Florence appears to have spelled her name as 'Florance' on the petition sheet.
Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Florence Woods was born about 1867 in New Zealand – the daughter of Thomas Woods, a stage hand and caretaker at the Princess Theatre in Dunedin, and Eliza. Florence's sister Cecilia also signed the 1893 suffrage petition.
Florence lived with her family in High St and, in 1893, she was working as a dressmaker.
She married Thomas Torpy, a habitual bookmaker, in 1911. They had three children.
In the 1920s the family moved to the North Island where Florence ran the Railway Hotel in Fordell, the Commercial Hotel in Waverley and later a restaurant in Hamilton.
Thomas died in 1941. Florence’s place and date of death are unknown.
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
Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.
Community contributions