Jessie Clarke

Clarke was the daughter of Ivy and Herbert Brookes, and granddaughter of Australian prime minister Alfred Deakin. Clarke completed an Arts/Social Work degree at the University of Melbourne, where her mother served on several faculty boards, before doing further studies in New York. Clarke's dress was designed by Thelma Thomas, painted with scenes of Melbourne, with a cloak representing the State's irrigation scheme, and a headdress representing the Yallourn Power Station. The headdress and bodice were destroyed in the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, and in 1998 she donated the hand-painted skirt, two hooped petticoats, and the green velvet cloak to the State Library Victoria. ==Career==

While in New York, Clarke was offered a position by the Australian Government as junior delegate to the League of Nations Union in Geneva. She was a welfare officer with the Victorian International Refugee Emergency Council when Sir Frank Clarke made negative comments about Jewish "rat-faced refugees" when addressing the Australian Women's National League, and she took him to task for his remarks. A few months later she married his son, William Anthony Francis Clarke, just after the outbreak of the Second World War. The company's goal was to help overburdened mothers in washing the nappies of their babies. The company went on to become the first successful nappy wash service in Australia, and the second largest such service in the world. ==Awards==

Clarke was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the 1997 Australia Day Honours in recognition of her "service to community health and welfare organisations over many years." ==References==