People Australia

Eileen Mary McMahon, later McLoughlin (1886-1981) journalist, feminist and Socialist

Birth: 1886 at Fitzroy, Melbourne, Victoria, eldest of three daughters of William Ponsonby McMahon (1851-1933), a schoolteacher, later journalist, born at Hobart, Tasmania, and Mary Catherine, née Murphy (1858-1909). Marriage: 1922 in Victoria to Edward Michael McLoughlin. They had no children. Death: 7 October 1981 at Greenvale Geriatric Centre, Greenvale, Melbourne. Religion: Catholic. 

• Her father was a prominent Catholic layman, sometime compositor, schoolteacher and journalist, who started a short-lived Labor and Liberal paper, the Tribune, in Melbourne in the 1870s. He was first headmaster of St Francis Xavier’s Boys Secondary School in Launceston, Tasmania, in the 1880s, then edited another Catholic journal, also named Tribune, in Melbourne from its founding in 1900 to 1919. He was sometime organising secretary of the Australian Catholic Federation.
• His eldest daughter was probably the Socialist and anti-conscriptionist Eileen McMahon who was active in Melbourne during World War I and reputedly an actor.
• In electoral rolls from 1909 to 1917 she was living with her father and sister at East Melbourne and gave her occupation as typiste in 1909 and, later, as journalist. She contributed to her father’s journal, which was a prominent opponent of conscription. One of her columns was a vivid account of the Women’s Anti-Conscription Procession in October 1916. She also wrote for the Woman Voter (Melbourne).
• She was a member of the Women's Political Association until June 1917, then of the Socialist Labor Party, the only woman SLP member to address party members (July 1917). Joined fellow Party members Ernest Judd and James Moroney in Domain agitation and the Anti-Conscription League.
• In 1919 the family was living at Simpson Street, East Melbourne, and Eileen was a bookseller. After her marriage, nothing is currently known of her until her death some fifty years later.
• Cause of death: hypostatic pneumonia (2 days), senile dementia (years) and osteoporosis.

Sources
Joy Damousi, Socialist Women in Australia, c.1890-c.1918, Ph.D thesis, ANU, 1987; information from J. Damousi, 1991.