Margaret Shand
Contents
Background
Margaret Purnell married Robert Shand. It is possible that she is the woman who attended the Monster Meetings reported in the newspapers as Mrs Shann. She is also listed as a pioneer woman of Ballarat.[1]
Goldfields Involvement, 1854
Margaret Shand, described as a “smart young woman of 21 years”, with her husband attended the Bakery Hill Monster Meetings in November 1854. Many women had reasons to be vitally interested in the causes of Eureka and attended the large rallies held on the Ballarat goldfields. They were thus active in a political sense. Although it is difficult to find overt evidence of women’s physical presence in the records of events organised by the Ballaarat Reform League and associated with Eureka there is evidence of women attending the Monster Meetings. [2]
Post 1854 Experiences
Margaret Shand attended the Eureka Parade in 1917.
- ... Among these was Mrs. Shand, who arrived in Ballarat in 1852, when she was a smart young woman of 22 years. With her husband she attended the meeting at Bakery Hill when Peter Lalor, afterwards Speaker in the Legislative Assembly, was chosen leader of the diggers, and it was decided to drill and oppose the police and military by force. Mrs Shand was the oldest of the pioneers who met this morning having passed her 87th year. ... [3]
Newsworthy
- EUREKA STOCKADE. - ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION.
- BALLARAT, Saturday-To. mark the 59th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade affray a rotunda was opened this afternoon by Councillor Penhalluriack, the first chairman of the committee formed to improve the Eureka Stockade. The gathering was presided over by the mayor of Ballarat East (Councillor A. J. Pittard), and addresses were given bv Messrs. R. McGregor and M. Baird, M.L.A.'s. The mayor stated that amongst those present were Mrs. Shand, Mrs. Ross, Mrs. Buckley, Mr.P. Dalton, Mr. A. Knight, and others who were in Ballarat when the lighting took place, Mr. Knight being one of those who were with the diggers in the stockade.
- The rotunda was erected at a cost of £117, making the recent expenditure on the reserve close on £200.[4]
See also
Further Reading
Corfield, J.,Wickham, D., & Gervasoni, C. The Eureka Encyclopaedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.
Dorothy Wickham, Women in 'Ballarat' 1851-1871: A Case Study in Agency, PhD. School of Behavioural and Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Ballarat, March 2008.
Dorothy Wickham, Blood, Sweat and Tears: Women of Eureka in Journal of Australian Colonial History, 10, No, 1, 2008, pp. 99-115.
Dorothy Wickham, Women of the Diggings: Ballarat 1854, BHSPublishing, 2009.
http://www.eurekapedia.org/Blood,_Sweat_and_Tears:_Women_at_Eureka
Clare Wright, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, Text Publishing, 2013.
Dorothy Wickham, Not just a Pretty Face: Women on the Goldfields, in Pay Dirt: Ballarat & Other Gold Towns, BHS Publishing, 2019, pp. 25-36.
