Ethel Pedley (1859–1898)

Ethel Pedley was born at Acton, an area of West London, the daughter of Frederick Pedley and his wife Eliza Dolby. She began taking piano lessons at age five. Due to her father's poor health, the family emigrated to Australia in the 1870s, but Ethel returned to London to attend the Royal Academy of Music. She studied with her uncle by marriage Prosper Sainton, a French violinist, and her aunt Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, a famous contralto. In 1882, Ethel went back to Sydney, where she taught singing and the violin and founded the all-female St. Cecilia Choir. In 1896, she traveled to London with her companion Emmeline Woolley to ask the Boards of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music to extend their examinations to the Australian colonies. They succeeded, and Ethel was named the Board's only representative in Australia at the time. In addition to her music career, Ethel published one book for young people, Dot and the Kangaroo, with illustrations by Frank P. Mahony. It was issued posthumously in 1899 and became a classic of Australian literature for children, adapted into a stage play, an animated film, and other media. Ethel died of cancer in 1898 at the age of 39.