Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Fanny Buswell was born about 1837 in Oxfordshire, England.
She married James Gubbins, a glover, in 1858 and they had eight children, one who died in infancy, before the family emigrated to Otago in 1874 on the Scimitar.
Their youngest son Louis died on the voyage from scarlet fever.
The family settled in Dunedin where their last three children were born, two of these children also died in infancy.
James worked as a foreman at the gas works before he died in 1881 when their youngest child was three-years-old.
When Fanny signed the suffrage petition she was living in Grosvenor St, Kensington working as a nurse.
She died on 24 November 1923 and is buried in the family grave in the Southern Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Free BDM https://www.freebmd.org.uk
GRO England https://www.gro.gov.uk
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz