Fanny Finch (born Frances Combe; 9 April 1815 – 15 October 1863) was an English immigrant to Australia who became a prominent businesswoman in the town of Castlemaine during the Victorian gold rush.
In 1856, 52 years before women's suffrage was achieved in Victoria, Finch and another unnamed woman used their status as ratepayers to cast votes during municipal elections.
[1] Frances Combe (also spelt Coombe) was born in London in 1815[1] and spent her childhood at the St Pancras Foundling Home.
She sailed with her employers, William and Julia Wyatt, from Gravesend aboard the John Renwick and arrived in Adelaide on 10 February 1837.
[2] However, Joseph could not have been the father of Fanny's children Jane (1855-1855) and Louisa (1858-1859), which she claimed he was on their birth registrations, as he was in prison in Melbourne at the time.
In an anonymous letter to the Mount Alexander Mail, one supporter wrote that Finch's "restaurant at Forest Creek ... was the only one in which any person could get respectable accommodation.
She defended herself and demanded an apology in a letter published in the Mount Alexander Mail, an unusual step for a working-class woman in the male-dominated goldfields at the time.