People Australia

Lucy Cassidy, caricature, 1949

Smith's Weekly (Sydney), 10 September 1949, p 13

Lucy Maria Cassidy, née Sullivan (1878-1968) nurse, trade union official and Labor activist

Birth: 7 May 1878 at Wandiligong, Victoria, daughter of Eugene Sullivan (1850-1935), an Irish-born miner, and native-born Ellen, née Kelly (1855-1930). Marriage: 1926 at Randwick, Sydney, New South Wales, to Robert John Cassidy (1880-1948), known by pseudonym as 'Gilrooney' (1880-1948), Australian Worker poet and journalist. They had no children. Death: 26 February 1968 in hospital at Randwick: usual residence Flood Street, Bondi. Religion: Catholic. 

• Moved from Melbourne as a young woman to work as nurse at Waterfall, Callan Park and Rookwood.
• From 1900 was active in Australian Labor Party circles, especially in Surry Hills and Bondi; was present at meeting to welcome Ramsay McDonald in 1900.
• 1904 helped form Labor Women's Organising Committee. 1910 founder of Hospital and Asylum Employees' Union, working as nurse at Waterfall where conditions were 'pretty bad'. (Employees were allowed four days a month leave.)
• Union's first delegate to Eight Hour committee, 1915, representing New South Wales at Tasmanian Eight Hour Committee celebrations in Hobart. With Jean Daley, in 1924 the only women members of All Australian Trade Union Congress.
• Active in anti-conscription struggles during World War I.
• 1928 established Fellowship of Australian Writers. Prior associations with Henry Lawson and Bertha McNamara influenced her campaign for 'Henry Lawson's Day' to be proclaimed in schools in New South Wales, achieved 1927 as well as subsequent lobbying for production of postage stamp to honour Lawson, which appeared in 1949.
• Remained committed Labor activist for more than 50 years. Friend of poet Rod Quinn and nursed him in his final years.
• Appointed OBE 1958.
• Cause of death: cerebral thrombosis and arteriosclerosis.

Sources
Westralian Worker (Perth), 15 February 1924; Health Standard, November 1958; ALP Woman Magazine Special Diamond Jubilee Issue, February 1964.