The South Australian Aborigines Act Amendment Act (1939) established a board ‘charged with the duty of controlling and promoting the welfare’ of Aboriginal people.
Could the problem of infant mortality be dealt with by giving expert advice to mothers? The Mothers’ and Babies’ Health Association certainly thought so.
The National Council of Women of South Australia argued for pensions for widows with children, raising the marriage age for girls from 12 and other reforms.
Modelled on the gentlemen’s clubs that proliferated in London from the eighteenth century, the Adelaide Club resembles bodies established at about the same time in the capital cities of the other Australian colonies.
Institutions transplanted to Australia were not always successful but the WEA, brought from England, survived an early period of adaptation before becoming a significant South Australian educational institution.