People Australia

Frances Ellen (Fanny) Mortimore (1876-1947) school teacher, anti-conscriptionist Labor activist and writer

Birth: 25 May 1876 in London, England, daughter of William Thompson, court clerk, and Ellen, née Harper. Marriage: 1897 in London, to William Mortimore (1868-1952). They had one daughter. Death: 30 January 1947 at Blue Mountains District Anzac Memorial Hospital, Katoomba, New South Wales; usual residence Chesterfield Parade. Religion: Christian Science. 

• Attended Kensington Higher Grade school, London, winning a local exhibition before becoming a pupil-teacher; trained at Tottenham residential Training College 1895-97, winning First Class Certificates from London Board of Education; then taught at Marlborough School in Chelsea for nine years.
• Arrived in Australia (Sydney) in 1910, being initially unsuccessful in obtaining appointment to NSW Department of Public Instruction, evidently because of her married status. About 1911 her husband seems to have arrived in New Zealand where he worked as a labourer and may have served in World War I.
• Mortimore moved to Gunbar district, near Hay, in Southern NSW, working as private teacher-governess for two years.
• Secured a position at Ipswich Girls Grammar School, Queensland in 1913, but with her daughter attending Fort Street High School, Sydney, she continued to seek work with the NSW Department, finally securing employment with the Department in early 1914, when she was posted to Waverley, Sydney.
• Transferred to Alma Public School, South Broken Hill, early 1915, leaving her daughter behind and having pay docked for arriving late because of train delay. Despite the difficulties of the remote posting, she developed a liking for the town, later publishing a positive memoir of the town and its working inhabitants.
• In 1916 she became involved in the local anti-conscription campaign, joining the Women’s Corps of the Labour Volunteer Army (LVA); in September 1916 she attended a meeting addressed by Adela Pankhurst, seconding a motion of thanks and declaring that the war had put men to ‘slaving and sweating in industry’ for far less than male wages.
• Became prominent in the LVA during the 1916 conscription referendum, working with Ern Wetherell, Percy Brookfield and others, addressing several meetings at the Broken Hill Trades Hall, condemning Prime Minister W. M. Hughes and his British counterparts as ‘avowed enemies of the workers’, and noting that she was ‘the only woman in Town who can get on the soap box and the crowd like me’.
• With Ted Sinclair she addressed meetings to celebrate the defeat of the first referendum, urging women ‘to stick together and continue to organise’. Collected money to pay fines imposed on P. J. Brookfield and other male LVA activists. As a result of her militancy, and direct representations to the Minister for Education by leading local Empire-loyalists (Barrier Empire League), she was transferred to Erskineville Public School, Sydney, departing from Broken Hill in December 1916 committed ‘to work harder in the great humanitarian class movement’.
• Taught at Erskineville until her resignation from the department in July 1918.
• Re-employed by the department June 1922, teaching at Paddington Girls, Leeton, Randwick Girls (where she was treated for ‘neuritis’) and Mascot Girls (where she suffered a hand injury, for which she received compensation).
• In 1928 she received a critical report from Department inspector and was transferred to Forest Lodge. Admitted briefly to a psychiatric clinic in 1932, she then returned to England for six-month visit.
• In 1933 she was transferred without explanation to Black Swamp Provisional school near Tenterfield as a sole teacher, then to nearby Sandy Flat.
• Retired July 1936, aged 60. Re-employed briefly in 1942.
• Contributed items to the Australia Worker and Labor Daily. Was a member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Sydney, with Adam Lindsay Gordon, Dulcie Deamer, Louis Essom and Dymphna Cusack. Her works included The vision Splendid of a nationalized and co-operative Commonwealth of Australia [1930] and The earth is ours: comments and suggestions on social reconstruction [1942].
• She was described as a widow on her death certificate. Cause of death: pneumonia and lymphatic leukaemia (14 days).
• Her daughter, who had married a New Zealander in 1925, survived her.

Sources
Frances Mortimore, The Inland Island. The Broken Hill New South Wales, Worker Trade Union Print, Sydney, 1917; Information from Martin Sullivan.