Daisy May Bates, CBE (born Margaret May O'Dwyer; 16 October 1859 – 18 April 1951) was an Irish-Australian journalist, welfare worker and self-taught anthropologist who conducted fieldwork among several Aboriginal groups in western and southern Australia.
Born in Country Tipperary, Ireland in 1859, Bates migrated to Australia in 1883 where she married three times (at least one of which was bigamous) and gave birth to a son. She returned to England in 1894 and worked as a journalist and editor. She migrated to Western Australia in 1899, where she bought a cattle station and developed an interest in the culture and welfare of Aboriginal Australians. She published a number of articles on Aboriginal issues and from 1904 to 1910 was employed by the Western Australian government to collect ethnographic information on the Aboriginal people of that state. Her research and field work was published posthumously in 1985 as The Native Tribes of Western Australia. Bates was appointed as a Travelling Protector of Aborigines in 1910 and continued to conduct research and welfare work among Aboriginal groups when this position ended in 1911.
In 1919, Bates moved to a remote camp in Ooldea, South Australia, where she lived for 16 years, conducting welfare work and field studies among the Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people and becoming a prominent participant in public debate on Aboriginal issues. Her life and work had come to the attention of the royal family and she was appointed C.B.E. in 1934. Bates moved to Adelaide in 1935 and spent most of the rest of her life in South Australia where she often continued to live with Aboriginal people. A series of semi-autobiographical articles, "My Natives and I", appeared in 1936 and were adapted into the book The Passing of the Aborigines, published in 1938. Her physical and mental health deteriorated in the 1940s and she died in a nursing home in Adelaide in 1951.
Bates is a controversial figure in the history of Indigenous Australians as well as in Australian history more broadly. Although she wrote sympathetically about Aboriginal society and welfare, commentators have criticised her for paternalistic attitudes which were often typical of her time. Scholars consider her anthropological work to include valuable ethnographic data on Aboriginal Australians, in particular the peoples of Western Australia. However, it has been criticised for inaccuracies, as well as exaggerated and often erroneous claims about Aboriginal cannibalism. Her reliability has also been questioned due to false claims she made about her personal history.
Biography Early life: 1859 to 1882 Bates was born as Margaret May O'Dwyer on 16 October 1859, in County Tipperary, in British ruled Ireland. She had six siblings, including a twin brother named Francis. Francis and another sibling, Joe, died young (with Francis dying two weeks after being born). When Bates was four, her mother, Bridget (née Hunt), died of tuberculosis on 20 February 1864. Her Catholic bootmaker father, James Edward O'Dwyer, now widowed, hired Mary Dillon to look after his six children. Seven months later they were married and attempted to emigrate to the United States. Her father however died "en route", also in 1864.
After her father and stepmother left for the US, Bates and her siblings were split up between relatives. Bates and three of her younger siblings were sent to live with her grandmother, Catherine Hunt, called 'Granny Hunt' by Bates. After Granny Hunt died in 1868, Bates returned to live with her stepmother, Mary, who had managed to return to Ireland and take over as householder. Bates (now nine years old) and her eldest sister, Kathleen, were sent to the Free National School for Catholic Girls in Dublin. She stayed there until she was nineteen, likely working as a pupil-teacher.
After leaving school, Bates was employed as a family governess in London. Not much is known of her time in London, except that she first met Ernest Baglehole there, who was the son of a wealthy ship and factory owner. Bates was rejected as a bride for Baglehole, who had already been arranged to marry another woman. Bates seems to have then been dismissed from her position. Possibly humiliated and desiring to start anew, Bates planned to emigrate to Australia.
Emigration and life in eastern Australia: 1882 to 1894
On 22 November 1882, Bates boarded RMS Almora, en route to Townsville in Queensland, Australia, as part of an immigration scheme reserved for "Catholic girls of 'good character' aged between fifteen and twenty-one." Bates, being twenty-three at the time, lied about her age to receive the government-assisted concessional fare. After arriving in Townsville on 15 January 1883, Bates's whereabouts for the next year is unclear. It is known that Bates was in Charters Towers for some period of time before November 1883, as a coroner's inquest report into the death/suicide of a man named "Arnold Knight Colquhoun" includes a suicide note that was intended for her.
By the beginning of 1884, Bates had found employment as a governess on Fanning Downs cattle station, outside of Charters Towers. Breaker Morant was also employed there, but as a "horse-boy". On 13 March 1884, they married in Charters Towers. The marriage was not legal; in Queensland, a man had to be at least twenty-one to get married but Morant was only nineteen (he claimed to be twenty-one).
About a month later, Bates learned that Morant had paid for neither the reverend nor the jeweller, and that he had stolen several pigs and a saddle. Morant spent only a week in jail for the thefts (the case was dismissed) and shortly afterwards Bates and Morant separated. They never officially divorced, likely due to the cost, divorces only being granted under specific circumstances, and the divorce laws unilaterally favouring men. Bates then moved and kept their marriage a secret.
By the end of 1884, Bates had found employment as a governess and maid on a small property in Nowra, NSW. Here she met Jack Bates on Christmas Eve, the eldest son of her employer and a drover. He proposed a few days later and they married on 17 February 1885. Her marriage certificate gives her age as twenty-one, though she was twenty-five. Due to his occupation, Jack would sometimes spend months away at a time, having to move cattle over great distances.
Bates also married Ernest Baglehole that year on 10 June 1885, at St Stephen's Anglican Church, Newtown, Sydney, again claiming to be twenty-one years old. She had received a letter from him three days after her wedding to Jack Bates, who by then had already left for work. It is not known how Baglehole managed to find Bates. Little about their relationship is known; Bates later burned their letters, wedding photos and her diaries, nor is any record of his death known.
Daisy Bates's only child, Arnold Hamilton Bates, was born on 26 August 1886 in Bathurst, New South Wales. While he was officially the son of Jack Bates, some biographers speculate that his actual father was Baglehole. The polygamous nature of Bates's marriages was kept secret during her lifetime.
Return to England: 1894 to 1899 On 9 February 1894, Bates returned to England. Before leaving she enrolled her son in a Catholic boarding school in Campbelltown, NSW and planned for him to stay with his paternal grandmother during the summer holidays at Pyree. She told Jack that she would return to Australia only when he had a home established for her. She arrived penniless in England as her bank had failed in a recession.
After arriving in London, she went home to Roscrea for some time, before returning once again to London. There she found a job working for journalist and social campaigner W. T. Stead. Despite her sceptical views, she worked as an assistant editor on the psychic quarterly Borderlands. She left Stead's employment in 1896. It is unclear how she supported herself until 1899. That year she set sail for Western Australia after Jack wrote to say that he was looking for a property there.
Emigration to Western Australia: 1899 to 1914 Growth as a writer: 1899 to 1904
On her return voyage she met Father Dean Martelli, a Roman Catholic priest who had worked with Aboriginal people and who gave her an insight into the dire conditions they faced. It was suggested that she join an expedition to a Catholic Mission at Beagle Bay, where a dictionary of Nyulnyul, the local language, was being compiled.
She arrived in Fremantle with enough money to buy the lease for a large plot of land named Ethel Creek Station, several hundred cattle, and a block of land in Fremantle. The source of this great sum of money is unknown. She found a Catholic boarding school in Perth for her son, Arnold, and organised for him to stay with another family. She became involved in the Karrakatta Club where she met Dr Roberta Jull.
Shortly after 1900 began, Jack Bates left for Ethel Creek Station and Daisy Bates followed in March. She travelled via a coastal steamship to Cossack, joined Jack and made their way to Ethel Creek Station. After arranging the building of a cattle run and homestead, they began the return journey home; first to Port Hedland and then Carnarvon by buggy, and then to Perth via steamer.
In August (no more than a month after arriving back in Perth), Bates joined Bishop Matthew Gibney and Father Martelli to the mission at Beagle Bay. Before arriving, they stayed in Broome for a few weeks. While there, Bates witnessed the sex trafficking of Aboriginal women within the pearling industry. While in Beagle Bay, Bates assisted in nursing unwell Aboriginal women, repairing buildings, fences and wells, and in yarding cattle.
They had returned to Perth by March 1901. She was invited to a garden party at Government House on 24 July 1901, where George V; retrieved her umbrella after she dropped it, making the umbrella a treasured heirloom of hers. Bates soon published two articles in Western Australia's Department of Agriculture's journal. The first article, titled Possibilities of Tropical Agriculture in Nor' west, was published in July 1901 and is primarily focused on the agricultural successes of the mission at Beagle Bay. The second article, titled From Port Hedland to Carnarvon by Buggy, was published two months later and is an account of her trip with Jack after leaving their cattle station.
In February 1902, the Bates family moved to Broome, where Jack had a job on Roebuck Plains Station. They left on a droving trip with 700–1000 cattle in April. The drive was a failure as 200 cattle intended for Ethel Creek station were lost. Bates rested at the station before leaving for Perth, where she arrived on 21 November 1902. She covered over in this six month long trip, providing material for a series of articles titled Through the Nor-West on a Side-Saddle. These were published in the Catholic paper The W.A. Record, which was managed by Bishop Gibney. Her first published writings on Aboriginal Australians are in these articles, many of which use deprecatory language. In the articles she published soon after the trip, as well as in the article she published twenty years later, she omitted any mention of Jack.
During 1901 and 1902, Bates had collected information on various dialects, practices and oral histories of the peoples of the Kimberley region. This material went largely unpublished until 1985.
Bates's employment at the W.A. Record ended sometime in May 1903. On 4 August she became the first woman to publish an article in the engineering journal, Cassier's Magazine. She omitted her gender by signing the article as "D.M.B". In December she was hired by the Western Mail to write a series of articles on mining in the Murchison goldfields of Western Australia, which she travelled through for three months.
Beginning of anthropological career: 1904 to 1914