Vida Goldstein
| Vida Goldstein | |
|---|---|
Vida Goldstein
|
|
| Born |
13 April 1869 Portland, Victoria, Australia |
| Died |
15 August 1949 (aged 80) South Yarra, Victoria, Australia |
| Other names | Goldstein, Vida Jane Mary |
| Occupation | Australian feminist politician |
Vida Jane Goldstein (13 April 1869 – 15 August 1949) was an early Australian politician who campaigned for women's suffrage and social reform. She was the first woman in the British Empire to stand for election to a national parliament.
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein was born in Portland, Victoria, the eldest child of Jacob Goldstein and Isabella (née Hawkins). Her father was an Irish immigrant and officer in the Victorian Garrison Artillery. Jacob, born at Cork, Ireland, on 10 March 1839 of Polish, Jewish and Irish stock, arrived in Victoria in 1858 and settled initially at Portland. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the Victorian Garrison Artillery in 1867 and rose to the rank of colonel. On 3 June 1868 he married Isabella (1849–1916), eldest daughter of Scottish-born squatter Samuel Proudfoot Hawkins. Her mother was a suffragist, a teetotaller and worked for social reform. Both parents were devout Christians with strong social consciences. They had four more children after Vida – three daughters (Lina, Elsie and Aileen) and a son (Selwyn).
After living in Portland and Warrnambool, the Goldsteins moved to Melbourne in 1877. Here Jacob became heavily involved in charitable and social welfare causes, working closely with the Melbourne Charity Organisation Society, the Women's Hospital Committee, the Cheltenham Men's Home and the labour colony at Leongatha. Although an anti-suffragist Jacob Goldstein believed strongly in education and self-reliance. He engaged a private governess to educate his four daughters and Vida was sent to Presbyterian Ladies' College in 1884, matriculating in 1886. When the family income was affected by the depression in Melbourne during the 1890s, Vida and her sisters, Aileen and Elsie, ran a co-educational preparatory school in St Kilda. Opening in 1892, the 'Ingleton' school would run out of the family home on Alma Road for the next six years.
In 1891, Isabella Goldstein recruited the 22-year-old Vida to assist in collecting signatures for a women's suffrage petition. She would stay on the periphery of the women's movement through the 1890s, but her primary interest during this period was with her school and urban social causes – particularly the National Anti-Sweating League and the Criminology Society. This work gave her first-hand experience of women's social and economic disadvantages, which she would come to believe were a product of their political inequality.
...
Wikipedia