Interior designer and author, Lady Barker was born in Jamaica. She was the daughter of Walter George Stewart. She married and had a successful career as an interior designer and author in England. She arrived in Western Australia in 1883 as the wife of the Governor Frederick Napier Broome, her second husband. As he did not have a title she kept her previous husband’s name. She put some of the local ladies’ 'noses out of joint’ with her Aesthetic Movement revision of the interior of Government House. Lady Barker, an established authoress on interior design, took an interest in the education of the daughters of her circle. Sewing classes were undertaken at Government House whilst she read modern history aloud. The classes were designed to assist the intellectual pursuits rather than cultivate manual dexterity. It is perhaps not surprising that the girls were some of the earliest to win universal suffrage. Photographs of the interior of Government House show her taste ran to an interest in the orient and the Aesthetic Movement. This appears typical of many families in that circle.
- Writers:
- Dr Dorothy Erickson
- Date written:
- 2010
- Last updated:
- 2011
