People Australia

Bertha Louise Tunnecliffe, née Gross (1881-1974) housemaid, laundress, Socialist and political activist 

Birth: 8 January 1881 at Hamburg, Germany, daughter of Louis Julius Gross (or Grosz) (1849-1924), bricklayer, and Johanna Christina Dorothea, née Denys (1852-1939). Marriage: 31 July 1913 by Rev Charles Strong, at Armadale, Victoria, to native-born Thomas Tunnecliffe (1869-1948), bootmaker and Labor politician. They had one daughter and one son. Death: 8 October 1974 at Sandringham, Victoria. 

• Arrived in Port Adelaide, South Australia, with her family aboard the Procida on 31 December 1883. Her family had moved to Richmond, Victoria, by 1887.
• Left school for workforce aged 11. Was a laundress at Toorak, Melbourne, when she was naturalised on 28 April 1905. Moved to Western Australia when aged 28, and worked as a housemaid at an outback hotel.
• Returned to Victoria and became active in the Victorian Socialist Party. Secretary of People’s Hall Committee, North Melbourne.
• Worked for H. H. Champion when he edited Booklover.
• She was president of the Collinwood Auxiliary for the Royal Victorian Institute of the Blind in 1938 and secretary of the Collingwood and Abbotsford Auxiliary for St Vincent’s Hospital in June 1940 when an ‘At Home’ was held at her house Neangar, North Terrace, Clifton Hill.
• She was a sister-in-law of Percy Laidler, aunt of Bertha Walker and wife of the sometime Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, Tom Tunnecliffe.
• Cause of death: bronchopneumonia (days), hypertension (years) and generalised atherosclerosis (years). 

Sources
H. J. Gibbney and Ann G. Smith, A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 2 (Canberra, 1987); Recorder, no.73, 1974; Tribune (Sydney), 29 October 1974.