SHEPPARD, KATE WILSON (1848-1934) (née Malcolm), one of the foremost pioneers in the woman suffrage movement in New Zealand, was born in Islay, Scotland, in 1848. She inherited from her father a talent for music and metrical expression, and mainly from an uncle a devotion to the Free Church and sympathy for social causes. Educated in Scotland, she was brought up as a Congregationalist.

In the late sixties she came to New Zealand with her mother and sisters, settling in Christchurch, where she married Walter A. Sheppard (1836-1915). Mrs Sheppard became prominent in the women's movement in New Zealand, to which she was attracted by the visit in the eighties of Mrs Mary Leavitt, to found a branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. For many years this was the leading women's organisation in the country. Mrs Sheppard's qualities of graciousness, enthusiasm, geniality and clarity of vision were of inestimable value in commending the claims of her sex to politicians. She met with much opposition, not always from the opposite sex, but was fortunate in securing the alliance of John Hall and John Ballance. In 1891 she inaugurated, in The Vanguard, a page for women which she conducted anonymously as an Esperanto student. This first page of women's activities was transferred four years later to the White Ribbon, of which Mrs Sheppard was editor (with Lucy Lovell-Smith as associate).

On female franchise being won (1893), Mrs Sheppard set to work to organise women's societies to study social problems. The first National Council of Women was held in Christchurch in 1896. She was president and held other offices until financial troubles caused the suspension of its activities. In the middle nineties Mrs Sheppard travelled abroad, making many contacts from which the movement received new inspiration. About the time of the war of 1914-18 the National Council was revived, with her as president, but she took an early opportunity of retiring in favour of younger leaders.

Mrs Sheppard lost her husband, and married some years later W. S. Lovell-Smith (d. 1929), author of Outlines of the Women's Franchise Movement in New Zealand (1905). She died on 13 Jul 1934, having survived by a few months the election of the first woman to the New Zealand Parliament (Mrs E. R. McCombs, q.v.).

Lyttelton Times, 26 Jun 1907 (tribute to Sir J. Hall); W. S. Smith, op. cit.; Jesse Mackay in Woman To-day, Apr 1937 (p).

Reference: Volume 2, page 152

🌳 Further sources