costume designer, was the daughter of David O’Neill, a squatter in the Western District of Victoria. When she became the second wife of the colourful Melbourne businessman James Stewart Butters on 5 November 1860, she began a short but exciting career as spouse—and vote-getter—of a would-be politician. She managed to capture the public imagination by designing and wearing—with great panache—a series of clever fancy-dress costumes.
Her first attempt in August 1863 ( Ariadne ) was overlooked, but her next effort in September ( Amphitrite ) was mentioned in press reports. She received more notice—and several column inches—when she appeared in September and October 1866 as The Press . (J.S. Butters accompanied her on each occasion as Signor Mantalini , presumably an impersonation of the 'kept’ husband of Madame Mantalini, the milliner in Dickens’s Bleak House !)
J.S. Butters won a close vote for Mayor of Melbourne in October 1867, just in time to be civic host for the visiting Duke of Edinburgh. Mrs Butters joined her husband in giving a fancy-dress ball for Prince Alfred, commencing the evening in her latest creation, The Mirror , but reappearing halfway through in her proved success, The Press . In 1868 J.S. Butters became the member for Portland but by the following year was embroiled in a parliamentary corruption scandal and involved in a highly speculative investment scheme in Fiji.
Mrs Butters’s final appearance in fancy dress ( Photography ) was at the ball given in aid of the Prince Alfred Hospital (for which her husband was chairman) in March 1869, during which one of the guests, Mr H.J. Mays, came dressed as 'a broker during the great South Sea Bubble of 1790’, distributing false prospectuses and phoney scrips throughout the room—a none-too-subtle reference to Butters’s affairs and to Mrs Butters’s previous appearance as The Press when she, too, had handed out printed favours.
In July 1870 J.S. Butters sailed to Fiji, remaining there until 1874. Presumably Mrs Butters went with him since she didn’t attend the fancy-dress ball that August. Neither she nor her husband were forgotten on that occasion, however; H.J. Mays, now appearing as The Cosmopolitan Postman , delivered amusing letters and telegrams that pointedly referred to Fijian matters.
Matilda Butters died at her home in Collins Street, Melbourne, on 7 February 1878. J.S. Butters married again (twice), but neither of these women ever came close to matching Matilda’s talent for winning over the press.
- Writers:
- Callaway, Anita
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
