This photograph shows Bella Lavender (then Bella Halloran) with her young son, Henry Marco.

After teaching in Ballarat, Bella Guerin married Henry Halloran, a poet and public servant in Sydney. Halloran was the son of notoriously irascible schoolmaster Laurence Hynes Halloran, and was then 80 years of age. Halloran died shortly after Bella gave birth to their son and Bella returned to teach in Melbourne.

This cartoon from the Melbourne newspaper Truth notes Bella Lavender’s occupation as a schoolteacher. During the anti-conscription campaign she was the principal of the High School for Girls in Brunswick.

The High School for Girls was a private school in Brunswick. From 1890 until 1909 it was operated by Elizabeth McCowan, a schoolteacher recently arrived from Britain. At the beginning of 1909 Bella Halloran — Bella’s first married name — purchased the school, and commenced running it. (She married George Lavender later in 1909.)

At that stage the School was run out of the Congregational Hall at 327 Sydney Road. However a year later, this hall was sold by the Congregational Church, and Lavender needed to find a new venue.

This search was complicated by Education Department requirements. In older suburbs like Brunswick, halls like this were the only facilities available, and were used by both private and public schools. However these old halls often failed to meet the Health Department standards required. (Public schools were exempt from inspection, even when they rented exactly the same halls.) As a result, Lavender’s school moved to the Lyceum Hall, at 259 Victoria Street Brunswick.

In 1917, the combination of Lavender’s activism, and Education Department bureaucracy had taken their toll; only four students remained at the High School for Girls. Lavender bowed to the inevitable and closed the school.

Further Information:

Girls High School
Sydney Rd
Brunswick
6th Dec 1909

Sir In reply to your memo of the 16th ult, re the registration of the above school, I beg to state, that the school is run by me, and has been registered under the former principal Mrs E McCowan from whom I purchased the school in January last. I furnished all information as regards no of school, registered nos of teachers & in August last, under the name I then bore [continued...]

Further Information:

[continued...] of Mrs Bella Halloran M. A. On Oct 1st last I was married to Mr G. D. Lavender, and of course there is no necessity for proceeding all over the former information.

Yours sincerely

Bella Lavender M. A,

Principal

Bella Lavender was an active member of the Labor Party. It was in her capacity as President of various committees of the Labor Party that she campaigned as an anti-conscriptionist.

In 1914, Lavender left the Women’s Political Association, believing that the only permanent solution for women was through advancing labour politics. In 1916, Lavender was elected President of the Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee, and then in 1917 as the President of the Women’s Industrial, Social and Political Council. She would also served as Vice-President of the North Melbourne Branch of the Australian Labor Party.

In this period, Lavender was a highly active campaigner against conscription. She was a regular speaker at the Yarra Bank on Sundays, and lecturer at Victorian Socialist Party meetings. Shortly before the 1917 referendum, Lavender undertook a speaking tour of regional Victoria, speaking at Sale, Bairnsdale , Terang and Paynesville in Gippsland, and also in Warrnambool.

Gradually, Lavender became dissatisfied with the Labor Party’s treatment of women. In May 1918, Lavender delivered an address at the Victorian Socialist Party where she criticised this attitude as regarding women as “Poodles or Packhorses”, and said that Goldstein was right to maintain a focus on women’s rights. This speech met with sharp criticism from other Labor women, and as a consequence her relationship with the party soured, and shortly afterwards she moved to Adelaide and withdrew from politics.