Rachel Don
Rachel Don was an accredited Methodist local preacher who became a local and national leader in the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand, serving as president from 1914 to 1926. Under her leadership, the WCTU NZ focused on white slavery, promoting national prohibition, and expanding women's career opportunities, especially in the New Zealand Police Force and judicial system. She represented New Zealand at a world-wide temperance convention in London in 1920, and at the U.S. Woman's Christian Temperance Union Jubilee in 1924. She served in many other local charitable organisations, and after visiting India, became a fervent leader of the Dominion Stocking League to send refurbished clothing for impoverished children and women to Christian mission stations in India.
Early life
Rachel Hull Don was born at Hokitika, New Zealand, on 23 July 1866. She was the daughter of Mary Ann Walters and James Washington Hull. Not much is known about her father except that he was an American. By 1880, according to the New Zealand Wise's Directory, her mother was living alone with her children on Aldred Street in central Christchurch. Rachel Hull had at least one sibling. Her older brother James Washington Hull was an iron and brass moulder who married Minnie Cockle in 1889. Rachel Hull attended the Christchurch Normal School and studied to become one of the first women in New Zealand to become certified Methodist local preacher. Because the records of the Local Preachers' Association in New Zealand were destroyed by fire in the 1950s, her claim in 1925 of being the first woman Methodist local preacher cannot be documented. She also worked as an evangelist for the Salvation Army.In the Durham Street Wesleyan Church in Christchurch on 17 October 1890, Rachel Hull married William Rae Don, a stationer on Broughton Street in South Dunedin. Rachel Don began getting involved in civic and church activities. She signed both the 1892 and 1893 women's suffrage petitions with her address as Dunedin.
Temperance and charity work
In the 1890s, Rachel Don got involved with the Dunedin Methodist Central Mission and became a popular speaker for temperance meetings, eventually being appointed as Dunedin WCTU NZ superintendent for Evangelistic work department. She also served briefly as secretary for the local Union in 1898, before she was elected president in 1901. Don regularly collaborated in teas and gospel meetings for sailors at the Dunedin Sailors' Rest.In the meantime, she was also a member of the Ladies' Auxiliary of the YMCA Dunedin; an executive member of the Otago Sunday School Union; a superintendent of the Methodist Central Mission Sunday School, Dunedin; an official visitor for the Dunedin Hospital; and the Ladies Cooperative Committee for the Charitable Aid Board.
Leadership in Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand
Though she was president of the Dunedin Union for only two years, Don was appointed as acting national president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand in 1904 by Lily Atkinson who took time off to have her baby. She returned in 1906 to serving as president of the Dunedin Union until 1909. That year, she was still busy in WCTU NZ work, however. Her speech during the Frances Willard Commemoration on April 20 in Dunedin followed a procession and tableaux of women representing twelve nations in the World WCTU. She accompanied the WCTU NZ president Fanny Cole as part of a deputation calling on the Minister for Education to advocate for the formal addition of scientific temperance instruction in public school curriculum. She argued that the curriculum currently included how to care for eyes and teeth but had not included the "most important element, the brain." She insisted that the science behind how alcohol destroyed the nerve tissues of the brain needed to be included in the health curriculum. "We represent organised mother's love, and for the sake of our children we feel that the day is gone when we ask – we demand from a democratic Government that this measure shall be introduced as soon as possible."Don took on various leadership roles in the local Union before and during World War I, serving as vice-president and president of the Dunedin Young Women's Christian Temperance Union, who worked to recruit young women to the cause with demonstrations and parades as well as lunch hour meetings in the factories. Don also served as press superintendent, and she stepped in as vice-president or acting president when needed. In 1912 at the 27th WCTU NZ convention in Dunedin, Don was nominated by Fanny Cole as vice-president-at-large. She served in this national role for two years.
In March 1913, Don was not able to attend the WCTU NZ convention in Nelson due to the illness and death of her mother in Christchurch. And when Fanny Cole died in May 1913, Don stepped forward as acting president for the rest of that year. Her memorial for Cole was published in The White Ribbon, and in it she showed her political acumen during a difficult time of disagreement among the WCTU NZ members. The Nelson convention under the leadership of Fanny Cole had served as a springboard for debate over whether or not the Union would collaborate in campaigns by the Bible in Schools League, but the majority voted no. Don counseled compromise and loyalty to the WCTU NZ as a democratic decision-making body: "my first act will be to appeal in her sacred memory to the Unions throughout the Dominion to cease all strife over the Bible in Schools question.... The Union stands, as it has always stood, for the Bible in schools, only we differ as to the method of teaching it. In memory of the departed one, let us agree to differ, and instead of wasting time in argument, let us be loyal to our Union..." There must still have been controversy over this topic since she had to send a stern reminder in May of the need for compromise.
At the March 1914 convention in Gisborne Don was elected President of WCTU NZ. Her President's address included many of the twentieth century goals of the WCTU NZ such as food reform, training hostels for girls, oversight of immoral content in films and magazines, Sabbath observance, anti-gambling, prohibitionism, and support for disabled women in maternity homes, asylums and gaols. Her own sense of how the WCTU NZ supported the progress of the nation was described in a section of her address in which she described the importance women in establishing a good home through "mother love:"
Don's life-long battle to convince Parliament to pass a national law prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol began in earnest in 1914. She was part of a deputation of prohibitionists who visited the Prime Minister on 26 June 1914, seeking to revise the Licensing Act so that a simple majority would allow for a community to vote against the trade in alcohol. She assured her listeners that no one knew more about "this evil" than she did. "I have visited the gaols since I was a girl of seventeen. I have come in contact with the victims of this evil; and of all the sufferers by the trade. It is the women and children that suffer the most."
That year Parliament replaced the three-fifths majority required to win a national referendum on prohibition with a fifty percent majority. To the WCTU NZ members, Don sent an open letter encouraging them to support their country in a time of war but to not slack on WCTU NZ temperance work. She wrote: "The wave of patriotism sweeping through the Dominion, the dreadful news from the battlefield, our anxiety for our own Empire, our interest in our boys, is no reason why we should slacken our work. There is no better way we could help in the defence of our country than by the overthrow of the Traffic, which is always more deadly in its effect than war."