Louisa LawsonPrint Page

The sculpture commemorates Louisa Lawson (1848 - 1920), who was a newspaper proprietor and poet.

Louisa was educated at Mudgee National School where J. W. Allpass proposed making her a pupil-teacher. Instead, she was kept home to help to care for her younger siblings and she resented the drudgery. On 7 July 1866 Louisa married Norwegian-born Niels (Peter) Hertzberg Larsen and  between 1867 and 1877 Louisa bore five children. Her husband was often away, either at the goldfields or contract building with his father-in-law; and Louisa took in sewing, sold dairy produce and fattened cattle. Louisa had had a strict Methodist upbringing and though she ceased to attend church she remained deeply religious. When she and the children moved to Sydney in 1883, she found friends through the Progressive Spiritualist Lyceum at Leigh House. She kept up a pretence of being separated from her husband by misfortune, but the marriage had ended.

In 1887 she bought the ailing Republican (1887-88). Her father Henry, though illiterate was a great story-teller. She shared that talent and her poetry, inspired by the death of her infant daughter, had been published in the Mudgee Independent. She and Henry edited and wrote most of the Republican's copy using 'Archie Lawson' for editorial purposes. In 1888 she started Dawn, announcing that it would publicize women's wrongs, fight their battles and sue for their suffrage. It offered household advice, fashion, poetry, a short story and extensive reporting of women's activities both locally and overseas. Dawn was an immediate commercial success. On 31 December 1888 Peter died, leaving £1103 to Louisa. She enlarged her printing plant and accepted job printing. In 1889 Mrs Lawson was employing ten women, including female printers.

The New South Wales Typographical Association, which refused membership to women, tried to force Mrs Lawson to dismiss her printers. It appealed to advertisers to boycott Dawn and harassed the women at their work. Louisa countered with a proclamation of her support for trade unionism. In a different context she advocated the protection of a union for married women and crèches for the benefit of the overworked mothers of large families and those forced to take paid employment. Her practical philanthropy included the Sydney Ragged Schools for which she organized the collection of old clothes and the seeds, bulbs and a prize for a floral competition.

In May 1889 Louisa launched the campaign for female suffrage and announced the formation of the Dawn Club. Who ordained that men only should make the laws which both women and men must obey, she asked, but her case rested on more than abstract justice. Woman's vote was needed to change evil laws and to protect women and their children. At the Dawn Club women met regularly to discuss 'every question of life, work and reform' and to gain experience in public speaking; she persuaded the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts' debating clubs to admit her and encouraged other women to join.

Through Dawn she created the public knowledge of women's affairs which helped to move opinion towards enfranchising women. She revealed the instances where the law failed to protect them or where by other means they were prevented from making a reasonable living. She blamed prostitution on men and evil laws and urged parents to equip daughters to earn their living and not keep them at home as unpaid domestic labour. In editorials she presented feminist arguments for opening the legal profession to women, appointing them as prison warders, factory inspectors and magistrates, and giving hospital appointments to female doctors. She added advice on health and the care of children, stressing diet, rest and exercise, and in her fashion page and paper pattern service encouraged women to dress sensibly but attractively. Dawn had an extensive country readership and intercolonial and overseas subscribers. It was in regular communication with English and American feminists.

When Mrs Dora Montefiore formed the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales in 1891, Louisa was invited to join and was elected to its council. She allowed it to use Dawn's office for meetings and printed its literature free of charge. She frequently spoke at league meetings and although she had enormous energy she was reported in need of a rest by the end of the year. About this time her relationship with Henry became strained although his first volume of verse was published on the Dawn press in 1894. She was a savage critic of drunkenness.

Again busy in the campaign in 1892, Louisa was a member of the league's delegation to the premier in October. Her outburst that women needed the vote 'to redeem the world from bad laws passed by wicked men' was unfavourably reported in the press. She was again exhausted and took a well-earned holiday. The failure of the Australian Joint Stock Bank caused her some financial difficulty but Dawn survived. She was drawn into the dispute in the league over allowing speeches on subjects other than the suffrage at its meetings.

In 1895 and 1897 Louisa Lawson took out a miner's right, presumably to demonstrate an inconsistency in the electoral law. At the celebratory meeting after women were enfranchised in New South Wales in 1902, she was publicly acclaimed as the originator of the suffrage campaign. She had become involved in protracted legal proceedings in an attempt to protect a patent which she had taken out on a mailbag fastener and for which she was meagrely compensated. She was thrown from a tram and suffered a fractured knee and injured her spine in 1900, taking over a year to recover, but in 1902 she was again active politically. On the council of the Women's Progressive Association, she resumed her campaign to secure appointment of women to public office.

Following her accident, she lost some of the vitality and inventiveness which had helped to make Dawn a success. Advertising fell away and in 1905 Dawn closed.

Afterwards Louisa lived in lonely and increasingly impoverished circumstances. She secured a publisher for two volumes of verse and sold a few poems and a number of short stories. She enjoyed her garden in which she had planted natives. Her 'Dolley Dear' poems capture the humour and warmth of the old woman's love for children. Louisa died in the Hospital for the Insane, Gladesville, on 12 August 1920.

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