Australian Dictionary of Biography

Bon Hull, Melbourne equal pay protest, 1969

Jessie Mary ‘Bon’ Hull (1915–2000), feminist activist, was born on 28 March 1915 at Richmond, Melbourne, eldest of three children and only daughter of Melbourne-born parents Claude Exton Davison, engine driver, and his wife Ruby Pearl, née Bishop. Bon’s family was working class and she grew up in Footscray, attending a local State school and then the Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy in the city. On 23 April 1938 she married David Edward Cullen, a salesman, at St John’s Church of England, Footscray. She was to have two sons, Peter and Phillip, and combined her family commitments with work as a seamstress and cutter and later a fashion designer and delicatessen owner. Having divorced her first husband in 1956, she married the radio journalist and magazine manager Allan Galbraith Hull, on 5 August 1957 at the Office of the Government Statist, Melbourne. She had another son, Ross, before separating from Hull in about 1970.

Bon Hull worked tirelessly to pioneer social and political change in support of women’s rights. As a founding member of the Women’s Action Committee, she helped to organise an ‘equal pay’ tram ride in April 1970 and protested against a Miss Teenage Quest in 1970 and 1971. With her friend Zelda D’Aprano, she wrote ‘one letter a week to the press’ (1995, 192). During a Vietnam War protest in August 1970, she intervened when she witnessed the brutal police treatment of a young woman. Charged with offensive language and resisting arrest, she proclaimed her innocence and refused to pay associated fines. This resulted in her incarceration at Fairlea Women’s Prison, an act of defiance that symbolised for D’Aprano the ‘strength and courage of women’ (1995, 207).

Hull’s radical activism occurred in the context of Melbourne’s women’s liberation movement, which demanded women-centred rights including abortion and free contraception. In a movement known primarily for inspiring younger women, she stood out as a woman in her mid-fifties who was distinctively ‘well dressed’ in suits and gloves. Remembered as ‘warm hearted’ and a ‘gutsy feminist’ (Merkenich 2000, 12), she possessed a keen awareness of ‘the tremendous suffering endured by women’ (D’Aprano 1995, 190), including Aboriginal women; after visiting Palm Island, Queensland, in 1973, she argued that ‘our black sisters … are more trampled on and suffer discriminations that leave us appalled’ (Taylor 2009, 91).

Instrumental in establishing a Women’s Liberation Centre in Melbourne in 1972—and groups which operated there included the Women’s Abortion Action Coalition and the Women’s Health Collective—Hull staunchly advocated repealing anti-abortion laws and for the right of women to control their bodies. In 1973 she jointly established the Abortion Trust Fund, which provided loans for low-income women to access abortions. She also gave her time generously to mentor younger activists. Her friend the feminist activist Jean Taylor recalled how, at age fifty-nine with ‘her stocky figure and grey hair and her fiery words’ (2009, 272), Hull spoke on women’s health issues to a La Trobe University women’s liberation forum, challenging those present to take radical action.

Hull’s determination to transform healthcare for women was unwavering, and in 1980 she published In Our Own Hands: A Women’s Health Manual. It was intended both to provide a resource for readers and to expose a healthcare system ‘that works particularly against women’ (Hull 1980, 234). In 1986 she was prominent in a campaign to retain Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Hospital at its city location. In a submission concerning its development, she argued that the hospital should be run ‘for women by women’ in a ‘well-known place for women of all classes, regardless of race, color or language’ (UMA 100/108). While the campaign failed to prevent the hospital’s relocation to Clayton—a great disappointment for Hull—the eventual retention of one of its buildings for the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre (opened in 1996) was a testament to ‘her strength and determination to fight for justice for all women’ (Taylor 2000, 6).

Personal transformation accompanied Hull’s political activism, as it did for many Australian women who developed woman-centred lifestyles. This was evident in her decision in the early 1970s to live in a women-only household and to adhere to strict rules stipulating that no males be allowed on premises, a policy she extended to her own sons. In later years she lived modestly in a bedsit, where she entertained friends by recounting stories of her life and generously sharing meals, while remaining politically engaged. Survived by her three sons, she died of heart disease on 16 June 2000 at South Caufield and was cremated. In an obituary Taylor remarked that ‘Bon Hull’s compassion and radical activism on behalf of women remains an inspiration to us all’ (2000, 6). In March 2004 she was inducted posthumously into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.