Kathleen M. Butler

Kathleen Muriel Butler was born on 27 February 1891 in Lithgow, New South Wales, one of seven children.[2] She grew up in the Blue Mountains and attended school in Mount Victoria, where her father, William Henry Butler, was stationmaster, and she later studied at Mount St. Mary’s Convent in Katoomba. Butler later attributed her engineering ability to her mother Annie Butler (née Gaffney) "who was remarkably clever at drawing plans of houses and supervising buildings".[3]

On leaving school, sometime before 1910, Butler was appointed as a clerk and typist to Mr W.F Burrow, chief officer of the New South Wales (NSW) government testing office in Lithgow, set up to monitor the quality of output from the local ironworks. At this point she had no technical qualifications. On 10 December 1910 (aged 19) she was transferred to the NSW Department of Public Works in Sydney.[4][2]

She joined the staff of the Chief Engineer of metropolitan railway construction, when the branch was established in 1912 to deal with Sydney's transit problems. This was the beginning of her long professional association with J. J. C. Bradfield, working as his Confidential Secretary.[4] During the following decade she “mastered all sorts of intricate technical matters of engineering” to become a highly skilled technical project manager.[3]

Bradfield initially favoured building a bridge with a cantilever overpass, without piers, between Dawes Point and McMahons Point. In 1916 the Legislative Assembly passed the Bill for the construction of a cantilever bridge, although the Legislative Council rejected the legislation on the grounds that money would be better used for the war effort.[5] Bradfield persevered and with his team developed full specifications and a scheme to finance the construction of a cantilever bridge. After going overseas in 1921 to investigate tenders for the project, Bradfield came to believe that that tenders should be called for both cantilever and arch designs. The necessary Act was finally passed in 1922 — the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act No. 28 — for the construction of a high-level cantilever or arch bridge across Sydney Harbour by connecting Dawes Point with Milson's Point. The Act also provided for the construction of the bridge and its approaches and also included the construction of electric railway lines. Butler had prepared the notes submitted with the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act No. 28 when it was introduced in the Assembly in 1921 and “these Notes materially assisting the passage of the Bill through the Assembly and Council” although there was a delay [6]

When the Harbour Bridge Act was passed by the Australian Parliament in 1922, Kathleen Butler was the first member of staff appointed to the team by its leader, Chief Engineer, Dr. J J C Bradfield. Her job title was Confidential Secretary to the Chief Engineer, which disguised her significant role on the project. (Today her job title would be technical adviser or senior project manager). She was described in the press as the “God-Mother of the Bridge”.[1]

She was “appointed on her merits” and was involved in all aspects of the project planning and acted as the lynchpin for information flow, as she had mastered all sorts of intricate technical matters of engineering. When the scheme for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the underground railway system was finally agreed on by the New South Wales Parliament, she worked on the preparation of the specifications for engineering the bridge.[6]

Butler wrote numerous articles about the development of Sydney Harbour Bridge between 1922 and 1927, in effect acting as the PR for Bradfield's office.[7]

In March 1922 Bradfield left Australia and travelled abroad, undertaking research into possible bridge tender proposals on the instructions of the government. It has been suggested that as the Sydney Harbour Bridge Act No. 28 had been delayed due to a change in political power due to an election, the new government considered cancelling the project and intended to ask Bradfield to stay in New York for consultation and recall. Butler knew Bradfield's itinerary and telegraphed him to warn him that a formal telegram was on its way to him and that he should be elsewhere. The formal telegraph never reached Bradfield as he left for London.[8][9][10]

In Bradfield's absence, Butler managed the complex correspondence with the international companies tendering for the project in 1922.[6] She was present at all interviews with the tenderers,[6] and was present at the meeting to open the tenders at noon on 24 January 1924 and named in the photograph (in info box) which appeared widely in the press, alongside Mr. T. B. Cooper (Under-Secretary for Works), Mr. R. T. Ball (Minister for Works and Railways), Bradfield and Mr. Swift (private secretary to the Minister for Works).[11]

Butler, Bradfield and the project engineer Gordon Stuckey worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge: report on tenders for seven days a week from the 16th January to sign off on 16 February 1924 with Bradfield thanking Butler and Stuckey for having "cheerfully worked incessantly" to complete the work in good time.[12] The report recommended appointing the British firm Messrs. Dorman, Long & Co.[12][5] Butler later told the Evening Standard that "We were working on the report 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 specification off by heart. 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]

Once the British firm Dorman Long were appointed in 1924, by late April Kathleen Butler was on board ship, the RMS Ormonde, headed for London with three engineers to set up the offices and run the London end of the project, based in the Dorman Long offices.[14] The Australasian claimed that “Miss Butler is in charge of the visiting party, on £500 a year…” a very significant salary and much increased from her 1916 typist's salary of £110 pa when she first joined the NSW Department of Public Works in Sydney.[4] Her tasks included “attending the most difficult and technical questions and technical questions in regard to the contract, and dealing with a mass of correspondence.”[13]

Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan, the first woman in Britain to gain qualification as a civil engineer, was working on the bridge project in the same Dorman Long offices at this time.[15]

Once Bradfield joined the team in London they also visited the Dorman workshops in Middlesbrough to inspect the work.[8]

Kathleen Butler received enthusiastic press attention in London and at home in Australia for her work. Her arrival in London featured in both the suffrage magazine The Vote and in several gossip columns which complimented her expertise and noted her interest in surfing, tennis and dancing. As the Echo put it in 1924, “She is an advocate of hard work leavened with an equal part of healthy recreation”. The Woman Engineer journal of the Women's Engineering Society (WES) described Butler as a Pioneer and "the first Australian woman to take a practical interest in Engineering enterprise".[16] She was invited to events by WES and kept in touch with members for several years following her visit.[17]

Sydney Harbour Bridge under construction.jpg

Kathleen Butler left Britain on 15 November 1924, sailing from Southampton on the SS Berengaria in the company of Bradfield.[18] In January 1925, and her family threw her a party in Lithgow where she announced that she would “return to Sydney on Monday and on Tuesday enter in earnest on the six-years job of constructing the harbour bridge”.[19] She was honoured at a lunch of the Professional Women Workers' Association in February 1925, hosted by Grace Scobie, Mary Jamieson Williams and Dr. Mary Booth, leading Australian women's rights activists.[20]

She was present at the ceremony of the turning of the first sod for the North Railway Approach to the bridge and she was publicly thanked for her services.[21] Bradfield paid her tribute in a paper which he wrote for his D.Sc. degree at Sydney University.[4]

In 1926, Butler contributed two illustrated articles to The Woman Engineer journal, detailing the technical work progress on Sydney Harbour Bridge, including one photograph of Butler herself drilling the first hole into the steel work for the bridge.[22]

Butler got married in early 1927, which led to her having to leave her job, as married women were not expected to continue in employment. Her leaving gift was a grandfather's clock, given as a token of "the good will and esteem of the officers of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Metropolitan Railway Construction Branches and of the Public Works Department" and Bradfield's statement that "Miss Butler's capability led to her attaining the position of trust and responsibility she held in the Department, and that her retirement would be a distinct loss to the Bridge branch".[23]

Sydney Metro - Barangaroo - Cutterhead of the Tunnel Boring Machine named Kathleen after Kathleen Butler

On 20 April 1927 Kathleen Butler married Maurice Hagarty, a grazier from Cunnamulla in Queensland in St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney.[24] They had a daughter Anne Josephine in 1931.[17] She kept in touch with the Bradfield family and visited for the opening of the bridge in 1932.[4]

In 1936 Butler took her daughter to visit Bradfield and his wife Edith in Sydney, admitting she “cannot curb her interest in the new Queensland bridge at Kangaroo Point [the Story Bridge in Brisbane, for which Bradfield was the consulting engineer] and feels she ‘hates to be out of it all’”.[25]

Kathleen Butler died on 20 July 1972.[4]

In 2019, a 130-metre tunnel boring machine for the Sydney Metro was named Kathleen in her honour.[26][27][28]