Jane Routh

Olive Jane Routh (d. September 1959) was an early Sydney Baha’i who helped teach the Baha'i Faith in Australia and served on the National Spiritual Assembly.

Life

She was taught about the Baha’i Faith by Mrs. Drake-Wright while travelling from America to England in the early 1930’s and associated with the English Baha’i community while living in Hampstead. In 1932 she met future Knight of Baha’u’llah Violet McKinley at the London Baha’i Centre and became close friends with her.

She moved to Australia in 1933 and assisted the Baha’i community there, reading passages from the Dawn-Breakers at weekly firesides held at Hyde and Clara Dunn’s apartment in Sydney. Initially Routh was planning on returning to England, but she became a member of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Sydney, and in 1934 she was elected to represent the Sydney Baha’is at the first National Convention of Australia and New Zealand, and she cast a vote in the first election of the first National Spiritual Assembly of Australia and New Zealand.

In the late 1930’s she visited England and assisted with teaching work and management of the Baha’i Centre in London, and she visited America shortly before the beginning of WWII. In 1938 she visited Perth shortly after a Local Spiritual Assembly was established, and gave a public speech on the Faith. In 1939 she gave a speech titled The Baha’i Message to Mankind at the second Yerrinbool Baha’i Summer School at a session that was attended by many members of the general public. She asked to visit the Holy Land in the same year, but Shoghi Effendi declined. The following was written on his behalf:

With regard to Mrs. Routh's request for permission to visit Haifa; much as the Guardian desires her to undertake such long for visit to the Holy Shrines, he feels that owing to the continued disturbances agitating the Holy Land, and which give no sign of abating, it would be inadvisable for her to come at such a dangerous time. He hopes some day when the situation will have returned to normal in Palestine, she will have an opportunity of undertaking this pilgrimage.

In the early 1940’s she participated in teaching campaigns in Hobart, Melbourne, Broken Hill and Brisbane, giving lectures and establishing friendships with interested people. In 1940 Effie Baker gave Routh a pen that had belonged to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, and she later donated this pen to the Australian National Archives.

In 1944 Routh and Charlotte Moffitt looked for a property in Sydney to be purchased and used as a Haziratu’l-Quds for the Australian Baha’i community. Silver Jackman travelled from Adelaide to Sydney to assist them and they chose a property near Centennial Park. She was Chairman of the Australian Centenary Convention held in the new Haziratu’l-Quds from the 19th to the 24th of May 1944 and gave a talk on ‘Abdu’l-Baha.

She was a member of the Australian National Assembly's Reference Library Committee in the early 1950's. She was also on the Australian Temple Site Committee and helped secure the site of the Australian Mashriqu'l-Adhkár in March 1954.