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Lilian Edger

Signed family name
Edger
Signed given name
Lilian
Given address
Ponsonby College Auckland
Sheet number
Town/Suburb
Ponsonby
City/Region
Auckland
Notes

Lilian's sister Kate M. Evans (nee Edger) – the first woman in New Zealand to gain a university degree – also signed the petition.

Margaret Lilian Edger was the youngest daughter of Louisa Harwood and Rev. Samuel Edger. Along with her sister Kate she was one of the first British women to earn a university degree. Spent some years in Benares, India, where she taught and gave lectures on theosophy. She wrote several books on theosophical subjects. In New Zealand, she founded Ponsonby College, a secondary school for girls, in 1888. In the 1890s she was giving public lectures in Auckland on subjects such as ‘practical theosophy’ and ‘karma and re-incarnation’.  Lilian died in 1941, aged 79. 

Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.