Background
Melville was born Gertrude Mary Day on 7 October 1884 to parents John Joseph Day, a sawyer, and Mary Ann Dunbar in Portuguese Macquarie, New South Wales.
Melville was born Gertrude Mary Day on 7 October 1884 to parents John Joseph Day, a sawyer, and Mary Ann Dunbar in Portuguese Macquarie, New South Wales.
In 1952 she was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council. She moved to Sydney to attend the Street Peter"s convent school in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. In 1925 she stood as an ALP candidate for the Eastern Suburbs district in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections, and in 1932 she was a candidate for the district of Hurstville.
Both times she was unsuccessful.
She was Mayor of Cabramatta–Canley Vale from 1945 to 1948. In 1952 Melville was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council in order to fill a vacancy caused by another member"s death.
Although she only served for one term, she earned a reputation as the "grand old lady of the Labor Party". She dedicated her time in parliament to being a "spokesman for the women" and "the little people", supporting equal pay for women, child welfare, housing and hospitals.
She died on 21 August 1959 in Little Bay, Sydney, and was buried in Randwick.
In the periods of 1922-1926 and 1950-1952, she was a member of the party"s central executive committee. Throughout the 1940s, she worked as a justice of the peace, a member of the New South Wales Board of Health, an alderman of the Cabramatta and Canley Vale municipal council, vice-president of the Country Women"s Association"s Cabramatta branch, and director of Fairfield Hospital.