#suffrage125

Makers’ names: Cheryl Comfort and Joycelyn Mallinson

Petition sheet number: 1892 petition

Person honouring: Phillipa Jane Terrill and Elizabeth Cantrill

Relationship to makers: Great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother

Phillipa Austin and John Terrill were married in a registry office in Cornwall, England in July 1862. In August of that year they sailed to Lyttelton with John’s mother Jane Terrill. The couple’s first child, Thomas, was born on the ship.

Between 20 and 40 years, Phillipa gave birth to 12 children, three of whom died in infancy.

John deserted Phillipa when she still had young children. The family moved to Napier about 1884 where Phillipa kept a boarding house with her eldest daughter Elizabeth. At that time it appears that divorce was rare, only really available to wealthy folk, so desertion remained just that, with the couple still legally married.

Phillipa sought the right to keep her own money and possessions from her husband and also from his creditors. He had stopped supporting her and she wanted to ensure that he could not claim anything she earned or acquired in the future – any money or property owned by a wife could be claimed if her husband fell into debt. She must have been a mentally strong woman, with records showing that in 1890 an order from the Napier magistrate’s court granted Phillipa Terrill control over her own earnings and any property she had or might acquire.

It is not surprising that Phillipa Terrill and Elizabeth Cantrill were true supporters of women’s rights, and in 1892 they were keen to put their signatures to the Women’s Franchise petition in Napier.

Phillipa died of peritonitis in January 1893, age 50, and so would not live to celebrate New Zealand becoming the first country to give women the vote that same year.

Panel materials: All fabric already owned. The main part is old Obi sash material. It has wonderful rust marks in it and looks very much like the paper in the Te Ara website article about her that we printed to include on the panel.

Maker’s name: Kate Blakeley

Petition sheet number: 154

Person honouring: Isabella Downes

Relationship to maker: Distant relative

In 1890, Isabella Livingstone married Thomas Nicol Downes, a carter then later a plumber, only after all their eight children were born. 

She was born in Scotland about 1844 and arrived in New Zealand around 1864. The couple’s first child was born in New Zealand in 1865 and their second in Victoria, Australia in 1868. They returned to New Zealand in 1869 for the birth of their third child. The family settled in Dunedin. 

When she signed the suffrage petition, and when she later enrolled to vote, Isabella was living with her family in Clarendon Street.

Isabella died in December 1914 and Thomas died in 1918. They were buried together in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.

Panel materials: Cotton (from Vinnies Re-Sew), acrylic paint, piece of lace from my grandmother’s amazing stash, lace edging from one of her handkerchiefs, embroidery thread, beads.

Maker’s name: Kaz Bartsch

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Pearl Chaly

Relationship to maker: Mother

Pearl was born in 1928 in Woking just outside London, where her parents ran a grocer’s shop. 

She was a teenager during World War 2 and recalled wearing gumboots in air raid shelter classrooms and dances for soldiers on leave every weekend. She was born with a shortened right hand but nevertheless trained as a shorthand typist. 

Around age 20, Pearl immigrated to Australia as a Ten Pound Pom where she found work as the secretary to the British High Commissioner in Canberra. Later, after travelling extensively, Pearl came to New Zealand and became Judge Pritchard’s Legal Secretary, and later the secretary to the Dean of Law at Auckland University. Pearl’s daughter remembers her as adventurous, brave, stunningly intelligent, and very kind; she carried out a vast correspondence with many people around the world.

Despite Pearl’s beloved brother Terry being shot down over Korea in the Korean War, Pearl’s daughter remembers knitting peggy squares for blankets for Korean orphanages and packaging up toys and coloured pencils for the children. 

Pearl always worked tirelessly to help others and bring people together, teaching English as a second language to new immigrants into her eighties. In the central piece of the panel there is a beautiful stitched tribute to her. Pearl’s daughter says “My mother was not a traditional mother, she was always her own person and I admire her tremendously for the integrity and wit by which she lived her life. She is an inspirational woman to me.”

Panel materials: Cotton sheet provided and embroidery threads from the sewing box. I also incorporated the beautifully stitched central panel from a piece I inherited from Mum – made by a friend of hers as a gift. The blue is from a failed cyanotype but it stands in for the blue aerogrammes she sent flying around the world on an almost daily basis.

Maker’s name: Rupini Vengadesan

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Pappathy

Relationship to maker: Unknown

Panel materials: Unknown

Maker’s name: Chrissie Probett

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Violet Pearl Martin

Relationship to maker: Grandmother

My creative Grandma, Violet Pearl Martin (born Campbell), lived in Manly on the Hibiscus Coast and was known to bake beautifully decorated cakes, have some wins with her floral art arrangements, and do her knitting, among other pursuits. A visit to Grandma always included a tour of the garden where much was learnt. 

Pearl was born in Coromandel town in 1909, the third child of 10. She left home in her mid-teens and found work in a bakery in Auckland. There she met my grandfather, Cyril Martin. They married and had six children. They lived in Milford while Cyril was working on the police launch Deodar, also in Dargaville, Coromandel, Ellerslie, and Okura – where they lived in a bus that Grandad added a couple of rooms onto. She had to leave the family in the care of Grandad and the older children when her youngest contracted polio and ended up in an iron lung. 

In my memories of Grandma she would invariably be wearing an apron with her hand-knitted cardigan. She was a very economical person who saved buttons from garments when they had worn out, and unpicked lace for reuse, as well as many other tricks that are now coming back into use. This, and the things she did for others in her family and the community, helped shape my panel for her. It showed me that you can be quietly shaping future generations without it necessarily being acknowledged in a big way.

Panel materials: All reused, the pillowcase, the wool – given to me previously unused but from the 1980s, the buttons are reused and from Grandma’s old sewing desk (a converted dressing table) they still had the old threads in them! Lace is also from Grandma’s desk – some previously used and has stitching holes. Fabric on the apron is from the hospice shop, as is the doily/ hanky in the pocket. The wool used to make the felted flowers was leftovers.

Maker’s name: Uputaua Laumatia

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Toto’a Laumatia

Relationship to maker: Parent

Uputaua Laumatia chose to honour her parents, who are now deceased. Her parents lived in Samoa their whole lives and worked as teachers.

Panel materials: Tapa cloth was added to panel which is used in Samoan culture for ceremonial dress. Pale (beaded headpiece) was also created by the artist. Also used is the coconut necklace which was originally from Samoa. All these pieces are highly respected during ceremonies.

Maker’s name: Caroline O'Reilly

Petition sheet number: 87

Person honouring: Mary Smith and all other woman who meandered country lanes to sign the petition

Relationship to maker: Mary Smith – same name as my mother

Mary Smith, daughter of Ellen McCarty and James Harty, a gardener, was born in  Cobh, County Cork, Ireland about 1853. Aged 18, Mary sailed on the Carnatic to New Zealand, arriving in March 1874 in Port Chalmers. Her occupation was listed as servant.

Mary married Joseph Smith, in February 1875, in Tokomairiro, now Milton.

Mary and Joseph had a small farm in Inch Clutha, South Otago but when flooded out by the 1878 floods moved to Wangaloa where Joseph leased about 50 acres of Education Reserve to farm. He also worked several seams of coal, supplying local farmers with fuel. 

Joseph and Mary had eight children at Wangaloa. In 1893, a Mary Smith of Wangaloa signed the Women's Suffrage Petition. At the time, 15 families were recorded in Wises Directory as living in Wangaloa – only one Smith family. 

Joseph died in December 1912 at Wangaloa. Mary saw at least two of her sons enlist during World War 1; Joseph as part of the American Forces and Peter as part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces. Both returned from the war.

Mary died at the home of her daughter, Margaret Brown, in her 83rd year, in February 1936. She and Joseph were buried in Kaitangata.

Biography written by Kaye Foran, Mary Smith’s great-great-granddaughter.

Panel materials: Recycled sheet, net, threads. 

Maker’s name: Emma Lou

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Theresa

Relationship to maker: Sister

Panel materials: Ink on cloth, yarn, paper.