Maker: Liz Parker

Panel number: 223

Petition sheet number: 267

Person honouring: Martha Broadley

Relationship to maker: Great-great-grandmother

When Martha Broadley signed the 1893 suffrage petition in Kaiapoi, she was in her sixties.

Martha Tempest was born around 1834 in Yorkshire. Her parents were Martha Gill and John Tempest; her father was a woollen weaver.

In 1850 Martha married George Broadley – they both worked as woollen slubbers and woollen shavers.

In 1873, the couple and six children emigrated to New Zealand, on the Surat. This ship was wrecked near the Catlins River mouth, south of Dunedin, on New Year’s Day 1874. All passengers were rescued, but goods, which included plant for the Kaiapoi woollen mill, were lost.

The family settled in Kaiapoi. Martha enrolled to vote here in 1893 and 1896.

The Kaiapoi woollen mill in the late 1800s became one of the most important industrial concerns in New Zealand – skilled spinners and weavers from England were actively recruited. George was a carding engineer.

During the 1880s and 1890s some of Martha’s children and grandchildren continued to work as spinners and millworkers in Kaiapoi. 

George died in 1880. Martha died in 1907 at the home of her daughter Sarah Warwick in Kaiapoi.

Panel materials: Patchwork fabric in my stash.