Enid Lyons
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The Honourable Dame Enid Lyons AD, GBE |
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Enid and Joseph Lyons in the 1930s
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| Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia | |
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In office 6 January 1932 – 7 April 1939 |
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| Preceded by | Sarah Scullin |
| Succeeded by | Lady Page |
| Member of the Australian Parliament for Darwin |
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In office 21 August 1943 – 19 March 1951 |
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| Preceded by | George Bell |
| Succeeded by | Aubrey Luck |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Enid Muriel Burnell 9 July 1897 Smithton, Tasmania |
| Died | 2 September 1981 (aged 84) |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Political party |
UAP (1943–44) Liberal (1944–51) |
| Spouse(s) | Joseph Lyons |
| Children | 12 |
| Occupation | Teacher |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Dame Enid Muriel Lyons AD, GBE (née Burnell; 9 July 1897 – 2 September 1981) was an Australian politician and the first woman to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives as well as the first woman appointed to the federal Cabinet. Prior to these achievements, she was best known as the wife of the Premier of Tasmania and later Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Lyons. She fought for women's equity and equality. She had 12 children.
Lyons was born Enid Muriel Burnell in Smithton, Tasmania, one of three daughters of William and Eliza (née Taggett) Burnell, and educated at the Teacher's Training College, Hobart and later became a school teacher. Her mother was an activist in Labor and community groups in Tasmania. She was one of the first women appointed as a Justice of the Peace in Tasmania. Eliza Burnell apparently introduced her teenaged daughter to Joseph Lyons, a rising Tasmanian Labor politician. The two married two years later. Enid had been brought up a Methodist but became, at Lyons' request, a Roman Catholic.
On 28 April 1915, when she was 17 and Lyons was 35, the couple wed, at Wynyard, Tasmania; they would have twelve children, one of whom died in infancy.
In 1931 Joseph Lyons left the Labor Party and joined the United Australia Party (UAP), becoming prime minister at the subsequent election. Enid Lyons was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the Coronation Honours of 1937. Joseph Lyons died in 1939, aged 59, the first Australian Prime Minister to die in office, and Dame Enid returned to Tasmania. She bitterly resented Joseph Lyons's successor as leader of the UAP, Robert Menzies, who had, she believed, betrayed her husband by resigning from the Cabinet, shortly before Joseph's death.
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