Adeline Keating

Adeline May Keating (8 January 1885 – 7 March 1957) was an Australian businesswoman. She rose to be an international buyer for Sidney Myer's emporium. She was said to be the highest paid businesswoman in Australia.

Life Keating was born in Bendigo in 1885. Her mother was Ann Jobling (born Todd) and her father was William Keating and she was their seventh surviving child. She had a complex relationship with her father who was a sharebroker. He regarded her as an unwanted child and her feelings for him evolved from respect to hate. He went broke and died in 1908. For the next ten years she and her mother lived in poverty and Keating gave up her dream of becoming an actress.

On 5 August 1915 Sidney Myer opened his emporium, a building so iconic that its frame is still retained in the Emporium Melbourne on the same site over 100 years later. Keating who had met Myer walked miles to join the crowd and she was hired to be a salesperson in the store. She found success in the business.

She travelled for three-quarters of every year and she would return each Christmas to organise that year's toy display in the store. She went to the USA, Germany, the UK and other European countries. She was brought back in disgrace once but she kept her job. She began buying again in Japan. In 1932 she resigned and started her own manufacturing business. Keating died in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton.