companies were paraded, and so on day by day with the others until the whole were properly organized. The mounted lady troopers had in the mean time been exercised in the Domain, and were subjected to some little annoyance on the first day by the strikers pelting them with rotten chocolate drops. However, they showed great firmness, and arrested some of the ringleaders, and then the mob dispersed. After this they were allowed to drill without molestation.

[Pg 13]

[Pg 14]

In the mean time public business was in a great many cases seriously interfered with. Not only was the inconvenience which I have mentioned before of having men to fill the girl’s places in the shops seriously felt, but the girl constabulary themselves unwittingly became a source of annoyance[Pg 15] to the managers of the leading banks and mercantile houses, as, when a company of the girl constabulary was marched through any portion of Sydney to quell a disturbance, there was at once a cry, “Here come the girl police;” bank clerks left their counters, barristers ran out of court, and in one or two instances men were actually known to leave their matutinal B. and S. untasted on the bar, and rush to the doors to stare with enraptured eyes at this beautiful contingent.

[Pg 15]

The girls on strike were very jealous of the admiration excited by the girl constabulary, and they decided if possible to organize a grand procession; with this idea a deputation waited on Reginald Oofbourne, and asked for his assistance. He readily consented to arrange the procession, regardless of expense, and, with the assistance of some of the leaders of art in Sydney, he organized one of the most splendid sights that has ever been seen.

The whole of the ladies employed in the different theatres gave their services for nothing, and were commanded in the procession by Miss Trueheart, who is an Australian, and is known to have the greatest sympathy with all her poorer[Pg 16] sisters in the Colony; they were all beautifully dressed to represent different characters in history; the banners, which were all specially painted for the occasion, exceeded in beauty and design the magnificent ones which had been carried through the street in the late strike amongst the men, and the best girl musicians had been brought, regardless of expense, from all parts of Australia, and formed into bands, which played at the head of each company as they marched, such appropriate tunes as “Over the Garden Wall,” “We won’t go home till Morning,” etc. The procession eventually reached the Domain, 

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