Catherine Helen Spence

Miniature portrait in oils of Catherine Helen Spence, women's rights agitator and writer, 1825-1910.

Catherine Helen Spence was born on 31 October 1825 in Melrose, Scotland. Her family migrated to South Australia in 1839.

Spence became Australia's first truly professional woman journalist and first female political candidate. She was a dedicated social and political reformer in her home colony. Spence's influence on suffrage, culminating in South Australia being the first Australian colony to grant the vote to women, and the first in the world to give women the right to stand for Parliament, extended beyond Australia. In later years she was known as the 'Grand Old Woman of Australia'. She died on 3 April 1910.

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