May Holman
Encyclopedia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n politician. She was the first woman in the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
to become a parliamentarian. Holman was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly
Western Australian Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of parliament in the Australian state of Western Australia. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Perth....
seat of Forrest
Electoral district of Forrest
Forrest was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Western Australia from 1904 to 1950. It was based in the South West region of the state, in the timber milling areas near the town of Dwellingup....
in 1925, and held it until her death on the day of her fourth re-election.
She was the daughter of John Holman, and her brother, Edward Holman
Edward Holman
Edward Joseph Frederick Holman was an Australian politician. He was the son of John Holman and the brother of May Holman, the first female Labor MP in Australia. He succeeded his sister as the Labor member for Forrest in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, serving from 1939 to 1947....
, was elected to her seat after her death. Holman was married in 1914 to politician Joseph Gardiner
Joseph Gardiner
Joseph Peter Gardiner was the Australian Labor Party member for the Western Australian Legislative Assembly seat of Roebourne from 1911 to 1915...
; this was unconsummated and annulled in 1920.
Born in the New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
mining town of Broken Hill
Broken Hill, New South Wales
-Geology:Broken Hill's massive orebody, which formed about 1,800 million years ago, has proved to be among the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits. The orebody is shaped like a boomerang plunging into the earth at its ends and outcropping in the centre. The protruding tip of the...
, her father and mother, Katherine Mary (née Row), moved the family to Western Australia two years later.
The women's executive of her party, and the Women's Service Guilds
Women's Service Guilds
The Women's Service Guilds, initially known as the Women's Service Guilds of Western Australia, was an organizing body of the feminist movement in Australia...
, nominated Holman as a delegate to the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
Assembly in 1930.
Holman died as a result of a car crash and was buried at Karrakatta Cemetery
Karrakatta Cemetery
Karrakatta Cemetery is a metropolitan cemetery in the suburb of Karrakatta in Perth, Western Australia. Karrakatta Cemetery first opened for burials in 1899, with Robert Creighton. Currently managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board, the cemetery attracts more than one million visitors each...
.