Hey Sir Mawson, it’s Lady Denman’s glacier, right?
By Katharina Hochmuth
How and why, we name geographical landmarks is and has always been an important part of scientific expeditions.
During the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-14), Sir Douglas Mawson and his crew mapped and named large parts of the East Antarctic coastline. Nowadays, international bodies like the GEBCO Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN) have a dedicated process on how newly found geographical features are to be named. Mawson’s expeditioners had a more basic approach and named glaciers, mountains and whole ocean basins after themselves (I see you Mawson Sea!), or to honour patrons of their expedition, like in the case of Denman Glacier.
Lord Thomas Denman was named the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia and arrived with his wife Lady Gertrude Denman in Melbourne in 1911. For Lord Denman, this position was meant to be a stepping stone towards further political office within England’s Liberal Party, but his poor health and allergies – including to Australia’s national flower, the wattle – as well as his limited political talent, made this appointment the last of his political career.
However, for Lady Denman, the time in Australia was just a short stopover in a flourishing life-long career as suffragette, activist and supporter of women’s rights.
Lady Gertrude “Trudie” Denman grew up in the Liberal Pearson household, with both her parents being vocal supporters of women suffrage, the Irish home rule as well as free trade. Her marriage to Lord Denman was arranged to be mutually beneficial. The impoverished Lord Denman provided a political office to further the Pearson’s family’s political leanings, and Trudie’s fortune, which included a house in London as well as an estate in Sussex as a wedding present, would support the couple financially.
While in Australia, Lady Denman is mostly remembered for her announcement of the name of the nation’s new capital city, Canberra. In her role she also took a major interest in the National Bush Nursing Association. Her support led to the establishment of over 20 new clinics in Victoria alone during the Denman’s brief stay in Australia.
Back home in England, Trudie supported women rights as well as veteran causes not only financially, but also through her connections as well as talent for organising and setting up efficient systems for aid to reach people in need directly. Her own various endeavours centred around supporting working-class women to make their own choices in their private and professional lives. She used her aristocratic standing to advocate for birth control and abortion in a time when both of these topics were a societal taboo.
Her own unhappy marriage – she filed for divorce on returning from Australia, but as her new lover died shortly after in the first battles of WW1, she did not finalise the separation – encouraged her to use her personal resources to help women of all walks of life.
So, in my heart, Sir Mawson named Denman Glacier for Lady Gertrude Denman, a British women’s rights activist, who dedicated her entire life to support working-class girls and women.
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Source: Andrews, M. and Muggeridge, A. (2024) Reading the silences: Trudie Denman and the women’s movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Women’s History Review, Volume 34, Issue 1, 118–138 https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2024.2329454
