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Daughter of David Spence,
writer to the signet, and Helen Brodie, was born at Melrose, Scotland, on
31 October 1825. Her schoolmistress, Miss Sarah Phin, was a "born teacher
in advance of her own time". Miss Spence had a happy childhood but in her
fourteenth year her father met with heavy financial losses and emigrated
with his family to the new colony of South Australia. Miss Spence carried
with her a letter from her schoolmistress certifying that she was able "to
undertake both the useful and ornamental branches of education--French,
Italian and music you thoroughly understand". Some years of privation
followed her arrival in South Australia at the end of 1839. The family
lived in a tent near Adelaide, some cows were bought, and the milk was
sold to the townspeople. Her father was then appointed town clerk at £150
a year, but in a little while the position was temporarily done away with.
At 17 years of age Miss Spence became a daily governess at sixpence an
hour, and spent several years in teaching. She refused one offer of
marriage on account of the Calvinistic creed of her admirer. Her own views
were recorded in her volume, An Agnostic's Progress, published
anonymously many years afterwards. She also began to take an interest in
politics and took part in the controversy on "State Aid to Religion". Her
brother, John Brodie Spence, was the Adelaide correspondent of the
Melbourne Argus, and Miss Spence began her journalistic career by
writing his letters for him. In 1854 her first novel, Clara Morison,
was published, which was followed by Tender and True (1856), Mr
Hogarth's Will (1865), and The Author's Daughter (1867). These
volumes, like other early Australian books, are practically unprocurable.
There are probably not more than two or three complete sets of them in
existence. Another novel, Gathered In, appeared in the Adelaide
Observer, but was never published in book form. Her novels are
sincere, well-written stories but only one attained much circulation, and
their author appears to have received little more than £100 from the four
of them. Miss Spence, however, took no little comfort from the fact that
the reading of Mr Hogarth's Will by Edward Wilson (q.v.) suggested
the founding of the great Edward Wilson trust that has meant so much to
the charities of Melbourne. The greatest interest in the life of Miss
Spence came to her in 1859 when she read an article by John Stuart Mill
which appeared in Fraser's Magazine supporting Thomas Hare's system
of proportional representation. She wrote a pamphlet on it, Plea for
Pure Democracy, published in 1861, which received the approval of
Hare, Mill, Rowland Hill and Professor Craik, who considered it to be the
best argument on the popular side that had appeared. Until near the end of
her life she continued to fight for this system.
By the kindness of a friend
Miss Spence was able to visit Europe in 1865. In England she met Mill and
Hare and revisited the scenes of her childhood. Returning at the end of
1866 she began to take an interest in the question of destitute children
and the gradual development of the boarding-out system, doing much work on
the committee of the Boarding-out Society. In 1871 she began public
speaking with a lecture on the Brownings, the first of many she was to
deliver, and in 1878 became a regular contributor to the South
Australian Register. For a period of 15 years she wrote many social
and political articles for its columns. Miss Spence also wrote many
reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald, and articles for the
Melbourne Review, the Victorian Review, and the Cornhill
Magazine. She began writing sermons and delivered many in Unitarian
churches at Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. She had an excellent voice and
her evident sincerity had a great effect. In 1880 Miss Spence published a
little volume for schoolchildren, The Laws We Live Under; she had
been the first woman appointed on a board of advice by the South
Australian education department and realized the necessity for children
learning something about civics. Many years later she was much interested
in the kindergarten movement. She was making a good income as a journalist
but a great deal was spent in charity, not always wisely as she herself
said. In the early eighteen-nineties she found herself able to give much
time to lecturing on proportional representation, and in 1893 visited the
United States as a government commissioner and delegate to the great
World's Fair congresses at Chicago. A visit to Europe followed, and soon
after her return to Adelaide at the end of 1894 she welcomed the success
of the women's suffrage movement.
In 1895 Miss Spence became
first president of a league formed for the furtherance of effective
voting, and fought hard without success for its inclusion in the
Australian constitution. She was also a candidate for the federal
convention of 1897 but was not elected. She paid a visit to Sydney in her
seventy-fifth year and then went on to Melbourne, giving addresses in both
cities, and a year later in 1901 became president of the South Australian
Co-operative Clothing Company, formed for the benefit of operatives in the
shirtmaking and clothing trades. In 1903 Miss Spence had the first serious
illness of her life, but recovered and continued her many activities. Her
State Children in Australia; A History of Boarding-out and its
Developments was published in 1907. She died on 3 April 1910.
Miss Spence was short, in
later life stout, and homely in appearance. She brought a thoroughly
reasonable, wise and acute mind to the social problems of her day, and in
private life was full of the kindliest human nature, with a charity that
enabled her "to help lame dogs over stiles" all her life. Proportional
representation, the dearest wish of her life, has been adopted to some
extent in Tasmania, Western Australia and New South Wales, and the system
of preferential voting now generally in force in Australia may be regarded
as a step towards the effective voting she so ardently fought for. A great
public-spirited citizen she spent her life in working for her country.
After her death a fund was raised by public subscription so that her
portrait could be painted and presented to the national gallery at
Adelaide, and the government founded the Catherine Helen Spence
scholarship in her memory. This scholarship is awarded every four years,
and one of the conditions is that the winner shall spend two years abroad
in the study of social science. |
