Elsie Andrews: A Woman Before Her Time

In the middle of a wretched war a Taranaki school teacher calls for peace. The same woman seeks equal pay for female teachers, makes stirring speeches on women's rights and pens poetry of love, loss and pacifism.

This may sound like a tale from the hippy days of the 1960s. But it's not. It is a story about Elsie Euphemia Andrews, a woman way before her time. Or perhaps a woman who paved the way for the future.

Elsie was born in Huirangi (near Waitara) in 1888, but she didn't become politically minded until she began teaching at Fitzroy School in 1912. "Looking back over the happy-go-lucky 23 years of my pre-Fitzroy life, when I worked and played with equal energy, teaching, dancing, playing games (hockey in particular), even at one time enjoying a 'light diet of love making', looking back I am sure that one thing at least I never did - I never thought." These are words from her incomplete autobiography, which Elsie began writing in 1938 at the age of 50.

She also pinpoints the moment when her mind began to broaden. In 1922, the Taranaki Education Board sent the young woman to observe schools in Wellington. What she saw rocked her foundations: "In one particularly terrible building in the suburb of Newtown, I found the infant mistress, a little Scottish woman barely five feet high, in a large room with small chairs here and there around the walls, mats scattered over the floors and no desks. This was a startling phenomenon. 'Where are your desks?' I asked. She replied, 'I pushed them under the school. On cold mornings I often break one up and burn it'," Elsie writes.

Faced with a rebel, Elsie felt seeds of revolt begin to sprout in her own soul: "I do not say that in one moment from being static I became dynamic; from being a colon I became a question mark. But the fact that I remember that morning in Newtown so vividly invests the incident with importance."

Elsie began questioning her own teaching, the education system, the emphasis of the curriculum and later, became outspoken against hitting children for making mistakes. 

"Corporal punishment for spelling errors still persists in some of our schools, a custom as stupid as it is barbarous. If visual memory is so important… children should receive every visual aid that teachers can devise. I have yet to learn that a strap appeals to the eye," she wrote in her memoirs.

As a member of the Women Teachers' Association, and president from 1928 to 1935, Elsie believed there should never be more than 40 students in each class. In her early days at Fitzroy, she found herself in charge of a class of 80 youngsters at three primer levels and standard one. Assisting her was pupil-teacher Muriel Kirton, "She and I became friends and have remained so ever since," Elsie writes.

In truth, the two women shared their lives, buying a house together on Kowhai Street in Fitzroy in the early 1920s. With Muriel by her side, Elsie flourished.

Dr Alison Laurie, Victoria University of Wellington Gender and Women's Studies Programme Director, has researched Elsie's life, including her partnership with Muriel. "Andrews, like many women in lesbian relationships, made women the focus of her life, and was enabled to do so by the loving support of Muriel Kirton" she says. "Andrews was outstanding for her personal courage and willingness to take up the challenges presented to her through her campaigns for the equality of women and for peace."

Alison says Elsie was a charismatic speaker with a marvellous sense of humour. She also possessed humility, passion for a cause and was committed to her many friends. "Andrews made a strong contribution to improving the position of women, especially through her work in the Women Teachers' Association, the Pan-Pacific Women's Association, and through the setting up of the Taranaki Women's Club as a place where women could meet and organise.”

"I regard it as very important that future generations of women learn about her life and activism" Alison says.

Elsie's niece, Judy Maiden, says her aunt made certain to teach young family members about women of substance. "Aunty Elsie was always very interested in her nieces and nephews and what they were doing with their lives. One stage when I was at high school we had speeches every year. I chose, with Aunty Elsie's help, to talk about Elizabeth Fry. Aunty Elsie helped me gather up the information about her." In the early 1800s, Elizabeth Fry worked tirelessly for prison reform in England. Her aim was to improve conditions for women inmates. Her work also led to better hospital systems and treatment of the insane.

While Judy can't remember how she fared with her own speech, she says her aunt was a brilliant speaker. "She had a wonderful command of language; the use of words. She was an emotive speaker; she believed so much, was so earnest and direct in the things she wanted for the world. That was education and women's concerns. She was a pacifist too."

Many times, Judy and her parents heard Elsie in full flight. "She was the youngest of this large family and my mother (Ida) was the second youngest, so they were particularly close" Judy says. "She had quite a number of friends that were teachers. When they came to stay with her, one of the special outings was to drive them out to our place at Okato for high afternoon tea."

Judy's father, a blacksmith and wheelwright (a person who makes or fixes wooden wheels), loved to debate politics with his sister-in-law. "My father and Aunty Elsie always had conversations about education... about what the Government was or was not doing."

Holding Elsie's unfinished memoirs, Judy describes her aunt. "Near the beginning of this, she said by the age of 11 she was of quite a sturdy build, which did not change over the years. She always wore black; a black frock that hung straight down. She had one style of frock and that's what she wore. She had long hair and it was always tied up in a bun at the back of her head."

Judy says her aunt loved cats, was a fine gardener, but left the cooking to Muriel. There are even stories about Aunty Elsie's not-so-domestic kitchen capers, including one involving a large saucepan half filled with rice. "And it just kept cooking and cooking," says Judy. "She had dishes of rice all over the place."

Elsie had other pots on the boil, causes to crusade, and beliefs to bolster. In 1930, Elsie spearheaded the revival of the New Plymouth branch of the National Council of Women (NCW), becoming its president. The city branch was first formed in 1903, but went into recess in 1905. Elsie was president from 1930 to 1936, and again in 1939, 1940, 1942 and 1944.

New Zealand's first NCW branch was formed in 1896, three years after suffragette Kate Sheppard led women to get the vote. Believing women needed to build on their new-found rights, Kate became the first president of the NCW. 

Her outspoken pacifist views did not always endear her to the NCW, especially during World War Two when the women's group was helping the war effort. Elsie offered to step down as president in 1939, because she believed her pacifist opinions might put the organisation in a difficult position. Her offer was refused, but the following year, a member organisation called for her resignation to be accepted. This did not gain support.

Early in the war, two of Elsie's nephews were killed. She became even more outspoken in her pacifism and support of conscientious objectors. Poems about her beliefs appear in The Plymouth Ships and other verses, a book she published in 1947. ‘War’, ‘Jock and Don’, ‘Commemoration’, ‘To Conscientious Objectors’, ‘Memorials’, and ‘Peace’ are some of the poems included in the slim volume. 

But she didn't wait for the war to end before speaking her mind.

Her 1941 speech to the Dominion Conference of the Women Teachers' Association was powerfully anti-war. It also covered disarmament and intelligently dissected why the Treaty of Versailles failed to keep the world at peace. The treaty was signed after the end of World War One, in 1919.

"A dictated peace is not a true peace; punitive terms recoil on our own heads. We must negotiate until we come to an agreement, and on that rock of agreement we can build a house that will not fall," her written speech says. "I wonder if we ever realise that every time we give way to hatred, to vindictive conduct, to unbridled, intemperate language, we become worse people, less able to reason and agree - and peace recedes further into the distance."

Other addresses to women teachers focused on the call for equity.

"...Here today in New Zealand we see the survival of the ancient prejudice against the freedom of opportunity demanded by womankind. In our own profession, we find women kept in subordinate positions in every branch of the service. Even our fellow teachers, who are supposed to be mentally well developed, acquiesce in and so tacitly approve of a condition of affairs reminiscent of England in the 18th century. Is there in the whole of New Zealand in our primary schools a woman teacher of a large school? Is there a woman inspector? Is there a woman holding responsible position in the Department of Education? In short, are women and men treated impartially? Is the race a fair one?" she asks.

"Women teachers don't ask for preferential treatment - they don't ask for concessions or indulgences. They ask for justice, for the simple equity, which is supposed to (be) obtain(ed) in all parts of our empire..."

On the general education front, Elsie was a New Plymouth branch member of the New Zealand Educational Institute, and from 1916 to 1935 represented it at national conferences.

She was also the driving force behind the formation of the New Plymouth High School's Old Girls' Association in 1907. "Andrews, the most loyal and prominent of the school's old girls, frequently spoke at school functions and is credited with bringing baby contests and second-hand-clothes sales to New Plymouth" says the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.

Her contributions to society were honoured in 1938, when she became a Member of the Order of the British Empire. This tribute came after Elsie's political efforts for the betterment of women in New Zealand and beyond.

Judy Maiden says Elsie's extended family was hugely proud that she was one of the New Zealand delegates to attend Pan Pacific Women's Association conferences abroad. She attended gatherings at Honolulu in 1930 and 1934 and Vancouver in 1937.

At the 1934 conference, Elsie delivered her opening speech entirely in Māori, and Hannah Bennett, one of the two Māori delegates, read the English version. Elsie was later asked to give an address at a Hawaiian church service.

This is part of her speech: "...for a long time our Maoris (sic) were unsettled and unhappy and grave injustices were done to them, and even when the white man tried to put right the wrong he had done, he did not always act in the wisest way. Consequently because of us, the Maori has been handicapped in his development as a free people. But there are many in New Zealand anxious to encourage this development.

"With the passage of a hundred years the Maori has taught some lessons to his Pakeha brother. By remaining true to the traditions of his Maori culture, he has earned respect and sympathy and understanding, so that a day of hope has now dawned and the Maoris in New Zealand now look forward to a future where they will stand side by side with us in working out the common destiny of our two races."

Elsie was a woman who did not accept the expected, who rejected stereotypes. Along with her beliefs about racial equality, she also presented logical arguments on equal rights for women. "...Too often women are inclined to accept the verdict of other people. In New Zealand, we women are developing a distinct inferiority complex, which I hold to be the direct result of our education system, and we are not using our intellect as we should be doing to help solve national problems" she writes in May 1932.

"Why are we not more interested in politics? We should be - the conduct of world affairs is of just as great moment to women as men. We have been told often that women's place is in the home; but what is the State, other than an aggregation of homes? Mr Ramsay MacDonald, in a recent speech, said that had women been in power in Downing St, there would have been no world crisis. I like to quote men who say things like that; even when no doubt we feel that Mr MacDonald was rather over-generous. But women certainly are the practical economists of the world. Every housewife in the land, every day of her life, fights an incessant battle to make sixpence do the work of a shilling - and wins!"

And she wasn't all talk. In 1935, she retired from teaching to stand for Parliament as an independent. Her slogan was ‘peace, prosperity and education’. She failed to be elected, gaining 786 votes to Sydney George Smith's 5662.

In 1948, Elsie lost her biggest battle. On 28 September that year, one month after being diagnosed with liver cancer, she died. Judy Maiden says the family were shocked at how quickly the disease claimed the strong woman. The Kowhai Street home was left to Muriel, who lived there until her death in 1980 at the age of 87.

Looking back at Aunty Elsie's life, Judy marvels at her vision for change. "She was a woman before her time."