People Australia

Lillian Kroemer, 1923

Register (Adelaide), 4 December 1923, p 6

Lillian Hammett Kroemer, née Dyer, also known as Cromer (1877-1969) women’s suffragist, elocutionist and professional storyteller

Birth: 25 July 1877 at Auburn, South Australia, daughter of Charles Dyer (1851-1935), a storekeeper born at Coombe, St Austell, Cornwall, England, and Eliza Bache, née George (1854-1937), born at Adelaide, of Cornish ancestry. Marriage: 1908 in Paris to Victor Eugene Kroemer [later Cromer] (1883-1930), a printer, clairvoyant and lecturer, born at Tanunda, South Australia. They had two daughters (twins) and a son. Death: 1 March 1969 in Braille Hospital, Victoria Park, Perth, Western Australia. Religion: Anglican (on death certificate). 

• For a time the family lived at Booleroo, in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. In 1898 Lillian received a prize for best recitation (under 16 years) at The United Methodist Church fete, Port Augusta. She moved to Northam, Western Australia, with her family in 1901.
• In 1904 she travelled aboard the Runic to London, studied singing and voice there with Madame Adey Brunel and gave recitations. She then went to France where she studied with Madame du Cullet.
• She came back to Western Australia in December 1906, gave an elocutionary recital at Northam and in Perth and taught elocution in Perth. The following year she returned to Europe, where she married Victor Kroemer. Their three children were born in England.
• For three years she was a member of the Women’s Freedom League, one of the institutions engaged in the fight for the franchise for women. In 1911 she returned with her husband and children to Australia.
• In February 1914 she was a member of the Women’s Non Party Political Association in Adelaide and in June was one of the audience when Adela Pankhurst addressed a large gathering there. ‘Miss Hammett-Dyer’ performed a recital at meetings of the SA branch of the International Peace Society and was on the platform at the formation of a branch of the Red Cross Society in South Australia.
• She was one of the pioneers of publicly telling stories and continued with this work after her marriage. In 1922 the Herald (Melbourne), reported: “Mrs Victor Cromer of Adelaide . . . has made a profession of story-telling. The trustees of the Public Library in Adelaide long ago placed her on the staff. Her mission is to make the children’s library in South Australia attractive, and to foster a love of good literature among juvenile readers, leading them on to the higher paths of literature by using specially selected stories as stepping stones”. She was sometime teacher of diction and deportment at the Elder Conservatorium.
• She later lived in Perth where she was a member of the Western Australian Women Writers Club with others including Mollie Skinner.
• Cause of death: ischaemic heart disease (years), atherosclerosis (years); (contributory cause) terminal bronchopneumonia (5 days).
• Her brother, trooper Norman Charles Dyer (1888-1915), a farmer, was killed in action at Gallipoli on 7 August 1915, serving with the 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment in the Australian Imperial Force.
• Her son D’Arcy Ananda Neil Cromer (1910-2003) a forester, served in the south-west Pacific area as a Squadron leader in the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II. He became director-general of the Commonwealth Forest Bureau and was awarded ISO (Imperial Service Order) in June 1976.
• Cause of death: ischaemic heart disease (years), atherosclerosis (years); contributory cause, terminal bronchopneumonia (5 days).