People Australia

Margaret Wearne, later Copeland (1893-1967) confectionary worker and trade union official 

Birth: 9 February 1893 at Eaglehawk, near Bendigo, Victoria, daughter of Joseph Wearne, a miner born in Cornwall, England, and Mary Ann, née Smith, born at Bendigo. Marriage: 25 September 1954 at Christmas Hills, Victoria, with Presbyterian forms to native-born Thomas James Copeland (1876-1955), a real estate agent and divorcee. Death: 31 August 1967 at Preston, Melbourne; usual residence Shaftesbury Parade, Thornbury. 

• Confectionary worker at MacRobertson’s factory, Melbourne.
• Co-founder of Female Confectioners’ Union (FCU) 1917; FCU trustee, member FCU Management Committee, FCU president 1921-1923, FCU general secretary from 1924; editor union’s journal The Women’s Clarion, FCU delegate to Melbourne Trades Hall Council (MTHC) and Eight Hours Committee; treasurer, Federal and Victorian Branches, 1924.
• MTHC representative on Council of the College of Domestic Economy, 1925. Represented union on Wages Board; reputedly the first woman to appear before the Conciliation and Arbitration Court as an advocate for the Confectioners’ Union.
• Delegate to Australian Labor Party conferences for many years. Member of the ALP Women’s Central Organising Committee from 1920; WCOC president (1944); WCOC secretary (retired 1959).
• Delegate to Labor Women’s Interstate Executive and Labor Women’s Federation Conference.
• Appointed justice of the peace in 1927. In 1946 she was described as being a “member of the Trades Hall Council longer than any other woman”.
• Cause of death: congestive cardiac failure (2 weeks) and cystic disease of lungs (years). 

Sources
H. J. Gibbney and Ann G. Smith A Biographical Register 1788-1939, vol 2 (Canberra, 1987); The Women’s Clarion, 20 January 1924, 20 March 1924, February/March/June 1925, February July 1926; Labor, April 1959; Merrifield card index, State Library of Victoria.