AGM - followed by - Woman's Christian Temperance Union - Exposing Melbourne's Shameful Secrets

AGM followed by a talk by Dr Anna Blainey Warner

Dr. Anna Blainey Warner will tell us how women in the 1890s alerted the public to the
sexual assault and prostitution of young girls and of the controversy that followed. Anna
is an East Melbourne resident and freelance historian whose PhD was on the Australian
Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the Nineteenth Century. It is known that the
organisation was instrumental in giving women the vote. What is less known is its protest
against the sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children in the brothels of
East Melbourne and elsewhere.