Maker: Ninotchka Mckay

Panel number: 444

Petition Sheet Number: 3 

Person honouring: Alice Meredith Burn

Relationship to makers: None 

Alice Meredith attended primary school at Hilton, South Canterbury and married one of her teachers, David William Murray Burn when she was 16. 

In 1892 and 1893, while David Burn was teaching at Waitaki Boys’ High School, Alice attended Canterbury College. 

In 1894 both Alice and David Burn became the focus of controversy. Alice asked the Board of Governors of Canterbury College whether she could wear ‘rational dress’ to lectures, and when they said no, she appears to have left Canterbury College. In the same year David Burn was asked to leave Waitaki Boys’ High School, many believed because of his political beliefs. As well as being a practical supporter of dress reform, he was a vegetarian and belonged to the local labour organisation.

Alice was an enthusiastic advocate of women’s cycling and the dress reform movement. She was secretary of the Atlanta Ladies Cycling Club which formed in Christchurch in 1892, and in May 1894 convened a meeting in Christchurch to form the New Zealand Rational Dress Association. She was elected president and lectured on dress reform in many South Island towns. She gave birth to a daughter in Dunedin in 1899 and studied for two years at Otago University towards a medical degree, before moving to Edinburgh with two of her sisters. Alice graduated MB ChB in 1906, did a diploma in public health, and appears to have lived and worked for the remainder of her life in Britain. 

Biographical information from 'The Woman Question’ by Margaret Lovell-Smith, New Women’s Press, 1992.

Panel materials: Printer toner, cotton, polyester lace, silk taffeta, linen, cotton embroidery and crewel threads. All items were present in the artist’s stash. Special thanks to Christchurch City Libraries for allowing the use of their photocopier to create the top and bottom printed elements of the panel.