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Elizabeth McCombs (1873-1935)
Elizabeth McCombs became New Zealand's first woman MP in 1933 when she won the Lyttelton seat in a by-election. Previously her husband, James, held the seat.
The following is an extract from Richard L. N. Greenaway's work Waimairi Cemetery Walk:
"Elizabeth was on the city council and tramway board. On her husband’s death, she was chosen as Labour Party candidate in the Lyttelton by-election.
Women had gained the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1893, the right to stand for Parliament in 1919, but no women candidate had yet been elected. The Coalition candidate who stood against Elizabeth was a prominent civil engineer and surveyor, Frederick Freeman (1881 - 1969), a man who long figured in Who’s who in New Zealand but is now forgotten. Elizabeth won the by-election.
Elizabeth has symbolic rather than practical importance as the first woman M.P.; she did not live to witness the Labour landslide election victory of 1935. When she died, her son, Terence, became MP. Terence, a minister in the last years of the first Labour Government, lost the Lyttelton seat after the family had held it for 38 years. He was defeated when National Party Prime Minister Sidney Holland called a snap election after crushing the 1951 waterfront strike. Terence returned to his original profession, school teaching, was a headmaster, and, in his later years, spent a period on the Christchurch City Council."
The McCombs home Adare.
The McCombs were residents of Fendalton for a time from 1904, when they moved to a house they had bought for one thousand pounds on a site where Tui Street runs off Fendalton Road.
The following is an extract from Elizabeth McCombs' biography 'My dear girl'.
"It had ten rooms and stood in five acres of beautiful woodlands with a stream at the bottom of the garden. They called it Adare The subdivision of the extensive grounds was to be one way the McCombs family were able to survive in a most comfortable style for a good decade" p28.
"Patricia (a daughter) remembers: My swing hung from a great wattle tree which hid the back lawn and washing lines from the croquet lawn at the side of the house. The orchard was divided from the lawns and garden by a series of arches which were covered with roses. The drive swept in between romantic cypresses which hid the house and garden from the road. The path to the kitchen was between a laurel hedge and a stand of large pear trees. Opposite the kitchen were two large tanks on lanky legs, twenty feet tall, and above that the windmill" p40.
In 1907 the McCombs' subdivided the property into 18 sections creating a new street (Tui Street). The first was sold off in 1910. Adare was demolished in the early 1920s.
References
- Extract taken From Waimairi Cemetery Walk by Richard L. N. Greenaway
- Gee, David, My dear girl: a biography of Elizabeth McCombs, New Zealand’s first woman member of Parliament, and her husband, James McCombs, member of Parliament for Lyttelton for twenty years. Christchurch, NZ: Tree House, 1993
Women politicians
- McCallum, J. Women in the House: Members of Parliament in New Zealand 1993
- Check the catalogue under the subject heading: Women politicians - New Zealand - Biography
- NZHistory.net.nz articles:
- Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Elizabeth McCombs
- Te Ara (1966 encyclopaedia): Elizabeth McCombs
