Zina Beatrice Selwyn Cumbrae-Stewart was a long-serving member of the Red Cross and an active supporter of women's causes.
Early years
Zina Hammond was born in 1868 to a large, well-to-do family from Brighton. After the death of her father in 1875, her mother and 9 siblings lived on their investments until the banks crashed in 1893.
She attended Mrs R. Sadlier Forster’s Ladies School but later became a drawing teacher there to make ends meet. She met the artist, Janet Cumbrae-Stewart here and married her brother, Francis in 1906.
Zina moved to Brisbane when the new University of Queensland appointed her husband to staff. The couple also had their only child here, a son.
Contributions
Zina was active in her church and evangelical in outlook. She belonged to many charities and received a medal for her 22 years of service to the Queensland Red Cross.
Zina supported women’s organisations including the Mother’s Union, the National Council of Women, the Mothercraft Association and the Bush Nursing Association.
In 1925, the couple invested in building a block of flats at Kangaroo Point for their retirement. They chose Elina Mottram, the first woman to open an architectural practice in Queensland, for the project. They moved into the flats in 1930.
Death
Upon her husband’s retirement in 1936, Zina and Francis moved to Melbourne to be nearer to their son. Not long after, during a trip to Britain for the Red Cross, Francis became ill and they returned home.
Francis died in 1938 age 73, and Zina moved to live with her son in Tasmania. She passed away in 1956, a month before her 88th birthday.
She is buried with her husband at Burwood Cemetery.
Bibliography
Adapted from material supplied by historian Dr Jan Penney, GMCT Trust member 2010-2020.
Bonnin, N (1981) Cumbrae-Stewart, Zina Beatrice Selwyn (1868–1956), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University [website]
National Council of Women (Qld) (2005) The First Fifty Years in the History of the National Council of Women of Queensland
Oppenheimer M (2014) The Power of Humanity: 100 Years of Australian Red Cross 1914-2014, Harper Collins
Image source
Image from Wikimedia Commons.
