Bessie M. Rischbieth,
JP, OBE, Champion of the underprivileged
Noel Duzevich
Reprinted from Theosophy in Australia, June 1998, vol.62, no. 2
When Bessie Mabel Rischbieth arrived in Perth as a young bride in 1899, the city was still quite young, having been chartered only in 1856. The Swan River colony, founded in 1829, had become self-governing in 1890. The status of women in the community was very depressed and Bessie was heard to say on many occasions: “Women, children and idiots have the same status!”.
Bessie had been raised in Adelaide by her uncle William Rounsevell. He was a wealthy pastoralist and businessman and a long serving member of the South Australian Legislative Assembly. William was a dedicated theosophist and had decidedly liberal views on female suffrage and the education of women. Consequently Bessie received the best education available and was also politically educated by spirited family political debates and the many political visitors. lt is certain that Bessie's lifelong commitment to Theosophy, which so influenced her future course, had its birth in the Rounsevell home.
At the age of twenty-three in 1898 she married Henry Wills Rischbieth and they moved to Western Australia (WA) the following year. Henry was a wealthy wool merchant. He built a gracious mansion in the elite suburb of Peppermint Grove and filled it with superb seventeenth and eighteenth century furniture from England.
Bessie soon became an active member of the Karrakatta Club, which was a group of well-educated and influential women involved in social welfare, some of whom were the wives of government officials and politicians. They constantly lobbied the Government for the enfranchisement of women, and were successful in 1899, when Western Australia became the second Australian state after South Australia (1893) to grant women the right to vote.
Bessie accompanied her husband on many overseas trips, including one to London, where she attended a suffrage meeting in 1908. On her return to Perth later that year she was to encounter the catalyst which was to influence her actions to the end of her life, and by which she became, without doubt, the most inspiring and dynamic leader of the women's movement in WA.
Many of the women in Perth who were involved in social welfare organisations were attracted to the theosophical movement with its high ideals of racial, sexual and religious equality and its concept of a classless society.
Prior to joining the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant had become well-known in England and the 'colonies' as a prominent and ardent socialist, dedicated to effecting social reforms for the underprivileged. She was now in her second year as International President of the Theosophical Society, and had recently founded the Theosophical Order of Service, whose motto was: A Union of Those who Love in the Service of All that Suffers. She visited Perth in that year and gave an inspiring talk to this small group of theosophical women. This motivated them to form an organisation which would be broadly based, non-party political and which would consist of women from all walks of life, willing to work together to further the interests of women and children.
Consequently a meeting was called and attended by Bessie, Edith Cowan (later first woman MP, JP, OBE), Muriel Chase (mother of Sandra Hodson), Alice Adair (then Secretary of Perth Lodge) and some thirty or forty prominent and influential Perth women. At least eighty per cent of the women were active and prominent theosophists. At that meeting the Women's Service Guild was formed, its motto, ‘By Love We Serve' and its proposed platform being:
- to support from the standpoint of women any movement to protect, defend and uplift humanity;
- to be loyal citizens of State, Commonwealth and Empire;
- to seek public good and not personal advantage.
The inaugural President of the Guild was Lady Gwenyfred James, the Vice-President Bessie M. Rischbieth. Subsequent meetings of the Guild affirmed their intention to lobby for equal pay to women and men for equal work; equal guardianship of children; women doctors in public service and women as lawyers. This was revolutionary action in those times, expressed wittily by Bessie's poem, written in 1964:
There are women on the warpath
And we mean to make it plain,
That dictatorial parties
Won't get our vote again!
Bessie very soon became President of the Guild, a position she held for many years due to her charisma, her leadership qualities and her capacity for hard work. In 1910 the Guild was affiliated with the TOS but in later years, as membership grew and included women who were not involved in the theosophical movement, the official relationship was discontinued.
The Guild had, from the beginning, quickly established contact and worked with other women's groups. Over the years Bessie and her band of loyal, compassionate and untiring workers, with strong support from their husbands, made headway. Some of their achievements were: equal marriage and divorce laws for men and women; the admittance of women to the Bar; improvements to the disgusting conditions of women prisoners in Fremantle Gaol; improvements to the squalid conditions of the Old Women's Home; the appointment of women police to work with delinquent girls and prostitutes; the construction of the first Women's Maternity Hospital (although a senior politician announced that no decent woman would give birth in a hospital!); the eligibility of women to sit in Parliament; the establishment of free kindergartens; the appointment of women as Justices of the Peace and as honorary officers of the Children's Court; the Child Welfare Bureau; the Women's Parliament (which educated women in Parliamentary procedure); and the Australian Federation of Women Voters (AFWV). Bessie was until her death President of Honour of the AFWV which formed a federal link with the International Alliance of Women (IAW). Bessie led delegations abroad to IAW congresses in Rome, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Interlaken, Amsterdam, Naples and Colombo.
King George V presented her with the OBE at Buckingham Palace in 1935 and that same year she represented Australia at the League of Nations as alternate delegate for her country.
Bessie was in London shortly after the start of World War 2 and remained there to work for the Boomerang Club and the Aid to China Fund. After the war she returned to Perth to continue the fight for the advancement of women's social, political and economic status. She lobbied for women to be included in jury service and turned her attention to Aboriginal welfare and environmental protection. Early in 1965 she published her book, The March of Australian Women, telling the story of women's struggle for equality with men for more than fifty years. She joined the Committee for the Preservation of the Swan River and was photographed at the age of 89 confronting a bulldozer which was attempting to fill in parts of the river for the Narrows Bridge Interchange.
l remember with pleasure a Perth newspaper photograph of Bessie standing thigh-deep in the river at the age of 92, not long before she died, giving a spirited interview to the press and stressing the importance of protecting the Swan River.
Bessie M. remained a staunch theosophist to the end, a member of the Esoteric School and lifelong vegetarian. She was also a member of the Co-Masonic Order. All her contemporaries affirmed her personal beauty and charisma, her exquisite dress sense and femininity, her unfailing compassion and her enthusiastic and untiring commitment to work for the underprivileged.
Bishop William Hill of the Liberal Catholic Church officiated at her funeral in March 1967. Her lifelong associate, Isabel Johnston, JP, gave a funeral oration and ended by saying: “Bessie Rischbieth was not afraid to die. She believed on the other side of death there would be a glorious awakening of spiritual power, that the soul or spirit that was her real self was immortal. Her passing therefore, as Bishop William Hill has already said, is a joyful experience for her, but a very great sadness for us.”
For the information contained in this biographical snapshot l am indebted to the special memorial number of the Dawn, official newsletter of the Women's Service Guilds of WA (Incorp.) and to Dianne Davidson's excellently researched book, Women on the Warpath (University of WA Press).