Enid Lyons

Dame Enid Muriel Lyons (; 9 July 1897 – 2 September 1981) was an Australian politician. She was notable as being the first woman to be elected to the House of Representatives and to serve in the federal cabinet. Prior to her own political career, she was best known as the wife of Joseph Lyons, Prime Minister of Australia from 1932 to 1939, who served previously as Premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928.

Lyons was born in Smithton, Tasmania. She grew up in various small towns in northern Tasmania, and trained as a schoolteacher. At the age of 17, she married politician Joseph Lyons, who was almost 18 years her senior. They would have twelve children together, all but one of whom lived to adulthood. As her husband's career progressed, Lyons began assisting him in campaigning and developed a reputation as a talented public speaker. In 1925, she became one of the first two women to stand for the Labor Party at a Tasmanian state election. She followed her husband into the new United Australia Party (UAP) following the Labor split of 1931.

After her husband became prime minister in 1932, Lyons began living at The Lodge in Canberra. She was one of the best-known prime minister's wives, writing newspaper articles, making radio broadcasts, and giving open-air speeches. Her husband's sudden death in office in 1939 came as a great shock, and she withdrew from public life for a time. At the 1943 federal election, Lyons successfully stood for the UAP in the Division of Darwin. She and Senator (Dame) Dorothy Tangney became the first two women elected to federal parliament. Lyons joined the new Liberal Party in 1945, and served as Vice-President of the Executive Council in the Menzies Government from 1949 to 1951 – the first woman in cabinet. She retired from parliament after three terms, but remained involved in public life as a board member of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (1951–1962) and as a social commentator.

Early life

Birth and family background

Lyons was born on 8 July 1897 at Leesville, a small sawmilling settlement outside Smithton, Tasmania. Her birth was registered just over one month later. She was the second of four children born to Eliza (née Taggett) and William Burnell. Her father, a sawyer and talented musician, was born in Devon, England, and grew up in Cardiff, Wales, before immigrating to Australia at the age of 17. Her mother was born in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, to an English immigrant father who had drawn by the Victorian gold rush. Her forebears in England had been middle-class, but the family fell into relative poverty in Australia. Lyons' parents first met at Angellala on Queensland's western railway line, where her widowed maternal grandmother Louisa Taggett (née Orchard) had won a catering contract. They married in Brisbane in 1888 and initially settled in Burringbar, New South Wales, where their first child was born. They moved to northern Tasmania in 1894 to be closer to William's parents, who farmed in Somerset.

Lyons' biographer Anne Henderson has speculated that William Burnell may not have been her biological father, and that she may instead have been fathered by Aloysius Joyce Jr., the son of a prominent local businessman. However, she also notes that "nothing [William] did in rearing her would suggest she was not his own". According to an account from the Joyce family, William confronted Aloysius Joyce Sr. and the two were overheard arguing, with Joyce eventually accepting Enid as a blood relation and agreeing to provide financial support to the Burnells if William raised her as his own daughter. Henderson suggests this as an explanation as to how the family were later able to secure a loan to buy property with limited income and no collateral.

Childhood

In 1901, Lyons and her family moved to Stowport, Tasmania, a rural locality south of Burnie. She began her education at a one-room public school, at a distance of from her home. Her mother supplemented the family's income by mending and laundering clothes and delivering meals to itinerant workers, taking a particular interest in well-educated visitors and those from overseas. She intended that her daughters would enter the teaching profession, which at the time provided the only opportunity for girls to gain a state-funded secondary education. In 1904, the family moved to a property at Cooee, on the coast to Burnie's west. They operated a small general store from their residence, with her mother serving as the local postmistress, and later added a dancehall which was rented out for community events. Lyons and her siblings attended school in Burnie.

Marriage

thumb|right|Lyons and her husband, c. 1930

Eliza Burnell introduced her 15-year-old daughter to Joseph Lyons, a rising Tasmanian Labor politician. On 28 April 1915, the two married at Wynyard, Tasmania; she was 17 and Lyons was 35. Enid had been brought up a Methodist but became, at Lyons' request, a Roman Catholic. They would have twelve children, one of whom died in infancy.

State politics

Lyons' husband, an MP since 1909, was elected state leader of the ALP in the aftermath of the 1916 party split over conscription. She was an active member of the ALP in her own right, appearing as a women's branch delegate at the 1918 state conference where she successfully amended one motion and co-sponsored a motion for compulsory military training with Edmund Dwyer-Gray. Her position as wife of the opposition leader gave her greater public prominence and beginning at the 1922 state election she began making appearances on his behalf. In October 1923, Lyons' husband was unexpected appointed premier of Tasmania following the collapse of the incumbent Nationalist government. She was expected to undertake various social engagements on his behalf, although she had to meet her own expenses and usually had to rely on public transport.

In 1924, Lyons gave birth to her seventh child, the first born to an incumbent Tasmanian premier. The family experienced a number of difficulties over the following two years. She was bedridden with mumps for two months in mid-1925, shortly after which her infant son died of meningitis. A few months later she miscarried and was forced to carry the dead foetus for three months; the curettage procedure resulted in toxemia. In July 1926, her husband was severely injured in a car accident that caused the death of his colleague Michael O'Keefe, remaining in hospital for nine weeks.

1925 candidacy

thumb|upright|left|Signed photograph of Lyons

In 1925, Lyons and her mother became the first women to stand as ALP candidates in Tasmania. The 1925 state election was only the second since Tasmanian women received the right to stand for state parliament in 1921. Lyons stood in the Hobart-based seat of Denison, where it was hoped she would draw votes away from female voters supporting independent candidate Edith Waterworth, while her mother stood in the seat of Darwin which included her home town of Burnie.

Lyons, aged 27, emerged as a "natural local candidate", making frequent public speeches both in support of her own candidacy and supporting her husband as he toured other electorates. She opened her campaign at the Hobart Town Hall, standing on a platform that included increased government funding of education and health, clearance of Hobart's slums, and government control of milk distribution and the saw-milling industry. She appealed primarily to female voters and frequently used domestic metaphors in her speeches, while also attacking the Nationalist opposition for financial mismanagement. The ALP ultimately won its first majority government in Tasmania, with Lyons finishing around 60 votes short of election in Denison.

Federal politics

thumb|right|Enid and Joseph Lyons during his premiership

In 1931 Joseph Lyons left the Labor Party and joined the United Australia Party (UAP), becoming prime minister at the subsequent election. Joseph Lyons died in April 1939, aged 59, the first Australian prime minister to die in office, and Dame Enid returned to Tasmania. She bitterly resented Joseph Lyons' successor as leader of the UAP, Robert Menzies, who had, she believed, betrayed her husband by resigning from the cabinet shortly before Joseph's death.

thumb|right|Lyons with other senior figures in the newly created Liberal Party in 1946 – from left to right: [[Robert Menzies, Eric Harrison, Harold Holt, and Thomas White.]]

Lyons was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1943 federal election, joining Senator Dorothy Tangney as one of the first two women in federal parliament. Lyons' second and third speeches in March 1944 were "judged as an attempt on her part to depart from her preoccupation with women's issues". She accused striking coal miners of disloyalty and placing their own interests above those of the nation during World War II, and opposed the Curtin government's 1944 referendum proposal to increase government powers.

In August 1944, Lyons was one of four speakers in an ABC Radio debate titled Population Unlimited? which became the ABC's "largest controversy during the war years". Lyons devoted a chapter to this debate in her 1972 autobiography, calling it "one of the most disturbing experiences I was to know as a member of parliament". Her fellow debaters were Norman Haire, Jessie Street and the economist Colin Clark. the second woman to receive this honour after Alexandra Hasluck. She was the first Australian woman to receive damehoods in different orders. Lyons died at Ulverstone on 2 September 1981, aged 84. She was accorded a state funeral in Devonport before being buried next to her husband at Mersey Vale Memorial Park.

Legacy

Jo Gullett in his autobiography discussed his fellow members of parliament and concluded that, "with hindsight, perhaps the wisest and most far-sighted of them all was a woman, Dame Enid Lyons."

An informal political faction of the Liberal/National opposition parties called the Lyons Forum was formed in 1992. The group's name alluded to Lyons' maiden speech to the House of Representatives. The faction was considered to be defunct in 2004.

In 1943 to commemorate Lyons' entering of parliament, artist Justine Kong Sing painted a miniature portrait of Lyons that is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.

In March 2023, a dual bronze sculpture of Lyons and Dame Dorothy Tangney was placed in the gardens of Old Parliament House, Canberra. The statues, sculpted by Lis Johnson, were inspired by an iconic photograph of the pair entering the building on their first day of parliament in September 1943. Lyons' granddaughter, former Director of the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency Libby Lyons, described the unveiling as a "wonderful, thrilling moment".

Children

Lyons first fell pregnant a few months after her marriage, but miscarried just after her 18th birthday. She suffered a second miscarriage the following year, and in her memoirs recounted having to watch on as a nurse threw the remains of the foetus into a bedside fireplace. She was told by doctors that she would never be able to have children, but in fact went on to give birth to twelve – the first born when she was 19 and the last born when she was 36. Her subsequent pregnancies went relatively smoothly, with the exception of a third miscarriage in 1926; she had to carry the dead foetus for three months before it could be removed. All but one of her children survived to adulthood, and all those who did out-lived her. Her son Garnet, born in 1924, died from meningitis at the age of 10 months. Another son, Barry, was born with achondroplasia.

thumb|right|300px|Enid and Joseph Lyons sitting on the lawn outside [[The Lodge (Australia)|The Lodge with their surviving 11 children]]

Gerald Desmond (1916–2000)
Sheila Mary Norma (1918–2000)
Enid Veronica (1919–1988) – married army officer Maurice Austin
Kathleen Patricia (1920–2012)
Moira Rose (1922–1991)
Kevin Orchard (1923–2000)
Garnet Philip Burnell (1924–1925)
Brendan Aloysius (1927–2010)
Barry Joseph (1928–2015)
Rosemary Josephine (1929–1999)
Peter Julian (1931–2021)
Janice Mary (1933–2020)

Publications

Autobiographical works

References

External links

Listen to a recorded version of Enid Lyon's maiden speech in Parliament and read more about it on australianscreen online. This recording was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2011.