Selina Sutherland - Infinite Women

Born: 26 December 1839, United Kingdom
Died: 8 October 1909
Country most active: Australia, New Zealand
Also known as: NA

This biography has been re-published in full with permission. Licensed by Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence. This biography, written by K. A. Simpson, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 1993.

Selina Sutherland (whose name at baptism was Sutherland Sutherland) was born on 26 December 1839 at Culgower, Sutherlandshire, Scotland, the third child of Jane McDonald and her husband, Baigrie Sutherland, a farm servant. She became known as Sulina, then Selina, and later incorporated Murray and McDonald into her name. She went to the Portgower school, Helmsdale, worked on the family croft, and was brought up in the Free Church of Scotland.
Listed as a domestic servant, Selina Sutherland travelled as an assisted immigrant on the Eastern Empire from London, arriving at Lyttelton, New Zealand, on 4 January 1865. Later she arrived unannounced at the home of her sister, Margaret Grant, at Gladstone, Wairarapa. The two sisters had not met for about 10 years. Selina stayed with Margaret and her husband, Robert Grant, on their sheep station, Bannockburn.
Selina Sutherland had studied medicine privately with the intention of becoming a nurse. In New Zealand she was able to realise this ambition as the central Wairarapa area had neither a doctor nor a hospital. She skilfully tended the sick, both Maori and Pakeha, riding on horseback through any weather over rough tracks and difficult roads. She advised sheepstation owners to improve the often overcrowded and unhygienic accommodation provided for their workers. In 1874, during a typhoid epidemic in New Zealand, she tended six men at Alfredton and single-handedly nursed them back to health.
In 1877 she put forward the idea of building a hospital in Masterton, and led a committee of citizens who planned and raised money for a 20-bed establishment. She collected most of the £500 required, soliciting money from as far afield as Wellington. The hospital was opened in early 1879 with William Hosking as its first surgeon.
In January 1879 Selina Sutherland was appointed matron of Wellington Hospital. In August 1880 she was publicly accused by some members of the hospital staff of drinking alcohol and behaving in a disorderly manner while she was working, but she was exonerated from these charges. In late 1880 she resigned after a dispute with the committee of trustees. They disagreed with her view, orthodox today, that sudden cessation of drinking was harmful to hardened drinkers. She had allowed alcoholic patients access to small amounts of alcohol while in hospital.
Selina Sutherland left New Zealand and settled in Melbourne, Australia, in 1881. In August, as lady missionary with the Scots’ Church District Association, she began looking after destitute children, and in October initiated the Neglected Children’s Aid Society. Through the society she was authorised to reclaim destitute children from slums, brothels and gambling dens, a task she performed personally in complete safety, so commanding was her presence. She sought permanent foster homes for the children, believing that integration into a family was far better for them than institutional care.
In the early 1890s Selina Sutherland recommended that the work of the society be increased because of the conditions caused by worsening economic times. But the society’s committee, concerned about costs, opposed her and in September 1893 she and 14 committee members resigned. In November the Presbyterian Society for Destitute and Neglected Children was formed, with Selina Sutherland as agent. Controversy again arose because of restrictive recommendations by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church’s commission, which gave preference to Presbyterian children and proposed to use only Presbyterian foster homes. In November 1894 Sutherland and her ladies’ committee resigned. At a public meeting on 7 December the Victorian Neglected Children’s Aid Society was formed with Selina Sutherland as an agent. It ran a receiving centre in the city as well as a home (later named the Sutherland Home) in Parkville.
In 1897 Selina Sutherland travelled to Britain, where she was presented to Queen Victoria and received a diamond brooch. After her return to Melbourne, Sutherland sold this to raise money for her charitable work. In 1905 she revisited New Zealand.
In May 1908 Selina Sutherland’s own ladies’ committee dismissed her because of allegations by domestic staff of inefficiency, insobriety and ill-treatment of the children. These complaints were later judged groundless by a committee of inquiry. In June, together with some of her old committee, Sutherland formed the Sutherland Homes for Orphans, Neglected and Destitute Children. This new society prospered with the generous gift in April 1909 of a house and land at Diamond Creek.
Selina Sutherland contracted pleurisy and pneumonia and died in Melbourne on 8 October 1909. She had never married and at her death she owned less than £10. A forthright leader motivated primarily by her Christian concern for the oppressed, Sutherland attracted enthusiastic followers as well as provoking opposition. A memorial in Melbourne praises the woman who had ‘rescued 3,000 waifs from its streets and slums’. A memorial tablet in Masterton Hospital commemorates her ‘unswerving and self-sacrificing ministrations to the sick and afflicted’ of Wairarapa.

This biography is republished from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Written by Shurlee Swain, Australian Catholic University. See below for full attribution.

Selina Sutherland was born in Scotland in 1839, the third child of crofter, Baigrie Sutherland and his wife, Jane. She received a basic education in Scotland, and in 1864 migrated to join her sister in New Zealand where she worked as a nurse. In 1881 she relocated to Melbourne where she constructed a career in child welfare, working initially through Scots’ Church. Following the passage of the 1887 Neglected Children’s Act she became Victoria’s first licensed child rescuer.
Modelling herself on child rescuers in Britain and North America, Sutherland carefully cultivated a relationship with the press which allowed her to position herself as a child welfare expert (Argus, 27 July 1900). In 1905 she was ranked ninth in a list of Victoria’s ten best citizens, one of only two women to make the list (Advertiser, 10 May 1905). A familiar of Alfred Deakin, Dr William Maloney, and many of the other influential figures in Melbourne’s social reform movement, she was able to command the support needed to both maintain and advance her work. She also had the trust of many of those amongst whom she worked, taking more children into her guardianship than the rest of Victoria’s child rescuers combined. Described as possessing ‘an abundance of human sympathy’, she was ‘received by the vilest’ and ‘disarmed their resentment’ as she went about her work in Melbourne’s poorest districts (Fitzroy City Press, 20 November 1908).
A strong personality, Sutherland had a history of conflict with her supervising committees. She was proud of her ‘brisk and businesslike methods of dealing with legal form and matters of red tape’, arguing that ‘formalities were nonsense when a child was sick or starving’ (Argus, 14 November 1901). As one disgruntled committee member commented: ‘Miss Sutherland managed herself’ (Argus, 29 September 1908). In order to escape such conflict she had established a non-affiliated organisation, the Victorian Neglected Children’s Aid Society in 1894. However, in 1908 she fell out of favour with this committee as well, and when they tried to replace her, staged a very public sit-in (Argus, 6 May 1908) before agreeing to compromise, allowing the committee to take over the newer of her two homes while she retained control of the other (Argus, 8 May 1908). Sutherland’s dispute with the Victorian Neglected Children’s Aid Society led to an official inquiry to investigate claims that she had been intoxicated and dealt with the children in a harsh and grossly negligent way, punching and caning them erratically. When the charges were heard, 72 witnesses came forward to speak on Miss Sutherland’s behalf, greatly outnumbering her accusers, and the magistrate concluded that the charges had not been sustained (Argus, 5 November 1908). In the wake of the inquiry, Sutherland, a salaried employee throughout her career, was critical of the society ladies who controlled Melbourne’s charities. Charities, she argued, were treated like ‘toys … a lot of the money never reaches the children or the poor … They wanted to invite ladies up there and show off. When I was there they could not spend 5/- on anything that was not for the good of the children’ (Argus, 21 November 1908).
A fortuitous bequest enabled her to found a new home in rural Diamond Creek, but Sutherland died in 1909, on the day she was to take possession of the property. In her obituary she was acclaimed as ‘a fine figure in the records of Victorian charity; a hard worker, and a woman whose heart was in her work’ (Argus, 9 October 1909). In a monument erected over her grave by public subscription, Sutherland is described as ‘The Children’s Friend’ (Fitzroy City Press, 20 May 1910). The new home at Diamond Creek was also named in her honour.

Work cited
Shurlee Swain, ‘Sutherland, Selina Murray Macdonald’, in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, Australian Women’s Archives Project, 2014, https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0130b.htm, accessed 16 January 2022.