People Australia

Adella Carver, c.1937

from Labor Daily (NSW), 6 October 1937, p 9

Carver, Adella Jane (‘Addie’), née Whittaker, also known as Adela (1886-1937) nurse and Labor activist

Birth: 2 November 1886 at Eden, New South Wales, eldest of ten children of native-born parents Arthur Bernard Whittaker (1862-1934), labourer later farmer, and Hannah, née Whelan (1859-1922). Marriage: 27 March 1918 in the Registrar General’s office, Sydney, NSW, to Arthur Raymond Carver (1889-1954) a native-born hotel keeper. They had no children. Death: 5 October 1937 in Sydney. Religion: Catholic. 

• Served the Australian Labor Party from about 1907, holding many official positions. She was a delegate to the Sydney Electorate Council, to the organising committee of the City Council (Fizroy ward) and to the Metropolitan and Easter ALP conferences. She was as well returning officer to the Fitzroy municipal assembly.
• A member of the Women Justices Association.
• Her brother D. P. Whittaker was president of the Tramway Union.
• Other siblings were settlers at Peeramon, near Yungaburra, far north Queensland, where her parents moved in 1918.
• Was a prominent member of the Labor Women’s Central Organising Committee, and its delegate to the party’s Easter conference in 1933. In March 1936 she was honorary secretary-treasurer of the Nurse Francis presentation committee.
• At her death she was secretary of the Darlinghurst branch of the Australian Labor Party, of which her husband was president. She was also deputy campaign-director for E. J. Ward for the forthcoming Federal election.
• Had been ill for some time and underwent an operation in June 1936.