People Australia

Margaret Caroline Fox, née Walker (1870-1953), Labor party activist

Birth: 3 March 1870 in Sydney, New South Wales, daughter of Reuben Walker, marine engineer, and Margaret, née Quirk. Marriage: 28 October 1895 at St Peters, NSW, with Primitive Methodist forms, to Charles Fox (1862-1936), bricklayer and trade unionist. They had a daughter and two sons. Death: 23 December 1953 at Penrose, NSW. Religion: Methodist. 

• At her marriage she gave "domestic help" as her occupation.

• Caroline Fox was closely connected with the Royal Hospital for Women, Paddington, from about 1908. Active member of the Rose Day Charity Fund and prominent in Sunshine Club and its work for children.
• A long-standing stalwart of the Australian Labor Party. In 1912 a member of the Paddington Labor League. A delegate to the Women’s Central Organising Committee [WCOC] from 1904 and for seventeen years vice-president, as well as acting as treasurer. Active speaker in Labor campaigns and in the anti-conscription movement during World War I. Member of the Surry Hills branch of the ALP in 1919, was elected its delegate to East Sydney Federal Labor Council.
• President Labor WCOC in 1924. At a women’s convention that year she “advocated the abolition of capital punishment.” In 1927 she was vice-president of the Labor Women’s Club.
• Appointed Justice of the Peace by Lang Labor government in March 1927.
• Still active in the Paddington branch of the ALP in the 1930s.
• Cause of death: coronary occlusion.