‘The Nation’s Health Is the Nation’s Wealth’: Portia Geach (1873–1959) and the Good Health Movement in Interwar Australia

Abstract

In the interwar period, the Australian artist and activist Portia Geach was a leading advocate of the ‘good health movement’ in Australia. Geach produced a public campaign promoting nutritious eating and rejuvenation practices, helping to introduce a health consciousness to the Australian public. A ‘female sojourner’, her ideas about diet and health were imported to Australia from across the globe, where she became educated on nutrition science, home economics, natural health, and physical exercise. By foregrounding Geach as a leader of the good health movement, and an active participant in cultural formations, this article highlights an avenue through which Australian women articulated their expanding role in public life during the interwar period, and how women's leadership roles were formed through transnational engagement. Her participation in cultural exchanges helped to create a new national public health discourse led by women.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Professor Joy Damousi, Associate Professor David Goodman and Dr Georgina Arnott for their helpful comments and indispensable advice regarding this article.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘Artist and Enthusiastic Philanthropist’, Table Talk, 12 February 1925, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146561600 (accessed 12 July 2022).

2 Reddie Mallett, Nature's Way: A Means of Health without Medicine, Australian edn (Melbourne: E.W. Cole, 1920).

3 Ibid., 12–13.

4 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain 1880–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), introduction, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280520.001.0001 (accessed 12 July 2022).

5 ‘A Vitamine Tea and Vital Truths Told’, Table Talk, 12 February 1925, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146561575 (accessed 20 July 2022).

6 Other advocates included the nature cure activist and physical culturalist Madame Alwyn, physical education proponent George Dupain, Northey Du Maurier, the dental surgeon Geo E. Payne Philpots, and health entrepreneur Alice Caporn.

7 See: P.S. Brown, ‘Nineteenth-Century American Health Reformers and the Early Nature Cure Movement in Britain’, Medical History 32, no. 2 (April 1988): 174–94; James F. Stark, ‘“Replace Them by Salads and Vegetables”: Dietary Innovation, Youthfulness, and Authority, 1900–1939’, Global Food History 4, no. 2 (3 July 2018): 130–51, https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2018.1460538 (accessed 12 July 2022); Jane M. Adams, Healing with Water: English Spas and the Water Cure, 1840–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015).

8 Alfred B Olson ‘The Nature of Disease and Its Cure’, Good Health 6, no. 8 (August 1908): 241, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/fyy2fzpn/items (accessed 2 March 2022).

9 Ibid.

10 See: Juliet Peers, ‘Portia Geach: Gippsland's Pre-Raphaelite?’, Arts Gippsland 11 (May 1993): 4–12; Victoria Hammond and Juliet Peers, Completing the Picture: Women Artists and the Heidelberg Era, 2nd edn (Melbourne: Artmoves, 1992); Judith Smart, ‘The Politics of Consumption: The Housewives’ Associations in South-Eastern Australia before 1950’, Journal of Women's History 18, no. 3 (2006): 13–39, https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2006.0047 (accessed 7 March 2022). See also: Jane Elix and Kate Moore, ‘Consuming Interests: Women's Leadership in Australia's Consumer Movement’, in Diversity in Leadership: Australian Women, Past and Present, eds Joy Damousi, Kim Rubenstein and Mary Tomsic (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014), 313–30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwvj5.20 (accessed 7 March 2022); Angela Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Yves Rees, ‘Travelling to Tomorrow: Australian Women in the United States, 1910–1960’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2016), https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/104532/1/ReesThesis2016.pdf (accessed 7 March 2022).

11 Historiography on the natural health movement in Australia includes Barbara Santich, What the Doctors Ordered: 150 Years of Dietary Advice in Australia (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1995), 81–3; Pauline McCabe, ‘Naturopathy, Nightingale, and Nature Cure: A Convergence of Interests’, Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery 6, no. 1 (February 2000): 4–8, https://doi.org/10.1054/ctnm.1999.0401 (accessed 3 March 2022). Modern body discourse emerged during the turn of the twentieth century, forming a bodily ideal drawing together modern aesthetics and modern science. The body became a site for eugenics discourse on national fitness, efficiency and racial purity: slender, white, and efficient, the body became a mechanised product: see Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546466.001.0001 (accessed 5 March 2022); Caroline Daley, Leisure and Pleasure: Reshaping and Revealing the New Zealand Body 1900–1960 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013).

12 See: Charlotte Macdonald, ‪Strong, Beautiful, and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, 1935–1960 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013); Jill Julius Matthews, ‘Building the Body Beautiful’, Australian Feminist Studies 2, no. 5 (December 1987): 17–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1987.9961563 (accessed 5 March 2022).

13 Yves Rees, ‘Sojourns: A New Category of Female Mobility’, Gender & History 31, no. 3 (2019): 717–36, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12443 (accessed 5 March 2022).

14 Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott, Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2008), introduction, eBook Collection (ESBCOhost).

15 Julie Carlier, Clare Midgley and Alison Twells, Women in Transnational History: Connecting the Local and the Global (London: Routledge, 2016), introduction, eBook Collection (ESBCOhost).

16 Angela Woollacott, ‘From Moral to Professional Authority: Secularism, Social Work, and Middle-Class Women's Self Construction in World War I Britain’, Journal of Women's History 2 (1998): 85.

17 Ibid.

18 Yves Rees, ‘“Bursting with New Ideas”: Australian Women Professionals and American Study Tours, 1930–1960’, History Australia 13, no. 3 (July 2016): 382–98, https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2016.1202370 (accessed 21 March 2022).

19 The Theories of the Late Alan Carroll in Relation to Health and Longevity (Sydney: The Central Press, 1922), Child Study and Adult Health Association of Australia, 1908–1950s, MLMSS 6362/1/2, SLNSW.

20 ‘Artist and Enthusiastic Philanthropist’.

21 Ibid.

22 Housewives’ Progressive Association, The Housewife 1, no. 1 (November 1933): 1–2.

23 ‘Ladies Letter’, Table Talk, 23 June 1910, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146116219 (accessed 6 March 2022).

24 Yves Rees, ‘The Quality and Not Only the Quantity of Australia's People’, Australian Feminist Studies 27, no. 71 (2012): 71–92, doi:10.1080/08164649.2012.648262 (accessed 5 March 2022); Yves Rees, ‘The Fight for the White Stuff’, Griffith Review 78 (2022), https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/the-fight-for-the-white-stuff/ (accessed 5 March 2022).

25 Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London, 4; Rees, ‘Travelling to Tomorrow’, 3.

26 See Yves Rees, ‘“A Season in Hell”: Australian Women, Modernity, and the Hustle of New York, 1910–1960’, Pacific Historical Review 86, no. 4 (2017): 632–60, https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2017.86.4.632 (accessed 5 March 2022).

27 ‘In Quest of Art’, Sun, 14 July 1910, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/229974105 (accessed 5 March 2022).

28 Helen Zoe Viet, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 1.

29 Lake Placid Home Economics Conference, 1901–08, Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Conference, Cornell University Library Digital Collections Bookreader, http://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=hearth6060826_5316_004#mode/1up.

30 Alice (Peloubet) Norton, Food and Dietetics (Chicago: American School of Home Economics, 1910), http://archive.org/details/fooddietetics01nort (accessed 17 April 2022).

31 The Housewife, November 1933, 1–2.

32 ‘Near and Far’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October 1922, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16046323 (accessed 6 March 2022).

33 Fran Baum, The New Public Health (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2015), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=4786467 (accessed 4 April 2022).

34 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, introduction.

35 Baum, 19.

36 Jane Carey, Taking to the Field: A History of Australian Women in Science (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2023), ch. 4, eBook Collection (Kobo), ISSN: 9781922633699.

37 Keith K. Farrer, To Feed a Nation: A History of Australian Food Science and Technology (Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing, 2005), ch. 16, eBook Collection (ESBCOhost), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=276186 (accessed 4 April 2022).

38 Baum, 19.

39 Marilyn Lake, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 13–14.

40 ‘The Dairy Cow’, Age, 5 November 1918, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article155233427 (accessed 28 July 2022).

41 S. Chant, ‘A History of Local Food in Australia 1788–2015’ (PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 2016), 49, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-history-of-local-food-in-Australia-1788-2015-Chant/98c86f036cfa8113dc8e910d4e6401f5d0ec895e (accessed 6 April 2022).

42 Jill Julius Matthews, ‪Dance Hall and Picture Palace: Sydney's Romance with Modernity (Sydney: Currency Press, 2004), 10.

43 Paul Van Reyk, True to the Land: A History of Food in Australia (London: Reaktion Books, 2021), 142.

44 ‘A Woman's Letter’, Bulletin 48, no. 2456 (10 March 1927): 26.

45 Ibid.

46 ‘Women's Clubs’, Telegraph, 4 March 1927, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article179348179 (accessed 27 April 2022).

47 ‘Poison in Foods’, Warwick Daily News, 30 October 1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175642593 (accessed 27 April 2022).

48 Activities Progressive Housewives’ Association, Files – Reports, 1952–66, Progressive Housewives’ Association, MLMSS 4155/H 3892/2, Mitchell Library Manuscript Collection, SLNSW.

49 Progressive Housewives’ Association, Files – President's correspondence, 1951–67, MLMSS 4155/H 3893/1, SLNSW.

50 Michael Symons and Gay Bilson, One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2007), ch. 10, eBook Collection (ESBCOhost), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=5739396 (accessed 24 April 2022).

51 ‘From Maid & Matron’, Daily Standard, 15 January 1925, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article179452786 (accessed 26 April 2022); ‘In Place of Meat’, Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1948, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article248278847 (accessed 26 April 2022).

52 ‘Artist and Enthusiastic Philanthropist’.

53 ‘Miss Geach's Lecture’, Sun, 31 October 1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article223574084 (accessed 6 April 2022).

54 Ibid.

55 ‘Going Strong’, Blue Mountain Echo, 11 August 1922, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article108240745 (accessed 6 April 2022); ‘Women’s Interest’, Land, 8 November 1946, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article105699453 (accessed 6 April 2022).

56 Pamphlet on Raw Milk (Natural) Versus Pasteurised, Progressive Housewives’ Association, MLMSS 4155/H3892/4/48, Mitchell Library Manuscript Collection, SLNSW.

57 ‘The People's Say: Our Milk and Our Babies’, The Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, 22 July 1921.

58 John Burnett, ‘Brown Is Best’, History Today 55, no. 5 (May 2005): 52–4.

59 R.B. Walker and Dave Roberts, From Scarcity to Surfeit: A History of Food and Nutrition in New South Wales (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1988), 82.

60 The Progressive Journal 1, no. 4 (7 May 1935), SLNSW.

61 ‘A Message for Home Makers from Miss P. Geach’, Barrier Miner, 14 January 1933, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48417723 (accessed 4 April 2022).

62 Pamphlet on Fresh Living Milk Versus Pasteurised (Dead) Milk, Progressive Housewives’ Association, MLMSS 4155/H3892/4/46, Mitchell Library Manuscript Collection, SLNSW.

63 Natural Food Company, Business and Company Records, 1903–22, Item no. 2/8546, file no. 27950, Public Records Office, NSW.

64 Santich, xxii.

65 Walker and Roberts, 185.

66 ‘Portia's Mail’, Sun, 24 August 1930, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article224259820 (accessed 6 April 2022).

67 Ibid.

68 President's Report, 1959–60, Progressive Housewives’ Association, MLMSS 4155/H3894, Mitchell Library Manuscript Collection, SLNSW.

69 ‘Portia's Mail’.

70 Ibid.

71 ‘Many Things Learnt Abroad’, Daily Pictorial, 7 February 1931, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article246422333 (accessed 6 April 2022).

72 ‘Talk of the Week’, Table Talk, 18 September 1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146558837 (accessed 17 April 2022).

73 ‘Talk of the Week’; ‘Back to Nature Meals’, Table Talk, 25 September 1924, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146558919 (accessed 17 April 2022).

74 ‘Back to Nature Meals’.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 James F. Stark, The Cult of Youth: Anti-Ageing in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), ch. 3, eBook Collection (ESBCOhost), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108695428 (accessed 5 March 2022).

78 P.W. Clements, Diet and Nutrition for the Australian People: By the Nutrition Committee of the Nation Health and Medical Research Council of Aust. (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941), 76.

79 Gayelord Hauser, New Health Cookery (New York: Tempo Books, 1930).

80 ‘7 Key to Good Health’, Progressive Housewives' Association, 1939-1970, MLMSS 4155/ H 3892/4/1, Mitchell Library Manuscript Collection, SLNSW.

81 ‘New Way Biscuit Pleases Portia’, Sun, 22 March 1931, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article224672133 (accessed 4 March 2022).

82 Ibid.

83 Peter Griggs, ‘Sugar Demand and Consumption in Colonial Australia’, in Food, Power and Community, ed. Robert Dare (Adelaide: Hyde Park Press, 1999): 74–90.

84 Van Reyk, 216.

85 Progressive Journal 1, no. 3 (5 April 1935), 4, SLNSW.

86 Ibid.

87 ‘Eat More Honey’, Sun, 4 February 1930, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article226033858 (accessed 6 March 2022).

88 See Ida Cogswell Bailey Allen, Mrs. Allen's Book of Sugar Substitutes (Boston: Small, Maynard & company, 1918), 13, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100153883 (accessed 6 March 2022).

89 ‘Rejuvenation Club for Housewives’, Evening News, 26 September 1929, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article201231885 (accessed 7 March 2022).

90 Ibid.

91 ‘Reduce and Rejuvenate’, Observer, 28 September 1929, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article165609478 (accessed 25 April 2022).

92 ‘Rejuvenation Club for Housewives’.

93 Stark, introduction.

94 Stark, ch. 5.

95 Matthews, ‘Building the Body Beautiful’, 17–34.

96 Progressive Journal, July 1935.

97 Progressive Journal 1, no. 7 (1 August 1935).

98 ‘Physical Fitness For All’, The Daily Telegraph, September 21, 1929, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article246289446 (accessed 27 March 2022).

99 ‘Portia Again’, Mercury, 21 September 1929, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article24289174 (accessed 26 March 2022).

100 ‘Sydney Day by Day’, Argus, 25 September 1929, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4039511 (accessed 26 March 2022).

101 Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London, 182.

102 ‘New Portia’, Sun, 20 September 1929, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article223506434 (accessed 28 March 2022).

103 Matthews, ‘Building the Body Beautiful’, 26.

104 ‘The Countrywoman’, Land, 28 December 1928, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article111655513 (accessed 28 March 2022).

105 For more on the connection between women travellers, modernity and autonomy, see: Angela Woollacott, Race and the Modern Exotic: Three “Australian” Women on Global Display (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2011); Sarah Galletly, ‘The Spectacular Traveling Woman: Australian and Canadian Visions of Women, Modernity, and Mobility between the Wars’, Transfers 1 (2017): 70, https://doi.org/10.3167/TRANS.2017.070106 (accessed 6 April 2022).

106 Matthews, Dance Hall and Picture Palace, 10–11, 193–4.

107 Ibid.

108 Rees, ‘The Fight for the White Stuff’.

109 Jane E. Hunt, ‘Finding a Place for Women in Australian Cultural History’, Australian Historical Studies 36, no. 124 (October 2004): 221–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/10314610408596286 (accessed 6 April 2022).

110 Carey, ch. 4.

111 ‘Portia Geach on the Air’, Wireless Weekly 20, no. 18 (28 October 1932): 56, https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/232975605?keyword=Portia%20Geach&l-format=Article (accessed 5 March 2022).

112 Miss Portia Geach, Obituary by Miss Ruby Duncan, 1959, Progressive Housewives’ Association, 1939–70, MLMSS 4155/3896/6, Mitchell Manuscript Archive Collection, SLNSW.