MP Robert Caldwell keeps votes for women (only with property) issue bubbling with three bills 1888-90
House of Assembly member Robert Caldwell, who pushed for votes for women with property, also took part (above, on his camel Sown) in several enquiries into agriculture.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Robert Caldwell kept the issue of votes for women – but only for women who owned property – before the South Australian parliament by introducing bills, all unsuccessful, to that end in the House of Assembly in 1888, 1898 and 1890. John Warren made a similar attempt in the Legislative Council in 1891.
Scottish-born Caldwell was a farmer and author before he entered parliament in 1879, representing York Peninsula and then Onkaparinga. His family were among earliest settlers at Alma Plains and Caldwell had homes at Mount Templeton, Yorke Peninsula and Woodside. In parliament, he also pushed for several commissions to enquire into agriculture issues.
Caldwell was a Methodist and a life-long member of the Temperance Alliance. This led him to became an active member of the Women’s Suffrage League. But his conservative views only allowed him to believe women of property should be allowed to vote, rather than the league’s aim for all women.
But Mary Lee, founding member and honorary secretary of the league, praised Caldwell as a courageous champion for keeping the women’s vote issue at the forefront of debate in Parliament through his franchise bills. Reporting on parliamentary debates and discussions in the wider society kept fuelling the Women's Suffrage League campaign.
In 1891, the issue of votes for women who owned property was exploited through a petition to parliament, with 219 signatures, based on “no taxation without representation”. The women of property, as taxpayers, argued that should be exempt from the Taxation Act is they weren’t allowed the vote. This was unsuccessful.
Also that year, Robert Caldwell led a deputation, including Catherine Helen Spence, to premier Thomas Playford (II) on women’s suffrage. Spence argued that she was in her seventh decade and still had no more vote than a three-year-old child and it “perfectly absurd to condemn half the human race to silence on public questions”.
With the rapid turnover of governments in that era, further deputations were to premier Frederick Holder in 1892 and to premier John Downer in 1893, but gained in-principle support and valuable publicity.
