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Henry, Alice (1857-1943)

Also known as
A.L.F.PomonaWyuna
Occupation
journalist; women's activist; women's suffragist
Persistent Identifier
http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-483516

Biographies

Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

HENRY, ALICE (1857-1943), journalist and woman's rights advocate, was born on 21 March 1857 at Richmond, Melbourne, daughter of Charles Ferguson Henry, accountant, and his wife Margaret, née Walker, seamstress. Her parents, both Scottish-born, had met on the voyage out from Glasgow and married in Melbourne in 1853. Her brother Alfred was born in 1859. At one stage Charles Henry tried farming a selection of land in Gippsland. Here Alice received her first lessons from her mother. Remembering these as years of freedom and activity, she never lost her love of the bush. Back in Melbourne she attended several schools, matriculating with credit from Richard Hale Budd's Educational Institute for Ladies in 1874.

View the full record at Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

Australian Women's Register

Alice Henry was a feminist journalist and union activist who became a prominent and respected figure in the American women's and trade union movements in the early twentieth century.

Alice Henry was the daughter of Scottish born migrants to Australia who she credits with ensuring that she developed a passionate commitment to social justice issues. She received a good, progressive education but was denied access to a university education. Nevertheless, she accepted the need to support herself, so Henry first tried teaching but then turned to journalism after a serious illness. She published her first article in 1884. For the next twenty years she wrote for the Argus, the Australasian, and occasionally other newspapers and overseas journals, under her own name or a pseudonymn, 'A.L.F.', 'Wyuna', or 'Pomona'.

At the age of 48 she embarked on an overseas tour which took in the United Kingdom and the United States. Unable to find work in England, she arrived in the United States in December 1905. Her knowledge of the Australian feminist and labour movements attracted the arrention of the prominent reformer Margaret Dreier Robins. She invited Henry to work for the National Women's Trade Union League of America (W.T.U.L.) in Chicago where, as lecturer, as field-worker organizing new branches, and as journalist, she became a key figure in the campaign for woman suffrage, union organization, vocational education, and labour legislation in the United States.

In 1908, she began to edit the women's section of the Chicago Union Labor Advocate, and in January 1911 became the founding editor of the W.T.U.L.'s monthly Life and Labor, where she remained as editor (working with Australian novelist Miles Franklin) until 1915. She served in a variety of ways and positions at W.T.U.L. including investigating the conditions of woman brewery workers (1910), author of The Trade Union Woman (1915), field organizer (1918-20), and director of the education department (1920-22). She returned to Melbourne temporarily in 1925 to address meetings and urge the importance of combining unionism and feminism. This visit inspired women to form an organisation similar to her own in Melbourne in July 1925, named the Women's Trade Union League.

Henry retired to Santa Barbara, California, in 1928. She returned to Melbourne in 1933 and died there ten years later.

The Trade Union Woman, 1915#xA; Women and the Labor Movement, 1925

View the full record at Australian Women's Register

Related people and organisations

Resources for Alice Henry

Selected resources (11)

Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

  1. 'Henry, Alice (1857 - 1943)' - Australian Dictionary of Biography
    Diane Kirkby
    [1983]
    Published: Melbourne University Press
    Series: Volume 9
    pp 264-265.

Australian Women's Register

  1. Alice Henry : The Power of Pen & Voice The Life of an Australian-American Labour Reformer
    Kirby, Diane
    [1991]
    Published: Cambridge University Press
  2. The Women's Pages: Australian Women and Journalism since 1850
    Australian Women's Archives Project
    [2008]
    Published: Australian Women's Archives Project
  3. Australian Dictionary of Biography Online
    Australian National University
    [2006]
  4. Alice Henry Investigates
    Cervini, Erica
    [2000]
    Published: School of Applied Communications, RMIT University
  5. Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism
    Lake, Marilyn
    [1999]
    Published: Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, New South Wales
  6. 200 Australian Women: A Redress Anthology
    Radi, Heather
    [1988]
    Published: Women's Redress Press, Sydney
  7. Henry, Alice (1857-1943)
    Kirkby, Diane
    [2006]
    Published: Australian National University
  8. Papers of Alice Henry
    [Mansucript and typescript articles : 1857 - 1943]
    The papers include newspaper cuttings, typescript and manuscript articles, some letters, and scrapbooks. Most of the material is concerned with women and trade unions and women's suffrage. The material divides roughly into two sections: 1. Biographical articles on people connected with trade unions and the labour movement and people in the literary and theatrical worlds. 2. Articles relating to Alice Henry or written by her, which appeared in newspapers and magazines.
    0.45 m, 3 Boxes
    National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection
    MS 1066
  9. Baker, Kate, 1861-1953 [Papers]
    [1893 - 1946]
    The collection consists mainly of correspondence relating to Australian literary interests and figures, particularly to Joseph Furphy and his writings. The main sections are letters from Furphy to his mother, to Kate Baker and to William Cathels; from Kate Baker to Margaret Boyd and A.K. Wilson; and from A.G. Stephens to Furphy and Baker. Correspondents in the collection include: J.S. Neilson, Guy Innes, C. Winterbottom, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Miles Franklin, Charles Bryde, Gerald Bryne, J.K. Ewers, H.B. Grattan, F. Wilmot, the editor of the Bulletin, the Australian Literature Society and publishers and booksellers such as Angus and Robertson. Other items include photographs, presscuttings, typescript copies of articles, MS copies of poems by J. Furphy and Kate Baker's Silhouettes - articles about such Australian literary figures as Ada Cambridge, J.K. Ewers, J.S. Neilson, Alice Henry, R.H. Croll, D.O'Reilly, Canon Hughes, Vance & Nettie Palmer, Dame Mary Gilmore Hubert Church, B. O'Dowd, A.G. Stephens, C. Winterbottom, C. Bryde, M. Franklin, G. Byrne, Edith Coleman, E. Coulson Davidson, C. Lang, C. Strong and Victor Kennedy.
    1.5 m
    National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection
    MS 2022
  10. Miles Franklin - papers, 1841-1954
    [manuscript, Photographs, Printed material : 1841 - 1954]
    The collection comprises personal and literary papers of Miles Franklin. Personal papers include diaries and notebooks and an extensive collection of correspondence. Literary papers include manuscripts and publishing papers of Miles Franklin, as well as literary papers of Mary Fullerton. The collection also includes family papers of the Franklin and Lampe families and papers received from the estates of Alice Henry and Mary Fullerton.
    6.55 m, 116 volumes
    Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales
    MLMSS 364
  11. Papers of Fred Coleman-Browne, including papers of his wife, Eileen Powell.
    [c. 1871 - 1968]
    Contents include material relating to trades unions, Australian Labor Party, Australian Communist Party and material relating to women in the feminist movement including papers relating to Alice Henry.
    8 boxes
    Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales
    MSS 3526

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Australian Newspapers (1803-1954)

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  1. Website: Australian Women's Archives Project
    www.womenaustralia.info
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  2. Website: Australian Women in War
    www.womenaustralia.info
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    View 26 matching archived pages
  3. Website: Putting skirts on the sacred benches : women candidates for the New South Wales Parliament
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  1. [Alice Henry]
    [Photograph : 1920]
  2. [Alice Henry]
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  3. Scott family - collection of studio...
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    [Photograph : 1865-1921]
  1. Spence, Catherine Helen. 1825-1910
    autobiographer/memoirist; charity worker; journalist; literary critic; novelist; public lecturer; Unitarian lay leader; women's activist; women's suffragist
    ... Henry, Alice (1857 - 1943) ...
  2. Franklin, Miles. 1879-1954
    feminist; literary scholar; novelist
    ... Henry, Alice (1857 - 1943) ...
  3. Goldstein, Vida. 1869-1949
    ... Henry, Alice (1857 - 1943) ...