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Skip to contentA foundation member of the Karrakatta Club and the Women Writer’s Club, Muriel Chase was social editress of the West Australian from 1903.
In addition to writing for the West Australian, Chase wrote for the Western Mail under the pseudonym of Adrienne, and campaigned for more social welfare services throughout the Western Australian community. She wrote for the paper’s Children’s Corner as ‘Aunt Mary’, and recruited her younger readers as ‘silver links in a chain of service’. In this way she helped to establish the Silver Chain District Nursing Association, raising enough money by 1904 to fund a district nurse who visited her patients by bicycle. The work of the district nurse raised awareness in the community of the need for hospitals and homes, both for infants and the elderly. Occasionally, Chase herself would relieve the district nurse on night duty.
Born Muriel Cooper, she had married Ernest Edward Chase in 1900. A much-loved member of the Western Australian community, she was survived by two daughters.
Sources used to compile this entry: Stewart, Noel, 'Chase, Muriel Jean Eliot (1880 - 1936)', in Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, Australian National University, 2006, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070630b.htm.
Barbara Lemon
Created: 4 October 2007, Last modified: 29 April 2009
http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE2754b.htm
