Browse Entries

Biographical entry Heagney, Muriel Agnes (1885 - 1974)

  • Click to view this Image

    Muriel A. Heagney, courtesy of Photograph from Andrew Scott, reDISCOVERING Labor. Sources of Victorian ALP History, Australian Labor Party (Victorian Branch), 1991, p.5..
    Details

Born
1885
Died
1974
Occupation
Trade Union - Organiser

Summary

Muriel Heagney was a trade union organiser and writer who was particularly interested in improving the conditions of women workers.

Born in Brisbane and educated at a Richmond convent in Melbourne, Heagney was trained as a teacher, but abandoned this vocation in 1915 when she went to work as a clerk for the Department of Defence.

She was involved for several decades in the fight for equal pay for women, having served on the committee of the Workers' Educational Association, the Victorian central executive of the Labor Party (1926-1927) and as an investigator for the Federated Unions of Australia in their submission to the Commonwealth Royal commission on the basic wage.

In the 1940s, she worked as an organiser for the Amalgamated Engineering Union in Queensland, and upon her return to Melbourne in the 1950s, embarked upon a history of the trade union movement which was never completed. She died in St Kilda in 1974.

Skip to

Archival resources

State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection

  • Muriel Agnes Heagney - Papers, 1936-1968, 1936 - 1968, MS 9106; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details

The University of Melbourne Archives

  • Melbourne Trades Hall Equal Pay Committee - Records, 1940 - 1967, 1978.0110; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details
  • Trade Union Equal Pay Committee - Records, 1940 - 1967, 1984.0145; The University of Melbourne Archives. Details

University of Wollongong Archives

  • 'Arbitration at the cross roads: digest of opinion on legal wage fixation' by Muriel Heagney, 1954, A730; University of Wollongong Archives. Details

Published resources

Book Sections

  • Bremner, Jennie, 'Muriel Heagney', in Radi, Heather (ed.), 200 Australian Women: a Redress Anthology, Women's Redress Press Inc, New South Wales, 1988, pp. 148-149. Details

Journal Articles

  • Lake, Marilyn, 'Independence of Women and the Brotherhood of Man: Debates in the Labour Movement over Equal Pay and Motherhood Endowment in the 1920s.', Labour History, vol. 63, 1992, pp. 1-25. Details

See also

Digital resources

Title
Muriel A. Heagney
Type
Image
Source
Photograph from Andrew Scott, reDISCOVERING Labor. Sources of Victorian ALP History, Australian Labor Party (Victorian Branch), 1991, p.5.

Details

Bruce A. Smith

Created: 6 May 2001, Last modified: 14 December 2001