Kathleen Butler

Kathleen M. Butler (27 February 1891 – 19 July 1972) was nicknamed the "Godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge" and also known as the "Bridge Girl". As the first person appointed to Chief Engineer J. J. C. Bradfield's team, as his Confidential Secretary (a role which today would be called a technical adviser or project planner), she managed the international tendering process and oversaw the development of the technical plans, travelling to London in 1924 to supervise the project in the offices of Dornan's, the company which won the tender. At the time it was built, Sydney Harbour Bridge was the largest arch bridge in the world, with the build expected to take six years to complete. Her unusual role garnered much interest in the press in Australia and Britain.

Early life Kathleen Muriel Butler was born on 27 February 1891 in Lithgow, New South Wales, one of seven children. She grew up in the Blue Mountains and attended school in Mount Victoria, where her father, William Henry Butler, was stationmaster, and she later studied at Mount St Mary's Convent in Katoomba. Butler later attributed her engineering ability to her mother Annie Butler (née Gaffney) "who was remarkably clever at drawing plans of houses and supervising buildings".

Bradfield initially favoured building a bridge with a cantilever overpass, without piers, between Dawes Point and McMahons Point. In 1916 the Legislative Assembly passed the Bill for the construction of a cantilever bridge, although the Legislative Council rejected the legislation on the grounds that money would be better used for the war effort. Bradfield persevered and with his team developed full specifications and a scheme to finance the construction of a cantilever bridge. After going overseas in 1921 to investigate tenders for the project, Bradfield came to believe that tenders should be called for both cantilever and arch designs. The necessary Act was finally passed in 1922 — the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act No. 28 — for the construction of a high-level cantilever or arch bridge across Sydney Harbour by connecting Dawes Point with Milson's Point. The Act also provided for the construction of the bridge and its approaches and also included the construction of electric railway lines. Butler had prepared the notes submitted with the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act No. 28 when it was introduced in the Assembly in 1921 and "these Notes materially assisting the passage of the Bill through the Assembly and Council" although there was a delay

When the Harbour Bridge Act was passed by the NSW Parliament in 1922, Kathleen Butler was the first member of staff appointed to the team by its leader, Chief Engineer, Dr J. J. C. Bradfield. Her job title was Confidential Secretary to the Chief Engineer, which disguised her significant role on the project. (Today her job title would be technical adviser or senior project manager). She was described in the press as the "God-Mother of the Bridge". Bound copies of these articles were later deposited in the Mitchell Library in Sydney.

In March 1922, Bradfield left Australia and travelled abroad, undertaking research into possible bridge tender proposals on the instructions of the government. It has been suggested that as the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act No. 28 had been delayed due to a change in political power due to an election, the new government considered cancelling the project and intended to ask Bradfield to stay in New York for consultation and recall. Butler knew Bradfield's itinerary and telegraphed him to warn him that a formal telegram was on its way to him and that he should be elsewhere. The formal telegraph never reached Bradfield as he left for London.

Opening of Tenders for the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1924 In Bradfield's absence, Butler managed the complex correspondence with the international companies tendering for the project in 1922. She was present at all interviews with the tenderers, Butler was named in the photograph which appeared widely in the press, alongside T. B. Cooper (Under-Secretary for Works and father of cricketer Bryce Cooper), R. T. Ball (Minister for Works and Railways), Bradfield and a Mr Swift (private secretary to the Minister for Works).

Butler, Bradfield and the project engineer Gordon Stuckey worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge: report on tenders for seven days a week from 16 January to sign off on 16 February 1924 with Bradfield thanking Butler and Stuckey for having "cheerfully worked incessantly" to complete the work in good time. The report recommended appointing the British firm Messrs. Dorman, Long & Co. By late April, Butler was on board ship, the RMS Ormonde, headed for London with three engineers to set up the offices and run the London end of the project, based in the Dorman Long offices. The Australasian claimed that "Miss Butler is in charge of the visiting party, on £500 a year..." a very significant salary and much increased from her 1916 typist's salary of £110 p.a. when she first joined the NSW Department of Public Works in Sydney.

Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan, the first woman in Britain to gain qualification as a civil engineer, was working on the bridge project in the same Dorman Long offices at this time.

Once Bradfield joined the team in London they also visited the Dorman workshops in Middlesbrough to inspect the work. She was invited to events by WES and kept in touch with members for several years following her visit.

Kathleen Butler left Britain on 15 November 1924, sailing from Southampton on the SS Berengaria in the company of Bradfield. In January 1925 her family threw her a party in Lithgow where she announced that she would "return to Sydney on Monday and on Tuesday enter in earnest on the six-years job of constructing the harbour bridge". She was honoured at a lunch of the Professional Women Workers' Association in February 1925, hosted by Grace Scobie, Mary Jamieson Williams and Dr Mary Booth, leading Australian women's rights activists.

She was present at the ceremony of the turning of the first sod for the North Railway Approach to the bridge and she was publicly thanked for her services. Bradfield paid her tribute in a paper which he wrote for his D.Sc. degree at Sydney University.

In 1926, Butler contributed two illustrated articles to The Woman Engineer journal, detailing the technical work progress on Sydney Harbour Bridge, including one photograph of Butler herself drilling the first hole into the steel work for the bridge. She undertook site visits with the project engineers, including the inspection of the excavation for the south west skewback.

Butler got married in early 1927, which led to her having to leave her job, as married women were not expected to continue in employment. Her leaving gift was a grandfather's clock, given as a token of "the good will and esteem of the officers of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Metropolitan Railway Construction Branches and of the Public Works Department" and Bradfield's statement that "Miss Butler's capability led to her attaining the position of trust and responsibility she held in the Department, and that her retirement would be a distinct loss to the Bridge branch".

Personal life

On 20 April 1927, Butler married Maurice Hagarty, a grazier from Cunnamulla, Queensland, in St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. He had proposed by singing opera.

They had a daughter, Anne Josephine, in 1931.

The marriage was not a happy one, and Hagarty was violent towards his wife and child. Kathleen eventually left her husband in the 1950s after her daughter married and left home. She moved back to Sydney in 1958 and lived in a flat below her sister Grace. When her grandchildren came to stay she had the garden piled with sand to replicate what they knew from their home in the outback to make them feel more comfortable.

In 1961, with her sister Gladys, she bought a house at 41 Wycombe Road, Kurraba Point, from where the Bridge can be seen. Butler would walk her visiting grand-children Maurice and Maria to the harbour and regale them with stories about her part in the building of Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In 2022, Butler was chosen as one of the notable people buried in Macquarie Park Cemetery whose life stories were told on video as part of the commemoration of the burial ground's centenary.

In November 2023, it was announced that Butler was one of eight women chosen to be commemorated in the second round of blue plaques sponsored by the Government of New South Wales alongside, among others, Emma Jane Callaghan, an Aboriginal midwife and activist; Susan Katherina Schardt; Dorothy Drain, one of Australia's first female war correspondents; writer Charmian Clift; Pearl Mary Gibbs, an Aboriginal rights movement activist; and charity worker Grace Emily Munro. The plaque was unveiled on 6 August 2024 at Butler's former place of work, the Chief Secretary’s Building in Phillip Street, Sydney.