A NEW museum has opened to celebrate the Scottish heroine who led the women’s suffrage movement in New Zealand.
Kate Sheppard, who grew up in Nairn and emigrated when she was around 21-years-old, was instrumental in the campaign which resulted in New Zealand becoming the first country in the world to grant all women the vote in 1893.
Her picture already appears on the country’s $10 dollar banknote and now her home in Christchurch has been turned into a museum to recognise her life and achievements.
The Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House was purchased by the New Zealand government last year for $4.5 million (£2.4m) and officially opened last week by prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Katie Pickles, professor of history at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, is writing a new biography of Sheppard which examines her Scottish upbringing and its vital influence on her life in New Zealand.
She told the Sunday National: “As the global epicentre of women’s suffrage, the opening of Kate Sheppard’s house as a museum is a coming of age in bringing attention to her life and importance in the suffrage movement. “Kate Sheppard is a revered Kiwi heroine here in New Zealand and proudly features on our $10 note. “Achieving women’s suffrage was a team effort, but Kate Sheppard was a talented, determined and hard-working woman whose contribution to the suffrage world first cannot be underestimated.”
Sheppard’s home at Clyde Road was a pivotal place in the suffrage campaign, where supporters spent much of their time working towards getting women the vote.
She moved into the eight-roomed property with her husband Walter in 1888 and lived there until 1902.
It was in the dining room where a key petition with around 32,000 signatures was pasted together before being presented to parliament.
Dr Christine Whybrew, of conservation body Heritage New Zealand, said: “This was the place where Kate Sheppard and other suffragists wrote pamphlets, prepared speeches, collected petition signatures, and worked towards New Zealand becoming the first self-governing country in the world to grant women the right to vote in 1893.”
Sheppard was born in Liverpool in either 1847 or 1848 to Scottish parents Andrew Wilson Malcolm and Jemima Crawford Souter, who were married on the Isle of Islay in the Inner Hebrides.
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