Jessie Grover

Jessie Grover (9 June 1843 – 17 March 1906) was an Australian journalist and sericulturist. She helped to set up a silk farm that would be owned and employ women, but the mulberry trees and the silk worms did not thrive.

Life Grover was born in 1843 in Melbourne. Her parents were Elizabeth Jane (born Price) and her husband William McGuire and she was the last of their four children. Her grandfather had been a highway robber. The Grovers owned the Red Lion Inn in central Melbourne's Lonsdale Street. Her father died the following year and after a few years her mother leased the inn but she continued to run the guest house business.

She came to notice in 1873 when she and Sara Florentia Bladen-Neill, who was the part owner of Brockelsby Station at Corowa, decided to start an unusual company. The idea was to plant mulberry trees so that they could farm silk worms and create silk for export.

In 1876, Mrs Bladen Neill asked for all ladies who were involved in silk production to meet her on 22 and 23 December. She wrote a letter to the Argus to explain that she was an agent for a firm in London who were willing to buy silk from the colonies and she noted the prices that could be obtained in London before the silk was spun for stockings.

The mulberry trees did not succeed. The trees became victim to frost, lack of water and rabbits and the original plot was abandoned in 1877. Sara Bladen-Neill was burned in an accident with a kerosene lamp in about 1881. In Bladen-Neill's obituary in 1884 it was noted that although the silk business was a philanthropic idea, the manufacture of silk had never been profitable. Not only did the trees have to grow but the young insects needed to thrive, and they did not.

Grover's mother died in 1879, leaving Grover and her husband with sufficient funds to buy a house in St Kilda. She and her husband were journalists. She would cover charity events for newspapers. Their income also came from investments until the bank crash of 1893. The ruins of the silk farm abandoned in 1877 still stand.