Page 22 - Keeping the Peace

16 Keeping the Peace – A History of Honorary Justices in Victoria
such as The Women’s Christian Temperance Union who, at their Annual Conference in Melbourne in 1922, included a resolution that there be more women as JPs, while also opposing the secularisation of the Sabbath, the facilities for wine drinking in restaurants and the facilities for smoking in railway carriages.25
Those advocating for democratic rights for women, such as the Victorian Women’s Citizenship Movement, were also active in encouraging change so that women could be eligible to be JPs. At an open meeting on 4 May 1926, the Reverend H H E Hayes expressed his dismay that a democratic country such as Australia was so slow to grant this right to women. He urged the attendees to commence a campaign, including suggesting they ‘dig someone in the hips in the railway compartment and say, “How do you do, do you know anything about women JPs?”’ He told of a case where a woman who had been seriously assaulted by her husband felt unable to take the matter to court as there were no women sitting on the bench to hear her story.26
Following a deputation from the Victorian Women’s Citizenship Movement, the government announced it would release a bill to allow women to be eligible to become JPs. However, in 1930 the Honorable H R Richardson noted in parliament that ‘a good many cases come before the bench that were not suitable for women to listen to’. However, less than four months later the first woman sat as a JP on the City Court Bench.27
Seven women were appointed as JPs in Victoria including Ms Lillias Skene, (a prominent member of numerous women’s groups and social welfare organisations), Ms Eleanor Glencross and Ms Blanche Muriel Eugenie Ross-Watt. Other notable female JPs from this period included Major Mary Anderson, who was involved with Salvation Army’s women’s shelters28 and Mrs O Hicken, first woman in a rural part of Victoria to be appointed as a JP.29
Allowing women to be JPs was not without its controversy. In September 1930, JP Mrs Britomarte James refused to leave the South Melbourne court on hearing a case of a disorderly house, even though her fellow male JP Mr Cohen insisted the evidence was too ‘revolting’ for a woman to hear. She reported that ‘it is more important that women should be present in cases of this description in which women are concerned than in others.
25 The Argus, 18 November 1922.
26 The Herald, 5 May 1926.
27 La Trobe University, ‘Guilty, your worship. A study of Victoria’s Magistrates’ Courts’, Legal Studies Department, 1980, p. 15.
28 www.salvationarmy.org.au/history. 29 The Argus, 17 May 1927.