Mrs Dance

Signed family name

Dance

Signed given name

Mrs

Given address

Queenstown

Sheet number

107

Town/Suburb

Queenstown

City/Region

Otago

Notes

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

Elizabeth Rebecca Rabbits (also known as Jane Roberts) was born in 1842 in Kingsclere, Hampshire, England – the daughter of Sarah Rabbitts, a farm servant.

Her mother married in 1850 and they lived in Newbury, Berkshire where Elizabeth married Joseph Dance, an engine driver about 1868.

They had a daughter in 1873 before they emigrated to Otago in 1874 on the Corona and they had a son the year after their arrival.

The family lived in Queenstown where Joseph died in 1878, aged 32.

Elizabeth supported her family by cleaning the local school and doing laundry. At the time that she signed the suffrage petition her occupation was washerwoman.

By 1904 she found it hard to keep working and applied to the Charitable Aid Board for assistance – she was granted 4s a week.

Elizabeth died on 25 August 1917 at the Lake County Hospital and is buried with Joseph in the Queenstown Cemetery.

Her obituary said 'truly may it be said of the late Mrs Dance that she was a type of the real pioneer. She was possessed of a hardihood and courage that faced hardships and privations with a quiet endurance – and most of our townspeople well know she had more than her share of the sorrows and trials that beset existence on this mundane sphere. Yet she bore them all with cheerful resignation. An industrious independent woman, she worked hard all her life, and not until her strength went from her did she cease her round of toil. She was a most faithful and honest servant in whosesoever service she was employed, and it may be said in all sincerity that she has earned her rest.'