Wilhelmina Sherriff Bain

Overview

Wilhelmina Sherriff Bain born Edinburgh, Scotland September 5, 1840 (d. 1944). New Zealand pacifist who opposed Boer War; promoted arbitration and disarmament as alternatives to war; she said she "would live, and die, for Peace" (Dict. New Zealand Bio.); opposed conscription 1909; teacher, feminist, suffragist, poet.

Quotations

"[T]he cult of Moloch had widened and strengthened until it appeared to have become the ruling passion of the human race." (May 1900, in Megan Hutching, "'Mothers of the World': Women, Peace and Arbitration." New Zealand Journal of History, p. 176, 1993)

"[I]f any section of humanity has cause to be interested in the prevention of war, that section is womenkind. . . In the wider field of devastated homes and maimed lives, and it is the women who have had to bear the brunt of this suffering." (London, July 1899, in Hutching, p. 176; photo nzhistory.net.nz)