People Australia

Alice Ann Warburton, née Large, later Riley (1874-1940), domestic servant and political activist

Birth: 6 December 1874 at Campbell Street, Hobart, Tasmania, daughter of Robert Large (1827-1877), a police constable and warden, formerly a convict, born at Eton, Buckinghamshire, England, and Alice Kate, née Dwyer (1851-1930), born at Tipperary, Ireland. Marriages: (1) 9 April 1892 at Moor Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Victoria, with the rites of the Victorian Free Church, to native-born William Ward Warburton (1870-1953), labourer. They had three daughters, one of whom died in childhood, and two sons. The marriage ended in divorce in 1919. (2) 27 April 1920 in a civil ceremony at 362 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, to Frederick John Riley (1886-1970), itinerant miner and union activist, and a divorcee. Death: 2 July 1940 in her daughter’s home at Crighton Avenue, Port Melbourne. 

• Moved with her parents to Victoria about 1889. Alice was a domestic servant before her first marriage. A victim of domestic abuse, she separated several times from her husband in the 1890s while living in various parts of Melbourne. They reconciled and lived in Ballarat for twelve months but his behaviour continued and she left him in February 1899 and sued for maintenance. The marriage resumed but her husband was gaoled for 18 months for shop-breaking.
• Upon his release they moved to South Australia and then to New South Wales, before finally returning to Fitzroy, Melbourne. Her youngest child was born there in 1907. During the marriage, which ended in about October 1915, Alice suffered three miscarriages due to her husband’s violence.
• Alice was a member of the executive committee of the Victorian Socialist Party prior to World War I, and was secretary of the Women's Socialist League (WSL) during World War I, taking a leading part in fund-raising for anti-conscription campaigns and in organising various commemorative celebrations. She represented the WSL at the Social Evil Convention in May 1916.
• She was a member, sometime-honorary secretary of the Fitzroy branch of the Australian Labor Party and was active in the Labor Women's Anti-Conscription Committee 1916-1917. She was also prominent in Melbourne cost-of-living demonstrations in August to September 1917. Active in relief committee set up during 1917 general strike, lobbying tirelessly on behalf of strikers' families. Member, People's Prisoner Defence Committee.
• During the 1919 wharf strike in Victoria, Warburton formed and was prominent as the chief organiser of the Women's & Children's Wharf Labourers' Relief Committee. Her letters seeking support for the families of the wharf labourers were widely published through Australia.
• In 1924 she was secretary of the North Fitzroy branch of the ALP and a member of the Victorian ALP Annual Conference Youth Movement Committee in 1926. Justice of the peace in Fitzroy from September 1927, in 1928 she was appointed special magistrate of Children's Court.
• During the 1930s Depression she was involved, with Muriel Heagney, in the Unemployed Girls' Relief Fund & Unemployed Girls Without Homes. Active on Council of Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy.
• Later she worked for the blind, being made life governor of Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind.
• In 1931 she was president Labor Party's Women's Central Organising Committee.
• Cause of death: cerebral thrombosis (16 days) and coronary thrombosis.
• Her husband remarried after her death.
• Her brother Robert George (George) Large was an official of the Operative Bakers’ Society, Melbourne. Her daughter Alice (1895-1979) married Albert (Bert) Davies, a mine worker and journalist.

Sources
N. Saffin, Labour History, No.6, 1964; Recorder, no.102, October 1979; J. Damousi Ph.D thesis, 1987.