Elizabeth Wallace

  General Notes:

Elizabeth was a signatory to The 1891 Women's Suffrage Petition. "In 1891 members from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Victorian Temperance Alliance and other women's suffrage groups worked together to collect signatures from women throughout Victoria requesting the right to vote for women in the colony. This Women's Suffrage Petition stated 'that government of the People, by the People and for the People should mean all the People, not half'. It was also noted 'that all Adult Persons should have a voice in Making the Laws which they are required to obey'.

The signatures were collected by these women's networks in the remarkably short period of ten weeks in 1891.

Signatures were collected not only in the metropolis but across rural and regional areas, particularly where towns were linked by railway lines. In street after street, in house after house, women from a wide variety of circumstances signed or made their mark.

Nearly 30,000 signatures were recorded on sheets of paper. The individual sheets of paper were pasted onto cotton or linen fabric backing which was then glued together and rolled onto a cardboard spindle. (It now rests on a Perspex stand.) The original Women's Suffrage Petition 1891 is approximately 260 metres long and 200 mm wide.

The petition was presented to the Parliament of Victoria in November 1891, with the support of Premier James Munro, whose wife was one of the signatories. It became known as the 'Monster Petition' as at the time it was the largest petition ever tabled. It took several attendants to carry it into the Legislative Chamber of the Parliament as it was so heavy and bulky." Source: Public Record Office Victoria >> http://wiki.prov.vic.gov.au/index.php/1891_Women%27s_Suffrage_Petition

Elizabeth married Hung Fee in 1879 in Victoria, Australia. (Hung Fee was born about 1835 in China and died in 1918 in Victoria, Australia.)