Fhs/fs/8/Oliver.html
[[Fhs/fs/8/index.html|File:Freotopia fhs fs .. .. img banner.jpg]]
[[../../../../index.html|Fremantle Stuff]] > Fremantle History Society > Fremantle Studies > 8 > Oliver
More than just the PM's wife: Elsie Curtin's contribution to history
Bobbie Oliver
Oliver, Bobbie 2014, 'More than just the PM's wife: Elsie Curtin's contribution to history', Fremantle Studies, 8: 27-36.
When Elsie Curtin was asked to stand as President of the WA Labor Women’s Central Executive in 1944, she was a reluctant candidate. She preferred working behind the scenes, but when persuaded that it was her duty to stand, she urged the members to consider her solely on her merits. ‘None of you are representing your husbands in this organisation’, she said. ‘You must not think of me as representing mine, either’. 1 Her husband was, of course, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin, whose enormous popularity during the war had won the ALP a landslide victory in the previous year’s election. To be considered on her own merits and to work quietly behind the scenes to achieve goals were the hallmarks of Elsie Curtin’s life. Yet these commendable characteristics have resulted in Elsie Curtin being misrepresented, misunderstood and little known.
Elsie Curtin (nee Needham), 1942 (John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library. Records of the Curtin Family. JCPMLOO376/ 15)
Elsie Curtin was born Elsie Needham at Ballarat, Victoria, on 4 October 1890 to Abraham Needham, a sign writer and painter, and his wife, Annie. The only daughter, Elsie had two older brothers, William and Leslie. Abraham Needham moved to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1896 and established the signwriting firm of Needham and Bennett. The family followed when Elsie was about eight years of age and they lived in a house in Devon Street, in the suburb of Woodstock. As a ‘pioneer socialist’, a gifted writer and fluent orator, Needham was a familiar sight at Van Riebeeck’s statue, a spot that was Cape Town’s equivalent to Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner in London. He also painted banners bearing slogans such as ‘Socialism - the Hope of the Age’, some of which were used to welcome the British labour leader Kier Hardie on his visit to South Africa in 1906. 2
Perth feminist Irene Greenwood depicted Elsie’s life in South Africa as being:
the period when Olive Schreiner’s book Life an an African Farm had awakened the women of the English-speaking countries to the legal and political disabilities of women, and had set up a ferment amongst them which culminated in agitation for ‘Votes for Women’. Elsie’s mother joined the Cape Town group, and won her husband’s sympathies for their cause. When a band of leading [British] suffragettes came to South Africa to lecture and speak, it was but natural that the Needhams should meet them. 3
As well as managing his signwriting business Abraham Needham edited a newspaper, the Cape Socialist, and wrote poetry. Elsie recalled him ‘sitting up late, night after night, burning the midnight oil while he studied, read, or wrote articles for his paper and poems’. 4 Needham was also a preacher in the Methodist Church and often equated the values of Socialism and Christianity. The Needhams were avid readers of classics, poetry, history, biography and politics. Consequently, Elsie and her brothers were brought up in a well-educated, progressive household where ideas of equality - of the sexes and of classes - were fostered and independent thought was encouraged, but also a household of strict morals, where drinking and dancing were regarded as evils. Elsie recalled that her father discussed ‘topical affairs’ with his children and that she frequently accompanied him to public meetings, including those at which suffragettes spoke. 5 Elsie was a financial member of the Social Democratic Federation in Cape Town before she was 17 years of age. 6In contrast to her brothers, Elsie was close to her father, sharing his political ideals. After leaving school, she did the accounts in Needham’s sign writing business. 7
After a decade in South Africa, the Needhams returned to Hobart where Elsie’s political education was extended by her father’s decision to stand for election to the State Parliament as a Labor candidate in 1912. It was this connection that brought Elsie into contact with her future husband, John Curtin. Curtin was Secretary of the Victorian Timber Workers Union; he went to Tasmania to recruit members and to establish a national federation of timber workers. Needham was one of the Labor men whose support Curtin sought in this venture. 8
Surprisingly, there are conflicting accounts about where Elsie and John first met; Elsie appears not to have left her own account. Dame Enid Lyons recalled that it was an occasion in Hobart when Curtin shared a platform with her husband the then ALP member Joe Lyons. Enid Lyons claimed that, ‘As Curtin stepped down from the box which had been their unpretentious rostrum, he had seen a girl called Elsie Needham, and fallen in love at first sight’. 9 But Dame Enid’s biographer, Diane Langmore, disputed this romantic version of events and stated that the couple more likely met at the Needhams’ home where John had been invited for afternoon tea. Whichever it was, Curtin became a frequent visitor to the Needhams’ during the month he spent in Hobart. When they met Elsie was 21 and John was 27 years of age; their courtship would last for five years.
Many difficulties beset any prospect of developing a lasting relationship. As a strict Methodist Elsie had signed the pledge and neither drank nor danced; Curtin was a heavy drinker who would shortly become an alcoholic, and dancing was one of his favourite pastimes. But far more important that either of these differences was that Curtin was Roman Catholic, although he did not adhere to religious practice. David Day suggests that Curtin’s mother, in particular, would have opposed his marriage to a non-Catholic. 10
Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that although Curtin wrote messages in Elsie’s autograph album - an intimate gesture that indicated close friendship if not courtship - these were stilted and didactic. For example, on 20 May 1912, he wrote:
“Ye shall be one nation!” (Isaiah); “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (Holy Writ); “Workers of the world unite! You have a world to gain and only your chains to lose.” (Karl Marx); “Let there be no fatalism in our counsels. Let us look neither to right nor left, nor to hell [nor] heaven. But let us spend ourself [sic] in discovering the laws of life and of society so that we may do wisely and justly. And let it be not for the love of God nor the fear of Hell - but because we are truthful and fear no evil.” [John Curtin] 11
Another message, on a much lighter note was addressed to ‘My very dear friend and comrade, Elsie Needham, aged ?’
Over the next two years, Elsie and John corresponded irregularly but within a year, he was addressing letters to ‘Elsie Dear’. 12 He visited Hobart again in March 1913, and they went out to ‘a couple of shows together’. Nevertheless, most of their courtship had been by letter when, in the winter of 1914, Elsie came to Melbourne to board a steamer for South Africa where she planned an extended stay with her brother, Leslie, who had remained in Cape Town when the rest of the family returned to Australia. Day suggests that Elsie was the instigator of Curtin’s hesitant marriage proposal, which he made just before she boarded the boat. Of Elsie’s feelings at this time, unlike many other occasions in her life, we have her Words. ‘I would have given anything to have been able to grab my baggage from the hold and run down the gang-plank again’. 13 Instead, she went to South Africa, carrying a photo of ‘Jack’ Curtin (as he was then known), which she proudly showed to friends and family. She didn’t return to Melbourne until November 1915. And it was another 18 months before they could marry.
At the end of 1916, Curtin secured a position as editor of the Westralian Worker, the paper of the labour movement in Perth. Elsie followed him west and they were married in a registry office in Leederville on 21 April 1917. The couple rented a house in Subiaco and later moved to the beachside suburb of Cottesloe where they purchased land in Jarrad Street and built their own home. Here they raised their two children, Elsie (born December 1917) and John (born 1921), as well as providing a home for Elsie’s parents. As the house filled up with family members the verandah was gradually built in to create more bedrooms and a larger sitting room/ study to house their significant book collection and Elsie’s piano. She was an accomplished pianist and one-time church organist.
When the media ‘discovered’ Elsie in 1935 at the time of her husband’s election to leadership of the ALP, and again after his elevation to Prime Minister in 1941, she was announced as a woman who ‘likes home life’, 14 ‘home loving’ and ‘a silent partner’. 15 But she had been active in the labour movement and elsewhere in the community throughout her life in the west. Soon after her marriage she joined the Perth Branch of the Labour Women’s Organisation [LWO] and through this network got to know Jean Beadle - with whom she formed a lifelong friendship - and other campaigners for women’s rights. 16
After the Curtins moved to Cottesloe, Elsie played an active role in the Fremantle LWO, including holding the office of Treasurer. 17 Like many other women in the labour movement she managed the family finances and merely extended this role by taking on the office of treasurer on an ALP committee. By 1935 she was Vice President of the Cottesloe Infant Health Welfare Centre. She also found time to join a choir in Fremantle, where she sang a contralto part in a performance of The Messiah at Christmas 1935. 18
During the six years that Curtin was ALP Leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Federal Government Elsie Curtin gave a number of interviews in which she reiterated that ‘home duties’ kept her from being very active in public life. Yet as we have seen she was active in the labour movement and in other groups in the community.
What she was far too loyal to say was that life with John - and especially when the children were young - was no picnic. In 1919 after his second unsuccessful attempt to enter politics, this time standing for the seat of Perth, coupled with personal grief over the deaths of his father and his closest friend, Frank Hyett, in a short space of time, John suffered a nervous breakdown. By this time Elsie’s parents were living with them and Abraham Needham helped out by writing polemical editorials for the Worker.
Elsie’s recollection of this crisis was surprisingly frank, according to Diane Langmore:
He veered between moods of high optimism and deep melancholy, as inexplicable as they were irregular. He would wake up in the morning at peace with the world and I’d start my household chores with a light heart. By lunchtime I would be treating him with a blend of sympathy and ‘Come, now, things aren’t as black as that’, which I learned through long months was the best mixture. 19
This was a time of crisis but, although it passed, John’s bouts of depression and his battles to overcome alcoholism continued. Despite promising to give up alcohol when he married Elsie and when he took the job at the Westralian Worker, it is evident that it remained a problem at least until 1931 and possibly 1935. Why else would his colleagues have taken the trouble to ascertain whether he would ‘stay sober’ 20 before asking him to stand as ALP Leader when Scullin decided to retire? Daughter Elsie recalled times when Curtin came home late, drunk, including one occasion when he turned up at the back door early in the morning, still dressed in his dinner suit. She commented, ‘I probably forgot about it, but I think my mother did not forget’. 21
Another bad time was when Curtin lost his seat after only one term in Parliament in 1931. John clearly credited Elsie with giving him the courage to stand again for Parliament on two occasions after defeat - firstly in 1928 and then in 1934. On Elsie’s visit to Canada in 1944, the Quebec Chronicle of 31 May profiled her, including this comment:
In 1928, when he couldn’t decide between journalism and politics, it was Elsie Curtin who gave her husband the decisive initiative with her simple, ‘You were meant for Parliament.’ Later, when Curtin was defeated in 1931, his wife - ‘Nippy’ as he affectionately calls her - again came to his aid with consoling words. ‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘this means nothing. You’ll be back in parliament again.’ And three years later, he was.
A report in The Argus (Cape Town) after Elsie’s death in 1975, stated:
[John Curtin’s] political zeal might have faltered, however, when in 1931 he lost his seat in the Federal Parliament of Australia. The Western Australian Government offered him an attractive permanent job and, when he talked it over with his wife - because he believed a wife earns half a man's salary - she advised him to stick to politics where his heart was.
Consequently, she might have added ‘counsellor’, if not ‘prophet’, to the homemaking skills she was prepared to acknowledge. And also ‘electorate officer’. John realized his wife’s value in the electorate during his absences, especially during the anxious days of the Pacific War when the North West coast was under attack from enemy planes - and this was one reason why she spent so much time away from The Lodge.
Yet, despite her public insistence that ‘Some women are equipped for public life, while others are best suited for a domestic role. I’m one of those women who belongs in the home,’ Elsie’s role was little understood at the time or afterwards. 22 She has been criticised for not moving permanently to Canberra after her husband became Prime Minister. A decade after her death, her daughter defended her thus:
My father was determined to retain the Cottesloe home as the family residence, and he considered that by my mother returning to Cottesloe for various periods reassured the people of Perth, who at that time were living in real fear of a Japanese invasion. During the four-year period of my father's Prime Ministership my mother not only helped him to entertain a host of visitors involved with the war and parliamentary business, but she also held fund raising functions at The Lodge to benefit the Red Cross Society and the National Shilling drive for women in the services. 23
Elsie also saw it as her duty to maintain a home for her two single adult children and her aged, and provide a place for son John to return on leave from his station with the RAAF in Geraldton. 24 The first time she left home daughter Elsie was only 18 and son John, 15. This trip, in 1936, involved a tour with John to Melbourne, Hobart and Launceston, which took several weeks. 25 Before the days of air travel, it was lengthy journey by train or sea between Perth and Melbourne with a further road or rail journey to Canberra.
A compilation of her visits to Canberra drawn from contemporary newspapers shows that she arrived in the capital less than a month after her husband became Prime Minister in October 1941 and remained until end of December. John Curtin was home in Perth in January. Elsie was back in Melbourne in April 1942 to celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary with John at the Victoria Coffee Palace - a journey which she undertook despite an injured foot. 26 On this visit she spent time in Canberra, launched a navy vessel in Sydney, and remained in the Eastern States until the end of May. In August she was back and launched the navy corvette Fremantle in Brisbane. She celebrated her 52nd birthday at The Lodge on 4 October 1942 before returning to Perth. So in the first year of Curtin’s Prime Ministership Elsie spent over five months either travelling with John or living with him at The Lodge.
In 1943, she did not return to Canberra until mid September, but this is probably because Curtin was home in Perth for several weeks at Easter. Elsie stayed for about two months; during this time, she had a flight over Canberra in a Lancaster bomber.
In 1944, the Curtins spent April to June overseas. They were together in America and it was not by Elsie’s choice that she was forced to remain in the US while he travelled by bomber to England. She was reportedly very upset by being ‘left behind’. When they returned to Sydney Elsie remained in Canberra until the beginning of August, during which time she entertained dinner guests with a ‘racy’ account of her trip to America. She spoke confidently and without notes 27 - quite an achievement for the woman who reportedly had first spoken in public at her husband’s farewell from the Westralian Worker in 1928. In 1945, during Curtin’s illness, Elsie was with him from 14 January until his death on 7 July. The only time she left him during these months was to preside at the Labor Women’s Central Executive national conference in Adelaide in April. 28
Yet the myth persisted that Elsie spent barely any time in Canberra, and was perpetuated in the 1985 film Hellfire Jack, which pronounced Curtin the ‘lonely saviour of Australia’. Narrator Leo McKern insisted, in doleful tones, even when Curtin was seriously ill in a Canberra Hospital, ‘still she did not come’.
Elsie bore herself with grace and dignity through the largest funeral that Perth has ever seen. A mere three weeks after Curtin’s death, Irene Greenwood broadcast a tribute to Elsie Curtin whom she described as:
A gracious woman sitting before a wood fire in a long, spacious room - a room book-filled, with a lived-in, well-loved air about . it, furnished simply with easy chairs, a radio, an upright piano. She wears a plain black frock, totally unadorned. Dark hair, now greying telling of the years’ onward march towards middle age, is piled in high, soft rolls above a good broad brow. There is a warm colour of health glowing in the clear, fine olive skin. Brown eyes are friendly in their direct gaze, but they can twinkle with humour on occasions. A generous well-controlled mouth completes the general impression that here is a person kindly, serene, and sincere. But it is the hands, most of all, that reveal the character of this woman. Such small hands, plump, well-kept, yet strong and capable, combining the practical and the artistic; hands equally at home in the laundry, the kitchen, the garden, or at the keyboard of her piano. 29
In widowhood, Elsie continued her association with the Labor Women’s Organisation, remaining as President for a further year before resigning from office. In 1949 she visited New Zealand at the invitation of the New Zealand High Commissioner, whom she had met in Canberra when attending the laying of the foundation stone of the John Curtin Medical School. 30 A letter to an acquaintance in 1954 gives a picture of the busy life that she still led. She spoke of opening fetes, meeting the Queen and Prince Philip during the 1954 Royal Visit, attending the laying of the foundation stone for the John Curtin High School, continuing as a delegate of the Fremantle LWO at conferences, and adjudicating a choir contest. 31 She also held the office of Justice of the Peace, and she took much delight in being a grandmother.
Elsie continued to live in the house in Jarrad Street with daughter Elsie and son in law Stan McLeod. In 1970 she was awarded a CBE. 32 She died in June 1975 aged 84 and is buried beside her husband in Karrakatta Cemetery.
Her epitaph: ‘A loving wife and mother’ is probably the one she would have wanted, but it belies the extent of her contribution to Australia. Not only was she the rock on whom John Curtin depended throughout his public life, but she also made her own contribution to the labour movement and the wider community through her long involvement with the Fremantle Labor Women’s Organisation and other groups. Consequently, her husband’s grander epitaph might easily be adapted to apply to Elsie Curtin:
Her country was her pride
Her fellow man her cause
Fremantle Studies Day, 2011
Notes
1 Cited in K. S. Prichard, ‘Mrs John Curtin ... Yours sincerely, Elsie Curtin’, typed notes, n.d. (possibly 1945), John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library [JCPML] Accession no. 00398/125 .
2 JCPML00964/199 The Argus (Cape Town), 30 June 1975, ‘Girl from Woodstock became PM’s wife’.
3 JCPML00398/74: Friday, July 27th 1945, “People In The International News” by Irene A Greenwood, ‘Mrs John Curtin - A personal sketch’, ABC Radio programme.
4 Ibid.
5 JCPML00964/70; The Telegraph, 18 August 1942. From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML00298/2 ‘Mrs Curtin First Knew War In South Africa’.
6 JCPMLO0964/4, Daily News, 3 October 1935 , from Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML00298/2. ‘Mrs Curtin was reared in Political Atmosphere.’
7 David Day, john Curtin. A Life. Harper Collins Publishers, 1999, p. 148.
8 Day, john Curtin. pp. 145-7.
9 Cited in Day, john Curtin, p. 149.
10 Day, pp.149-50, 163.
11 Elsie Needham’s autograph album, JCPML0001/ 12
12 David Black, Friendship is a Sheltering Tree. John Curtin's letters 1907 to 1945, JCPML and API Network, 2001, pp. 67 ff.
13 Day, John Curtin
14 JCPMLO0964/ 5 : Melbourne Herald, 9 April 1936 From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML 00298/2. ‘Likes Home Life’.
15 JCPMLOO964/ 136: Quebec Chronicle-Tele. Que. 31 May 1944, From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML 00297/6: ‘Curtin’s Wife Silent Partner’
16 Bobbie Oliver, jean Beadle. A life of Lah0r Acti1Jism, UWA Press, 2007, p.59.
17 Day, John Curtin, p. 293.
18 JCPMLO0964/4: Daily News, 3 October 1935, From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML00298/2. ‘Mrs Curtin was reared in Political Atmosphere’.
19 Cited in Day, p. 266.
20 Day, p. 341.
21 Cited in Day, p. 303.
22 ‘Curtin’s Wife Silent Partner’ in Quebec Chronicle, 31 May 1944, JCPMLO0964/ 136
23 Elsie McLeod’s letter to the editor, The Herald, 29 April 1985. Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings, JCPMLO0964/ 204
24 JCPMLO0964/63, Argus, 22 April 1942 From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPMLO0297/2: ‘Mrs Curtin Tells of Happy Married Life’.
25 JCPML 00964/5, Melbourne Herald, 9 April 1936 From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML00298/2: ‘Likes Home Life’.
26 JCPMLOO964/62, Unidentified newspaper, 21 April 1942. From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPML00298/ 2: ‘Curtin Silver Wedding: no Celebration’.
27 JCPML00398/119 ‘List of periods when [Elsie Curtin] was in Canberra...’ compiled from contemporary newspaper accounts.
28 Greenwood, ’People In The International News’.
29 Greenwood, ’People In The International News’.
30 JCPMLOO964/186: New Zealand Free Lance, 30 November 1949, From Curtin family scrapbook of press clippings JCPMLO0297/2 Trip Planned On Spur Of The Moment’.
31 JCPLM 01095/1 24 Jarrad Street Cottesloe Western Australia [14 November 1954]
32 Commander of the British Empire patent awarded to Elsie Curtin by Governor Kendrew, 1 January 1970. JCPML00373/2
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 28 May, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/fhs/fs/8/Oliver.html (it was last updated on 16 December, 2018). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.