This article is the second in a series of articles for The Circular by the members of the NCWNZ International Action Hub. The series highlights the many different international treaties to which New Zealand is a signatory and how this impacts women and girls.
One of the founding member organisations of the National Council of Women of New Zealand, the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand (WCTU NZ) led a campaign to contribute to an international initiative, "The Polyglot Petition for Home Protection." The 4,000+ signatories of women from New Zealand would have seen themselves as part of a global effort to convince heads of state to work together to address the scourge of violence resulting from the state support for and individual use of alcohol and drugs.
This world-wide campaign of the Polyglot Petition was the first global proclamation against the international trade in alcohol and drugs. The petition was initiated by the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1885, and its American president Frances Willard penned the petition to be submitted to national leaders. The destructive effects of the highly addictive version of opium used in the drug trade had funded and maintained several European empires through the nineteenth century. The Polyglot Petition was the first international campaign to raise awareness about the controls needed for opium and its derivatives as well as for the liquor trade.
The WCTU NZ was an anomaly in the political and social scene of New Zealand in its founding. Typically, the temperance societies expected women to stay in the background, preparing and serving tea. Women's leadership in these settings was usually expressed in leading hymn singing while men spoke at length from the podium and led the prayers. As a women-led organisation, the WCTU NZ offered a public platform not only for religious-based temperance homilies or fundraising efforts for social charities, but also for political speech designed to change local, regional and national laws. Specifically, for direct political action within the public arena. The preparation and launch of the Polyglot Petition serves as a paradigmatic case of this turn of women as political actors in the international public sphere.
In February 1887 at the second national convention of WCTU NZ, president Anne Ward née Titboald (1825–1896) laid out the plans for getting the Polyglot Petition campaign going. They had five years to get signatures back to the U.S. where they would be combined with the other nations' results. Emma Eliza Packe née de Winton (1840–1914), the founding president of the Christchurch WCTU, was elected national president at that conference. Under Ward's then Packe's leadership, the WCTU NZ local chapters joined together to present multiple petitions to the New Zealand Legislative Council: to change the hiring practices of local pubs to protect young girls and women, to expand women's suffrage from municipal voting to include them in the national elections, and more.
In her President's Address at WCTU NZ's Fifth Annual Convention in Dunedin in February 1890, Packe announced she and Mrs. George Clark (founding superintendent of the Franchise Department) had sent 4004 names to the U.S. to add to the Polyglot Petition. The WCTU ultimately gathered signatures of nearly eight million people in more than fifty countries. The first two conventions of the World's WCTU -- Boston in 1891 and Chicago in 1893 -- the petitions as wall-coverings to show the breadth and scope of the global effort. The New Zealand signatures were also part of the rolls exhibited in 1895 in Cleveland for the U.S. President Grover Cleveland before they were shipped to England to be presented to Queen Victoria in June 1895. and then on a world-wide tour.
Mounted on white muslin and bound by red and blue ribbons, the New Zealand signatures are archived in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union Administration Building in Evanston, Illinois, United States of America.
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See the other articles in this series here:
"Convention Against Torture & Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment," by Megan Hutching (August 29, 2025). https://www.ncwnz.org.nz/convention_against_torture
To read more articles from The Circular (September-October 2025) issue 654, click on the tag below.