Mrs Buist

I came across a small pile of Midlands Agricultural Society* exhibition certificates that been awarded to Mrs Buist in the 1880s, for produce and working bullocks. Last month, I found some more, so I thought I'd see if I could find some more about her with a quick poke around.

Seems she'd been winning at the show for a while. In 1874, the Examiner said, " The exhibits of fat cattle were in splendid condition and were much admired by numerous interested visitors. A pen of three fat Hereford bullocks exhibited by Mrs Buist gained the prize in Class” and the Mercury said, "For the best pen of fat bullocks those of Mrs. Buist showed tho best breeding, and were deservedly awarded a first prize".

She was a daughter of George Taylor, of Valleyfield, a prominent colonial family. He arrived with some of his children in 1823, full page write-up about the family on the centenary of arrival. Two years later, she married Arthur Buist, who died in 1837 and it seems she continued to run their property (Pitcuncarty) until her own death in 1895

DEATH OF AN OLD COLONIST.-On Thursday last there passed away to her rest another of the early pioneers of the colony, Mrs Christian Buist, of Pituncarty, at the ripe age of 97. The end was not altogether unexpected by her relatives and a friends, as she had been very feeble for some time and during the preceding week was confined to her bed. She passed quietly away without any apparent suffering. Notwithstanding her great age she retained in a surprising degree nearly to the last her mental vigour and her warm interest in the concerns of her friends and the movements of her surroundings and time. Mrs Buist was a colonist of fully 72 years standing, having left Scotland with her father, the late George Taylor, in 1822, arriving in Tasmania in January 1813. when she settled at Pituncarty, on the Macquarie river, where she spent the remainder of her long and useful life. Continued.
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*Campbell Town show

Mrs Roberston

One of the women I came across while reading for an essay about strikes & labour history. (Don't tell me you thought strikes were just about the men :)

Mrs Helen Robertson aged 89 years who died yesterday at her home in Rupert street, Collingwood was one of the foundation members of the former Tailoress's Union which was formed in 1880. Mrs Robertson, who arrived in Victoria from Scotland in 1853 continued her association with the Clothing Trades Union for 50 years. She was a foundation member of a committee which erected the Female Operatives Hall on the site of the Trades Hall buildings. The Argus, 24 June 1837


From "'We have no redress unless we strike':Class, Gender and Activism in the Melbourne Tailoresses' Strike, 1882–83", by Danielle Thornton, which you can read here:

"When she was interviewed by the Clothing Trades Gazette in 1922, Helen told how she and 'three or four' others, among them Lucy Moody and Mary Wise, sick of being 'treated like animals' by their employers, had resolved to start a union.... Helen remembered how she, Lucy Moody and Mary Wise had acted covertly, on one occasion plastering the factories with 'dodgers'–-handbills-–under the cover of night. Another time, she and her band of committed activists led a rally to Parliament House, presumably in support of the Factory Act, wondering all the while how long it would be before they were found out and sacked. Eventually, another worker betrayed them. 'Opposition came from all quarters', she remembered, and she had been labelled 'an agitator' and boycotted by employers. Undeterred, her gang of 'staunch fighters' had 'stuck all along', stoically 'battling the might of the employers' until a Factory Act was at last passed. 'That', Helen recalled, 'was really the starting point of our improvement'."


Entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography


A short entry on University of Sydney's Working Lives labour/social history site. On the Biographical Register page, there's a list of other women in the labour movement, but mostly a bit late for my purposes (active 1890s onwards).