Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Unbridling the tongues of women
She wore calico underclothes, ‘no woollies except a flannel petticoat’ even in
winter, and her photographs suggest that she usually endured the chronic discomfort
of corsets. She took a cold bath every morning, winter and summer. This all argues
good circulation and an excellent constitution which probably contributed greatly to
her remarkable energy and endurance. Lucy Morice found her aunt’s energy amazing:
On one occasion she was going to lecture at Peterborough … that necessitated
catching a train at about 7a.m., and as she was then living in an
outlying suburb meant very early rising, and a long tramride in a horsedrawn
car. She would get to the township in the afternoon, be met and
entertained by some (perhaps) sympathiser … attend the meeting, lecture
and conduct a demonstration, and probably get to bed about midnight!
Leave the next morning by an early train, and on the occasion I have in
mind, go off to speak at Port Adelaide in the evening – a marvellous feat
of endurance, but for a woman nearing the eighties it was indeed a wonderful
triumph of physical and mental strength and courage. 33
Her energy came at least partly from her ‘usually robust health’, 34 but also from the
intensity of her concern for her work. When she was 78 she was confined to bed for
some months with an unspecified illness which threatened to curtail all her activities.
‘But’ wrote Lucy Morice, ‘after a few months of inactivity she determined that she
would not be daunted by physical disabilities, and so she carried on … disregarding
the fatigue and distress to which she was liable during the last seven years of her life.’ 35
Her intensity and energy sometimes persuaded her friends into ventures against their
better judgment. The daughter of one old friend related a story about Miss Spence
helping her mother find a washerwoman. After three unsuccessful attempts at employing
Miss Spence’s candidates, her mother decided that ‘a philanthropist, though
she had the best will in the world was not the person to go to for help when any
work was wanted.’ 36 Lucy Morice observed, ‘My Mother was inclined to consider
that Kate’s demands upon my father’s purse for her pet schemes or necessitous “cases”
were excessive’, though she added ‘but Auntie Kate never wanted anything for herself
although she was never even moderately well off’. 37 Other recollections present her
as absent-minded – she left for America without her purse 38 – and prone to awkward
situations. She recalled one on her first campaign for proportional representation:
I had no advance agents to announce my arrival, and at one town in the
north I found nobody at the station to meet me. I spent the most miser-
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