Mary Hughes

Dame Mary Ethel Hughes GBE (née Campbell; 6 June 18742 April 1958) was the second wife of Billy Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923. She was the daughter of a well-to-do grazier, and grew up in country New South Wales. She married Hughes in 1911, when she was 37 and he was 48; their only daughter was born in 1915. Early life Mary Ethel Campbell was born on 6 June 1874 at Burrendong, a station near Wellington, New South Wales. Her father, Thomas Campbell, was an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland, while her mother, the former Mary Ann Burton, had been born in Australia to English parents. Little is known about Campbell's upbringing, although she may have had some training as a nurse. The Campbell family seems to have had a certain amount of social standing, as in 1899 her sister Esther married John Haynes, a member of parliament and co-founder of The Bulletin. Marriage Campbell married Billy Hughes on 26 June 1911, at Christ Church, South Yarra, Melbourne. She was 37 at the time; he was 48 and a widower (his first wife having died in 1906). He did not have time for a honeymoon, so he took her on a long drive. Their car crashed where the Sydney-Melbourne road crossed the Sydney-Melbourne railway north of Albury, leading to the crossing being named after Billy Hughes; it was later replaced by the Billy Hughes Bridge.