Elizabeth Brentnall

Elizabeth Brentnall ( Watson; 18 September 1830, Nottingham, England – 30 April 1909, Brisbane, Australia) was an Australian suffragist, temperance activist and philanthropist. She was the first state president (1885–99) then honorary president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Queensland.

She was a Methodist Christian and in her 1888 presidential address to the WCTU annual convention she called for women's voting rights and pushed for adoption of women's suffrage as a mission activity of the Queensland WCTU. She trained as a teacher at the Normal College in Glasgow, Scotland. The normal teacher training college was set up by the Glasgow Educational Society to professionally train teachers and improve education for working people in Scotland, especially in urban and industrial areas. "Normal" referred to the norm or pattern of teaching. Brentnall's membership of the Wesleyan Methodist church indicates that her faith motivated her leadership in the suffrage and temperance movements and in social reform.

As a minister's wife, Brentnall was vice-president then president of the Wesleyan Home Mission Society Ladies Auxiliary in Queensland and continued in that role even after Frederick resigned from his ministry in 1881. who worked with the Women's Equal Franchise Association (WEFA) to submit suffrage petitions to the Queensland parliament; a double petition from WEFA in 1894 (one signed by women and one by men) and one from the WCTU signed by women and men in 1897. Most of Brentnall's WCTU activities aimed to benefit women and children, reform legislation and mitigate the effects of alcohol on families and society. WCTU meetings opened with "devotions" and included prayers and hymns. Brentnall often led devotions or prayers for both national conventions and the Queensland union. In 1897 she led a deputation to the acting premier, Horace Tozer, to argue for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act 1868 which allowed police to arrest a woman (but not a man) on the street, have her inspected for venereal disease and locked up in a hospital if she was infected. spoke at some WCTU meetings, including making a supportive speech at the first Brisbane meeting and participated with Elizabeth in some welfare work such as flood relief assistance in both the 1890 and 1893 Brisbane floods.

Elizabeth sat on committees for charitable organisations in Queensland. Committee work involved more than meetings; the members of the "ladies committees" founded the institution in response to demand, assessed applicants for admission, visited residents, organised fund-raising events, helped in training, counselling and job placement. Brentnall was active on the committees of at least five institutions: Lady Bowen Hospital (a "lying-in" hospital for mothers) 1882–1886, Lady Musgrave Lodge (a home for immigrant and young working women) 1885–1897, the Governesses' Home (a home and employment agency for governesses and lady workers) from 1883 and the Industrial Home (a home and employment for "fallen" or friendless women) from 1883.

Death and legacy Brentnall died in 1909 of acute peritonitis at her home in Coorparoo, Brisbane, Australia, seven years after white women were allowed the federal vote in 1902 and four years after white women could vote in Queensland state elections.

She was known as a prolific letter-writer to obtain support for her social reform work but also to encourage and counsel individuals. A speaker at her memorial service said, "Her fertile pen contributed articles and addresses private and public, letters stimulating, heartening those who were fighting the good fight, and securing help for the weak, sorrowful, and ignorant."

Her obituary included this description:

"Her life was one of true service...Although the body had to rest, it was not so with her mind, tongue and pen--these were used in the service of others, and first in the world wide temperance cause, which lay so near to her heart. She was the first president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Many could recall the tone of spirituality that pervaded the society at the outset, imparted to it by the lofty ideal that was in the mind of their late sister...Being a woman of large heart she had cultivated a world-wide sympathy, was thoroughly cosmopolitan in her outlook upon life, and her influence would live on." One of Brentnall's legacies was to raise her daughters in the WCTU as temperance advocates and suffragists. Both of her daughters sometimes spoke at the meetings. Flora especially carried on her mother's work in the WCTU although Charlotte also stayed involved. of the Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union (known as the "Y') and president of the Queensland WCTU in 1902.