Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 143, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1910 — "GRAND OLD WOMAN” IS DEAD [ARTICLE]

"GRAND OLD WOMAN” IS DEAD

Miss Spence of Australia Was a Friend of Children of Her Country. M hen Miss Catherine Helen Spence, the “grand old woman of Australia,” died not long ago the children of her country lost one of their best friends. It was Miss Spence who, in conjunction with Miss Emily Clark, initiated the Australian system for the care of dependent and delinquent children, a system which is the envy of social workers in more than one other country. Old as she was, according to the New York Tribune, she filled up to the time of her death a, seat on the state children’s council and also or| the destitute board of South Australia. But Miss Spence was never really old, though she had lived 85 years when she died. She took the warmest interest in all that her friends werfe doing. She mothered and brought, up one after another three families of children. Her public work was many sided. The English colony in South Australia, to which, as a young girl, Miss Spence went from Scotland, was not at all like the colonies founded later by gold seekers. It was a colony established by idealists, with dreams of just laws and pure electoral coa-

ditions. Spence took all this in at the impressionable age and all her life she preached and worked for the voice of the people in government. In 1893 Miss Spence traveled in America, speaking at the World’s Fair in Chicago and in many other cities.