International Women's Day

Suffragette and temperance advocate Margaret McLean (nee Arnot, 1845-1923) lived in her later years at the home of her daughter, Edith, in Seymour Avenue in Armadale. She was the first signatory of the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Petition for the Franchise, as Mrs William McLean, which was presented to Parliament in 1891 and now memorialised by a sculpture in East Melbourne. She was a founding member of the Melbourne branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of Victoria, and published two widely circulated pamphlets, Womanhood Suffrage (1890) and More About Womanhood Suffrage (1891). She petitioned for the employment of female police officers, and helped establish the National Council of Women of Victoria, which advocated for juvenile courts and police matrons. 

Margaret McLean, 1870, East Melbourne Historical Society collection.Stonnington History Centre SHC71333

Kathleen Sloane, MBE (nee Adamson, 1908-2001) lived in Glenbrook Avenue in Malvern East. She served on the Committee of Management of Yooralla from 1934 until 1981 and established its first opportunity shop. During the Second World War she joined the Women of the University Patriotic Fund, and formed the Ridge Group, which held jumble sales in Malvern Town Hall to assist the Save the Children Fund. She helped establish International House at the University of Melbourne in the 1950s and started the Melbourne University Parents’ Group in 1960. She was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to the community in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 1974. 

Kathleen Sloane, Argus, 1 July 1953, p. 6. Stonnington History Centre SHC71331

Dame Rita Mary Buxton (nee Neunhoeffer, 1899-1982) lived with her husband and her parents at Toronto, 48 Hampden Road, Armadale. She joined the Toorak auxiliary of Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital in 1927, later becoming president of the central executive of auxiliaries, responsible for both fundraising and volunteering at the hospital. An only child, she received the bulk of her father’s considerable estate when he died in 1935, using some of the money for studentships and fellowships for the St Vincent’s School of Medical Research, for which she was a founding council member in 1958. She received an OBE in 1944, a CBE in 1955 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969 in recognition of her work as one of the hospital’s major donors and fundraisers.