Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1955), Monday 28 June 1943, page 4


Woman Brewer, Lawyer dies

Miss Alice Cummins, probably Australia's only woman brewery manager, died suddenly in Kalgoorlie yesterday morning. She was managing director of the Kalgoorlie Brewery for

the last seven years. Quiet-spoken, remarkably good business woman, the late Miss Cummins was also a gifted musi-cian, barrister and solicitor, qua-lified engineer and wireless ex-perimenter, as well as a connois-seur of art, china and old furni-ture. She was the first West Australian woman to be accepted at the Bar. She was also the first woman in Australia to take out a transmitter's licence. Knowing that her aging father de-pended on her to carry on his two breweries, one of which was the fam-ous Hannans Brewery, Miss Cummins relinquished her practice and set about learning her father's business from the beginning. Beginning in the humble capacity of cash ledgerkeeper in 1928, she learned the whole business from the technical side of brewing to engineer-ing and refrigeration. Then she im-mediately set about re-establishing the business. She arranged for the loan of money, installed a new plant and gradually won back business which had been lost when her father in-sisted, against her advice, on brew-ing English beer when the demand was for lager beer. Some years ago she made a world tour, taking with her former Perth journalist, Mrs Redvers Bate. On her return, she set up house keeping at Crawley in a charmingly appointed, beautifully furnished home called 'The Bend of the Road,' 4 Crawley Avenue. There she had her cultural in-terests- a 'cello, one of her great-est treasures, and her workshop. The workshop was appointed with tools and materials for making exqui-site model galleons of the ornate Spanish type. It also had its radio side, where Miss Cummins made me-chanically perfect sets. Born in Kalgoorlie in 1900, her only relatives are in Adelaide. The funeral will take place at Mer-redin.