People Australia

Florence Stuart, n.d.

Rhoda Florence (Florrie) Stuart, née Collings (1872-1932) singer, writer and political activist 

Birth: 26 June 1872 at Brighton, Sussex, England, daughter of Joseph Silver Collings (1842-1904), grocer, and Mary Ann, née Dyke (1836-1919). Marriage: 4 September 1895 at the General Registry Office, Brisbane, Queensland, to John (Julian) Alexander Salmon Stuart (1866-1929), trade unionist and labour journalist. They had one daughter and five sons. Death: 28 July 1932 in hospital at Perth, Western Australia. Religion: Freethinker. 

• Child of Quaker mother and Free-thinking father. To Brisbane with family in 1883.
• As a teenager she became a committed democrat and accomplished singer. Sang at the opening of the Brisbane Trades Hall.
• Attended first meeting of the Women’s Equal Franchise Association; with Emma Miller and others she campaigned for the enfranchisement of women. In 1894 she attended a reception in Brisbane Centennial Hall for twelve unionists imprisoned during the 1891 shearers’ strike, including Julian Stuart, whom she subsequently married.
• To Kalgoorlie, WA, with husband, about 1895. ‘The most socialist-minded woman of the early goldfields labour movement’. Associated with the Westralian Worker, which her husband edited 1903-1906.
• Known widely as “Mrs Julian Stuart” she contributed regularly to the Westralian Worker under the nom de plumes ‘Hypatia’ and ‘Adohr’ until the paper’s relocation to Perth in 1912. Also wrote under the name Florence Collings.
• Instrumental in establishing the Eastern Goldfields Women’s Labor League, 1904; attended first WA Labor Women’s Conference, 1912; elected secretary.
• Sister of Queensland Labor Senator S. Collings, and mother of writers Donald Stuart (1913-1983) and Lyndall Hadow (1903-1976).
• Cause of death: acute endocarditis, involvement of kidneys, coma (weeks).

Sources
Worker (Sydney), 17 August 1932; Our Women (Anniversary Issue), June 1963; A.L.P. Woman Magazine (Special Diamond Jubilee Issue), February 1964; Justina Williams, , The First Furrow, (Perth,1976); information from Anne Morrison, 1994.