It sounded like an insult but Helen made a joke of it.

"Are you substantial women?" the administrator of the housing trust asked.

"I knew what he meant", Helen says, "He meant, were we important women? Like doctors' wives?"

Helen and her friend were in the administrator’s office trying to get sheltered accommodation for women and children who were victims of domestic violence. Or, 'battered wives’ as they were called then, in the 1970s.

The administrator wasn’t taking Helen and her friend seriously so they replied in kind.

"I was pretty big then", says Helen, "So I stood up and I said, ‘I think I’m a pretty substantial woman’ and my friend started laughing and she stood up too and said, ‘and I’m pretty substantial too.’"

The administrator threw them out of his office.

But Helen Oxenham wasn’t so easily defeated and she continued lobbying and got the shelter.

Helen is 90 and was born in Cork but grew up in Dublin. This all took place though, thousands of miles away in Adelaide, Australia. How Helen ended up there is because of two men in her life – one gentle and one brutal.

The gentle man was Helen’s husband, August. He had damaged his ears during WWII and the advice given to him was to move to a dry climate. South Australia is one of the driest places you can find so they emigrated there in the 1950s. They operated a watch repair shop.

One day a woman from the local social services office came in and was chatting with Helen. She happened to mention the numbers of women with children who came into the office looking for help getting away from their violent partners.

This immediately prompted memories of her own childhood.

"I thought that only happened in Ireland", she said.

Helen’s father beat their mother.

"My earliest memories, as a young child, is standing between my mother and my father, knocking his legs with my fists because he was beating my mother. And then he would pick us up by the scruff of the neck, and just throw us somewhere. And we would get back up and hit him again because it’s just terrifying to see your mother getting beaten."

So, Helen decided she needed to do something for the women and children in Adelaide who had experienced the kind of violence that she had. She persuaded her husband that they should leave their living quarters at the back of the shop and turn it over to women and children in crisis.

Helen’s became an unofficial emergency shelter.

She and her friends fundraised by baking cakes, "I never want to see another Lamington (Australian cake) as long as I live." The community donated clothing and bed linen. A local group of lesbians pitched in, "In those days, they all wore a sort of uniform: dungarees and short hair."

And she became notorious with the police, "If a husband came looking for his wife, they would tell him to ‘Go down to No. 73 Beach Rd. – there’s a mad Irishwoman down there – she’s bound to be behind it.’"

Soon the shelter was incorporated and received government funding and Helen pulled back.

But she was still aware that women and children were being beaten and dying. She still believes domestic violence is not being taken seriously – and the lockdown of Covid-19 has proven that, according to Helen.

So, she is now campaigning for a memorial, in Adelaide, to the women and children who have died through domestic violence. It is to be a place for people to go to grieve and to become aware of the problem. To get the memorial built, Helen has set up a charity called, Spirit of Woman.

In 2020, while the rest of the world is talking about pulling down statues, this 90-year old Irishwoman is determined to put one up.

Note: Helen Oxenham died on July 22nd., 2024, aged 93. Producer, Tiarne Cook said her family wanted the RTE listeners to know and described her as "incredible".

Helen and Heather's NGO: Spirit of Woman

Produced by Tiarne Cook and Ronan Kelly

First broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 - Saturday 15th of August, 2020 at 1PM

Repeated on RTÉ Radio 1 - Sunday 16th of August, 2020 at 7PM

An Irish radio documentary from RTÉ Radio 1, Ireland - Documentary on One - the home of Irish radio documentaries