Kathleen Muriel Butler
Butler, Kathleen Muriel (1891-1972)
Kathleen Butler had no formal qualifications as an engineer, but played such a role in the creation of the Sydney Harbour Bridge that she became known as The Bridge Girl and The Godmother of the Bridge. The Father of the Bridge, John Bradfield, thought so highly of his Confidential Secretary that he stated in 1925 that without the assistance of this Australian girl, he might never have been able to bring the great scheme to a successful issue.[1]
Butler was born in Lithgow on 27 February 1891. The family lived in Mount Victoria where her English born father, William Henry Butler, was employed by the NSW Railways, eventually as the station master. Her mother was Annie Gaffney, an Irish immigrant, and it was to her that Kathleen later credited her competence in drawing and figures.
Her younger brother Roger (born 1897) did become a formally qualified civil engineer and also worked on the bridge, so perhaps the family made a unique contribution to the Sydney icon.
Kathleen attended school in Mount Victoria and later at Mount St Mary’s Convent in Katoomba. On leaving school sometime in the early years of the twentieth century Butler was appointed as a clerk and typist in the NSW government testing office at Lithgow ironworks, intended to check the quality of material produced there.
In 1910, aged 19, she transferred to the Public Works Department in Sydney, where she must have soon met Bradfield. She at first lived at 3 Mill Street, Hurlstone Park. In 1912 he formed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and City Transit Branch within Public Works, and Butler was the first person he appointed to the new organisation. This seems to have been a deliberate act rather than a quirk of history, as he recalled and recorded it in the introduction to his Doctor of Science in Engineering thesis twelve years later.
Butler later stated in a newspaper interview that:
- Bradfield from the beginning encouraged her interest in all mathematical calculations and conditions connected with engineering works.[2]
Two years later, in 1914, Bradfield made a study tour to America and Europe seeking knowledge about large bridges and city underground railways. His report was published in 1915 and became the basis for the Sydney City Railway. Butler apparently contributed much to the production of the document, as her Public Works Department record card includes an entry:
- Allowed Bonus of £10 in connection with typed calculations for Metro Rly Constrn O15.4339. [3]
About 1913 Butler’s parents, William and Annie, retired to a house which they may have bought new from its builder at 39 Acton Street, Hurlstone Park, and it is where Kathleen lived during her career working on the bridge, in the later years as owner after her parents’ deaths.
The Great War delayed work on the City Railway, although it had been commenced in 1916. When work resumed in 1922 the Sydney Harbour Bridge project was getting under way as well. Tenders had been called in September 1921 and in the preparation of the papers for that process Bradfield must be taken at his word:
- In preparing the Specification for the Sydney Harbour Bridge [Butler] was my only assistant; the technique of the Specification is hers, and it would I think be impossible to find a better arranged or better printed specification.[4]
To ensure that potential bridge builders submitted tenders Bradfield made a second trip to America and Europe in 1922. The Bridge Bill, which would authorise the work, was still before the NSW Parliament and, in Bradfield’s absence, Butler was given the task of supporting its passage. She wrote the notes which accompanied the bill and these were hailed as being crucial to its passage, late in 1922. Tenders for the bridge were open and many firms were interested and seeking advice and this became Butler's responsibility with Bradfield away overseas.
She was awarded an honorarium of £25:
- in recognition of services rendered during Mr Bradfield’s absence.[5]
Once the passage of the Act was published, The Blue Mountains Echo[6] either coined, or made early use of, the phrases The Bridge Girl and the Godmother of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. These became well known epithets for Kathleen in Sydney in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Bradfield had departed Australia during a state election which resulted in a change of government. The incoming government was less enthusiastic about the bridge than the former one, and the new Premier announced in the press[7] that a cable was to be sent to Bradfield, then believed to be in New York, to remain there and await further instructions. Butler circumvented the Premier’s plan by sending Bradfield a telegram advising him to take the first possible ship out of the United States, so as to not be there to receive the official telegram. It would seem likely that she was exchanging cables with him frequently about work and knew his exact location, whereas the Premier’s cable may have come through the Canadian Minister for Railways and Canals in Ottawa.[8]
Despite initial reservations, the new government did persist with the bridge and city railway projects. The 1921 tender documentation specified a cantilever bridge, but Bradfield learned on his trip that capable firms were willing to build an arch bridge, as he thought the better solution to the span. On his return to Sydney late in 1922 the specifications were withdrawn and re-issued – again requiring work from Butler.
In 1923 physical work commenced on the bridge project although no contract had been signed for the main span. Work was needed through North Sydney to gain railway access to the site and Bradfield wanted to demonstrate to firms preparing tenders that the work was going to proceed.
The Minster for Works, Richard Ball, ceremonially turned the first sod at the site of North Sydney station on 28 July 1923. While there are no pictures of Butler at the event and no actual words recorded, Bradfield in his speech is reported to have acknowledged the work of his Confidential Secretary.[9]
A few weeks later, on 19 September, another ceremony was staged as the first act of construction of the bridge, although much loose soil had already been moved and sheds erected with machinery installed. The first act was deemed to be the throwing of a switch to start an air compressor which supplied power to drill the first holes in the rock and this was considered as the second act. The holes were quickly charged with explosive and fired. Photos of the acts exist in Bradfield’s albums of the bridge work,[10] with the captions written or authorised by him, and they show Kathleen Butler throwing the switch and standing with the Minister and the Railways Commissioner watching the holes being drilled.
Bradfield undertook considerable public relations during the building of the bridge and railway and much of this was articles in newspapers, explaining the design and the construction process. Between 1922 and 1927 twenty-nine feature articles appeared in The Sydney Mail, a weekly newspaper, generally under the by-line written by Miss Kathleen M. Butler from the notes of J. J. C. Bradfield.
Some have Butler’s name at the end of the piece, and some are not credited directly, but all exist in two bound volumes in the Mitchell Library with the cover embossed with the words Articles on the Sydney Harbour Bridge by Kathleen M. Butler.[11] Much of the material is derived from documents written by Bradfield.
Late in 1923 Bradfield submitted his thesis to the University of Sydney for the degree of Doctor of Science in Engineering. It is presumed that Butler was involved in the physical production of the document, but it is most noteworthy for its foreword in which the author extols the contribution to the bridge and railway projects made by his Confidential Secretary:
- The first officer appointed to the Branch was Miss K.M. Butler, now my Confidential Secretary; she has at all times carried out her duties with foresight, tact and marked ability. In preparing the Specification for the Sydney Harbour Bridge she was my only assistant; the technique of the Specification is hers, and it would I think be impossible to find a better arranged or better printed specification. During my absence abroad in 1922 she carried out all correspondence with tenderers throughout the world, herself; she is present at all interviews with tenderers in Sydney, and myself alone excepted she alone knows of the many issues involved in tendering for the Bridge. Her conscientious and efficient help has materially lightened the responsibility which the design and construction of these great engineering works have entailed, and in this Thesis I wish to place on record my sincere thanks to the lady for her invaluable assistance.[12]
The only other person referred to in the thesis is Professor William Warren, Bradfield’s old teacher and mentor at the University, and he receives two short sentences.
Tenders for the bridge finally closed on 16 January 1924 and they were opened in the Minister’s office the same afternoon. Present were Bradfield, Minister RT Ball and his secretary EH Swift, Public Works Undersecretary TB Cooper and Kathleen Butler. She later wrote:
- Those were exciting days; I was the only woman present in the Minister’s room when the tenders were opened. It was a most exciting moment.[13]
Thus began an intense six weeks of work for Bradfield, Butler and young engineer Gordon Stuckey. The tenders would have to be assessed and a report prepared. That report, after recommending the acceptance of the tender of Dorman Long and Company, concludes:
- Since January 16, these two officers [Butler and Stuckey] have cheerfully worked incessantly, Saturdays and Sundays, assisting me to present my report to the Minister at the earliest possible moment.[14]
Of the experience Butler wrote:
- We were working on this report for six weeks, night and day because the tenderers were all waiting to hear their fate and we wanted to let them get back to America, England, and Canada as soon as possible. I think I know that report and the specifications off by heart.[15]
The report is signed by Bradfield, and also by Butler as:
- Report checked with Tenders
- Kathleen M Butler
- Secretary
Butler and Stuckey were given bonuses of £50 in recognition of services rendered in connection with Sydney Harbour Bridge tenders.[16] At this time her salary was £360 per annum, so £50 would be about seven- or eight-weeks’ pay, or in modern terms $15,000 perhaps.
The Minister for Public Works and the Cabinet quickly accepted the report’s recommendation, and the contract was signed in Ball’s office on 24 March. Again, Butler was the only woman present, with Bradfield, TB Cooper and a legal officer RG Allman.
Dorman Long’s tender required that the detailed design work for the bridge would be done at their offices in London and so this required a delegation from NSW Public Works to travel to London for many months to work with the contractor’s engineers designing the bridge. The party of four chosen were civil engineers Gordon Stuckey, James Holt and Owen Powys, and Kathleen Butler. The three engineers were 24 years old, though Holt turned 25 on the day the ship left Sydney. Butler was 33 years old, in charge of the party and paid more than her engineering-qualified companions. Her salary had been increased to £500 per annum, and allowed expenses of £10 per week whilst absent in London.[17]
For comparison Holt was paid £363 and Stuckey £423, plus expenses.[18] Butler, Holt and Powys left Sydney on 30 April 1924 in the SS Ormonde, which was also carrying the Australian team to the 1924 Paris Olympics.[19] Stuckey had left the day before on the SS Largs Bay. Bradfield followed his advance party three months later, so in the meantime Butler set up an office in the premises of Dorman Long and commenced the process of the bridge design.
She was feted in the United Kingdom as a very high achieving young woman. She was invited to all functions of the Women’s Engineering Society, which had only been founded in 1920, though she could attend few as she was so busy. She was made a member of the Cowdray Club for Professional Women. Articles about her appeared in many newspapers and journals including The Vote, the Organ of the Women’s Freedom League[20] and The International Women’s Suffrage News.[21] Plainly, in the woman suffrage environment of the UK in 1924, a young woman from the dominions building the greatest bridge in the world was remarkable.
An article about her, and an article by her about the Sydney Harbour Bridge, appeared in The Woman Engineer[22]. Butler even attended a royal garden party, and may have been presented to the king and queen.[23]
Another role for Butler emerged while she was in England. The University of Sydney was installing a carillon as a war memorial and the bells were to be cast by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough, Leicestershire. Bradfield was on the organising committee and Butler became a member of the Buildings, Bells and Funds sub-committee to be able to deal on site with the founders, and to represent the views of young women in the process. She attended carillon recitals in London to learn of the art.[24]
On 8 October 1924 she visited the Dorman Long Redcar steel works and was presented with an engraved jewellery box made from the first steel rolled for the bridge.[25] Contemporary reports suggest that it is engraved inside the lid to attest that it is made from the first steel produced for the bridge, but inspection of the object as it survives in the possession of her grand-daughter, shows it to be also inscribed on the outside of the lid – Miss Kathleen M. Butler.[26]
With their work completed in London, the team, now including Bradfield, returned to Australia via the Atlantic, crossing America by rail and then across the Pacific. In North America the party inspected several bridges. These were ‘behind the scenes’ inspections requiring special permission and signed indemnities rather than strolls across public walkways. At Hell Gate Bridge in New York, an undoubted model for the Sydney bridge, the party was challenged by a security guard, who, once he had found all their papers in order, remarked that in all his years since the bridge opened in 1916, he had never seen a lady on the bridge.[27] At Niagara Falls she stood knee deep in snow watching labourers throw rivets from oven to bridge, catching them in large tins.[28] In Philadelphia she observed the spinning of cables for a 1,750 feet span bridge, noting all the details of the number of wires and their ultimate tensile strength.[29]
Butler was welcomed home at a function hosted by her brother Will, the publican of the Imperial Hotel in Lithgow. She is reported as stating at this function that she would return to Sydney on Monday and on Tuesday commence the six-year task of building the bridge.[30]
Butler on her return was invited by the Professional Women Workers Association to a lunch in her honour. Detailed reports of this event survive including that:
- Dr Bradfield himself said before he left for England, that without the assistance of this Australian girl, he might never have been able to bring the great scheme to a successful issue[31]
During the event Association president Miss Grace Scobie stated:
- The unique position which Miss Kathleen Butler holds in Sydney to-day is owing to the fact that Dr. Bradfield dares to place a woman in a position of trust where merit, capacity and initiative counts.[32]
A series of letters to the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald during 1925 well illustrates the central role which Butler held in the public understanding of the bridge construction. It begins with an article based on a press release from Bradfield[33] boasting a successful survey of the bridge centreline. The claimed accuracy of this measurement is disputed by one DT Sawkins, lecturer in geodesy at the University, the next day[34] and this rebuttal provokes a response from a writer who signs themselves K.M. Butfield, surely a contrived nom de plume, who berates Sawkins as a mere ‘Bradfield detractor’. Other letters appear and Butfield replies until December when Smith’s Weekly exposes the whole sequence as a hoax on the Herald. That ‘K.M. Butfield’ could be accepted by the editor and the public illustrates the familiarity with which K.M. Butler was known in Sydney.[35]
Smith’s Weekly’s exposure of the spoof confirms the place of both Bradfield and Butler in the public perception in 1925:
- All Australia will remember the bouquets which were thrown when Dr. Bradfield produced his bridge designs. He was not the only Cyclops at this amazing forge; the creature genius was said to be equally shared by –
- (1) Dr. Bradfield himself.
- (2) Miss K. M. Butler, his secretary.
- The Bradfield-Butler bridge builders had claimed an error of only three-eighths of an inch in the bridge centre line of 2268 feet.[36]
Over the next three years there are many photos of her on construction sites through North Sydney and the Botanic Gardens, in the large excavations for the main span skewbacks and in the Milsons Point bridge workshops. She is often accompanied by the Minister for Works, Bradfield, or other significant players in the project.[37]
On 7 July 1926 she ceremonially drilled the first hole in the first member for the approach spans, at the bridge workshops. This staged event was undertaken in the presence of Bradfield, Lawrence Ennis, Director of Construction for Dorman Long and their consulting engineer and bridge designer Ralph Freeman.[38]
Butler’s involvement with the bridge ended in early 1927 when she married. At that time married women could not be employed as public servants, though in Butler’s case this would not have mattered as her husband, Maurice Hagarty, was a grazier from Cunnamulla in far western Queensland.
Bradfield stated at a farewell function that her departure would be a great loss to the team building the bridge.[39]
Kathleen returned to Sydney late in 1930 or early 1931 as her pregnancy was a difficult one which required specialist support. Her only child, Anne Josephine, was born at Waverley on 9 April 1931.[40] The baby was not well and would remain in hospital for a year, with Kathleen shuttling expressed milk to the hospital twice a day. At this time, she was supported by her brother Will who was now publican of the Rawson Hotel where she lived and their sister Naomi who was the manager of the establishment.[41]
Happily, the crisis eventually passed, and Anne Josephine lived a long and healthy life until 2012.
Butler had remained friends with Bradfield and his family, and was invited to plant a tree during finishing works to the bridge at Milsons Point at a function in August 1931.[42]
Butler was still in Sydney, the baby still in hospital, when the bridge opened. She attended the ceremony as an invited guest in the stands overlooking the event. This is documented by a letter she wrote to Bradfield the next day. It survives in his papers in the National Library of Australia.[43]
Soon after the bridge opening she returned to Queensland though she was in Sydney in 1936 where her presence was noted in the press and she is quoted as stating the she could not curb her interest in the new bridge being built at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane, by Bradfield and Holt, and that she hates to be out of it.[44]
By the early 1950s Anne Josephine had grown up and was about to depart for a tour of Europe with her aunt, Kathleen’s sister, Gladys. A farewell function hosted by Kathleen, was held in Sydney.[45]
In 1958 Kathleen returned to Sydney permanently, living in the house in Acton Street, Hurlstone Park where she had lived during her days working on the bridge.
In 1961 she, and her now widowed sister Gladys, bought a house at 41 Wycombe Road, Kurraba Point, with views of the bridge. Anne Josephine, later with children Maurice and Maria, would stay when they visited Sydney from Cunnamulla. Kathleen would walk her grand-children to the harbour side and tell them stories about building the Sydney Harbour Bridge.[46]
Kathleen Muriel Hagarty, née Butler, died at Mount St Margaret’s Hospital Ryde on 19 July 1972, and is buried at Macquarie Park Cemetery, Sydney. The cemetery, to mark its centenary in 2022, commissioned short films about four notable people interred there, and among those was The Bridge Girl.
Use this link to see the film:
https://mailtrack.io/trace/link/79432129d788b4945079eb16db66c71f384e3193?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F754620962&userId=1665347&signature=3b5fe66475d70f8a
In 2020, as part of the construction of the Metro line from Chatswood to Barangaroo and the city, twin tunnels were bored under the harbour, beside Kathleen’s bridge. The engineers named their tunnel boring machine for her.
On 20 November 2023 Katheen Butler was announced as the subject of a Blue Plaque awarded by the Heritage Office of the New South Wales Government. The plaque was unveiled on 6 August 2024 at 44 Phillip Street Sydney at the entrance to the building which was in the 1920s the offices of the Public Works Department and where Kathleen Butler worked.
- ↑ Labor Daily 29 January 1925
- ↑ Brisbane Courier 21 September 1925
- ↑ (Museums of History NSW NRS-12395-1-[7/11490]-[316] | BUTLER, Kathleen)
- ↑ http://hdl.handle.net/2123/11968
- ↑ Butler record card. Museums of History NRS12922
- ↑ Blue Mountains Echo 24 November 1922
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 24 May 1922
- ↑ The address given in the call for tenders NSW Government Gazette 28 October 1921
- ↑ Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner 20 September 1924
- ↑ Museums of History. Bradfield Albums NRS12865
- ↑ SLNSW F624.35/2A1 , F624.35/2A2
- ↑ http://hdl.handle.net/2123/11968
- ↑ London Evening Standard 16 January 1926
- ↑ Report on Tenders Bradfield papers NLA
- ↑ London Evening Standard. 16 January 1926
- ↑ Employment Record Cards, Museums of History. NRS 12922
- ↑ Employment Record Cards, Museums of History NRS 12922
- ↑ Employment Record Cards, Museums of History NRS12922
- ↑ Freemans Journal 29 January 1925
- ↑ The Vote 10 October 1924
- ↑ International Women's Suffrage News 5 December 1924
- ↑ The Woman Engineer September 1924 and March 1926
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 12 January 1925
- ↑ Freeman's Journal 28 April 1927. This wedding report mentions the significance of the bells of St Marys Cathedral pealing.
- ↑ Sydney Mail 25 March 1925
- ↑ Personal communication, Maria Sloane
- ↑ Evening News 10 January 1925
- ↑ Evening News 10 January 1925
- ↑ Sunday Times. 11 January 1925
- ↑ Lithgow Mercury. 26 January 1925
- ↑ Labor Daily 29 January 1925
- ↑ Evening News 5 February 1925
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 27 May 1925
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 27 May 1925
- ↑ Smiths Weekly. 5 December 1925
- ↑ Smiths Weekly 5 December 1925
- ↑ Bradfield Albums Museums of History NRS12685
- ↑ Museums of History. Sydney Harbour Bridge Photograph Albums. NRS12685
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 27 March 1927
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald. 11 April 1931
- ↑ This is the address she gives in her letter to Bradfield 20 March 1932. Congratulatory Letters. Bradfield Papers NLA
- ↑ Bradfield Albums Museums of History NRS12865
- ↑ Congratulatory Letters. Bradfield Papers NLA
- ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 9 March 1936
- ↑ Truth 19 April 1953
- ↑ Personal communication Maria Sloane
