Australian Dictionary of Biography

Mavis Jackson MBE, 1979, by Charles Bush

University of Melbourne Art Collection, Commissioned by International House 1979, Courtesy of the Estate of Charles Bush.

Edna Mavis Jackson (1913–2000), fund-raiser and microbiologist, was born on 21 July 1913 at Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, elder child and only daughter of English-born Walter James Swan, naval port officer, and his South Australian-born wife Edith Alice, née Ball. Educated (1920–31) at Methodist Ladies’ College, Melbourne, Mavis was active in school life, competing in athletics and swimming, and writing for the school magazine. In 1930 she won the school’s F. J. Cato scholarship as the best all-rounder in her class, and she was a prefect in her final year.

From 1932 Swan studied science at the University of Melbourne (BSc, 1936), where she displayed the community involvement that characterised the rest of her life. In 1936 she was a member of the Students’ Representative Council and secretary of the Committee of Melbourne University Women. She was active in raising funds to furnish the university’s new Union House and was a committee member for the Women’s College appeal. It was through these activities that she met Alice Paton, whose husband (Sir) George Paton was professor of jurisprudence and later the university’s vice-chancellor. Swan would later work with Alice Paton to raise funds for another residential college, International House. Graduating in December 1936, Swan was one of only three women science graduates alongside fourteen men. She subsequently became a committee member of the Victorian Women’s Graduate Association.

In April 1940 Swan became engaged to Alan Vaughan Jackson (1912–2000), a pathologist and captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps. She enlisted in the Voluntary Aid Overseas Service on 11 November 1941 and worked briefly as a microbiologist with the AAMC and as a blood transfusion officer at the Heidelberg Military Hospital. On 23 March 1942, at the Stow Memorial Church in Adelaide, she married Jackson while he was on leave from duty in the Middle East. The next month she requested a discharge from the VAOS and over the next five years would have three children.

In 1951 Jackson was invited by (Sir) Ian Clunies Ross to join the planning and fund-raising committee for a new residential college at the University of Melbourne, Australia’s first ‘International House,’ which opened in 1957 and catered to both Australian and international students. It was the beginning of an involvement that would continue for nearly thirty years. Her most significant contribution was as inaugural secretary (1953) and then president (1954–67) of the International House Women’s Auxiliaries. She oversaw concerts, fêtes, lunches, and other activities, and by 1967 the auxiliaries had raised more than £130,000. One of her biggest projects was the 1961 building appeal for the construction of International House’s second accommodation building. She was often called upon to undertake the more domestic aspects of preparations for International House: advising on kitchen design, choosing furniture, and sewing curtains and bedspreads. A founding member (1955–79) of the International House council, she would later become the first woman to chair the council (1973–79).

Supporting International House was not Jackson’s only philanthropic activity. She was a board member of the Yooralla Hospital School for Crippled Children (1954–60), the National Council of Women of Victoria (1957–60), and the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria (1967–84). From 1962 to 1977 she worked in the Alfred Hospital’s pathology department, where her husband was the director, establishing a cytology unit. A member of the Lyceum Club (president 1973–75), she was made an honorary life member in 1995.

Jackson was appointed MBE in 1968 for her role at International House and was awarded the Queen’s silver jubilee medal in 1977 in recognition of her community service. Those who knew her commented on her ability to draw others into a cause. Lyndal Pascoe, who as an undergraduate student in the 1950s worked with Jackson on fund-raising activities, remembered being ‘happily sucked along in the slipstream of her enthusiasm’ (quoted in Kilpatrick 2000, 7). Jackson’s grandson, James Kilpatrick, wrote of her quality of ‘motivating the right people to get things done’ (2000, 7).

On 6 August 2000, just four months after the death of her husband, Jackson died at Richmond, and was cremated after a funeral at Toorak Uniting Church. She was survived by her two sons, her daughter, and her eight grandchildren. A portrait by Charles Bush (1979) hangs in the dining hall at International House, where scholarships for academic potential and academic performance and the Mavis Jackson Room are named in her honour.