People Australia

Doris Beeby, 1937

Doris Isabel Beeby (1894-1948) secretary, trade union official, journalist and Communist 

Birth: 30 July 1894, at Stanmore, Sydney, daughter of native-born parents (Sir) George Stephenson Beeby, Labor politician and judge, and Helena, née West. Unmarried. Death: 17 October 1948 at Castlecrag. 

• Baptised in St Andrew’ Anglican Cathedral, Sydney, on 31 July 1894.
• Educated Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School (SCEGGS) and Sydney University. Assisted her father after his appointment as a NSW and then Commonwealth Arbitration Court judge.
• 1939-40 active in Spanish Relief Committee, London, where she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. Sold copies of the Daily Worker.
• Joined Communist Party of Australia on her return to Australia. From 1942 to 1945 she worked as an organiser for Sheetmetal Workers' Union.
• Canberra correspondent for Tribune. Active in feminist causes, principally through the United Associations of Women.
• May have acted as intermediary between Wally Clayton and Soviet Foreign Ministry official at diplomatic function, Canberra, 1948, and assisted Clayton’s espionage for Soviets.
• Cause of death: cancer.

Sources
Heather Radi (ed), 200 Australian Women; John Playford thesis, p. 415; Tribune (Sydney), 23 October 1948; David McKnight, Espionage and the roots of the Cold War: the conspiratorial heritage, (London) 2002; Desmond Ball and David Horner, Breaking the codes: Australia’s KGB network 1944-1950 (Sydney, 1998).