Cybele Ethel Kirk

Cybele Ethel Kirk (1 October 1870 – 19 May 1957) was a New Zealand temperance and welfare worker, suffragist, and teacher. Kirk was one of the first women appointed Justice of the Peace in New Zealand. After serving for many years as president of the Wellington chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand (WCTU NZ), she was elected in 1930 as the national Union's recording secretary. She simultaneously served as president of the National Council of Women of New Zealand from 1934 to 1937. She was elected president of the WCTU NZ in 1946, serving in that role through 1949. Early life Kirk was born in Auckland in New Zealand on 1 October 1870. Her parents were Sarah Jane and Thomas Kirk. Her father was an enthusiastic botanist who was a museum curator who later lectured on the natural sciences at Wellington College. She was one of nine children and five, including Thomas, Harry and Lily, who survived to adulthood. She used the name, Cybele, as a child but used, Ethel, in later life. When she was three her family moved to Wellington as her father continued his career in Botany. She, her sisters and her mother assisted her father by gathering plants. Her mother Sarah Jane Kirk was a leader in the Wellington Christian Ladies' Association and the Wellington chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand; and she encouraged her three daughters to participate in these organizations as they worked to support impoverished families and victims of domestic violence. However, when Cybele was singled out to serve as an officer in the Society for the Protection of Women and Children, a new organization started up by her sister Lily, Sarah Jane protested as she thought the work to be too difficult for the delicate nature of Cybele's health at the time. In 1893, Cybele Kirk was one of over 30,000 women who signed the petition for the New Zealand Parliament to extend political franchise to women. At that time she lived on Brougham Street in Mt. Victoria, Wellington.