Elizabeth Webb Nicholls

Elizabeth Webb Nicholls (21 February 1850 – 3 August 1943) was a key suffragist in the campaign for votes for women in South Australia during the 1890s. She took on several high-profile roles in the capital of South Australia, Adelaide and was President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of South Australia, one of the most prominent organisations in the successful campaigns which made South Australia the first of the Australian colonies to grant women the right to vote in 1894.

Background Nicholls was born on 21 February 1850 in Rundle Street, Adelaide to parents Samuel Bakewell, grocer, and his wife Mary Ann, née Pye.

Her father Samuel and her uncle William both became members of the South Australian House of Assembly, providing her with some background in local politics.

An active member of the Archer Street Wesleyan church in North Adelaide, Nicholls taught Sunday School and distributed religious tracts.

Nicholls was said to be "short in stature, with a benign expression, she was a pleasant, unself-conscious speaker and quickly earned her members' approval for her efficiency and enthusiasm", Nicholls was described as being "prone to chafe quietly at 'unreasonable restraint'" later shortened to "South Australian Alliance".

Nicholls founded the WCTU's journal Our Federation and was its editor from 1898 to 1904 when it ceased.

Nicholls helped to gather 8,268 of the 11,600 signatures for the 1894 South Australian Women's Suffrage Petition to the South Australian Parliament, In 1921 she helped found the Australian Federation of Women Voters and lobbied the League of Nations (now the United Nations) on behalf of Australian women.

Nicholls remained committed to the WCTU throughout her life and was involved in successful referendum of hotel closing hours which resulted in the imposition of a 6:00 pm closing time in 1915. She justified all reforms on the grounds of temperance and social purity.

Her husband, who had worked 55 years with G. & R. Wills & Co., died on 11 November 1920. Nicholls moved into Willard House, the WCTU Adelaide headquarters and residence on Wakefield Street near Francis Xavier's Cathedral. She died at North Adelaide on 3 August 1943 and is buried in Payneham cemetery, South Australia.