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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-11-13 Daily Xml
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MATTERS, MURIEL

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (11:31): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises the centenary of the Grille Incident and the unique and outstanding role of South Australian born Muriel Lilah Matters-Porter in the United Kingdom Suffrage Movement;

(b) acknowledges her work for women's rights and issues that included abolition of sweating, promotion of women's unions, equal divorce laws, equal pay for equal work, endowment of motherhood and support for unmarried mothers; and

(c) recognises her other main areas of activism including access to education, prison reform, peace and disarmament.

I feel very privileged to put this motion to the house, because it will put on the record the role of South Australian born woman, Muriel Lilah Matters, and the role she played in women's suffrage and so many other areas of social reform. While I use 28 October and the centenary of the Grille Incident as the focus of this motion, as members will hear, it was just one of many highlights in the remarkable career in activism that Muriel forged in her adopted home country of the United Kingdom.

The Muriel Matters story started for me in about 2003, when I read a short paragraph on her in the research monograph written by Myra Scott entitled, 'How Australia led the way: Dora Meeson Coates and British Suffrage'. Dora, who was born in 1869 and died in 1955, was a contemporary of Muriel's, and I feel sure that they must have met, as both were involved in the Women's Freedom League, one of the prominent women's suffrage groups, but more on that later.

An artist, Dora was born in Victoria, migrated with her family to New Zealand and lived on the Continent, finally settling in England. Dora painted the banner, 'Trust the women, mother, as I have done'. It is a celebration of women's suffrage in Australia and the banner depicts a young woman (symbolic of Australia), a shield of the Southern Cross by her side, appealing to the maternal Britannia, urging that Britain grant women suffrage, as New Zealand had in 1893, and of course our own great state in 1894, when South Australian women were also given the right to stand for election.

As Myra Scott says in the introduction, where she details the dates that the various Australian states granted women dual suffrage:

These electoral rights were achieved after considerable struggle but without the devastating campaigns, violence and civic turbulence which characterised the movement in what was then known as the 'Mother Country', or Great Britain.

It was in these tumultuous times that Muriel arrived in London in 1905, but her story really started here in Adelaide in Bowden, where she was born on 12 November 1877, the third born daughter of John Leonard Matters and Emma Alma, nee Warburton. A further seven siblings arrived to complete the family over a period of about 15 years. Many of her siblings are distinguished in their own right, perhaps the most notable being Leonard Warburton Matters, a journalist and an adventurer, who was himself elected to the House of Commons in 1929. We have located his direct descendants in the United Kingdom, Patricia and Hugh Dunseith, who remember Aunt Muriel well, and I hope to have more information from them in due course.

John Matters had three brothers and two of them, Charles and Thomas, were the brothers who founded Matters & Co., for many years located in King William Street, opposite the Town Hall, where The Advertiser stood for so many years. John is shown as a carpenter in the Sands & McDougall Directory of 1876, eventually becoming prosperous through various endeavours that reportedly tried his marriage. We see him following his family to Perth, Western Australia, in about 1894.

By this time, Muriel has become a gifted elocutionist and been influenced by the themes in Ibsen's Doll's House. She returned to Adelaide in 1901, performing at the Cowandilla Salon and Mrs Quesnel's Music Rooms, among other venues. This was a time when entertainment consisted of live performances, and Muriel had studied music and was in great demand. She lived in Sydney and Melbourne and appears to have performed in Robert Brough's Comedy Company in those cities. She also directed Pinero's Sweet Lavender for the Appendreena Dramatic Club.

We have also located a program from 1896 where Muriel plays Ophelia in a performance of the Adelaide University's Shakespearean Club, which demonstrates that Muriel is actively moving around this young nation's capital cities. While moving around the country, Muriel was influenced by European friends, who imbued her with socialist ideals and no doubt encouraged her to broaden her experience.

She left for London on 26 August 1905 and taught for a time. In London she met the Russian revolutionary anarchist Peter, Prince Kropotkin, and many others with similar views and soon abandoned acting. We must appreciate that by now in Britain there are many groups working for social reforms of all kinds and women are playing leading roles in all sorts of reforms.

Muriel formally joined the women's suffrage movement on 7 March 1907, becoming part of Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). When their actions and methods became increasingly violent, Muriel left (later that year) and became part of Charlotte Despard and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence's new movement called the Women's Freedom League (WFL), whose members adopted a policy of constitutional militancy.

It was around this time that the Votes for Women caravan began its tour around Great Britain, with Muriel at the reins, driving through Surrey, Sussex and Kent. She spent a year in Wales and time in Dublin. Pictures depict a large wooden vehicle, similar in size to a modern day caravan, with a woman and four horses (or two) galloping around the countryside.

A gifted orator, Muriel reportedly had no trouble gathering crowds around the van, pulling up and speaking from the rear steps. She is reputed to have lectured in Hyde Park. On 21 June 1908, there was a massive rally there, attracting around half a million people. It had been many months in the planning and an area had been arranged around 20 speaking points, with four women to speak from each of the points.

The event went for over an hour, with a motion unanimously passed on the voices at the conclusion of the rally. While there is growing evidence to confirm that Muriel was one of these speakers, there is little doubt she spoke throughout the country at rallies and public meetings as an organiser for the WFL, and was heavily involved in several by-elections at that time.

Around mid-1908, planning began for the Grille Incident to take place in the Ladies Gallery in the House of Commons. Women were allowed into parliament to witness the proceedings of the house, but only behind something that resembled a modern day screen door through which a person could see but not be seen by those on the other side. The 'vile grille', as it was known, was seen as a symbol of women's oppression. Muriel said in her article, 'My Impressions as an Agitator for Social Reform', written in 1913, that she regarded the offensive barrier in the ladies' gallery as 'a symbol of the conventional attitude towards women, of many men in this country', and compared it unfavourably with the conditions designed to stifle women in other countries.

On 28 October, Muriel and two other women managed to smuggle lengths of burglar proof chain—carefully wrapped in wool so they would not make rattling noises as they moved—into the gallery. They padlocked themselves with the chains around their waists to the grille and hid the key in their clothing. They unfurled their banner listing suffrage demands into the chamber, and Muriel began shouting suffrage proclamations. When the attendants came to remove her, it became apparent that the grille would have to be taken down with her. When the grille was eventually removed, the ladies were technically in the house, thus making Muriel's remarks—as she was still speaking—the first speech by a woman in the House of Commons. Sympathetic men in place in the public gallery then threw brochures onto the floor of the chamber and the sitting ended in uproar, resulting in the galleries being closed for some days after the incident.

The women, still chained to the approximately six foot by two foot metal grille, were ushered into a committee room where tools were used to file off the chains. They were then taken to the Westminster Bridge side entrance of the house and put outside. Muriel ran back around to the front of the house to check on her comrades who were demonstrating there and was promptly arrested, along with four others who had been in the house, and 10 who had not. She was tried the next day and sentenced to a month in Holloway Prison.

Her protest, arrest, trial and sentence made headlines and brought great publicity to the cause. A report of the incident in the Adelaide Advertiser on 30 October 1908 noted that Muriel informed the interviewer that she had voted twice in Australian elections. Another result of the day's protest was that the grille was not replaced for some time. It now occupies a place in one of the Commons hallways.

While in prison, Muriel became passionately concerned about reform of gaols. Many suffragettes were imprisoned during the troubles, and many began hunger strikes—36 were subjected to force feeding, a barbaric practice that gained so much bad publicity that it eventually resulted in the government of the day abandoning imprisonment as a strategy to stop the women. These militant rather than violent acts attracted a great deal of media attention, and Muriel already had a clear understanding of the importance of publicity. She became the person looked to for an audacious stunt.

The next big event was planned for February 1909 to coincide with the royal opening of parliament. Muriel and the WFL organised what can only be described as a very large airship piloted by Captain Spencer, who is perhaps a relation to the late Princess of Wales. The balloon had 'Votes for Women' painted on one side in large letters, with WFL on the other. The plan was to fly over Westminster and drop handbills calling for support for the vote. However, weather conditions were not favourable, and the balloon rose to a great height and went off course. Nevertheless, 100cwt handbills were dropped in a 'not too inefficient distribution', according to an article headlined in the papers the following day, 'Handbills from the clouds'.

A motorcade of suffragettes armed with megaphones followed the balloon along the countryside, stopping to give out extra handbills and making one-minute speeches along the way. Muriel later wryly noted that she had been refused insurance for her role in the stunt.

In 1910, Muriel returned to Australia to visit her family and she undertook a lecture tour in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, which featured slides on a lantern show. Over three nights in each city, she covered her activities for suffrage and other social causes. While in Melbourne, a reception was held in Parliament House in her honour. She worked with Vida Goldstein on a motion that passed through our Senate to be sent to the British Prime Minister, Mr Asquith. It encouraged him to support enfranchisement of women by pointing to the success and good results of female suffrage in this country. The motion was moved by Senator Rae on 17 November 1910. Sadly, this association with Vida is not mentioned in the history of Victoria's struggle for the vote. Their centenary will be celebrated shortly, and I hope that we can ensure Muriel's inclusion in this historic event beforehand.

On her return to England, Muriel remained an activist for suffrage and other social issues. She worked to further educational opportunities for women in the Lambeth slums and spoke widely on many issues. She undertook another caravan campaign, this time in Buckinghamshire. She worked to ease the hardships caused to workers by the Dublin lockout in 1913 and, in October 1914, she addressed the Bedford Women's Suffrage Society.

Also in that year, she married William Arnold Porter, a divorced Bostonian dentist with rooms in London's fashionable professional area. During the Great War, she produced a pamphlet entitled 'The False Mysticism of War' and worked in the peace and disarmament movement, organising a peace conference for women in London in April 1915.

In 1916 she travelled to Barcelona to train with the noted educationalist, Maria Montessori, later using her teaching skills in the Bow Street School established by Sylvia Pankhurst. In 1922, she again returned to Australia for a family visit and another lecture tour, again to four cities. In 1924, with suffrage finally granted, she unsuccessfully stood against a Tory Lord as the Labor candidate for the seat of Hastings under the name of Muriel Matters-Porter.

Very little is written about Muriel's life after about 1934 when she appeared in the High Court as a witness for Hanah Sheehy Skeffington in her libel case against the Irish Catholic Herald. In 1957, Muriel attended the golden jubilee of the WFL. Her husband, William, died in 1949 and they had no children. We know, however, that she lived happily in Hastings, independently until shortly before her death from pneumonia on 17 November 1969.

What influences would nurture one person more than another to want to be an agent for change—not change for change sake but, rather, changes that are fairer and more equitable for the common good? Spending her formative years here in Adelaide—a settlement unique and founded on the sorts of principles that sought a fairer society—must have played some role. Muriel's family worked hard to forge a life for their children and showed a true pioneer spirit, moving around the country in search of work and a better life. This mobility stayed with Muriel all her life. It is remarkable to think of a woman sailing to and from the UK and visiting many parts of Europe, often on her own, and then to America with her husband on his dental congresses after their marriage.

Muriel's means are still a mystery. She did work as a performer and elocutionist, having held rooms at 12 Pirie Street here in Adelaide (in the old Bank of New Zealand building) at least for one year in 1904. There is much to discover about her motivations and later life, and I hope to be able to inform the house of future research when I make my concluding remarks on the day that I hope this motion will be passed.

It is not possible to cover all of Muriel's endeavours in this contribution. The information in the one paragraph on Muriel in Ms Scott's monograph which started my interest in this fascinating woman is referred to from various sources. When I began to look into Muriel, I soon found her entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, dating back to 1986, written by a woman called Fayette Gosse. This provided a treasure trove of other references but little did I realise how this would connect to Muriel's history. I commissioned a paper from the parliamentary library, for which I thank David Brooks and the many other wonderful research staff under Coral Stanley and Jenni Newton-Farrelly—particularly John Weste, Sandra Kane and Alex Grove.

At the same time, I contacted Marie Maddocks from the family research area of the State Library of South Australia. I cannot thank her enough or commend her too highly for her wonderful and professional assistance with what has become the Muriel project to many who have helped to reach this day, including my colleagues the Hons Jane Lomax-Smith and Stephanie Key, who suggested that the Premier would be interested, and I thank him for his comments to the house on the day of the centenary.

After assembling material for this motion, I realised that, if I could, I should contact Muriel's family. To my great joy, this led to meeting Mrs Jocelyn Davis, Muriel's favourite niece, who was born in 1922. Her birth was the catalyst for one of Muriel's return visits to Australia. Jocelyn and her daughter Helen travelled to Adelaide for the centenary and met their relatives, Frank and Janice Hatherley, who travelled from New South Wales, and Mr Robin Matters, an Adelaide relative through one of Muriel's uncles.

Most importantly, though, through the member for Adelaide, eventually I found out that Fayette Gosse was a great friend of her friend, Elizabeth Thomas. A Matters by birth, Fayette had married the brother of South Australian icon, Lady Mary Downer. Both these ladies are friends, too. Sadly, I was not able to meet Fay as both she and her husband passed away within a few weeks of each other—a few weeks before I realised the connection. Ironically, Marie mentioned that other staff of the State Library of South Australia had remembered Mrs Gosse spending many hours in the library researching. It could have been part of the research for the Muriel entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, apart from her book on the Gosse family.

I am indebted to all the people I have mentioned to date and so many more: the staff of libraries all over Australia, including Cheryl Hoskin of the Barr Smith, Jenny Scott of the State Library of South Australia, Tricia Fairweather of the State Library of Western Australia, and Robyn Holmes and Liz McKenzie of the National Library of Australia. Thanks also to Susie at the State Theatre Company's prop shop, Helen Trepa from the Performing Arts Collection and Creon Grantham and his team for their help on centenary day, which was especially appreciated by all who attended.

The Adelaide City Council archivist, Michial Farrow, Wayne Price, Linda Lacey and Trevor Porter from the City of Charles Sturt have all assisted, and I look forward to working with local historians from the City of Unley. Many book indexes have been searched, newspaper articles sourced and contacts made. I thank all involved, too many to name. Internationally, researcher Mari Takayanagi from the House of Lords has been helpful, and we have even had help from the National Library of Ireland. I look forward to the contributions of other members and I commend the motion to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. S.W. Key.

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