Muriel Agnes Heagney - Infinite Women

This biography is reprinted with permission from Melbourne Observatory’s Astrographic Women: Star Measurers and Computers by Dr Toner Stevenson, published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Volume 26, Issue 2: 325 – 338 in 2023.

Born: 31 December 1885, Australia
Died: 14 May 1974
Country most active: Australia
Also known as:

Muriel Heagney was employed as an astrographic measurer and computer at Melbourne Observatory from November 1906 until August 1910. Heagney is best known and acknowledged as a pioneer of women’s rights and equal pay, a feminist and trade unionist (Francis, 2011) but for four formative years, from the age of 21, she calculated the position of stars and determined their magnitudes for the AC.
Heagney’s employment at Melbourne Observatory came after her matriculation from the Faithful Companions of Jesus Convent School in Richmond. Like Charlotte Peel, Heagney was trained as a primary school teacher and was offered a job at Melbourne Observatory after sitting an exam. She was the daughter of Patrick Reginald Heagney, one of the founders of the Australian Labor Party, and Muriel Heagney was already a member of the Labor Party and active in the Labor movement when she joined the Observatory.
In the star catalogue and notebooks she left her insignia ‘M.H.’. The logbooks held by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and State Records in NSW and Victoria revealed that Heagney’s work was mainly measuring the stars photographed by Sydney Observatory. Eileen Sheldon was one of Heagney’s regular measuring partners. Sheldon demonstrated high speed and consistent accuracy but Heagney’s skill at measurement was not exceptional.
Heagney left her work in astronomy to pursue a career campaigning for women’s rights, spurred on by an initiative to form a Labor Women’s Committee. In 1909 she became a delegate and from this initiative the involvement of the Labor Party in women’s rights escalated and a year later Heagney resigned her position at Melbourne Observatory.
From 1914, Heagney was the press secretary for a branch of the Labor Party and she held a number of positions. She actively campaigned for women to have equal employment rights and pay, and to be able to maintain their employment after marriage. Heagney’s rationale in her papers and speeches included statistical analysis. She travelled to Russia and the United States, established and worked for many Women’s Movement organisations, wrote articles and gave ‘Town Hall’ style presentations based on her observations and analysis, articulating the economic relationship between women’s income, or lack thereof, and poverty.
In 1972 women were granted equal pay to men through the Equal Pay Decision 1972 (Kramar, 1990: 4). In 1975 Heagney was posthumously featured in the Canberra Times:
… the person who worked hardest and longest for equal pay in Australia died in May last year. Tiny, redoubtable Muriel Heagney stood for women’s rights … all her life she was a rebel and a fighter. (Browning, 1975).
Heagney’s four rigorous years of work at Melbourne Observatory, as one of the first women employed in astronomy in Australia, was not included in information about her contribution to the Labor movement (Ranald, 1979; Symons, 1997) nor in a publication commissioned by the Australian Heritage Commission (see Nugent, 2002).
There is no proof that the precision required for the Astrographic Catalogue, Heagney’s use of mathematical formulae, or her employment conditions influenced her life once she left the Observatory. Her social and scientific connection to astronomy, and its impact on her work for women’s equal pay may yet have potential for further detailed research.