People Australia

Rosetta Flynn, n.d.

Library&Archives NT, PH0057/0095

Rosetta Flynn (1878-1944) suffragist, political and social activist and community worker

Birth: 18 February 1878 at Moliagul, Victoria, daughter of Thomas Eugene Flynn (1852-1928), a state school teacher, born at Farnborough, Warwickshire, England, and Rosetta Forsythe, née Lester (1853-1883), born at Sydney, New South Wales. Unmarried. Death: 3 July 1944 in Strathelgin private hospital at Blackburn, Victoria; usual residence Central Avenue, Blackburn. Religion: Presbyterian. 

• When Rosetta was aged 5 her mother and young sister died in childbirth. Her older brother Eugene died of typhoid in 1899 aged 22. John “Flynn of the Inland” (1880-1951) was her younger brother.
• In the 1890s her father lived and taught at Braybrook (Sunshine) and had moved to Footscray by 1902 and to Moonee Ponds by 1903. She and her brother may have been raised by relatives. After her father retired in about 1914 Rosetta lived with and kept house for him.
• In 1915-1916 she was the honorary secretary of the Victorian Council of Sex Hygiene and Morality.
• Formerly a supporter of the Liberal Party and a member of the Women’s National League, she joined Women’s Social and Political Union in 1912. She was a member of the Women’s Political Association and became a strong supporter of Vida Goldstein in World War I. She made several contributions to the WPA’s journal, the Women Voter, in 1913-1918.
• From 1922 to 1925 at least she was a member of the Quarterly Club, founded by a teacher and former fellow WPA member, Susan Elizabeth Pinckney (1861-1944), a group of women interested in citizenship and public affairs who met quarterly in Melbourne.
• Flynn was one of a group of women who supported her brother’s activities. They formed the Mailbag League, and also the publication of the Outback Battler, which was aimed at people in remote communities. She also helped to raise funds for John Flynn's first trip to the Northern Territory.
• In June 1926 she travelled by train to the Northern Territory to attend the opening ceremony of the Australian Inland Mission’s hospital at Alice Springs.
• She lived at Central Avenue, Blackburn, Victoria, from at least 1928. In electoral rolls, her occupation was given as “home duties”.
• Her obituary stated that she contributed articles of interest to women in the Presbyterian Messenger.
• Cause of death: cerebral haemorrhage (2 days) and arteriosclerosis (many years). 

Sources
Ivan Rudolph, Flynn’s outback angels: Casting the Mantle (2012).