Life & Times

Ada Wells

Ada, suffragist

Chester Pike

Dorothy Murray

Ada's Suffrage Work

Ada's work in the suffrage movement is not well documented. This page puts together some of what is known.

Ada's education as a young woman at Christchurch West School and her one year at Canterbury University, as well as her family experiences, influenced her a view of life in such a way to make her a radical of her age. She believed women were entitled to have equal rights with men.

Ada spent many hours working for women's rights through the Women's Temperance Union, the Canterbury Women's Institute and the National Council of Women. She had responsibility for influencing the press for the Temperance Union. She was secretary for both the Canterbury Women's Institute and the National Council of Women. In the early years, she seems to have been a back room worker, recording the speeches and activities of those around her, rather than being a prominent speaker.

At the time when the campaign for the vote beginning to gather momemtum, she had four children under five. However, Ada was a forebear to the women of the late twentieth century, who chose family life as well as public life.

Other sites to find out more about topics that interested Ada Wells.

Women's Temperance Union stand at the New Zealand Exhibition 1906-1909 (look at the bottom of the page).

Links to my pages on Ada Wells

• Suffragist • Wells family • Ada's education • Chester Wells • Chronology