Jessie Mary Lloyd

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Jessie Mary Lloyd (born Jessie Mary Hunt; also known as Jessie Mary Griffiths) was an Australian temperance campaigner who lived from 13 June 1883 to 24 October 1960. She led the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Victoria and later the national organization in Australia.

She was born in Wolverhampton, England, and moved to Melbourne, Australia, with her family before her first birthday. Her first husband, Robert Griffiths, was also from Wolverhampton; they married in East Kew, Victoria. He died in 1916, leaving her a widow with three children. Seven years later she married the Rev. George Samuel Lloyd, a Methodist minister, and adopted a fourth child, becoming Jessie Griffiths-Lloyd.

Lloyd was an active member of the WCTU and focused on temperance education. She worked on creating material for children and helped run reading contests to promote temperance-themed poetry and prose. By 1932 she had become president of the WCTU in Victoria, and from 1933 to 1945 she led the national WCTU. The group was promoting temperance information in children’s education and was involved in broader social causes during and after the war.

In 1935 she wrote a piece about the human eye being like a camera in the Eyre Peninsula Tribune, arguing that alcohol could harm sight. She also cared about world peace and hunger, helping to lead the WCTU’s peace efforts. At the Australian Association for Peace convention in 1957 she represented the WCTU, and she helped protest the United Kingdom’s testing of atomic bombs in Australia.

Jessie Mary Lloyd died in Blackburn, Victoria, in 1960, aged 77. She was also known as Jessie Mary Griffiths and, earlier, as Jessie Mary Hunt, and is remembered for her long involvement with the temperance movement in Australia.