Courting men: Mothers, magistrates and welfare in the Australian colonies

Women's History Review

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 231-246

  Twomey, Christina ^a  

^a DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; AUSTRALIA; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT; GOVERNMENT; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; MOTHER; POLITICAL SYSTEM; POVERTY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL CARE; SOCIAL WELFARE; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

AUSTRALIA; COLONIALISM; FUND RAISING; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; LOCAL GOVERNMENT; MOTHERS; POVERTY; PUBLIC ASSISTANCE; SOCIAL WELFARE; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

EID: 34247284453     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612029900200200     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Stephen Garton (1990) Out of Luck: poor Australians and social welfare 1788-1988 (Sydney: Men & Unwin);
2. Brian Dickey (1980) No Charity There: a short history of social welfare in Australia, (West Melbourne: Nelson).
3. For a historiographical overview see Stephen Garton (1994) Rights and duties: arguing charity and welfare 1880-1920, in Michael Wearing & Rosemary Bereen (Eds) Welfare and Social Policy in Australia: the distribution of advantage, pp. 23-38 (Sydney: Harcourt Brace).
4. A recent 'overview' of this literature is present in Patricia Harris (1992) Penny-pinching activities: managing poverty under the eye of welfare, in Kay Saunders & Raymond Evans (Eds) Gender Relations in Australia: domination and negotiation, pp. 287-301 (Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).
5. Joy Damousi (1997) Depraved and Disorderly (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press);
6. Marian Aveling (1992) Imagining New South Wales as a gendered society, Australian Historical Studies, 98, pp. 1-12.
7. For women and the welfare state see Jill Roe (1983) The end is where we start from: women and welfare since 1901, in Cora V. Baldock & Bettina Cass (Eds) Women, Social Welfare and the State, pp. 1-19 (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin)
8. and Marilyn Lake (1993) A revolution in the family: the challenges and contradictions of maternal citizenship in Australia, in Seth Koven & Sonya Michel (Eds) Mothers of a New World: maternalist politics and the origins of welfare states, pp. 378-395 (London: Routledge).
9. R. A Cage (1992) Poverty Abounding Charity Aplenty: the charity network in colonial Victoria (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger);
10. Richard Kennedy (1985) Charity Warfare: the charity organisation society in colonial Melbourne (Melbourne: Hyland House);
11. Shurlee Swain (1980) Destitute and dependent: case studies in poverty in Melbourne, 1890-1900, Historical Studies, 74, pp. 98-107.
12. Jennifer Davis (1984) A poor man's system of justice: the London Police Courts in the second half of the nineteenth century, The Historical Journal, 27, pp. 309-335;
13. George Behlmer (1994) Summary justice and working-class marriage in England, 1870-1940, Law and History Review, 12, pp. 229-275.
14. Although see Christina Twomey (1997) Gender, welfare and the colonial state: Victoria's 1864 Neglected and Criminal Children's Act, Labour History, 73, pp. 171-172.
15. Roger Therry (1863) Reminiscences of Thirty Years' Residence in New South Wales and Victoria, 2nd edn, pp. 325-326 (London: Sampson Low, Son & Co.)
16. For biographical details see Alex C. Castles (1982) An Australian Legal History, pp. 208-209, 224-226, 239, 245 (Sydney: Law Book Company).
17. For a discussion of the appointment of stipendiary magistrates in New South Wales see Hilary Golder (1991) High and Responsible Office: a history of the New South Wales magistracy (Sydney: Sydney University Press), pp. 39, 42-53, 73, 89-90;
18. David Neal (1991) The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: law and power in early New South Wales, pp. 125-126 (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press).
19. On poor boxes see Behlmer, 'Summary justice and working-class marriage', p. 26.
20. For examples of the predominance of widows and deserted wives as recipients of poor box donations see Alexander Thomson, Mayor of Geelong to Chief Secretary, 18 January 1858, VPRS 1189 Unit 751, J58/ 654 and Mayor of Geelong to Chief Secretary, 9 June 1860, VPRS 1189 Unit 753, 060/4981.
21. See Sheila Bignell (1973) Orphans and destitute children in Victoria up to 1864, Victorian Historical Magazine, 171 and 172, pp. 5-18.
22. See Twomey, 'Gender, welfare and the colonial state', p. 173.
23. For a succinct discussion see Ellen Ross (1993) Love & Toil: motherhood in outcast London, p. 74 (London: Oxford University Press).
24. Jan Kociumbas (1992) The Oxford History of Australia: volume 2 1770-1860, Possessions, pp. 26-28, 229, 316 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press);
25. Katrina Alford (1984) Production or Reproduction? An economic history of women in Australia 1788-1850, p. 219 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press).
26. Ellen Ross (1982) 'Fierce questions and taunts': married life in working-class London, 1870-1914, Feminist Studies, 8, pp. 580-581.
27. For the warrant and arrest of Thomas Kenny see the Victoria Police Gazette, 19 April 1860, p. 164 and 26 April 1860, p. 174.
28. For a discussion of the continuity of English views of marriage as primarily an economic, rather than romantic, partnership see the introduction by Penny Russell (1994) to her For Richer, For Poorer: early colonial marriages, p. 6 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press). Magisterial disapproval of husbands who failed to provide for their families was also common in British low-level courts.
29. See A James Hammerton (1992) Cruelty and Companionship: conflict in nineteenth-century married life, p. 48 (London: Routledge).
30. 'Minutes of Evidence', in 'Report of the Royal Commission . into . Charitable Institutions', Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 1871, vol. 2, paper no. 1, p. 29.
31. For a discussion of colonial vagrancy legislation see Susanne Davies (1994) 'Ragged, dirty .infamous and obscene': the vagrant in late-nineteenth century Melbourne, in David Philips & Susanne Davies (Eds) A Nation of Rogues? Crime, law and punishment in colonial Australia, pp. 141-165 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press);
32. Mark Finnane (1994) Police and Government: histories of policing in Australia, pp. 95-96 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press).
33. See also the case of Margaret Scott, Argus, 31 May 1863, p. 6;
34. Davies, "'Ragged, Dirty . Infamous and Obscene '2', pp. 143-144.
35. 'Criminal Statistics, Being Returns Called from the Sheriff and Inspector General of Penal Establishments', Victorian Parl. Papers, 1858-59, vol. 2, paper no. 28, pp. 34, 6.
36. On selective policing see Finnane, Police and Government, pp. 71-73, 93, 103
37. and especially Judith Allen (1990) Sex and Secrets: crimes involving Australian women since 1880, pp. 6-13 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press)
38. and Allen (1987) Policing since 1880: some questions of sex, in Mark Finnane (Ed.) Policing in Australia: historical perspectives pp. 188-221 (Kensington: NSW University Press).
39. Chris McConville (1980) The location of Melbourne's prostitutes, 1870-1920, Historical Studies, 74, pp. 86-97.
40. See, for example, the cases of Bridget Treacy in Mayor of Geelong to Chief Secretary, 19 August 1861, VPRS 1189 Unit 754, T61/ 6764 and Mary Bennett, Chairman Municipal Council, Kilmore to Police Magistrate, Kilmore, 24 June 1861, VPRS 1189 Unit 753, R61/ 5121.
41. See ibid., and the warrant for the arrest of George Terry, VPG, 15 August 1861, p. 304 and the arrest report, VPG, 22 August 1861, p. 316.
42. Donella Jaggs (1986) Neglected and Criminal: foundations of child welfare legislation in Victoria (Melbourne: Phillip Institute of Technology);
43. Robert van Krieken (1991) Children and the State: social control and the formation of Australian child welfare (Sydney: Allen & Unwin);
44. Twomey (1997) 'Gender, welfare and the colonial state', pp. 175-183.
45. Gisela Bock & Pat Thane (Eds) (1991) Women and the Rise of European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s (London: Routledge);
46. Koven & Michel, Mothers of a New World. For a critique see Jane Lewis (1994) Gender, the family and women's agency in the building of 'welfare states': the British case, Social History, 19, pp. 37-55.