Mary Dreaver

Mary Manson Dreaver (née Bain, 31 March 1887 – 19 July 1961) was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party. She was the third woman to sit in the New Zealand House of Representatives, one of the first two women to sit in the New Zealand Legislative Council, and the only woman to sit in both chambers.

Early life and family Mary Dreaver was born in Dunedin in 1887, the oldest of 13 children of Alexander Manson Bain, a Scottish Presbyterian cabinetmaker and trade unionist, and his Irish Catholic wife Hanna Kiely. The children were raised Anglican.

She married Andrew James Dreaver, a salesman and former boxer, in 1911 and moved to Auckland. The couple had six children. One son, Alex, was an Auckland city councillor from 1953 to 1974.

Mary Dreaver taught piano and became active in the National Spiritualist Church of New Zealand, in which she was ordained as the church's first woman minister in New Zealand in 1934. She was also a journalist. She wrote an astrology column in the New Zealand Woman's Weekly and was a broadcaster on Radio 1ZB as Aunt Maisy. She was also known as a painter of watercolour landscapes under the name May Bain. As a Labour candidate she unsuccessfully contested the Newmarket Borough Council in 1927 and the Auckland Hospital Board in 1929. She won a seat on the Auckland Hospital Board in 1931. In 1933 a visit by her to the hospital kitchen and claims of long hours and "sweated labour" there aroused controversy on the board. Dreaver continued as a member of the hospital board until 1944 and was elected for another period from 1950 to 1956.

She was also a member of the Auckland Transport Board from 1939 to 1944, the Auckland Electric Power Board from 1944 to 1947, and the Auckland Metropolitan Drainage Board between 1956 and 1957. She next sought the Labour nomination for the in the seat, but was beaten by Arthur Osborne. She won selection to contest for Labour in the , coming second to Bill Endean. Auckland West MP and prime minister Michael Joseph Savage died in 1940; Dreaver stood for the Labour nomination for the Auckland West by-election, but lost to Peter Carr.

In 1941 she won the Waitemata electorate when a by-election was held after the death of the previous Labour Party MP, Jack Lyon. She was the third woman to be elected to Parliament after Elizabeth McCombs and Catherine Stewart and the first woman from Auckland. During her time in Parliament, Dreaver introduced the Women Jurors Bill, which enabled women to optionally submit their names as prospective jurors. The bill became law in 1942.

Dreaver was defeated in the next (1943) general election, by the National Party candidate, Henry Thorne Morton. After her defeat she contributed to the war effort as a recruiter for the Women's Land Army.

Death Mary Dreaver died in Auckland on 19 July 1961. She was survived by her husband (by only three months), three daughters and two sons.