Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
124 F M Sim
Frances Mary Walters was born in 1858 in Victoria, Australia – the daughter of Joseph Walters & Martha McCabe. She married a barrister, William Alexander Sim on 6 January 1886 at her home in Victoria.William was from New Zealand and soon after their marriage they sailed for Otago and settled in Dunedin.
They had five children and when Frances signed the suffrage petition they were living in Drivers Rd, Maori Hill.
William was appointed to the position of Supreme Court judge in 1911 and he was knighted in 1924.
He died in 1928 and Frances died on 2 December 1933 – they were both cremated and Frances’ ashes are interred in the family plot in the Andersons Bay Cemetery.
Frances’ obituary said “the Otago branch of the Victoria League owes much to Lady Sim’s work on its behalf, especially since she was elected president in 1914.””For the past ten years Lady Sim held the presidency of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children”, “it is perhaps not so well known in New Zealand the Lady Sim was an authority on the life and works of Robert Browning”. She published, in total, five volumes which were well regarded overseas.
The full obituary can be found here; https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19331204.2.87
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
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au
BDM Victoria https://online.justice.vic.gov.au