Jessie Street

Lady Street (née Lillingston, commonly known as Jessie Mary Grey Street; 18 April 1889 – 2 July 1970) was an Australian suffragette and an extensive campaigner for peace and human rights. Dubbed Red Jessie by her detractors in Australia's right-wing media for her efforts to promote diplomacy with the USSR and to ease tensions during the Cold War, Jessie was ardent in her support for the progressive cause. By blood she was a member of the House of Grey, and by marriage she was a member of the Street family, making Lady Street a maverick among the historically conservative establishment.

She was a key figure in Australian and international political life for over 50 years, from the women's suffrage struggle in England to the removal of Australia's constitutional discrimination against Aboriginal people in 1967. Jessie was Australia's first and only female delegate to the establishment of the United Nations, where she played a key role alongside the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt in ensuring that gender was included as a non-discrimination clause alongside race and religion in the United Nations Charter. She is recognised both in Australia and internationally for her activism in women's rights, social justice and peace. The Jessie Street Centre, Jessie Street National Women's Library and the Jessie Street Gardens are named in her honour.

Jessie Mary Grey Street was born on 18 April 1889 at Ranchi, Bihar, India, the eldest child of Charles Alfred Gordon Lillingston and his wife Mabel Harriet. Her father was the son of Mary Grey Mason, daughter of Mary Grey (1796—1863), who was in turn the first child of Sir George Grey, 1st Baronet. She was thus a direct descendant of Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey, and ultimately a descendant of Anchetil de Greye, patriarch of the House of Grey, who was a military companion of William the Conqueror named in the Domesday Book.

Members of the Street family have been prominent in politics and law, especially in Australia and the state of New South Wales, since the 19th Century. Various ancestral lines of the family were prominent throughout the second millennium in the United Kingdom as members of the House of Grey and the Berkeley family. Members of the Street family have also been prominent in business, the Royal Australian Navy and human rights. The Street family is the only dynasty in Australian judicial appointments with three consecutive vice-regal appointments to their name; men of the 2nd through 4th generations of the family having become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales. The narrator of the ABC series Dynasties said: "Among the great and powerful of the law, no family sits higher than the Streets. They've been at the forefront of the legal establishment for over a century."

The patriarch of the family’s legal tradition is Sir Thomas Street, whose ancestors were well-established in Worcester, his father having been the mayor of the city. Thomas was Chief Justice for Brecknock, Glamorgan and Radnor from 1677 to 1681, and a Baron of the Exchequer from April 1681 to 1684. Sir Thomas had his children by Lady Penelope Berkeley, by whom the successive generations of the Streets descend from William the Conqueror, via the Berkeley family, whose ancestor Sir Maurice de Berkeley bore his progeny by Isabella FitzRoy (married 1247), daughter of Richard FitzRoy, a feudal baron of Chilham in Kent and a son of King John of England.