People Australia

Elizabeth Jane Bremner (1877-1927) Socialist, peace activist 

Birth: 1877 at North Melbourne, Victoria, daughter of Cunningham Gray (1833-1913), a labourer born in Glasgow, Scotland, and Elizabeth, née Cross, late Halstead (1843-1923), born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England. Marriage: 2 February 1895 at the registrar’s office, Carlton, Victoria, to native-born William Bremner (1874-c.1940?), railway carriage builder. They had one daughter and a son who died in infancy. Death: 1 March 1927 in hospital at Wellington, New Zealand.

• Member of the Victorian Socialist Party and 'official pianist'. Member of the Women's Socialist League and in 1910-11 was its assistant secretary. In 1911-12 she was variously vice-president, president and treasurer.
• Executive member, Australian Peace Alliance during WWI. In 1916 was treasurer of Labor Women's Anti-Conscription Committee; prominent in women's mass anti-conscription procession in Melbourne in October 1916.
• Secretary, Women's Strike Committee 1917. Lost contact with VSP after the war.
• Husband convicted on 14 May 1918 and fined £2 for pilfering items valued at seven shillings and sixpence.
• In 1923 their daughter married a New Zealander and moved to Wellington. Mrs Bremner died there while she and her husband were visiting their daughter.
  
• cause of death is: acute salpingitis abscess, operation and acute general peritonitis.

Sources
Socialist (Melbourne), 1 March 1912, p 3, 1 June 1917, p 3; H. J. Gibbney & Ann G. Smith, A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 1 (Canberra, 1987); Recorder, No.  81, April 1976; Joy Damousi, Socialist Women in Australia, c.1890-c.1918, PhD thesis, ANU,1987.