Ethel Hassell

Ethel Hassell (nee Clifton, 1857-1933) was a colonial author who lived near Albany, Western Australia. She wrote several texts on the colony and Nyungar peoples of Southwest Australia, especially those she knew at the region around Broome Hill, Albany, and toward Doubtful Islands Bay.

Biography Born in 1857 to Sophia Harriet (née Adcock) and William Carmalt Clifton (1820–1885) in Middlesex, England, her father's occupation as an agent of P&O had the family located to Mauritius in 1859 then the Western Australian port of Albany in 1861. Ethel Clifton and her elder sisters were placed among an elite of P&O officials in Albany society, and commercial rivals to the family of Albert Young Hassell, whom she eventually married on 22 June 1878 at a church in Perth.