Wilma McKeown collection of Bertha McNamara papers, 1865-2000.

MLMSS 10086

fonds

1865-2000

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs

9591503

0.01 metres of textual material (1 folder), includes photographs

Mathilde Emilie Bertha McNamara (nee Kalkstein) was born on 28 September 1853 at Posen, Prussia (Poland). She migrated with her family to Victoria in 1896. After the death of her first husband Peter Hermann Bredt, she became a political activist and published one of Australia's first pamphlets on socialism.
On 9 July 1892 she married William McNamara and ran a boarding house in conjunction with McNamara's Book and News Depot in Castlereagh Street, Sydney which became a famous gathering-point for political radicals. Throughout the 1890s Bertha was a leading member of the Social Democratic Federation of Australasia and of the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, as well as being a member of the Australian Labor Party and Labor Women's Central Organizing Committee.
In 1896, her daughter, also named Bertha, married Henry Lawson. Another daughter, Hilda, married prominent Labor Party politician Jack Lang.
Bertha has been called 'The Mother of the Labour Movement' and carried on agitating for social reform for 25 years after the death of her second husband.
Reference:
Library correspondence file

By descent through donor's father

A collection comprised of personal papers and photographs from key moments in the life of Bertha McNamara (1853-1931) and research documents.
01. School report of Mathilde Kalkstein, 1865, with translation.
02. Confirmation certificate awarded to Mathilde Kalkstein, 1867, with translation.
03. Letter from Bertha McNamara to the Elberfeldt police in Germany enquiring after her deceased first husband’s inheritance, 1903, with translation.
04. Baptism document of Emilie Mathilde Berta, in German, 18 May 1869.
05. Research documents, provided to Wilma McKeown by the Unions NSW secretary, relating to Bertha McNamara's legacy. These documents mostly concern Bertha’s legacy as a political activist in Sydney, and correspondence organising a bronze memorial in her honour at the Sydney Trades Hall in Goulburn street.
06. Photographic portrait of family inscribed on reverse 'Karl von Kalkstein'.
07. Photographic portrait inscribed on reverse 'Mathilde Emilie Bertha Bredt' / Anson, Hobart.
08. Photographic portrait inscribed on reverse 'Grandma Bredt' / Anson, Hobart.
09. Copy of a photograph of four women and a child identified as: Grandma Vi Brett, Violet David (nee Brett), Bertha Lawson, Mathilde Emilie Bertha Bredt (McNamara) and Wilma G. Brett David, taken at Heidelberg, Victoria, 1930.

German, English

Copyright status:: Manuscripts - in copyright
Approval for reproduction required: No reproduction without prior written approval of copyright holder
Out of copyright: Photographs - Created before 1955
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Photographs have been identified by donor.