People Australia

Annie Gardiner, 1904

Worker, (Wagga, NSW), p 5

Gardiner, Annie E. (or Ada) (?-?) suffragist, community activist and artist 

Birth: San Francisco, United States of America. Marriage: unknown. Death: unknown. 

• Arrived Sydney, New South Wales, aged 1. Became wage-earner at 17.
• Active member of the Women's Progressive Association from 1904. Campaign worker for Labor candidate G. S. Beeby during 1904 NSW elections. Advocate of equal pay for women workers. 1904 nominated by Women's Labor Council as a country organiser. Quoted as stating “the greatest ambition of my life is to see women workers on an equal footing with men, and I intend to exercise every effort to bring about this condition of things.”
• A founding executive member and treasurer in September 1904 of the Labor Women’s Central Organising Committee and sometime vice-president.
• Represented Marrickville league at the Labor conference in February 1905.
• Again toured the State as ALP organiser in November 1906. A member of the Political Labor League executive from 1906 to 1909.
• Campaigned on the NSW south coast in June 1909 and in December that year was described as “one of the best-known women workers in the Labor cause”, responsible for the emblem “Organised Labor, the Hope of the World”.
• At the NSW PLL conference in January 1913 Miss Gardiner was a delegate from King League – her alternate was Miss Maggie Hall.
• Reports of the presentation to Kate Dwyer of her portrait in 1914 stated that the portrait was painted by Miss Gardiner.
• In September 1916 Gardiner was elected a member of the council of the Women’s Progressive Association, under the presidency of Anne Golding.

Sources
Worker (Wagga), 24 December 1904.