#svdp

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: Mary Culver

Petition sheet number: 413

Person honouring: E. A. [Elizabeth Ann] Patching

Relationship to maker: Great-aunt

Elizabeth Ann Bovey was born in April 1866 in Nelson. She was the third child of Elizabeth Stud and John Bovey.

In 1887, she married Peter Henry Patching in Wellington; they had three girls. Peter was a brickmaker, and only 34 when he died in 1891.

Elizabeth was left to bring up three little girls by herself. It is thought that Elizabeth ran a boarding house and then married Thomas Driver. Thomas died in Levin in 1912, and Elizabeth married for a third time to John Daniels in 1916.

Elizabeth passed away in 1920 due to cancer and was buried in the Mako Mako Road cemetery in Levin.

Panel materials: In the spirit of recycling, I chose fabric with a stenciled red rose I had completed decades ago – after adding the photos and embroidery, I discovered that in Tennessee supporters of women's right to vote wore yellow roses and those against wore red – so I changed the colour of the rose. The tatted pieces represent Elizabeth's three marriages and three daughters, and the koru the new opportunities open to women since gaining the vote – albeit slow at times! The tatted pieces come from my husband's grandmother. The white knots represent camellia buds, the crosses the other 46 signatories on the same page. Vintage lace is added around the edge of the panel.

Maker’s name: Marion Cooper

Petition sheet number: 298

Person honouring: Margaret Cooney

Relationship to maker: None

Margaret’s early life and education galvanised her interest in social justice, community care, and political reform, which she expressed through fundraising and donating to causes, as well as by supporting political meetings and petitions. 

Margaret Gertrude Page was born in 1862 in Goorteeny, Galway, Ireland, the second of 11 children. She arrived in New Zealand in 1879 and worked until her marriage to James Cooney in 1884.

The couple had 11 children. James was a produce merchant who ran Oamaru’s Royal Oak store, selling goods such as chaff, onions, tea, and in 1913 ‘a large lot of linseed oil’.

Margaret was living in Oamaru when she signed the petition and enrolled to vote in subsequent elections.

Three of her children died before Margaret did in December 1922.

Panel materials: Fabric I already had. 

Maker’s name: Pam Stade

Petition sheet number: 321

Person honouring: Esther Lucas

Relationship to maker:  Paternal grandmother

Esther Hardy was born in 1865 and moved to Blenheim in New Zealand from Northumberland, England. 

She married Charles Lucas, a storeman, in 1889 and had five children: Mary (1889), Sarah (1891), Emily (1892), George (1893), and Charles (1903).

Esther signed the petition in Blenheim. She died there in June 1937, five years before the panel maker was born. She and Charles were both buried at Omaka cemetery.

Panel materials: Calico panel. Black lace. Black and white stitched flowers cut from a piece of netting material, and small pieces of purple violet material (suffrage colours). The knitted lace at the bottom of my panel was knitted by Esther's mother, Sarah Hardy – several family members had various amounts of this lace in their possession, my mother included. She had it stitched onto pillow shams on our beds, on bedspreads, and possibly table runners.