One of the more momentous and important events in 1924 happened in March of that year 1924 state election when Edith Cowan was not re-elected to parliament. The Mount Lawley connection being ECU, the only university in Australia named after a woman.
We all know the story about Edith Dircksey Cowan (1861-1932) who was born near Geraldton and at 18 married James Cowan who was registrar and master of the Supreme Court.
She had an unfortunate start in life as her mother died in childbirth when she was seven and her father was hanged to death on a charge of wilful murder of his second wife when she was fifteen.
In 1894 Edith Cowan was one of the founders of the Karrakatta Club and in time she became the club’s president. WA women won the right to vote in 1899 but it was not until 1920 that they became eligible to stand for and win parliamentary seats.
A year later, Edith successfully won the seat of West Perth in the Legislative Assembly for the Nationalists Party (the precursor to the Liberal Party). As we know she became the first woman member of an Australian parliament and indeed the first woman in the Southern Hemisphere to be elected to a Parliament.
Her undoing was probably set in her maiden speech when she said:
“It is all the more necessary, therefore, that I should make it clear where I stand. I am a Nationalist, and I belong to no party in this House. I was sent here to uphold law and order and constitutional government, and it will be my desire to assist in carrying out these objects in a proper and satisfactory manner; while in the discharge of my duties here I shall be responsible only to my own constituents.”
She was true to her word and, during her one term in Parliament, voted against her Party on several occasions. At the 1924 election, even though she was endorsed by the Nationalists, the Party put up a prominent lawyer against her and she lost her seat.
During her three-year term she successfully introduced two private member’s Bills. The first cemented the right of women, married or single, to enter the professions. The other gave inheritance rights to women whose adult children died without having made a will and without having had children of their own.
The results of the 1924 State Election in West Perth are given in this image to the right, showing how the National vote was split by the inclusion of the second candidate Thomas Davy and Edith Cowan being eliminated at the first round.