Agnes Knight Goode, néeFleming, best known as Mrs. A. K. Goode, was an Australian social and political activist. A contemporary report called her "... a vigorous speaker, with a keen, logical mind and experience backed with sound commonsense, Mrs. Goode was until her later years frequently called on to take the public platform in support of social welfare movements."
History
Born at Strathalbyn, South Australia, to storekeeper James Fleming and Charlotte, née Knight, she won, in 1884, a bursary to attend Port Adelaide Model School and by 1893 had qualified as a teacher and was sent to Caltowie as a Provisional Teacher on Probation. In 1892, as part of her qualification, she completed a First Aid course conducted by the St. John Ambulance Association. She married sheep-farmer William Edward Goode at Port Lincoln on 11 July 1896; they had a daughter and two sons. She and the children moved to Adelaide in 1915. Agnes was founding vice-president of the Women's State Recruiting Committee during World War I and conceived the establishment of the advisory committee of soldiers' dependants. She was secretary and president of the Liberal Women's Educational Association. She was one of the first South Australian female Justices of the Peace from 1916, and the first to take her seat on the bench with the Stipendiary Magistrate. Her period presiding over the State Children's Court from 1919 gave her a reputation for severity; she famously made a 12-year-old boy who was convicted of stealing six bicycle chains a state ward for six years. Goode edited the women's page of the Liberal Leader from 1918 to 1924 and supported equal guardianship for mothers, women police, women in juries, equal pay, probation and the National Council for Women. In 1923 she was selected by the Liberal Federation in SA to stand for the Adelaide district seat in the House of Assembly, but was unsuccessful. In 1924 she was appointed "Official Visitor" to the Parkside Mental Asylum. In 1925 she was the first woman in South Australia to win a contest for election to a municipal council when she became a councillor of Hackney ward in the St. Peters Council, and was re-elected unopposed at the next election in 1929. A perennial opponent of politician and publican A. A. Edwards, she unsuccessfully stood against him as a Liberal in 1924 for both the state and council elections:
Goode and Edwards were candidates for the seat of Adelaide in the House of Assembly elections in 1924. Edwards and fellow Labor Party candidates W. J. Denny and J. Dunn were successful; Goode came a distant fourth.
Goode and Edwards were candidates for the Grey ward for the Adelaide City Council in 1924. Edwards topped the poll but had, as Mrs. Goode pointed out, contravened the Act by driving voters to the polling place. She refrained from formally charging him, as this could have given her the seat by default without a fair majority of votes.
In 1925 Goode criticised as excessively lenient the jailing for one year of one Kelly, who was convicted of indecent assault. Edwards defended the judge, pointing out that the girl was a consenting party and above the age of consent.
In 1927 Edwards criticised her for disallowing a proposed increase in allowances for "State girls" from 2/ to 5/ per week.
After being overlooked for the new Liberal Council in 1926 she left party politics and stood as a Non-Party Association candidate for Adelaide, contesting it again for the Liberal Federation in 1927. As President of the Liberal Federation's Adelaide women's branch, she contested the mayoralty in 1935, having continued her disputes with Edwards in the intervening years. Following her husband's death from cancer on 14 November 1929, Goode continued to be active in the community, contributing to societies for poetry, theatre, Aborigines, housewives, unemployed women, travellers, local industries and kindergartens. She died at Toorak Gardens in 1947 of coronary occlusion and was cremated.
Recognition
She was associated with the Kindergarten Union in SA for more than 25 years, and in recognition of her service was elected a life vice-president.
In 1947 the St. Peters Council agreed to rename the Stepney Free Kindergarten the "Agnes Goode Kindergarten" in her honour.
Family
Agnes Knight Fleming married William Edward Goode on 11 July 1896. Their first child, a daughter, was named Katanya, an aboriginal term for "first born". Their children were:
Nora Katanya Goode married Frank Best on 19 July 1930. They were divorced in 1953.
