Amey Daldy
New Zealand feminist and benefactor
Amey Daldy (née Hamerton, c. 1829 – 17 August 1920) was an English-born New Zealand feminist and suffragist. She was an important leader in the movement for women's suffrage in New Zealand, but later resigned as superintendent of the Auckland W.C.T.U. so that the League would not be associated with her other cause, the temperance movement.
Early life
Born in Yarwell, Northamptonshire, Daldy sailed to New Zealand with her brother John on the Caduceus, arriving in Auckland on 11 October 1860. In 1865, she married William Henry Smith, a shoemaker, whilst running a 'ladies seminary' on Karangahape Road in Auckland. William Smith died in 1879 at the age of 62, and within a year Amey Daldy married Captain William Crush Daldy in Ōtāhuhu.
Activism
As a founding member of the Auckland branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand, Amey Daldy became a prominent voice of the suffragist movement in Auckland. At the first convention of the National Council of Women of New Zealand in 1896, Daldy was voted to represent the Auckland Branch of the Women's Political League. During her time representing various women's organisations in Auckland, Daldy's social policies focused primarily on financial independence for married women, opposition towards restrictive immigration, and legislative changes in the New Zealand Parliament.
Death
After a lengthy career as a suffragist and women's rights activist in New Zealand, Daldy retired from the public eye after suffering from a stroke in 1905.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amey Daldy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.