AustLit

Jeannie Lockett, aunt of Mary Gilmore (q.v.), was the daughter of a farmer, Hugh Beattie, who emigrated before she was born from Country Antrim, Northern Ireland. She married fellow colonist Thomas Lockett on 27 May 1868, in Wagga, and was the mother of three children. In the years after her marriage, Lockett was the headmistress of several schools, including the Camperdown, Plunkett Street, Forest Lodge Public Schools, and the girls department of the Crown Street School in Sydney. She prepared many of her pupils for the university exams, and received high praise from a school inspector’s report for her work. 

Locket contributed social and political pieces for Westminister Review, Nineteenth Century, and St James’s Gazette in Britain, addressing female labour in Australia, and the question of divorce, especially for women. She was also a literary writer and novelist, with many of her stories appearing locally in the Australian Town and Country Journal and Evening News. Some of her work, such as The Millwood Mystery, An Awfully Sudden Death, The Garston House Tragedy, and The Case of Dr Hilston, were serialised by the Sydney Mail and the Australian Town and Country Journal. 

She died in Darlinghurst, Sydney at the age of forty-three, after suffering a fatal illness largely attributed to overwork (see 'Australian Town and Country Journal'), cutting short what otherwise could have been a brilliant career.