Dame Mary Hughes, 1913-1953

Component identifier:

Series 13

Content Summary:

Mary Campbell married Hughes in Melbourne in June 1911. She was the second daughter of grazier Thomas Campbell of Burrangong. In marrying Hughes, according to Fitzhardinge, she provided for him for the rest of his life 'the perfect domestic background'. She accompanied him on his several trips overseas, and in 1922 was created a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) for her charity work during the war. She died in Sydney in 1958.

The bulk of the series consists of letters she received while in Britain in 1918-1919 and 1921, in the USA in 1924, and in England in 1932; congratulations upon the award of her GBE in 1922; correspondence on the Regimental Flag Scheme conducted by Mrs Hughes and the wives of the High Commissioner and the States' Agents General in London in 1918; correspondence concerning groups such as the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children and the Lindfield Women's Service League; Christmas greetings; some financial correspondence and sympathy letters following her husband's death in October 1952. The main correspondents are her husband, Lady Janette Birdwood, Lady Molly Northcliffe, Lady Alice Northcote, Ellis Rowan, Arthur Streeton, Lady Helen Munro-Ferguson, Mary Lyell, Mrs Florence Avery, Sir Ronald Anderson, Evelyn Grant, Mrs J. Wemyss Syme, Lady Enid de Chair, Mary Grant and Christabel Pankhurst.

The remainder of the series is made up of household invoices and receipts, bank statements, telegrams, miscellaneous newscuttings and invitations, three diaries (1918, 1921) and four ladies' passes to the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The W. M. Hughes Papers were presented to the National Library of Australia by Dame Mary Hughes in 1953. The collection was received in two consignments. One consisted of papers taken from the Perpetual Trustee Company comprising material from Hughes' Lindfield home and from his office rooms at the Commonwealth Offices, Sydney; the other came directly from Lindfield. Lists of the contents of both consignments are held in the Library's Manuscript Branch. With the agreement of the executors and the Library, much of the collection, was for a time, held at the Australian National University by Fitzhardinge. He was permitted sole access to the collection while writing the biography Hughes commissioned in 1951. Fitzhardinge's own papers documenting the writing of the biography are also held by the Library (MS 5400). The papers transferred to the Library in 1953 are by no means the total collection of Hughes' personal papers, although it is impossible to say what proportion has survived. (see Fitzhardinge, p.936).

Names:

Hughes, W. M. (1862-1952)

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