| Reference: D. Waterson, //A Biographical Register of the Queensland Parliament 1860-1929//, Canberra: ANU Press, 1972, p.135.\\ | Reference: D. Waterson, //A Biographical Register of the Queensland Parliament 1860-1929//, Canberra: ANU Press, 1972, p.135.\\ |
| TLM-P had a very public clash with one of the few higher status women to have a lucrative, responsible employment. For TLM-P, conservative views on women's roles and self-interest combined when he was offered the position of Postmaster-General, over the claims of Elise Barney, Brisbane Postmistress during 1855-65.(([[http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barney-elise-12785]])) Historian Desley Deacon has outlined how Elise Barney had taken over the lucrative position when her husband, the previous postmaster, died. Her son Whiston Barney became her assistant. When Queensland became a separate colony, Elise Barney automatically became the head of the new postal department, responsible only to the politician appointed Acting Postmaster-General. Her work was soon officially found to be 'in every respect satisfactory'. When the new Queensland Government decided to combine the Postmaster-General position with that of Postal Inspector and to make it a public service position, a 'long and bitter struggle' ensued between TLM-P and Elise Barney, supported by her son. It was not helped by TLM-P having to have his office in the building in which the Barneys had lived and worked for years. As well, combining the Postmaster-General position with that of Postal Inspector travelling throughout the colony, suggests a deliberative move to exclude Mrs Barney((such inspections would be too dangerous, and perhaps too arduous, for a woman travelling alone as did TLM-P)). Whiston Barney resigned under pressure in mid-1883; in 1864 Mrs Barney was placed on leave after a clerk 'nominally' under her supervision embezzled funds. A Public Service Enquiry criticised both TLM-P and Elise Barney; a subsequent parliamentary Select Committee exonerated them. It appears that sympathy and blame remained equally proportioned between the two. Elise Barney was retired on a generous pension while TLM-P, as seen, was appointed to the Legislative Council when the Postmaster-General position again became a ministerial one.((Desley Deacon, //Managing Gender: The State, the New Middle-class and Women Workers 1830-1930//, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.31,33, 38-40, 238; Desley Deacon, 'Elise Barney' in //200 Australian Women// (ed.) Heather Radi, Sydney: Women's Redress Press, 2007, pp.16-17.)) | TLM-P had a very public clash with one of the few higher status women to have a lucrative, responsible employment. For TLM-P, conservative views on women's roles and self-interest combined when he was offered the position of Postmaster-General, over the claims of Elise Barney, Brisbane Postmistress during 1855-65.(([[http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barney-elise-12785]])) Historian Desley Deacon has outlined how Elise Barney had taken over the lucrative position when her husband, the previous postmaster, died. Her son Whiston Barney became her assistant. When Queensland became a separate colony, Elise Barney automatically became the head of the new postal department, responsible only to the politician appointed Acting Postmaster-General. Her work was soon officially found to be 'in every respect satisfactory'. When the new Queensland Government decided to combine the Postmaster-General position with that of Postal Inspector and to make it a public service position, a 'long and bitter struggle' ensued between TLM-P and Elise Barney, supported by her son. It was not helped by TLM-P having to have his office in the building in which the Barneys had lived and worked for years. As well, combining the Postmaster-General position with that of Postal Inspector travelling throughout the colony, suggests a deliberative move to exclude Mrs Barney((such inspections would be too dangerous, and perhaps too arduous, for a woman travelling alone as did TLM-P)). Whiston Barney resigned under pressure in mid-1883; in 1864 Mrs Barney was placed on leave after a clerk 'nominally' under her supervision embezzled funds. A Public Service Enquiry criticised both TLM-P and Elise Barney; a subsequent parliamentary Select Committee exonerated them. It appears that sympathy and blame remained equally proportioned between the two. Elise Barney was retired on a generous pension while TLM-P, as seen, was appointed to the Legislative Council when the Postmaster-General position again became a ministerial one.((Desley Deacon, //Managing Gender: The State, the New Middle-class and Women Workers 1830-1930//, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.31,33, 38-40, 238; Desley Deacon, 'Elise Barney' in //200 Australian Women// (ed.) Heather Radi, Sydney: Women's Redress Press, 2007, pp.16-17.)) |