In 1889 Elizabeth Webb Nicholls became the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s South Australian president.
Nicholls held this post until she resigned in 1897 because of the demands of her position as Australasian president (1894-1903). She attended conferences in Paris, London, and Edinburgh in 1900, and in 1920 the tenth world convention of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Geneva.
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, with Nicholls as president, helped to gather 8268 of the 11,600 signatures for the 1894 suffrage petition to the South Australian parliament.
This gavel was presented to Nicholls in 1903 at the fifth triennial convention in Melbourne, commemorating her term as Australasian president of the union.
On loan from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, South Australia branch
