MACDONALD, AMELIA MORRISON FRASER (1865-1946), social reformer and women's
activist, was born on 17 June 1865 at Blackburn, Linlithgowshire, Scotland, elder
daughter of Peter Fraser, cooper, and his wife Isabella, née McRae. Amelia
attended school at Govan, Glasgow. When she was 11 years old, her mother died, and
she worked as a seamstress to support herself and her sister. At West Govan on 2
August 1886 she married with the forms of the Church of Scotland Alexander
Parkinson Macdonald (d.1937), a steamship steward and caterer. They emigrated to
Sydney where, for nine years, she ran a tailoring business. In 1896 the Macdonalds
moved to Western Australia. Amelia opened a café in Barrack Street, Perth, which
continued to operate until 1913. Her orphaned 19-year-old niece Isabella Millar
had joined the childless couple in 1910; Bonnie Brae at Glen Forrest was their
home from 1916.
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Australian Dictionary of Biography Online
Born, educated and married in Scotland, Amelia Macdonald migrated to Australia in 1887, living first in Sydney where, for nine years, she ran a tailoring business. In 1896 she and her husband, Alexander, moved to Perth, where she lived for the rest of her life.
Her own experience of losing her mother at an early age, along with that of her neice who was orphaned as a young woman, no doubt made her acutely aware of the precariousness of women's fortunes, and how intricately connected they were to those of men. Macdonald spent all her adult life working towards untangling these connections and reforming the legal, educational and social structures that operated to oppress women and children.
Connected to the church (she taught Anglican Sunday School classes), she was also deeply influenced by the ideas of the Theosophists. Their guiding ideals of spiritual force, service, social reform, universal education and equal citizenship provided the platform for the Women's Services Guilds Of Western Australia, an organisation Macdonald helped to establish in 1909. She was also important on the establishment of the National Council of women in W.A. and she supported the Workers' Educational Association and the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
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Australian Women's Register