industry. She appealed primarily to female voters and frequently used domestic metaphors in her speeches, while also attacking the Nationalist opposition for financial mismanagement. The ALP ultimately won its first majority government in Tasmania, with Lyons finishing around 60 votes short of election in Denison. Federal politics In 1931 Joseph Lyons left the Labor Party and joined the United Australia Party (UAP), becoming prime minister at the subsequent election. Enid Lyons was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the Coronation Honours of 1937. Joseph Lyons died in April 1939, aged 59, the first Australian prime minister to die in office, and Dame Enid returned to Tasmania. She bitterly resented Joseph Lyons's successor as leader of the UAP, Robert Menzies, who had, she believed, betrayed her husband by resigning from the cabinet shortly before Joseph's death. Widowhood Lyons suffered from "nervous exhaustion" in the period immediately after her husband's death. She fainted or collapsed on a number of occasions and spent several weeks in hospital, initially at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, and later at Mercy Hospital for Women, Melbourne. She had some requests to stand for his seat at the resulting by-election, including from Jessie Street, but declined. Outside of the family home, Lyons was left only £344 () from her husband's estate. In the absence of any parliamentary pension, the government under caretaker prime minister Earle Page immediately drafted legislation to provide annuities for her and the couple's seven dependent children. There was some opposition from Joseph's political opponents who regarded the amount as excessive, and she was eventually awarded an annual grant of £500 () with another £500 for the children's education through to the age of 16. Lyons received thousands of letters of condolence, which she answered with the help of family and her husband's former staff, but also received hate mail over the annuities issue – "filthy epithets, threats, dead rats, things even more revolting" – leading her to stop opening her own mail. In December 1939, Lyons began a series of weekly Sunday evening broadcasts for 7LA Launceston, which were syndicated on the Macquarie Broadcasting Network. She turned down other offers, including from the ABC and from Keith Murdoch's 3DB. The Macquarie broadcasts came to an end in June 1940, partially due to a lack of sponsorship. In the same year she had moved to Melbourne to be