When Janine Holland signed on to Methven Theatre Company’s upcoming musical about suffragist Kate Sheppard, she didn’t realise there was a personal connection. Janine is proud to tell Agnes’s story.
There’s nothing like theatre to immerse yourself in another world.
Normally that world is far removed from real life.
But recently I found out my small role in That Bloody Woman ironically intersects with an ancestor.
Cast as Sir John Hall, the MP who presented the suffrage petitions to Parliament, I was delighted to discover my great great grandmother Agnes Davison was among 887 local women who signed the petitions in 1893.
My 84-year-old mother Elizabeth Holland identified the connection bringing out a sepia photo of Agnes and telling her story. Credit must also go to the brilliant website https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/petition where you can find the details of local suffragists.
Agnes, living on a farm in Willowby at the time, was an Irish immigrant who arrived in New Zealand only a few years before suffrage with husband William and seven of her nine children.
Born in Ahoghill, Ballymena during the Potato Famine, Agnes married William at
21. After four children within eight years, they endured a three-month sailing to South Australia, followed by tough years trying to grow wheat and raise cattle.
William was often away for days at a time taking loads of wheat to the nearest town, leaving Agnes alone with the children.
One night she went outside to chase away an intruder and was hit over the head with a spade.
Agnes carried a scar on her forehead for the rest of her life. She kept a gorse knife by her bed when William was away, and another night thought she saw a man in her room. William’s new suit was hanging on the bed post, and in the dark Agnes hacked the suit to pieces.
In 1888, after four years of drought, the couple left for New Zealand with five more children born in Australia. They bought a farm in Willowby and their tenth and last child arrived the following year.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was active in Ashburton in 1893. It’s possible that cause encouraged Agnes to sign the suffragist petition.
My late grandfather Bob Lynn remembered his grandmother Agnes Hume Davison as a determined and hardworking woman.
He recounted in his family history Under the Lynnwood Tree, 1840-1940, that “she had a mind of her own and was a very fast walker, always meeting things as they came and not before’.
Agnes died in 1928 and is buried alongside William in Ashburton Cemetery.
Elizabeth wonders if Agnes’ spirit has been passed down in the family as “we have our fair share of strong-minded women.”
“I’m not sure of her motivation (to sign the petition), possibly just Irish determination. She was obviously a hard worker with plenty of stamina who felt her ideas (temperance movement etc) would make for a better life. I am extremely grateful that those women thought that way. Thanks to them I get to vote each election!”
Elizabeth thinks the That Bloody Woman show is a good time to remind people that voting wasn’t always universally available.
All up over several years in the late 1800s, nearly 32,000 women around New Zealand signed multiple petitions to get women the vote – almost a quarter of the voting-age European female population.
The Electoral Act 1893 finally gave all adult women in New Zealand (with some exceptions, ‘aliens’ and inmates of prisons and asylums) the right to vote in the general election held on November 28, 1893.
– That Bloody Woman plays for three nights from September 11 to 13 at the Mt Hutt Memorial Hall. While Methven Theatre Company is retelling a historic moment, the show itself is a contemporary rework full of vigour, punk rock attitude and hilarity (mature themes and coarse language). Tickets from the Ashburton Event Centre box office or online, and at Cafe45 in Methven.
