I lived from 1848-1920.
I was from Australia, and am in the Oceania category.
She was born Louisa Albury at Guntawang, near Mudgee, New South Wales, in February 1848. An intelligent and thoughtful child, Louisa rebelled against the domesticity expected of her, and at the age of eighteen, she married Niels Hertsberg Larson. In those days, a young woman had very little choice other than marriage if she wished to leave her family home, especially in the country where there were no other options for women. Louisa took this way out.
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Married life made her a feminist and she spent thirty-five years of her life fighting for women's rights. In 1902, when the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales celebrated victory at last in obtaining the vote for women, Louisa was referred to as 'The mother of womanhood suffrage.' A great tribute among so many other women who had worked and fought for the right for women to vote.
Louisa's first son, Henry, was born on the goldfields in a bark hut with a dirt floor. The family was often on the move as her husband (now known as Peter Lawson) followed opportunities for work, and finally, at Louisa's urging, they settled on a small farm. Louisa worked on the farm, grew the vegetables, performed the household chores and took in sewing to earn more money. Peter began to be absent on contracting work more and more often, leaving Louisa to endure the loneliness and hard work of a woman alone in the Australian bush with a family of small children. Finally, in 1883, she left the country (and her absent husband) and moved to Sydney to a large house where she could take in boarders. She began meeting interesting and diverse people, and commenced her association with intellectuals, social reformers and political radicals.
In 1888, she launched The Dawn, a journal for women, written, edited and printed by women - the first of its kind. The Dawn advised on women's issues, discussed divorce, the age of consent, and women's right to vote. The paper also contained short stories, fashion notes, sewing patterns and reports on women's activities around the country and overseas.
Louisa employed only women in the production of The Dawn and she and her staff were consequently severely harassed by male workers in the printing trade. For seventeen years Louisa Lawson continued to produce The Dawn, as well as carrying on her work for women's rights.
Louisa Lawson died in 1920. The small obituary in The Bulletin gave as much space to the fact that she was Henry Lawson's mother as it did to her role in the achievement of votes for women.
"I have always loved my countrywomen, always admired them, and believed in them, and believed them to be the most patient, long suffering, generous and capable Women in the whole World. I still think so. It does not seem so odd now as it did years ago, when Australians male and female were not considered as they are now. I had in my mind's eye a big capable, strong, virtuous Woman as a Representative of Australia. I saw her in my dreams when a little child, and when I grew up I wanted to fight every obstacle out of her way, and I fought, God knows I did with a persistence almost amounting to mania as long as health and means lasted."
Louisa Lawson
My poetry
No downward path to death we go
Through no dark shades or valleys low,
13 lines, 13 comments
You ask me, dear child, why thus sadly I weep
For baby the angels have taken to keep;
13 lines
O, why do you weep mother, why do you weep
For baby that fell in the summer to sleep?
13 lines
A city bird once in a desperate rage
Threw over the bars of his screen
23 lines
Oh, there is a being that haunteth my dreams
When night sendeth slumber to me,
23 lines
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