Summary heading

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

Career within Commonwealth

Enid Muriel Lyons (nee Burnell) was born in Leesville (Duck River) in Tasmania to William Charles and Eliza (Taggett) Burnell. She received her early schooling in Burnie, showing some dramatic talent, before entering the Hobart Teachers’ College at the age of 14. She was a 17-year old trainee teacher when she married Joseph (Joe) Aloysius Lyons in Stanley in 1915. They had eleven children (5 sons and 6 daughters). At the time of their marriage Joe Lyons was 35, and a member of the Tasmanian State Parliament holding the portfolios of Education, Railways and the Treasury. When he became Premier, he encouraged his wife, then the mother of 6 young children, to stand as a Labor candidate for the seat of Denison (1925) but she was unsuccessful.

During Lyons’ subsequent career in federal politics, Enid was considered to be her husband’s closest political ally. She often travelled with him, and campaigned actively on his behalf before the December 1931 election which brought him to office as Prime Minister. Their children were the first to live in The Lodge, although several of them were sent to boarding schools. As wife of the Prime Minister (1932-1939), Enid accompanied Lyons to the Royal Jubilee celebrations for King George V and Queen Mary in England in 1935 and to the Coronation of King George VI in 1937. Separated from her family and often exhausted, she did not always enjoy the social responsibilities she was required to meet during this period. Her own later prominence, however, owed much to the recognition of her political influence.

In 1943, four years after Joe Lyons’ death, Dame Enid became the first woman member of the House of Representatives. Her maiden speech touched on various social issues and was widely applauded. She held the Tasmanian seat of Darwin for the United Australia Party (from 1944, the Liberal Party) through three general elections, until her retirement in March 1951 owing to ill health. Interestingly, the Darwin seat had been contested unsuccessfully by her husband as a Labor candidate in 1919. Dame Enid was also the first wife of a State Premier to enter federal politics and, when the Menzies Government came into power in December 1949, the first woman to be given a Cabinet post. She was made Vice-President of the Federal Executive Council, a position she later referred to as ‘toothless’ (1).

A gifted public speaker and well-known broadcaster, Dame Enid retained an interest in women’s issues and public affairs. After resigning from politics, she served on the governing board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission for eleven years. Her later years were partly occupied by the publication of two autobiographical works (So We take Comfort and Among the Carrion Crows) and in planning the gift of the family home in Devonport (Tasmania) to the Australian public. ‘Home Hill’, built for the Lyons in 1916 and now owned by the Devonport City Council, is a house museum managed by the National Trust.

Compassionate, self-confident and practical, Dame Enid was affectionately known as ‘Australia’s Greatest Mother’. She was created a Dame of the British Empire (DBE) in 1937, an honour conferred personally by His Majesty King George VI, and a Dame within the Order of Australia (AD) in 1980. Also an Honorary Fellow of the Australian College of Nursing, she died in Ulverstone in 1981 and is buried beside her husband in Devonport.

Links to other Commonwealth Persons

28 Apr 1915-7 Apr 1939: CP 254, Rt Hon Joseph Aloysius LYONS PC, CH

Publications

Lyons, Dame Enid Muriel, So We Take Comfort (London, 1965)

Lyons, Dame Enid Muriel, The Old Haggis

Lyons, Dame Enid Muriel, Among the Carrion Crows (Adelaide, Rigby, 1972)

End notes

1) Langmore, Diane, Prime Ministers’ Wives, p108

Sources

Australian Encyclopaedia (Sydney, Grolier Society, 1963), Vol 2, p473

Commonwealth Parliamentary Handbook,16^th ed (1938-1945) and 24^th ed (1988)

Langmore, Diane, Prime Ministers’ Wives (McPhee Gribble, 1992), pp75-114

Who’s Who in Australia, 13^th ed (1947), 18^th ed (1965) and 23^rd ed (1980)