Maker: Vanisa Dhiru

Panel number: 38

Petition Sheet Number: 29 

Person honouring: Mrs Morrisey 

Relationship to makers: Bridget Morrissey signed the petition with her neighbour. It’s suggested Mrs Mulrooney signed on her behalf as Bridget may not have been able to write. The role of neighbours and neighbourhood in the era of the Suffrage Petition was so important. 

Bridget Ellen Kenelly was born in Ireland in 1840, five years before the horrors of the potato famine. The next time we hear of Bridget, she’s in Melbourne. She’d arrived there with her elder sister in 1858. By 1862 she was employed as servant in Richmond. That year Bridget married Patrick George Morrissey. Patrick was 28, and Bridget 22. Patrick was a seaman, travelling between Melbourne and Dunedin – a busy sea route then because miners from Victoria were leaving the exhausted fields for newly discovered gold in Otago. 

Sometime after their wedding Bridget sailed with Patrick to Dunedin, where their eight children were born. Tragically, in 1876 scarlet fever claimed the lives of their eldest son and their youngest daughter on the same day. Four of their other children were ill with the fever and the Health Inspector was sent to take them to the fever hospital. In the horror of their grief Patrick snapped. It was reported that “Mr Morrissey threatened to shoot anyone who would come to take them away.”  The Health Inspector discreetly withdrew at first but eventually the sick children were removed, and survived. 

 In 1887 the family moved to a fine detached house at 8 Cashel St, South Dunedin. Another Irish family, the Mulrooneys, moved in next door and they became friends - the two women signed the Women’s Suffrage Petition together.  Bridget seems to have had no formal education. She signed her wedding certificate with a cross, beside which someone has written ‘her mark’. Did Bridget, the bride who wrote her name with an 'X’, ask her neighbour to help her sign the petition? 

 Bridget died in July 1897, aged 57, and is buried in Southern Cemetery, Dunedin.

*Information provided by Michael Keir-Morrissey, and Joanne Koreman, for the He Tohu exhibition*

Panel materials: A neighbour of mine was once kind enough to find and return my lost earring they found in a driveway. A small gesture, but a big win for me - who likes a single earring?! It made me think - many others like me must have single earrings? After I dug around my drawer and found 10 “lost” earrings of my own - and thought that I would gather 60 earrings to represent the 60 signatures on sheet 29. I asked family, friends, workmates, and members of the National Council of Women for their earrings. It didn’t take long to get 60 earrings - especially as my mum asked her workmates as well! All the earrings on my panel are different, just as all the women who signed the petition were different and have their own story. The earrings each have history, a story to tell. One earring on the panel was worn by a bride at her wedding! The donor didn’t want it anymore, so gave it to me for this cause. Two earrings are from my current neighbour! Some are clip ons, some are studs, some silver, some are gold, some fake. The base fabric is pre-loved skirt, bought at a second store in Cuba Street, Wellington. .