BLACKBURN, DORIS AMELIA (1889-1970), politician, peace campaigner and civil rights activist, was born on 18 September 1889 at Hawthorn, Melbourne, daughter of Lebbeus Hordern, estate agent, and his wife Louisa Dewson, née Smith, both Victorian born. Encouraged by several of her teachers at the progressive school, Hessle College, Camberwell, Doris began her political career in the Women's Political Association and in 1913 acted as campaign secretary for Vida Goldstein. Doris's driving impulses were compassion for the underprivileged and concern for social justice in general rather than for women's rights alone. On 10 December 1914 in Melbourne she was married by Frederick Sinclaire to Maurice McCrae Blackburn. Impressed by his principled and intellectual approach to politics, she shared with Maurice a marriage that was as much a political as a personal partnership. He drew her into the labour movement and together they campaigned vigorously against conscription in 1916-17.
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The second woman member of the House of Representatives, Doris Blackburn successfully won her late husband’s Federal seat of Bourke as an Independent Labor candidate in 1946. She was involved in the Free Kindergarten movement and numerous campaigns for better education, playgrounds and crèches. Blackburn was a member of the Women’s Political Association in Victoria, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Women’s Prison Council and the Save the Children Fund. In 1957, with Doug Nicholls, she was a co-founder of the Aboriginal Advancement League and the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement.
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