Lilian Fowler

Fowler was born at Cooma, New South Wales. She was the third daughter of Charles Munro Gill, who was a farmer, and Frances Rebecca, née Gaunson. After receiving a primary school education, she became closely involved in labour politics with the assistance of her father, a Labor League organiser and an Alderman, Valuer and Inspector of Nuisances for the Municipal District of Cooma.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article222125526 |title=Municipal district of Cooma |newspaper=New South Wales Government Gazette |issue=249 |date=20 April 1888 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=2870 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article222113910 |title=Notice |newspaper=New South Wales Government Gazette |issue=152 |date=18 March 1890 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=2446 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article223542790 |title=Municipal district of Cooma |newspaper=New South Wales Government Gazette |issue=286 |date=12 April 1892 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=3226 |via=Trove}} On 19 April 1909, while working as a waitress in Sydney, she married a bootmaker and widower, Albert Edward Fowler, at Whitefield Congregational Church.{{Australian Dictionary of Biography |last=Radi |first=Heather |year=1981 |id2=fowler-elizabeth-lilian-6222 |title=Fowler, Elizabeth Lilian Maud (1886–1954) |accessdate=16 June 2019}} Her uncle, John Munro Gill (1838–1917), a boilermaker of Granville, also served as an Alderman of the Municipality of Granville (North Ward; 1898–1906).{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article220993757 |title=Borough of Granville |newspaper=New South Wales Government Gazette |issue=731 |date=19 August 1898 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=6632 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article221015080 |title=Borough of Granville |newspaper=New South Wales Government Gazette |issue=166 |date=23 February 1900 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=1568 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article220261284 |title=Borough of Granville |newspaper=Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales |issue=89 |date=17 February 1903 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=1438 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article86087206 |title=Death of Mr Gill |newspaper=The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate |date=29 September 1917 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=2 |via=Trove}} Her younger brother, Percy Thomas Algernon Gill (1889–1957), a labourer of Rosebery, served as an Alderman of the Municipality of Waterloo (1934–1937).{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237426160 |title=Newtown creates history |newspaper=The Labor Daily |date=8 December 1937 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=1 |via=Trove}}{{cite web |title=Percy Gill |url=https://www.sydneyaldermen.com.au/alderman/percy-gill/ |website=Sydney's Aldermen |publisher=City of Sydney |accessdate=20 July 2020}}

File:Mayor slnsw.jpg

Fowler was made secretary of the Newtown-Erskineville Political Labor League, and from 1917 managed the electorate of Newtown MP Frank Burke, an anti-conscriptionist. In 1921, she was appointed justice of the peace one of the first women so appointed.

Elected to the central executive of the Australian Labor Party 1920–21 and 1923–25, she and Jack Lang were behind the move to admit James Dooley at the 1923 conference.{{cite book |title =The Light on the Hill | first =Ross | last =McMullin | year =1991 | publisher =Oxford University Press | page =128 | isbn =978-0-19-554966-9}} Fowler was also instrumental in the anti-corruption moves at the conference which led to the exposure of sliding-panel ballot boxes. She resigned from the central executive in 1932.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2268520 |title=A.L.P. Executive |newspaper=The Canberra Times |date=3 March 1932 |accessdate=16 June 2019 |page=1 |via=Trove}}

She was president of the Labor Women's Central Organising Committee 1926–27, lobbying New South Wales Premier Jack Lang to implement widows' pensions and child endowments. She also petitioned the governor regarding the appointment of women to the Legislative Council, and organised the first interstate Labor Women's conference.

In 1928, shortly after she separated from her husband, she was elected to Newtown Municipal Council. She was the first woman elected to any local council in New South Wales, holding office as an Alderman for Camden ward from 1934 to the Council's amalgamation with the City of Sydney in 1948. On 7 December 1937 Fowler made history again when she was elected as Australia's first female mayor, with her daughter serving as Mayoress.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17440132 |title=Her worship, the mayor |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=9 December 1937 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=22 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237429124 |title=Madam Mayor At Newtown |newspaper=The Labor Daily |date=15 December 1937 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=5 |via=Trove}} She was re-elected for a second term as mayor on 6 December 1938 and held the mayoralty until 1939, when the 10-member Labor caucus on Council decided on Raymond Beaufils, the President of the Enmore ALP Branch, as the next candidate for mayor and Fowler did not contest the vote.{{cite web |title=The City of Sydney Newtown Project: Mayors and Councillors 1863–1948 |publisher=City of Sydney |year=2005 |url=http://cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/newtownproject/Mayors_and_Councillors/mayors_and_councillors.html |accessdate=18 June 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080420234244/http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/newtownproject/Mayors_and_Councillors/mayors_and_councillors.html |archive-date=20 April 2008}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article194168208 |title=Mayor of Newtown |newspaper=The Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser |date=7 December 1938 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=1 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17554901 |title=Mayoral elections |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=9 December 1938 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=19 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article247831419 |title=Mayor has last word |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |date=13 December 1939 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=2 |via=Trove}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article236341133 |title=Newtown Changes Mayor |newspaper=Daily News |date=13 December 1939 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=2 |via=Trove}}

In recognition of her achievements, Fowler was presented with an illuminated address signed by former Premier Lang and Federal shadow Minister Jack Beasley.{{cite web |title=Marrickville Council Online History Exhibition |publisher=Marrickville Council |year=2008 |url=http://www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/community/history/localgovernmentweek/4.htm |accessdate=17 June 2009}} A portrait depicting her in the robes of mayor was painted by Reginald Jack Shepherd (Ald. Mrs Fowler) and was a finalist in the 1938 Archibald Prize for portraiture.{{cite web |title=Archibald Prize Finalists 1938 |url=https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/1938/ |publisher=Art Gallery of NSW |accessdate=20 July 2020}}{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article236312987 |title=Mayor of Newtown |newspaper=Daily News |date=12 December 1938 |accessdate=20 July 2020 |page=8 |via=Trove}}

File:Lilian Fowler from Argus.jpg, on her election to state parliament in 1944.]]

In 1941, Fowler unsuccessfully ran against Burke for the seat of Newtown as an independent Labor candidate.{{Cite NSW election |year=1941 |district=Newtown |accessdate=20 July 2020}} She ran again as a Lang Labor candidate in 1944, campaigning for reduced taxation, better housing and more day nurseries and baby clinics. She defeated Burke and became the third woman elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly since its inception in 1856.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11804521 |title=Mrs Fowler |newspaper=The Argus |date=3 June 1944 |accessdate=16 June 2019 |page=11 |via=Trove}}{{Cite NSW election |year=1944 |district=Newtown |accessdate=20 July 2020}}

In Parliament, she condemned the Labor Party's centrist tendencies and opposed intervention from Canberra in New South Wales affairs. Her principal legislative achievement was an amendment to the Lunacy Act in 1944 to secure the release of Boyd Sinclair from a lunatic asylum, where he had been held since 1936, so that he could stand trial in a criminal court for the alleged murder of a Sydney taxi driver.{{efn|name=Sinclair|Sixteen year old Boyd Sinclair was accused of murdering Sydney taxi driver John Smilie in 1936, found unfit to be tried on grounds of insanity, and confined without trial to a lunatic asylum.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2691668 |title=Trial for 10-year old murder |newspaper=The Canberra Times |date=30 July 1946 |accessdate=16 June 2019 |page=3 |via=Trove}} Fowler's 1944 legislative amendment permitted Sinclair to argue before a jury that he was fit to plead his case.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2607729 |title=Trial authorised |newspaper=The Canberra Times |date=6 December 1944 |accessdate=16 June 2019 |page=2 |via=Trove}} A jury found that while Sinclair may have been insane at the time of the crime, he was now sane enough to be tried. Sinclair was arraigned before the Criminal Court where he pleaded not guilty, but was nonetheless convicted of the murder and resentenced to life imprisonment.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2691857 |title=Sinclair Guilty of Murder |newspaper=The Canberra Times |date=1 August 1946 |accessdate=16 June 2019 |page=4 |via=Trove}} Shortly afterward, he was again declared insane and returned to the asylum.{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2907488 |title=Court to investigate prisoner's sanity |newspaper=The Canberra Times |date=1 June 1954 |accessdate=16 June 2019 |page=1 |via=Trove}}}}{{cite web| title = Women Shaping the Nation: Victorian Honour Roll of Women| publisher =Centenary of Federation Victoria | year =2001 | url =http://www.women.vic.gov.au/web12/rwpgslib.nsf/GraphicFiles/HonourRoll01/$file/HonourRoll01.pdf | accessdate =15 June 2009 }} A fierce critic of bureaucracy, she supported regrouping local councils, and lost her own council seat when Newtown was merged with the City of Sydney in 1949. Fowler was re-elected in 1947, but was defeated in the 1950 election by the "official" Labor candidate Arthur Greenup.{{Cite NSW Parliament |id=1452 |name=Mrs Lilian Fowler (1887–1954) |former=Yes |access-date=16 June 2019}}{{Cite NSW election|year=1950 |district=Newtown Annandale |accessdate=20 July 2020}} In 1953, she was unsuccessful in an attempt to win election to Sydney City Council.

Fowler did not long survive her retirement from politics; she died in King George V Memorial Hospital on 11 May 1954 from coronary occlusion and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery with Methodist rites. She was survived by a daughter.

The federal division of Fowler is named for her,{{Cite web|url=https://www.aec.gov.au/profiles/nsw/fowler.htm|title=Profile of the electoral division of Fowler (NSW)|website=Australian Electoral Commission|language=en-AU|access-date=2 February 2020}} as is Fowler Place, in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm{{Cite web|url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/25600600|title=Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Periodic (National : 1977 – 2011) – 15 May 1987 – p2|website=Trove|language=en|access-date=2 February 2020}} and Lillian Fowler Place in Marrickville. She was posthumously inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.{{Cite web |date= |title=Councillor Lilian Fowler MBE JP |url=https://www.vic.gov.au/councillor-lilian-fowler-mbe-jp |access-date=2025-03-08 |website=State Government of Victoria |language=en-au}}

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{{s-bef| before= Isidore Ryan}}

{{s-ttl |title= Mayor of Newtown | years =1937–1939}}

{{s-aft|after= Raymond Beaufils}}

{{s-par|au-nsw-la}}

{{s-bef|before=Frank Burke}}

{{s-ttl|title=Member for Newtown | years=1944–1950}}

{{s-non|reason=District abolished}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fowler, Lilian}}

Category:1886 births

Category:1954 deaths

Category:Lang Labor members of the Parliament of New South Wales

Category:Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly

Category:Australian Members of the Order of the British Empire

Category:Women mayors of places in New South Wales

Category:Mayors of Newtown

Category:20th-century Australian politicians

Category:20th-century Australian women politicians

Category:Burials at Rookwood Cemetery

Category:Women members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly

Category:19th-century Australian women

Category:People from Cooma