Evelyn Goode was the fourth of ten children of Thomas Good(e) and his wife Margaret. Goode's father had come to South Australia in about 1857 and was Station Manager on Canowie and Hill River stations. The family later moved to Adelaide and settled in Fullarton.
Goode became the first wife of Crawford Vaughan (MP for Torrens 1905-15, MP for Sturt 1915-18, Premier of South Australia, Treasurer and Minister for Education 1915-1917) whom she married in 1906. They had one daughter. Crawford Vaughan was himself a prolific writer on economic and social questions.
Goode was a pianist of repute. She was also an excellent public speaker and during the war years she 'carried out a special recruiting campaign, addressed innumerable meetings, and inaugurated the well-known window badges, whereby crosses indicated the number of volunteers that had been received from that particular dwelling' ( Register, 4 November 1927). She was also active in the British Red Cross Society. Goode actively supported her husband's political career, and on one occasion when illness prevented Vaughan from addressing a political meeting, Goode went and spoke in his place. With an interest in progressive movements, she was a member of the Women's Non-Party Political Association, and in 1911 was spokesperson for a deputation to the Premier, John Verran, on the rights of women to serve on juries. She was awarded the OBE in 1920.
Goode and her husband and daughter moved to Sydney, probably in the early 1920s, and following a long illness Goode died of tuberculosis at the age of fifty.
