People Australia

Olive Elizabeth Kenny, later Cochrane (1911-2000) secretary and trade union official

Birth: 29 March 1911 at Brisbane, Queensland, daughter of native-born parents John Joseph Kenny (1893-1936), compositor, and Olive Frances, née Smith (1891-1966). Marriage: 30 October 1943 in Mary Immaculate Catholic church, at Annerley, Queensland, to a widower, Harold Alphonsus Cochrane (1893-1967), railway clerk, born at Glebe, Sydney. Death: 5 August 2000 in a nursing home at New Farm, Brisbane. Religion: Catholic. 

• Her father, an employee of the Government Printing Office, was a life member of the Printing Trades Union.
• Olive passed the State public service examination “receiving an exceptionally high percentage of marks in shorthand typewriting and English.” Instead of entering the public service she accepted a position in the office of the Clothing Trades Union.
• In April 1932 she was appointed a part-time organiser and inspector in the Queensland branch of the Amalgamated Clothing & Allied Trades' Union.
• Branch industrial officer from about 1943.
• Cause of death, frailty and dementia.

Sources
Bradon Ellem, In women’s hands? A history of clothing trades unionism in Australia (Sydney, 1989.