Marjorie Tipping

Marjorie Jean Tipping MBE (1917–2009) was an Australian historian and patron of community services.

Doctor Marjorie Tipping MBE
Born	26 March 1917 Melbourne, Australia
Died	28 September 2009 (aged 92) Melbourne, Australia
Occupation	Historian

The daughter of John Alexandra McCredie and Florence Amelia Paterson,[1] she was born Marjorie Jean McCredie in Melbourne and grew up in Princes Hill and Kew. She studied at the Presbyterian Ladies' College and Melbourne University. In 1942, she married journalist Bill Tipping.[2]

Tipping's works focus on the history of art and colonial Australia, and include Eugene von Guerard's Australian Landscapes (1975) Ludwig Becker: Artist & Naturalist with the Burke & Wills Expedition (1978), Melbourne on the Yarra (1978)[3] and Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and Their Settlement in Australia (1988).[4] She also contributed to the Australian Dictionary of Biography.[5]

Tipping was the first woman to earn the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination from the University of Melbourne, and was awarded an MBE. Tipping has contribute to many community organisations, including as first woman president (from 1972) of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and as a patron (with Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and Governor of Victoria David de Kretser) of EW Tipping Foundation (a social justice and human rights organisation named for her late husband).

Tipping was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria (1968) and appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (13 June 1981), for her contribution to the Arts.

In 1988, she discovered a letter which suggested that Melbourne pioneer John Batman had been transported to Tasmania as a convict rather than migrating there by his own choice as had been previously thought. Later research determined that the information in the letter was either incorrect or applied to some other person with the same name.[2]

Tipping died at The Alfred Hospital after suffering a stroke.[5]

References

1. "Tipping, Marjorie Jean - Woman". The Australian Women's Register.
2. "Scholar who ignited Batman controversy". Sydney Morning Herald. 10 November 2009.
3. http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1055037
4. http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1752991
5. "Trailblazing woman wrote on Australian history". The Age. 3 November 2009.

External links

• "Tipping, Marjorie (1917-)". Trove. National Library of Australia.
• Tipping, Marjorie Jean McCredie (1917–2009) in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia