Kate Sheppard

Kate Sheppard
Kate Sheppard, photographed in 1905
Born	Catherine Wilson Malcolm (1847-03-10)10 March 1847 Liverpool, England
Died	13 July 1934(1934-07-13) (aged 87) Christchurch, New Zealand
Other names	Katherine Wilson Malcolm
Home town	Liverpool
Spouse(s)	Walter Sheppard (m. 1872) William Lovell-Smith (m. 1925)
Children	Douglas Sheppard (b. 1880)

Katherine Wilson "Kate" Sheppard (10 March 1847 – 13 July 1934) was the most prominent member of New Zealand's women's suffrage movement and was the country's most famous suffragette. She also appears on the New Zealand ten-dollar note. Since New Zealand was the first country to introduce universal suffrage in 1893, Sheppard's work has had a considerable impact on women's suffrage movements in several other countries.

Kate Sheppard was born Catherine Wilson Malcolm in Liverpool, England to Scottish parents Jemima Crawford Souter and Andrew Wilson Malcolm. She generally preferred to spell her given name "Katherine", or abbreviate it to "Kate". She received a good education, and was noted for her intellectual ability and broad knowledge. For a time she lived with her uncle, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland at Nairn. In 1869, several years after her father's death, Sheppard and her siblings immigrated with their mother to Christchurch, New Zealand. She married Walter Allen Sheppard three years later, and their only child, Douglas, was born on 8 December 1880.

In 1885, Kate Sheppard became involved in establishing the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union, part of the larger temperance movement. Sheppard's involvement arose primarily from her religious beliefs, which she had derived from her uncle.

Discovering that much of the support for moderation came from women, the Temperance Union increasingly became active in advocating the cause of women's suffrage, an area in which Sheppard quickly became prominent. Her interest in women's suffrage, however, went beyond practical considerations regarding temperance: her views were made well known with her statement that "all that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome." Sheppard proved to be a powerful speaker and a skilled organiser, and quickly built support for her cause.

Sheppard helped introduce the first suffrage bill in 1887. In 1888, she published a pamphlet entitled Ten Reasons Why the Women of N.Z. Should Vote which championed the reasons women should be allowed to vote and also displayed her "dry wit and logical approach."