Ruby Sophia Rich-Schalit (1888-1988)
Searching for information online I ran into the “Papers of Ruby Rich” on the website of the National Library of Australia (1). This is a large archives which has been digitized, but too large and too unstructured to be really useful.
There are dozens upon dozens of files, three of which are connected to Freemasonry. These three files appear to be three boxes that have been scanned to three files. They contain notes, envelopes, the Australian co-Mason and a few ritual booklets (one that I have been looking for for years!).
Ruby is relatively famous, she even has her own Wikipedia page (2). Other biographies can be found here and there, but none of them mentioned her Masonic membership.
She was born on 23 June 1888 in Walgett (New South Wales, Australia). Her father, Louis Rich, was from German descent, her mother, Ada Bebarfald, came from Melbourne. Ruby was a gifted piano player, but her father was very conservative: women had to look for a husband and their role was in the kitchen. Ruby vehemently disagreed and even fled abroad with her sister to study piano in Berlin and Paris. Even with her abroad, her father wielded his influence. He did not allow her to play concerts other than for royalty. Again, Ruby didn’t play ball.
Somewhere in 1910 or early 1911, Ruby shortly lived in Australia, only to leave for London again. Also she spent a lot of time in Switzerland during World War I. In that same war, her brother got wounded and in 1917 she accompanied him home. When both the brother and his wife died, Ruby adopted their child.
In 1923, Ruby met the feminist Millicent Preston-Stanley and from then on, Ruby was a fierce feminist who also fought for the Jewish cause (in 1937 she married Moïse Aaron Schalit (1875-1959) in a synagoge) and rights for sex workers. It is not strange that she came in contact with early co-Masonry which was quite the suffrage movement in these days. Unfortunately no biographies mention when or how and I haven’t been able to distill this from the “Ruby Rich papers”. I did find a few things worth of mentioning, so it is time to also shed some light on Ruby Rich as a Freemason.
Her files contain a “clearance certificate”.
She “joined” (not “was initiated”!) in 1972 and circumstances forced her to resign in 1976. Apparently, she was already a Freemason. Her files also contain a Royal Arch certificate from 1926 and a document from Paris from 1919. I think the latter is a Masonic passport, which she might have either received on her initiation or her raising.
My guess is that she was initiated somewhere between 1917 and 1919, around her 30th (when she went back to Australia with her brother? When he passed away?) and before she met the feminist! Also years before her marriage by the way. I have looked around a bit (but that is the proverbial needle in a haystack), but I have not encountered her name as any functionary in a lodge or grand lodge. By all appearances it seems that Ruby Rich has been a Freemason for a couple of years around 1919 and then again much later from 1972 until 1976, but without climbing the internal ladder. The first time the most likely reason to resign was living abroad, the second reason was “regretful”, so perhaps health.
It isn’t much, but here we have an overlooked part of the life of a woman who was known as a fighter for the causes of women, of Jews, she organised peace conferences, played music to allied forces during World War I; she generally seems to have been an energetic woman with a feeling for justice. And she lived almost a 100 years too.
(1) Papers of Ruby Rich (MS 7493) (accessed 24 July 2025)
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Sophia_Rich (accessed 24 July 2025)