Fanny Cole

Fanny Buttery Cole was a prominent temperance leader and women's rights advocate in New Zealand. Cole was a founding member then president of the Christchurch chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand and national WCTU NZ superintendent of the Press from 1897 through 1903. In 1906 Cole was elected national president of the WCTU NZ, a position she held until her untimely death shortly before her fifty-third birthday.

Early life

Fanny B. Holder was born at St. George's, Shropshire on 20 June 1860, the sixth of eight children of Fanny Buttery and Charles Holder. Buttery was a surname of Huguenot origin and pronounced Beautrais. According to the England Census, Fanny and her siblings grew up in Wrockwardine Wood where her father worked as a bootmaker and served as the local Methodist preacher. Some of the family immigrated to New Zealand in 1880; and the four sisters lived near their parents in Christchurch, marrying in quick succession as their mother grew ill and died. The eldest Sarah Elizabeth Holder married in 1883 a Methodist minister, Rev. Daniel James Murray. Lydia Ann Holder married a carpenter Andrew Harre in 1884. Jane "Jennie" Holder married in 1885 Thomas Oliver Johnson, a farmer.
Fanny B. Holder worked as a teacher in Brookside and East Oxford public schools before she married in 1884 Herbert Cole of Kaiapoi. Herbert Cole was a temperance worker for the "no-license" option and an agent for the Canterbury Farmers' Cooperative Association. On 1 October 1886, their elder daughter Marguerita Lilian "Daisy" Cole was born in Richmond, on their estate called Ellengowan situated near the River Avon. The wetlands in the area were once called "Daisy Meadows."
Their second daughter, Eleanor Charlotte "Nellie" Cole was also born there on 4 July 1888.
Her children were four and six years old in 1892, when Fanny Cole of Richmond, Christchurch signed the suffrage petition put forward by the Political Franchise Leagues and WCTU NZ. Cole had been part of the founding of the Christchurch Union when Mary C. Leavitt, the world organiser for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, visited in May 1885. There were forty-four founding members who they elected Emma E. Packe, president; Cecilia Wroughton, treasurer; and, Kate Sheppard, secretary. Cole also signed the 1893 petition, the largest ever presented in the New Zealand Parliament, and which led to the successful acquisition of women's right to vote at the national level. They were still living at Ellangowan in Richmond according to the electoral rolls of 1896, but by 1894 Herbert Cole had started up a land agency business partnership with temperance activist Thomas "Tommy" E. Taylor. By 1900, according to the electoral roll of Lyttelton, the Cole family had moved to the Port Hills area overlooking the Lyttelton Harbour.

Temperance and women's rights leader

Since 1897, Fanny B. Cole was elected vice president of the Christchurch Union. The many activities undertaken by the Union that year included the establishment of coffee rooms to compete with alcohol-centric restaurants and hotels, a luncheon booth at the Agricultural & Pastoral Association Show that held hundreds of patrons, cottage meetings with Bible study in Linwood, registering factory girls to be able to vote, rescue work for young girls on the streets, and petitioning Parliament to reform the Juvenile Depravity Bill to include boys and not just girls. That year she and Kate Sheppard signed, as representatives of the Christchurch WCTU along with other Christchurch leaders such as Ada Wells, a public letter to the Premier of New Zealand. They sought equal powers with male official visitors to gaols – to be granted powers of Justices of the Peace. "It is little use having women as official visitors to our jails, unless they have the same powers as men visitors."
That same year during the presidency of Annie Jane Schnackenberg of Auckland, Fanny B. Cole started working for the national WCTU NZ as superintendent for Press Work. By the next year, Cole was elected over incumbent Kate Sheppard as president of the Christchurch Union, a position she held until her ascendancy to the national presidency of the WCTU NZ. She was hailed for her leadership skills which included "conciliatory, tactful methods of procedure," and that meetings "were specially noticeable for the absence of anything approaching friction."

WCTU NZ president, 1906–1913

1906 WCTU NZ convention

At the 1906 WCTU NZ convention conducted March 20–26 in Greymouth, hosted by the Anglican Church at Trinity Hall, Fanny B. Cole was elected national president. She was not present at this meeting – Mary Sadler Powell of Invercargill, Rachel Hull Don of Dunedin, and Lily May Kirk Atkinson of Wellington removed their names from nomination in favor of the Christchurch Union's nomination of Cole – her candidacy was unanimously won. Cole formally accepted the role by letter.
Even before she was elected national president, Cole was working on representing all of the WCTU NZ at the . The goal was to show how various the work of the Unions, "under its all-embracing Do-Everything policy." Cole was invited to be on the platform at the opening ceremony, and she was sure that this was evidence of a "change in public sentiment with regard to Temperance.... Assuredly the women of New Zealand banded together in the W.C.T.U. are now recognised as a force to be reckoned with in the political world." However, the part of the Exhibition that garnered space in the was "The Children's Rest," a building that accommodated a crèche for as many as sixty young children and babies per day. The Education Minister, Sir George Fowlds wrote to her to thank the WCTU for their efforts at the Exhibition, especially in organising the Creche.

1907 national convention

The twenty-second Annual Convention was held in Christchurch, February 14–20, 1907. Cole presided over the meetings and resulting resolutions showed her strong convictions – similar resolutions from the previous and following conventions under her leadership. The resolutions emphasized: anti war, anti-violence, remove disabilities hindering women from sitting as members of Parliament or other offices, protest against legalization of the Totalisator, creation of separate homes in rural areas with farms for men and women arrested due to a deficiency of sexual control; abolish the time limit of charges of criminal offences against girls; remove legal disabilities affecting illegitimate children; teach Scientific Temperance in schools; create economic equality of husband and wife – including restrictions on women's time and labour contained in Factory Acts; and, equal wages for equal work.
There were several hints in The White Ribbon about Cole's declining health from 1905 on. And, at the 1907 national convention in Christchurch and the celebrations at the International Exhibition, she excused herself after the formal business. "... the severe indisposition which seized her immediately after the garden party upset all her plans for the further entertainment of those delegates to the Convention." That year, too, her daughter Marguerite Lilian Cole became business manager of the White Ribbon – and began accompanying her mother to conventions.

1908 national convention

At the 1908 convention in Auckland, Cole could not speak for several moments after a particularly poignant presentation by two little girls dressed in temperance white. She said afterwards that she was overcome with grief, thinking of all the children at risk from the violence of drink and the liquor traffic. Hera Stirling, a former Salvation Army officer and currently an Anglican missionary from Pūtiki, spoke eloquently about her work among the Māori in the Hawke's Bay, Waikato and Wanganui districts – and petitioned for the WCTU NZ to set aside funds specifically for Māori-related projects. The Auckland Star reporter noted in the summary of the meeting that the response to Stirling was positive though no action was taken. On Cole's way home to Christchurch after the convention, she was interviewed by "Dominica" for a Wellington newspaper about the WCTU's national efforts underway. Cole emphasized the campaign to abolish the Totalisator allowed in the Gambling Bill and that the Union chapters had gathered together 36,000 signatures to send as a petition to Parliament. She also spoke on the "legal disabilities of women and the economic independence of wives," e.g., the mother having no legal right to her child or say in keeping the home over her head. "... The Women's Union acts on the broad principle that it is woman's duty to oppose everything that is likely to injure the home or the interests of the home."

1909 national convention

The 1909 national WCTU NZ convention meetings were held in the Baptist church on Vivian Street in Wellington. It included two formal visits: one to the Hon. George Fowlds Minister of Education on the successes of scientific temperance instruction, and one to the Premier Sir Joseph Ward to continue the fight against the Contagious Diseases Acts, inherited from the Parliament of the United Kingdom which promulgated men's use of prostitution and abused all women's rights when at any moment any woman could be accused of harboring a venereal disease. That year Cole and the WCTU NZ Canterbury District hosted a visit in Christchurch from the American WCTU missionary Katharine Lente Stevenson during their convention. Stevenson and Cole, both passionate advocates for scientific temperance and women's rights, quickly became good friends in that time which Stevenson called "our week of close comradeship." Cole attended the Australian Triennial Convention in Sydney that year in May to great acclaim by the Australian WCTU.

1910 national convention

Cole presided over the twenty-fifth national WCTU NZ convention at Invercargill in February 1910. The presence of Hera Stirling "and other Maori Sisters at the Invercargill Convention and the part they played in the various gatherings, brought the native work prominently before the members of the Convention." This kicked off a formal effort at fundraising specifically for the support of Māori Unions with Mrs. E.H. Henderson serving both as WCTU NZ superintendent of Māori Work and of Māori Fundraising. At the 1910 convention, in addition to the usual resolutions for women's rights and economic justice, the delegates resolved that they would take advantage of new Municipal Act, which for the first time allowed both men and women ratepayers to nominate and vote for members to Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards. They also recommended that every Union form a "Y. Union, a Loyal Temperance Legion and a Cradle Roll" to reach out to youth and young mothers in a more sustainable way. That year the Contagious Diseases Acts were finally repealed by Parliament, and Cole credited the WCTU NZ with winning a fight against the "Social Evil" that had been going on since their very first national convention in 1886. The WCTU NZ leaders had "agitated for this repeal for many years and our members may certainly claim that their strenuous efforts have been the means of keeping this matter before Parliament and the Cabinet Ministers, until justice has been done to the women of this Dominion."