Eveline Willett Cunnington

Cunnington was born Eveline Willett Leach in Briton Ferry, Glamorganshire, Wales, on 23 April 1849. She was the daughter of a wealthy owner of a lunatic asylum. Her father sent her to school in France and she also spent three years at Queen's College in London. She emigrated to Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1875. She married Capel Baines on 8 April 1876 and they moved to South Australia where Capel worked as a clerk. Her husband died suddenly of a heart attack in August 1883 while they were visiting her family in England. Her second husband was Herbert James Cunnington, an electrical engineer, and they married on 18 December 1884.[1]

She became a member of ladies' committee of the Canterbury Female Refuge in 1891, was present at the first meeting of the Canterbury Women's Institute in 1892,[1] and in 1895 became a prison visitor, one of the first women in New Zealand to hold such a position. She was a founding member of the National Council of Women of New Zealand and of the Canterbury Fabian Society. Her written works were published posthumously in 1918.[2]

Much of her activism concerned girls and young women. She campaigned to have the age of consent raised to 18 or 21, to make it illegal for girls under the age of 21 to enter brothels[1] and she opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts due to the double standards it placed on women.[3] she also campaigned for changes in women's prisons such as female inspectors employed in women's prisons and education of prisoners. She provided clothes and accommodation for young women released from prison and often let them live in her home.

Cunnington died on 30 July 1916 at her holiday home in Sumner.[1]