Elizabeth Lilian Maud FowlerMBE, JP was an Australian politician. She was Australia's first female mayor, serving as mayor of Newtown, New South Wales, from 1937 to 1939. She later represented the seat of Newtown in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1944 to 1950. She had a long involvement with the Lang Labor faction of the Australian Labor Party, which had evolved into a separate party by the time of her election to parliament.
Early life
Fowler was born at Cooma, New South Wales. She was the third daughter of farmer Charles Munro Gill and Frances Rebecca, née Gaunson. After receiving a primary school education she became closely involved in Labor politics with the assistance of her father, a Labor League organiser and an Alderman, Valuer and Inspector of Nuisances for the Municipal District of Cooma. On 19 April 1909, while working as a waitress in Sydney, she married bootmaker Albert Edward Fowler, a widower, at Whitefield Congregational Church. Her uncle, John Munro Gill, a boilermaker of Granville, also served as an Alderman of the Municipality of Granville. Her younger brother, Percy Thomas Algernon Gill, a labourer of Rosebery, served as an Alderman of the Municipality of Waterloo.
Early political career
Fowler was made secretary of the Newtown-Erskineville Political Labor League, and from 1917 managed the electorate of Newtown MP Frank Burke, an anti-conscriptionist. Elected to the central executive of the Australian Labor Party 1920–21 and 1923–25, she and Jack Lang were behind the move to admit James Dooley at the 1923 conference. Fowler was also instrumental in the anti-corruption moves at the conference which led to the exposure of sliding-panel ballot boxes. She resigned from the central executive in 1932. She was president of the Labor Women's Central Organising Committee 1926–27, lobbying New South Wales Premier Jack Lang to implement widows' pensions and child endowments. She also petitioned the governor regarding the appointment of women to the Legislative Council, and organised the first interstate Labor Women's conference. Appointed justice of the peace in 1921, one of the first women so appointed, she separated from her husband shortly before she was elected to Newtown Municipal Council in 1928; she was the first woman elected to any local council in New South Wales, holding office as an Alderman for Camden ward from 1934 to the Council's amalgamation with the City of Sydney in 1948. On 7 December 1937 Fowler made history again when she was elected as Australia's first female mayor, with her daughter serving as Mayoress. She was re-elected for a second term as mayor on 6 December 1938 and held the mayoralty until 1939, when the 10-member Labor caucus on Council decided on Raymond Beaufils, the President of the Enmore ALP Branch, as the next candidate for mayor and Fowler did not contest the vote. In recognition of her achievements Fowler was presented with an illuminated address signed by former Premier Lang and Federal shadow MinisterJack Beasley. A portrait depicting her in the robes of mayor was painted by Reginald Jack Shepherd and was a finalist in the 1938 Archibald Prize for portraiture.
State politics
In 1941, Fowler unsuccessfully ran against Burke for the seat of Newtown as an independent Labor candidate. She ran again as a Lang Labor candidate in 1944, campaigning for reduced taxation, better housing and more day nurseries and baby clinics, and defeating Burke to become the third woman elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly since its inception in 1856. In Parliament she condemned the Labor Party's centrist tendencies and opposed intervention from Canberra in New South Wales affairs. Her principal legislative achievement was an amendment to the Lunacy Act in 1944 to secure the release of Boyd Sinclair from a lunatic asylum where he had been held since 1936 so that he could stand trial in a criminal court for the alleged murder of a Sydney taxi driver. A fierce critic of bureaucracy, she supported regrouping local councils, and lost her own council seat when Newtown was merged with the City of Sydney in 1949. Fowler was re-elected in 1947, but was defeated in the 1950 election by the "official" Labor candidate Arthur Greenup. In 1953 she was unsuccessful in an attempt to win election to Sydney City Council.
