The first Mothers’ Club in Australia was founded at Princes Hill School in 1917 at the initiative of Infant Mistress Lillian Horner. Pleased by the response to her invitation that mothers visit the school and observe their children in the classroom, Lillian Horner suggested that mothers return each month and read stories to the children. So the Princes Hill Mothers’ Story Telling Club was formed. The experiment was quickly copied elsewhere, culminating with the founding of the Victoria Federation of State School Mothers’ Clubs in 1925. The -Federation had as its motto, ‘We serve the children’. Its constitution clearly set out the Clubs’ intentions: to provide mothers with opportunities to tell stories to children; to promote a true spirit of helpfulness and friendliness among members; and to further the interests of children attending school.1
The earliest surviving records of the Princes Hill Mothers’ Club are a Visitors Book recording the annual birthday festivities of the Club since 1932, and Minutes of Meetings from 1948. Medals were awarded to members who had served ten years or more. More than two hundred guests attended the club’s fiftieth anniversary party in 1967. In 1977, the Mothers’ Club celebrated its Diamond Jubilee.
...