MARY COLTON

COLTON, MARY (née CUTTING) (b. London, England, 6 Dec 1822, d. Adelaide, SA, 28 July 1898). Philanthropist, YWCA founder, suffragist.

Mary Cutting emigrated with her father Samuel Cutting to Adelaide in 1839; they were Congregationalists. In 1844 she married saddler John Blackler Colton, later a prosperous merchant and member of parliament. Mary Colton bore nine children between 1848 and 1865; several died in infancy. She worshipped with her husband at Gawler Place Wesleyan chapel and its successor Pirie Street Wesleyan Methodist church. She was one of SA's earliest Sunday school teachers, taking girls' classes. Her unwavering Christian commitment, compassion and inner strength determined her life of service.

Mrs Colton worked continuously for the poor and vulnerable, especially women and children. She actively adopted many church and public causes, some alongside her husband. Privately she helped supplicants at her door, and succoured needy, sick and suffering people in hospitals and their homes: her name became a household word. Only childbearing, and later in life two trips abroad with her husband interrupted her work. She knew the city well, and recognised the dangers facing working girls from the country and those without families; she gradually developed her Sunday school classes as a basis of social support and evangelism. She became a foundation committee member of the Protestant, residential Young Women's Institute which provided aid, protection and religious instruction from 1881 to 1885.

Never sectarian, Mary Colton held weekly evening Bible classes for older girls and worked towards establishing a young women's undenominational Christian organisation. Backed by nonconformist clergy and churchwomen and men, the Young Women's Christian Association opened in Dec 1884 under Mrs Colton's presidency. During the 1885 Wesleyan conference she addressed 1300 young women in Pirie Street church on 'The young woman without religious surroundings', directing them to seek help on the narrow path to heaven from devoted Christian women in church classes and societies, and in the YWCA. She presided over the YWCA for the remainder of her life, opening city residential premises and suburban branches and successfully extending religious meetings, clubs and classes to supplement work of the churches. She encouraged YWCA members in practical Christian service: they supported overseas missionary endeavour, befriended street girl newspaper sellers, gave flowers to hospital patients and books to factory girls.

Mrs Colton had long assisted pregnant girls and prostitutes through the Protestant Female Refuge ladies' committee, which in 1883 established the Social Purity Society Adelaide ladies' branch. As treasurer and then president she participated in successful campaigning for legislation to raise the age of consent. She clearly saw that statutory change was essential for social reform. In 1892, then Lady Colton, she was elected president of the lively South Australian Women's Suffrage League and cooperated closely with secretary Mary Lee (q.v.) and the league's council of both women and men. Her committed leadership influenced the successful outcome of women's enfranchisement in Dec 1894.

Lady Colton's church responsibilities continued: for over fifty years she taught her Sunday school girls by loving precept and example. From as early as 1844 she had been secretary of the South Adelaide Wesleyan Ladies Working Society. She devoted herself to the Dorcas Society, the Nursing Mothers' Association and the Maternity Relief Association, and in 1893 became founding president of the Women's Auxiliary of Foreign Missions.

Her labours of love for children encompassed work for the early Adelaide Children's Hospital ladies' committee, council of the Boarding-Out Society and for the State Children's Council. She worked too on committees of the Servants' Home, of institutions for the blind, deaf and dumb, and the Home for Incurables, cottage homes for the aged and the Adelaide Strangers' Friend Benevolent Society. Self-effacing, she sought no acknowledgment of her manifold good works. On her death the Rev R S Casely appropriately claimed her in fact, though not in name, a deaconess.

H Radi (ed), 200 Australian Women (Sydney, 1988)

HELEN JONES