ABSTRACT
In this final biographical case study, the role of evangelicals within the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is explored. Nicholls was a Wesleyan Methodist who was born in South Australia and commenced her public work within the local church as a Sunday school teacher and gospel speaker. She went on to play a key role in the temperance movement in South Australia, serving as president of the WCTU from 1889–97 and again in 1906–27. In the intervening years (1894–1903), she was the Australasian president of the WCTU. She launched the WCTU's magazine, Our Federation, and travelled extensively as a temperance speaker. Nicholls is an example of the advocacy carried out under the influence of the WCTU's ‘do everything’ policy and the growing international shape of the movement. This chapter focuses on the increasing tendency of the movement to lobby for legislative reforms aimed at reshaping the nation, and on the role that their campaigns for women's suffrage and moral reformation played in shaping the political culture of the newly-federated nation in the early twentieth century.
