Maker: Roseann Burgiss

Panel number: 417

Petition sheet number: 506

Person honouring: Ellen Dowdall

Relationship to maker: Maternal great-great-grandmother

Ellen was known as the Little Duchess in the family as she was short in stature but long in presence. She arrived in New Zealand in 1874 from County Waterford, Ireland. 

Four months later Ellen Guiry married Patrick Dowdall, a kind and intelligent Dublin man. By 1893, when she signed the petition, she had her hands full with eight children. She had another child and become the matriarch of a large family. Her husband called her his Little Bantam. (The bantam chicken is known for mothering large broods.).

Ellen was listed as the ratepayer on Patrick and Ellen’s property in Feilding. She died in 1930.

Ellen’s eldest daughter, Johanna, was my great-grandmother, a seamstress who passed a love of sewing down the family. Her daughter Ivy was my beloved Nanna whose 1928 Singer treadle sewing machine is still in my craft room and was my work bench for this project. Her daughter Fay was my mother, who taught me to sew and encouraged me to design and make my own clothes as a teenager.

This female line is on the panel, representing the threads of time. As a Kiwi woman now living in France, my life has been blessed with choices and freedoms because Ellen and all the other women participated in this suffrage movement and fought many battles since. I have worked all over the world and can work a concrete mixer and a hammer as comfortably as a sewing machine. These opportunities and choices came as a gift from their efforts.

Panel materials: As my female forebears did before me I keep a treasure chest of bits and bobs from which I took the antique french laces, collars, plumetis monogram letters, and wedding satin – which represents the petition itself, and also the buttons – which represent the other 57 signatories on page 506. I only had two monogram letters – an L and a D – so the embroidered ‘Little Duchess’ felt meant to be! Everything was sewn onto lining fabric from a current re-upholstery project, leaving excess fabric inside the backed panel to create a slightly padded effect, which with all the layers of lace and satin reminds me of how thick these women’s clothing always seems, even when being ‘pretty’.