Women’s Suffrage in South Australia

On 23 August 1894 George Hawker, member for North Adelaide, presented to the South Australian House of Assembly a petition in favour of women’s suffrage. It was signed by approximately 10,600 men and women, with individual pages adhered together to make a 101 metre scroll.

Members of the Women’s Suffrage League, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Working Women’s Trade Union were primarily responsible for collecting the signatures from metropolitan and country areas.

The original petition is held by the House of Assembly. It has been preserved in 191 archival boxes. 

A transcription project was undertaken by State Records of South Australia in 1994. A digital dataset was developed by the History Trust of South Australia in 2019. This final database was developed by the House of Assembly in 2026.  State Records and the House of Assembly made every effort to identify names against a series of relevant primary sources.

Reading the Women’s Suffrage Petition 

– Square brackets indicate the content does not appear on the petition page itself – it is information either supplied by the public, assumed, or alternate spellings to assist searching. 

– Some signatures are followed by a note reading [X – his/her mark].  This indicates someone signed on behalf of the signatory, and the signatory made an “X” next to the writing to indicate their agreement. 

– Some individuals signed their name in the address field.  If you cannot see the signature in the first column, check the address field. 

– Number markings on the sides of some pages were likely made when tallying up the total number of signatures collected, and are not a reference to the order of names in the petition. 

– A style guide was applied for ease of reading. As examples, suburbs are written out in full with no abbreviations, street names are written out in full.

10,656 petitioners in database