Alice Frances Mabel (May) Moss (1869-1948)

Community activist. Early HSV member.

Daughter of sharebroker John Alfred Wilson and wife of grazier, wool classer and investor Isidore Moss, Alice Frances Mabel (May) Moss brought her skills as a leader to a wide range of women’s and children’s organisations. She was politically conservative, but campaigned vigorously for women’s rights in the inter-war years. She took up issues as diverse as raising the school leaving age, equal pay for teachers and the evils of white slave trafficking. Appointed as the alternative delegate to the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva in 1927, she served on a number of its committees, becoming the vice president of the League’s Victorian branch when she returned to Melbourne.

May joined the National Council of Women in 1904. Years later, she was elected state president from 1928 to 1938. She was the first president of the National Council of Women of Australia, a position she held from 1931 to 1936. In 1934, Victoria’s Centenary year, she chaired the Victorian Women’s Centenary Council and was a member of its History Committee, alongside a number of HSV members featured elsewhere in this biographical dictionary. She was also involved at an international level, serving as vice president of the International Council of Women from 1928 until her death.

She had broad interests, was a member of the International and Lyceum Clubs, and joined the Historical Society of Victoria in 1940.

She died in 1948 aged 79.

Kaleidoscope exhibition text by Cheryl Griffin, February 2022. Full entry to follow.