Hannah Maclurcan

Hannah Maclurcan (; 1860–1936) was a cook and hotelier in Australia. She was the author of the very popular cookbook "Mrs. Maclurcan's cookery book : a collection of practical recipes specially suitable for Australia". She is also known as Hannah Maclurcan Lee.

Early life Hannah Phillips was born on 17 October 1860 in Tambaroora, New South Wales, the daughter of Jacob Aaron Phillips, a London-born Jewish storekeeper and his first wife Susan (née Moses) from Scotland. Her mother died in 1866.

On 25 March 1880 Hannah Phillips married English born Robert Watson Wigham at her father's home in Brisbane. The couple had their first daughter born in February 1881. They left for England later that year and their second daughter was born there in 1882. Hannah returned to Australia in 1883.

In April 1884, Hannah Wigham applied for her first publican's licence which was for the Club Hotel on the corner of Margaret and Ruthven Street, Toowoomba. She married her second husband, Donald Maclurcan, in June 1887.

Her father was bankrupt in January 1892 owing £4,000.

In 1894, she and Donald moved to Townsville, running the Criterion Hotel and then moving to the Queen's Hotel. Maclurcan's cookbook known as "Mrs. Maclurcan's Cookery Book" was first published in 1898. She helped the Townsville printers, Thankful Willmett, to set the type, and when the establishment ran out of type, she bought some more. The first edition sold out in a fortnight. The second edition was published in Sydney. The third edition was published in London, at the time of the jubilee of Queen Victoria, who accepted a copy. Until 1929 there was a new edition published almost every year. During that time she bought land on either side of the hotel, and remodelled and rebuilt until she had achieved a modern hotel. She was actively associated with the management of the Wentworth Hotel until 1932, when she handed over responsibility to her son Charles Dansie Maclurcan (born 1889). Although Charles was an electrical engineer who used the flat roof of the hotel for his pioneering experiments in wireless transmission, he had been a director of the company since 1916. Maclurcan's daughter Evelyn Clara (born 1888, later Mrs F. C. Postle) was also a director.

Legacy

Her son Charles Dansie Maclurcan was a prominent early wireless experimenter before World War I (callsign: XDM) with his firm of Maclurcan and Lane. When amateur licensing recommenced after World War II, Charles was one of a handful initially licensed and the first to commence regular music broadcasts from 1922 (callsign: 2CM). Her grandson Donald Charles Boulton Maclurcan (son of Charles) became a well-known architect.

Published works