Lilian Locke

[2] She was variously president of the New South Wales Association of Women Workers, the "only lady member of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council", lady organiser for the Political Labor Council, and honorary secretary of the United Council for State Suffrage[3][4][5] In 1905, she was the first woman delegate to a Labor Party interstate conference, when she was accredited for Tasmania at the Commonwealth Political Labor Conference.

[2] Her skills were widely praised in the labor press: the Brisbane Worker labelled her a "brilliant organiser and propagandist", the Daily Standard in Brisbane described her as "one of the ablest women Labor platform exponents in the Commonwealth", while the Worker in New South Wales stated that "a great deal of the effectiveness of Mr. Burns' political activity must be credited to the splendid help accorded him by his wife, Lilian Locke Burns".

[10][11][12] One visit to South Australia was credited with the foundation of the Women Employees' Mutual Association in that state.

[13] She married George Burns, then a Tasmanian state Labor politician, in Melbourne on 6 January 1906.

[17][18][19][20] A 1988 book, Silk and Calico: Class, Gender and the Vote, by Betty Searle, explored the first wave of the feminist movement in Australia through the lives of Locke, Goldstein and Rose Scott.