Bessie Lee Cowie (1860–1950), 'Australia's Temperance Queen', spent her early years in Daylesford, Victoria. Following her mother's death in 1868, she was sent to Melbourne to live with an uncle and aunt who mistreated her amid their regular bouts of drunkenness. In 1869 she was committed to the care of other relatives who provided a model of austere Christianity. She married in 1880 and began teaching Sunday school before taking up preaching and becoming involved in community work for the Anglican church. From 1884, convinced of 'drink's share in the poverty and degradation of the people', she applied herself to the prohibitionist crusade. She was a founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1887 and was appointed its designated Colonial Evangelist. In the 1890s Lee lectured in Australia and internationally. Widowed in 1908 she remarried and settled in New Zealand where she took an interest in prison reform and other social issues. A prodigious writer of letters to the editor, poems and moralising tracts, Lee also produced three memoirs, the last shortly before her death.
John Yeoman & Co. operated portrait studios at several locations in Melbourne from the early 1880s. This portrait shows Lee posed with an illuminated address, possibly one presented by the Victorian Alliance for the Suppression of Liquor Traffic, her sponsor.
Purchased 2017
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