People Australia

Loretta Emily (Lorrie) Shore (1909-1974) hotel worker, cook, tram driver, community activist and feminist 

Birth: 1 April 1909 at Greta West, Victoria, and registered as Emilie Loreta, daughter of native-born parents John Michael Hogan (1849-1925), farmer and carpenter, and Emily, née Jepson (1867-1955), sometime registrar of births, deaths and marriages at Greta. Marriage: 17 April 1946 at the office of the Government Statist, Melbourne, to Gordon Stanway Shore (1913-1961). They had no children. Death: 5 July 1974 in her home at Paterson Crescent, Greensborough, Victoria. 

• In the late 1930s she worked in the Hotel Australia, Melbourne. Active in rank and file team which won leadership of the Victorian Liquor Trades Union in 1937.
• With Jean Morant, née Young, she helped organise barmaids and waitresses into the Liquor Trades Union.
• Briefly a member of the Communist Party of Australia.
• In the early 1940s she worked as a cake cook, then became one of the first women recruited to wartime tram driving in Melbourne.
• Active campaigner for equal pay in the 1950s and 1960s. Joined Australian Labor Party and the Congress for International Co-operation and Disarmament. Re-built the neglected Greensborough Branch of the Australian Labor Party with her husband. Campaigned against the Vietnam war and conscription.
• Cause of death: secondary cancer of liver (3 weeks), and primary cancer of breast (2 years).

Sources
Recorder, August 1974; Alleyn Best, The History of the Liquor Trades Union in Victoria (North Melbourne, 1990).