Elizabeth Laurie Rees (née Johnston; 1865–1939) was an English-born Australian temperance and women's rights activist.
She was a key leader in the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Victoria, serving twenty years as the general secretary.
Her father was originally from Edinburgh, Scotland; at the time of Bessie's birth, he worked in England as a coach maker.
Thomas and Margaret Johnston moved their family of three, John, Elizabeth and Anne Grey, to Australia in late 1870 aboard the Essex, arriving in Melbourne on 26 January 1871.
Bessie was the second oldest of seven children in the family, with her remaining three siblings, Jane Victoria, William Robert and Thomas Lyttleton, being born in Castlemaine.
Through her church and temperance activities, Rees came to know Cecilia Downing, another prominent Baptist woman interested in women's rights.
While president, she attended, with her husband and daughter, the 1928 World Baptist Congress, held in Toronto, Canada.
[5] In 1913, she was elected general secretary of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Victoria, and she remained in this role for twenty years, until 1933.
[1] She addressed the thirteenth Convention of the World Women's Christian Temperance Union, held in Lausanne, Switzerland from 26 July to 2 August 1928.
[1] After years of advocating that women should be allowed to serve in this capacity, on 17 February 1927, Rees became a justice of the peace in Victoria.
[14][1] She also served as the WCTU representative for the Children's Cinema Council,[1] and lobbied against beauty pageants, taking on a leading role in a campaign to end them in 1927.
In the fall of 1930, she participated in a peace demonstration organized by the Victorian Women Citizens' Movement, again representing the WCTU.
[2] The United States had at that time recently passed a national prohibition on the sale of alcohol, and Rees viewed the results favorably.
[19][20] Upon her return, she gave several lectures and shared her reflections on the benefits of the ban on liquor in the United States.
[2][9] She had an overly optimistic view that prohibition would not be repealed, and was quoted as saying,"We have no fear of America ever going back because we know that the 19th amendment was women's suffrage.
In 1936, when serving as president of the Australian WCTU, she remarked in her presidential address that "[t]he greatest single factor that we can control in the interest of public health is the elimination of beverage alcohol.
Evan Rees had emigrated to Australia from Wales, and established a green-grocer business, which he expanded over time to a chain of fifteen stores.
"[23] Rees died unexpectedly on 19 March 1939, at the age of 73, after attending Sunday services at the Baptist church in Auburn, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.