Background
Daisy Bates was born Margaret Dwyer in County Tipperary, Ireland in 1859. Her mother, Bridget (née Hunt), died of tuberculosis in 1862.
Daisy Bates was born Margaret Dwyer in County Tipperary, Ireland in 1859. Her mother, Bridget (née Hunt), died of tuberculosis in 1862.
She was raised in Roscrea by relatives, and educated at the National School in that town.
In 1884 she emigrated to Australia for health reasons, and at Bathurst, New South Wales, she met and married John Bates. She returned to Britain in 1894 and took up journalism but in 1899 emigrated to Western Australia, partly in connection with a pastoral lease in which she was interested and partly on behalf of the Times to investigate charges of white cruelty to the aborigines. Bates's reports suggested that the aborigines were incompetently and unwisely managed but refuted the idea that they were being treated cruelly. Having discharged her commission, Bates remained in Western Australia and for 35 years lived as a solitary European among the aborigines. Her work was officially recognized by the Western Australia government, which commissioned her to study particular tribes and made her the state's traveling Protector of Aborigines. The death of her husband and the acquisition of property in the north of Western Australia did not distract her from the service to which she had now clearly resolved to devote her life and for which, in 1933, she was made a commander of the British Empire. The aborigines accepted her as their friend and referred to her as Kabbarli, or grandmother. She was admitted to some of their initiation ceremonies, from which their own women were excluded on pain of death, and made copious notes on all she observed, which formed the basis of a book she published in 1938. She was still working among the aborigines at the age of 80, but in 1945 ill health compelled her to retire to Adelaide. She died on April 18, 1951. Bates not only studied the aborigines but also helped to feed them, nurse them, and settle disputes between them. She took care to respect their tribal rules and customs and was critical of missionaries who attempted to undermine their beliefs and convert them to those of a totally alien world. She regarded the aborigines as a race doomed to eventual extinction but was concerned that the process should be as painless as possible. In this regard she concluded that what was needed was not "anthropological study of social laws" but "administration of British rule founded on our highest and best traditions. "
Records show that she married poet and horseman Breaker Morant (Harry Morant aka Edwin Murrant) on 13 March 1884 in Charters Towers; the union lasted only a short time and Dwyer reputedly threw Morant out because he failed to pay for the wedding and stole some livestock. Significantly, they were never divorced.
She then met John (Jack) Bates—like Morant, a bushman and drover—and they married on 17 February 1885. Their only child, Arnold Hamilton Bates, was born in Bathurst, New South Wales on 26 August 1886. The marriage was not a happy one, probably because Jack's work kept him away from home for long periods.
She also found time to marry Baglehole, her emigration voyage shipmate, in 1885 at St Stephen's Anglican Church, Newtown, Sydney. Although he is shown as being a seaman, he was the son of a wealthy London family and had become a ship's officer after completing an apprenticeship and this might have been an attraction for Daisy. The polygamous nature of these marriages was kept secret during Bates's lifetime.