Summary heading

Person registration completed as part of the Prime Ministers Papers’ Project (October 2001).

Career within Commonwealth

Sarah Maria Scullin (nee McNamara) was born in Ballarat (Vic) to Michael McNamara and his wife Sarah Elizabeth (nee Simcocks). McNamara, a wool dyer from County Clare, Ireland had emigrated to Victoria in the 1850s. His wife was from County Kerry. Sarah Scullin, their third child, became a skilled dressmaker and ‘a painter of pictures, in no small way’. She married James (Jim) Henry Scullin in Ballarat on 11 November 1907.

The Scullins had no children and lived modestly in Melbourne throughout Jim Scullin’s political career, firstly in Richmond and later in Hawthorn. A woman of quiet disposition, ‘kindly and charitable’, Sarah Scullin often accompanied her husband on his electoral campaigns and sat through many debates in the House of Representatives in which he participated. She died nine years after him in 1962 and is buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.

Links to other Commonwealth Persons

11 Nov 1907 – 28 Jan 1953:    CP 63, Rt Hon James Henry SCULLIN PC 

Publications

End notes

Sources

Grattan, Michelle ed, Australian Prime Ministers (Sydney, New Holland, 2000), pp144, 151

Sunday Magazine (Sunday Telegraph), 31 Dec 2000

The Age, 1 Jun 1962