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.
Contents
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, 40 kilometres (25 mi) 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.
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
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.
South Australia: 1914 to 1951
She hired a camel buggy and in May travelled to Yalata Station with a married couple, Balgundra and Gauera – a Mirning man and Wirangu woman she had become friends with. At Yalata Station, Balgundra and Gauera returned to Eucla aboard the camel buggy. Bates stayed for a month before leaving for Adelaide aboard a steamer.
On 29 July 1914, Bates was interviewed by the South Australian Government's "Committee of Inquiry into Aboriginal Affairs" at Parliament House. She objected to any policy which brought Aboriginal people into missions or allowed them to gather near towns. She instead advocated for her own appointment as a Protector of Aborigines, a salary of £200 a year and that she be equipped with a camel buggy. With this, she said that she would travel the region, find camps of Aboriginal people and act as "an intermediary between them to help settle their quarrels and help protect them from their own people and the whites."
The congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science opened in Adelaide on 3 August. Bates attended the congress over the coming weeks in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. On the third day of the congress it was announced that the United Kingdom, and by extension Australia, had joined World War I. At the congress in Sydney she met the future anthropologist Olive Pink, who she would correspond with. Bates's son Arnold was living in Sydney and was about to join the war. While there Bates saw him for the second-to-last time; it was also the only time she ever met her daughter-in-law and grandson.
At the congress, Brown presented a paper titled Varieties of Totemism in Australia. Bates said Brown presented a paper titled The Myths and Legends of the Western Australian Aborigines and that after his presentation she was invited to comment; she complimented him on presenting her work so well that she had nothing to add. Only Bates's account of this event exist. While Brown is known to have plagiarised others on multiple occasions, whether or not he plagiarised Bates is uncertain. Anthropologists Isobel White and Rodney Needham agreed, in the very least, that he did not give her due credit for her work.
In September, Bates returned to Adelaide from Sydney. In November or later she returned to Yalata Station at Fowlers Bay. There she received the news that her application for the position of a Protector had been rejected. Largely due to the war reducing the market for her articles, there is little information regarding Bates for the next four years, though it is known that she continued her ethnographic work.
Involvement with Australian Aboriginal peoples
Bates was influenced by the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism and believed that Aboriginal Australians were primitive and "physically uncivilizable". She consequently believed, as did many others in her time, that Aboriginal Australians were a "dying race". Therefore, her mission was to "smooth the dying pillow" and to record as much as she could before they disappeared. Bates devoted 40 years of her life to studying Aboriginal peoples' cultures. Evaluations of the work she conducted over this time have varied greatly.
Many contemporaries were highly critical of her. Two activists for Aboriginal civil rights, William Harris and Mary Bennett, considered her to be one of the worst enemies of the Aboriginal peoples and that she exploited them for her own gain. The medical practitioner and geologist Herbert Basedow – who had led an expedition through the north-west of South Australia and inspected the health of Aboriginal people at Ooldea in 1920 – was critical of her claims of cannibalism, suggesting that she was "wildly exaggerating".
The international success of her book The Passing of the Aborigines granted her the popular reputation as an expert on the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. However, the book was severely criticised by several academics. Anthropologist Ted Strehlow wrote in 1968 that it was "riddled with inaccuracies" and marred by baseless tales about cannibalism. The anatomist and anthropologist Andrew Abbie wrote in 1969 that because of Bates's claims of cannibalism, he "strongly suspected Mrs. Bates was equally in error in [other] fields". The anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt, who conducted fieldwork at Ooldea in 1941, wrote in 1977 that Bates's "notes are the only ones available for some groups of Aboriginals" but that much of her work was not "seriously anthropological" and left much to be desired.
Bates's posthumously published book The Native Tribes of Western Australia was the product of nearly a decade of research conducted by her throughout the south-west of Australia. Anthropologist Isobel White edited the book, allowing it to be finally published in 1985. White suggested that the book would "remain [Bates's] greatest contribution to our knowledge of Aboriginal life-styles before these were changed by contact with Europeans". She explained that Bates's success was due to her living with the people she studied and by "sitting on the ground and sharing her food with them, observing their behaviour and listening". This research method would not be common in anthropology for many years. White noted that Bates's personal attitudes "coloured" her interpretations; she described Bates's contradictory views on the role of women in Aboriginal societies as evidence. She wrote that Bates's research compares well to her contemporaries' and where it failed later anthropological standards, this was due to her sharing the beliefs and values of her generation. White concluded that, though Bates had severe faults and though her later work at Ooldea lacked the quality of her earlier work, her "reputation as an anthropologist and an authority on the Aborigines of Western Australia" is "well deserved".
Digital database
The goal of the Digital Daisy Bates project, co-ordinated by Nicholas Thieberger, was the digitisation, transcription and geocoding of the word lists compiled by Bates in the 1900s. The geocoding allows the origin of the words and wordlists to be presented on a map.
Bates's fictitious and misleading claims
Daisy Bates made several false statements about her personal and professional history. This has contributed to scholars questioning the reliability of her anthropological work.
She described her family as landowning Irish Anglican aristocracy, when in fact her parents were Catholics and "lived in modest circumstances above the family bootery" which they rented. In defence of Bates, Reece states that "as a poor Irish Catholic immigrant girl seeking to make her way in colonial Australia, she had every reason to reinvent her early life". De Vries similarly concludes that, because "anti-Catholic and anti-Irish prejudice was rife in North Queensland", she falsified her family background to "be treated with respect".
From around 1912, Bates described Jack Bates, her separated husband and father of her child, as "my late husband", when he actually died more than 20 years later (in 1935 in Mullewa, Western Australia, near Geraldton).
Bates wrote in 1936 that shortly before returning to Australia in 1899, The Times had accepted an offer of hers to investigate claims of cruel treatment of Aboriginal people in the north of Western Australia. She said she began this investigation shortly after arriving in Perth and that her findings had been published by The Times. Recent biographers express varied levels of scepticism towards Bates's account. Reece and Hogan question the likelihood of a formal commission, with Hogan noting that "No record of a formal assignment from the Times exists". According to De Vries, Bates's claim of being a freelance correspondent for The Times "was untrue" as the newspaper had "merely agreed to publish a letter to the editor if she sent one". Her first known publication in The Times is from 1904 – a letter sent in response to charges of mistreatment of Aboriginal people made by Walter Malcolmson in the same year.
Bates also made many "sensational" claims regarding cannibalism among Aboriginal people without convincing evidence. While some Aboriginal peoples practised cannibalism (much of which was done as part of mortuary rituals and involved only parts of the body being eaten), Bates developed what has been described as a "fixation" and as a "morbid preoccupation" with the topic later on in her life. De Vries notes that "This became worse in her seventies and eighties as her dementia increased." Over forty references to cannibalism can be found in her contributions to tabloid newspapers. Eleanor Hogan says that "it wasn't until she began camping at Ooldea that she persistently advocated this practice was rife across the country." While confirming that cases of cannibalism after infanticide occurred in some Aboriginal groups, anthropologists Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt rejected Bates's claims regarding its prevalence as "grossly exaggerated". Reece thinks that she spread misleading tales of widespread cannibalism because such stories sold well and journalism was her chief means of financial support.
Personality and views
Bates was known for her strict lifelong adherence to Edwardian fashion, which included wearing a coat, corset, ankle length skirt, boots, gloves and a veil. She remained physically fit into her late eighties and maintained a morning skipping-rope routine until then. In earlier years she did calisthenic exercises and used dumb-bells. She carried a .32 revolver during her time in the outback and was a good enough shot to hunt game, which included rabbits. Bates said that in her younger years she liked to "Just meet, love, then part—perhaps never see each other again. It was fun that way." She swore off ever having sex again after the birth of her son, Arnold.
She was a non-denominational Christian and great admirer of Charles Dickens. She supported the British Empire and monarchy, and was a critic of trade unions. Many of her contemporaries found her personality to be autocratic; her secretary believed that her difficulty working with others was why she spent so much time in the desert.
Recognition and memberships
In 1907, Bates was elected a member of the Victorian branch of Royal Geographical Society and appointed an honorary corresponding member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. In May 1934, she became a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE).
In popular culture
Marjorie Gwynne's 1941 painting of Bates shows her sitting at a desk sorting through correspondence. The portrait now hangs in the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Sidney Nolan's 1950 painting Daisy Bates at Ooldea shows Bates standing in a barren outback landscape. It was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia.
An episode in her life was the basis for Margaret Sutherland's chamber opera The Young Kabbarli (1964).
Choreographer Margaret Barr represented Bates in two dance dramas, Colonial portraits (1957) and Portrait of a Lady with the CBE (1971).
In 1972, ABC TV screened Daisy Bates, a series of four 30-minute episodes with art by Guy Grey-Smith; the music was composed by Diana Blom and sung by Lauris Elms.
Her involvement with Aboriginal people is the basis for the 1983 lithograph The Ghost of Kabbarli by Susan Dorothea White.
In 2002, a dramatised documentary about Bates was produced.
In 2007, Tales of Kabbarli, a one-woman play with Daisy Bates as the sole character, was first performed. Since opening and at least until 2024, Bates has been played by Robina Beard. It is set in 1939 at Bates's camp in Pyap, Victoria.