Elizabeth Yates (mayor)

New Zealand politician

Elizabeth Yates (née Oman, 1840 – 6 September 1918) was a New Zealand politician who served as the mayor of Onehunga borough for most of 1894. She was the first female mayor in the British Empire. Outside the British Empire, she was preceded by Susanna M. Salter who was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas in 1887. Onehunga is now part of the city of Auckland.

Yates was born Elizabeth Oman in Caithness, Scotland in 1840. She came to New Zealand with her family in November 1852 aboard the Berwick Castle and apparently lived in the Onehunga area from 1855 on. She married Michael Yates, master mariner, in 1875. He was on the Onehunga Borough Council, a councillor from 1885 and mayor from 1888 to 1892.

Yates was already involved in politics through her strong support of the women's suffrage movement, as well as participation in the debates of the Auckland Union Parliament. Earlier in 1893, after her husband had stood down from his post due to ill health in 1892, she had accepted the nomination for the office of mayor and in November defeated her opponent, F. W. Court, at the polls (also automatically becoming a Justice of the Peace) in a close race decided by only 13 votes. Yates became mayor of Onehunga on 16 January 1894. Yates later returned as a councillor to the Borough Council for two years between 1899 and 1901. Even her opponents conceded that she had been very effective during her short tenure, having liquidated the borough debt, established a sinking fund, reorganised the fire brigade, upgraded roads, footpaths and sanitation, and having personally lobbied the government to authorise the reopening of the Waikaraka cemetery. She was buried with her husband in the cemetery at St Peter's Anglican Church in Onehunga. Yates and her husband are the subjects in The World's First Lady Mayor, the second oldest surviving New Zealand film restored by Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, which was shot by photographer Enos Pegler in 1900.

In 2019 a public mural of Yates was commissioned and installed by the Onehunga Business Association. Located on the corner of Onehunga Mall Road and Pearce Street, the mural was made by two local artists, Bobby MacDonald, Karlee Hirovaana Nicholls.