People Australia

Mary Rogers, 1920s

Richmond Library, 2006-11-17

Mary Catherine Rogers, née Skeahan (1872-1932) cleaner, trade union official, political activist, municipal councillor and community worker

Birth: 2 August 1872 at Melbourne, Victoria, daughter of Irish-born parents John Skeahan  (1839-1887), a labourer, and Margaret, née Walsh (1838-1914). Marriage: 28 November 1900 at St Ignatius’s Catholic Church, Richmond, to Patrick Denis Rogers (1864-1910), an upholsterer and trade unionist born at Richmond. Death: 25 September 1932 at Richmond. Religion: Catholic. 

• Employed as a cleaner, she became involved in union affairs as secretary of the Office Attendants’ Union committee.
• Secretary of the North Richmond Branch of the Australian Labor party for several years, she was a delegate to Victorian annual party conferences.
• A member of the Labor Women’s Organising Committee, she was appointed women’s organiser for the Victorian Labor Party in 1918. Elected to Richmond City Council in 1920, becoming both the first women councillor in Victoria and the second women to hold such a post in Australia.
• On her election to Richmond Council, she was appointed to the ALP’s central executive, retaining the position for two years.
• She was the first women Justice of the Peace in Victoria and was a special magistrate of Richmond Children’s Court.
• In 1925 Rogers succeeded Annie O’Brien as secretary of the Labor Women’s Organising Committee and was secretary at the time of her death. She served as Victorian representative on the Interstate Labor Women’s Conference.
• Sometime president of the Catholic Welfare Committee, she also served on the Richmond technical school council, Heatherton Sanatorium board, the Richmond auxiliary of St Vincent’s Hospital, the Central Unemployed Relief Committee, and the State Royal Commission on Children’s Welfare.
• Cause of death: cancer. 

Sources
Worker (Sydney), 11 November 1920; Labor Call, 11 November 1920, 29 September 1932.