Summary heading

  Person registration completed as part of the Prime Ministers Papers’ Project (April 2002).

Career within Commonwealth

  Mary Ethel Hughes was born at Burrandong, near Wellington (NSW) in 1874, the fifth child of an Irish-Protestant pastoralist, Thomas Campbell, and his wife Mary Ann (nee Burton). She trained as a nurse and in June 1911, at the age of 37, married William Morris (Billy) Hughes. They lived in Sydney and had one daughter. The marriage was often turbulent, and relations with Hughes’ first family not easy. Nevertheless, Hughes depended on his wife (who called him ‘WM’) and remained loyal to her, especially after the death of their daughter at the age of 21.

During Hughes long political career, and when he was Prime Minister (1915-1923), Mary often went to Melbourne during Parliamentary sessions and accompanied him on many overseas trips. The more important of these occurred in 1916, 1918, 1921 and 1932. She enjoyed the social occasions such visits provided, although Hughes otherwise generally excluded her from his political activities. Nevertheless Mary took a close interest in soldiers’ welfare, visiting service hospitals and camps in Britain, France and Australia, and in January 1922 became a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her services during World War I. It was the first such award made to an Australian. She championed women’s rights and continued to be active in charity and hospital work in the 1920s. In 1925, Dame Mary became President of the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children in Sydney and was also president of the Lindfield Women’s Service League and Vice-President of the Ladies’ Amateur Swimming and Life Saving League. Considered conventional and kindly, although also financially irresponsible, her friends included Dame Mabel Brookes, Dame Enid Lyons, Penny Gullett (wife of Sir Henry Gullett) and the British suffragette, Mrs Christabel Pankhurst.

Dame Mary was less prominent in Hughes’ later career, but outlived him by six years. She died in Sydney in 1958.

Links to other Commonwealth Persons

  26 Jun 1911 – 28 October 1952: CP 290, The Rt Hon William Morris HUGHES PC, CH, KC

Publications

End notes

Sources

Langmore, Diane, Prime Ministers’ Wives (McPhee Gribble, 1992), pp47-73 

‘Sunday Magazine’, Sunday Telegraph, 31 December 2000