Isabelle Bean

Isabelle Bean, born Isabelle Gater in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 1862 and known at different times as Edelfelt and John, was a nurse, theosophist and feminist who worked in Australia and died in 1939. After training as a nurse she migrated to Australia in the early 1880s, travelled with her first husband to New Guinea, and on her return trained further at the Women's Hospital in Melbourne, qualifying in obstetrics in 1894. Widowed in 1895, she joined the Theosophical Society, spent twenty-three years at its Sydney headquarters teaching classes and speaking at Sunday meetings in the Domain, and did social work around the city's wine bars. In 1908 she accompanied Annie Besant on a national lecture tour. Later she served as vice-president of the Queensland Women's Non-Party Association and as a delegate to the National Council of Women.