Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T21:58:08.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex Workers or Citizens? Prostitution and the Shaping of “Settler” Society in Australia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The history of prostitution, defined as the commercial exchange of sexual services, provides a fertile ground for the study of the intersections between gender, race and class. Obviously, the sale of sexual labour has implications for constructions of gender, although the specific implications may change with time. Commercial sex offers particularly sharp insights into the ways in which gender considerations intersect with class and race because of the physical intimacy and potential for procreation involved in the sex act. Prostitution literally forces societies to come face to face with their assumptions about and attitudes to class and race hierarchies and relationships. The Australian case is especially useful for studying these relationships because of the imbalance in the ratio of men to women which has characterized colonial society generally and certain types of communities in particular, and the ways in which this imbalance affected some classes and ethnic groups more than others. Colonial Australia also provides a complex tapestry of ethnic/racial issues because it included divisions not just between “white” settlers and indigenous Aborigines, but also between both of these groups and various groups of immigrant, “coloured” workers. In the twentieth century, when demographic patterns became more balanced in gender terms and more homogenous in racial terms, the international sex industry continued to be important because it played a part in Australia's quest for recognition as an independent member of the community of “civilized”, white, nations. Finally, the process of reassessing Australia's place in the world was intimately connected to a reassessment of Australia's domestic policies, both in relation to prostitution generally and to the sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 44 , supplement S7: Complicating Categories: Gender, Class, Race and Ethnicity , December 1999 , pp. 101 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1999

References

1 Summers, Ann, Damned Whores and God's Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia (Melbourne, VIC, 1975)Google Scholar.

2 Grimshaw, Patricia, Lake, Marilyn, McGrath, Ann and Quartly, Marian (eds), Creating a Nation (Melbourne, 1994), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

3 Letter Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, 15 May 1788, Historical Records of Australia, series 1, vol. I, p. 23Google Scholar.

4 There is a very large literature on the fate of convict women. More recent work includes Deborah Oxley, Convict Maids (Melbourne, VIC, 1997)Google Scholar;Damousi, Joy, Depraved and Disorderly (Melbourne, VIC, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Daniels, Kay, Convict Women (Sydney, NSW, 1998)Google Scholar; see also Aveling, Marian, “Bending the Bars: Convict Women and the State”, in Saunders, Kay and Evans, Raymond (eds), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation (Sydney, NSW, 1992), pp. 144–157. For Aboriginal women, seeGoogle ScholarJebb, Mary Anne and Haebich, Anna, “Across the Great Divide: Gender Relations on Australian Frontiers”, in Saunders and Evans, Gender Relations in Australia, pp. 20–41Google Scholar.

5 There is no comprehensive history of prostitution in Australia. Daniels's, Kay edited collection, So Much Hard Work: Women and Prostitution in Australian History (Melbourne, VIC, 1984), is a series of case studies rather than an overviewGoogle Scholar.

6 Daniels, Kay and Murnane, Mary, “Prostitutes as ‘Purveyors of Disease’: Venereal Disease Legislation in Tasmania, 1868-1945”, Hecate, 5 (1979), pp. 5–21Google Scholar; also Daniels, Kay, “Prostitution in Tasmania during the Transition from Penal Settlement to a Civilised Society”, in Daniels (ed.), So Much Hard Work, pp. 15–85Google Scholar.

7 Davidson, Raelene, “‘Dealing with the Social Evil’: Prostitution and the Police in Perth and on the Eastern Goldfields 1895-1924”, in Daniels (ed.), So Much Hard Work, pp. 162–191Google Scholar.

8 Haebich, Jebb and, “Across the Great Divide”. See also Deborah Bird Rose, Hidden Histories (Melbourne, VIC, and Canberra, CT, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 Evans, Raymond, “‘Soiled Doves’: Prostitution in Colonial Queensland”, in Daniels (ed.), So Much Hard WorkGoogle Scholar.

10 Levine, Philippa, “Venereal Disease, Prostitution and the Politics of Empire: the Case of British India”, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4 (1994), p. 593Google ScholarPubMed.

11 Frankenberg, Ruth, White Women, Race Matters: the Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis, MN, 1993), p. 236Google Scholar.

12 Frances, Raelene, “Australian Prostitution in International Context”, Australian Historical Studies, 106 (1996), pp, 127–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Underwood, Hon. R.H., Western Australian Parliamentary Debates: Legislative Assembly, 51 (7 09 1915), p. 637Google Scholar.

14 , Levine, “Venereal Disease, Prostitution and the Politics of Empire”, p. 593Google Scholar.

15 Davidson, Raelene, “‘As Good a Bloody Woman as Any Other Bloody Woman’: Prostitutes in Western Australia, 1895-1939”, in Patricia Crawford (ed.), Exploring Women's Past (Sydney, NSW, 1985)Google Scholar.

16 Yarwood, A.T., Attitudes to Non–European Immigration (Sydney, NSW, 1968)Google Scholar;idem, Asian Migration to Australia: the Background to Exclusion 1896–1913 (Sydney, NSW, 1964). See alsoGoogle ScholarYarwood, A. and M Knowling, .J., Race Relations in Australia (Sydney, NSW, 1982) andGoogle ScholarMarkus, Andrew, Australian Race Relations (Sydney, NSW, 1994)Google Scholar.

17 For an excellent account of this process, see Grimshaw, Patricia and Ellinghaus, Katherine, “White Women, Aboriginal Women and the Vote in Western Australia”, in Studies in Western Australian History, forthcoming women's suffrage centenary special issueGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibid., fh. 14. Also, Willard, Myra, History of the White Australia Policy (London, 1923)Google Scholar;Palfreeman, A.C., The Administration of the White Australia Policy (Sydney NSW, 1967)Google Scholar;Brawley, Sean, The White Peril: Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America 1919-78 (Kensington, NSW, 1995)Google Scholar.

19 The most recent account of this episode is in Macintyre, Stuart, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality (Sydney, NSW, 1998), pp. 270–273Google Scholar.

20 Smith's Weekly, 20 April 1929.

21 Sun Pictorial, 20 April 1929.

22 Sun, 24 April 1929.

23 Argus, 13 July 1928.

24 Age, 13 July 1928.

25 Advertiser, 13 July 1928. The difference of opinion on the basis of citizenship perhaps reflects the distinction identified by Rogers Brubaker, that is, between jus sanguinis and jus solis, between a principle of descent and a principle of residence. While Germans, for instance, in the nineteenth century emphasized nationality and German descent as qualifications for citizenship, the French state remained much more open to the naturalization of residents who had planted themselves in French cultural soil. Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, 1992). See alsoGoogle ScholarTilly, Charles, “Citizenship, Identity and Social History”, International Review of Social History, 40 (1995), Supplement 3, pp. 8–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 E.g. Sissons, D.C., “Karayuki–san: Japanese Prostitutes in Australia, 1887–1916”, Historical Studies 17 (1977), pp. 323–341 and 474–488CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Onselen, Charles van, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand: New Babylon (Harlow, 1982)Google Scholar;Hyam, Ronald, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (Manchester, 1990)Google Scholar;Davidson, Raelene, “Prostitution in Perth and Kalgoorlie and on the Eastern Goldfields, 1895-1939” (MA. thesis, University of Western Australia, 1980). 27.Google ScholarFrances, Raelene, “Australian Prostitution in International Context”, Australian Historical Studies, 106 (1996), pp. 128–129Google Scholar.

28 Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “Captured Subjects/Subject Others: Violently Engendering the New American”, Gender and History, 5 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Namias, June, White Captives: Gender and Eth–nicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill, NC, 1993). For Australian captivity narratives, seeGoogle ScholarSchaffer, Kay, In the Wake of First Contact: the Eliza Eraser Stories (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar;Darian–Smith, Kate, “‘Rescuing' Barbara Thompson and Other White Women: Captivity Narratives on Australian Frontiers”, in Kate Darian–Smith, Liz Guner and Sarah Nuttall (eds), Text, Theory, Space: Land, Literature and History in South Africa and Australia (London and New York, 1996), pp. 99–114Google Scholar;Darian-Smith, Kate, et.al. (eds), Captive Lives: Australian Captivity Narratives (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

29 Yarwood, A.T., Attitudes to Non–European Immigration (Sydney, NSW, 1968)Google Scholar;Evans, Raymond, Kay Saunders and Kathryn Cronin, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland 1975 (Brisbane, QLD, 1993), Part IIIGoogle Scholar.

30 See, for example, the “drama in four parts”, The White Slave Traffic by Howard, Kate, written in the 1920s, AA Series A1336/2, item 3432; also Frances, “Australian Prostitution”, pp. 136–137Google Scholar.

31 Sunday Times, 24 August 1902.

32 MrsMackinolty, Archibald (Olive Christian Malvery) and Willis, W.N., The White Slave Market, colonial edition (London, n.d. ca. 1909), p. 94. This account exaggerates the sentences meted out: the men concerned received only two years' hard labourGoogle Scholar.

33 AA Series A1108, item vol. 31. Jeffreys, Sheila, The Idea of Prostitution (Melbourne, VIC, 1997)Google Scholar; ch. 1, contains a brief history of these international conventions.

34 Letter Millicent Garrett Fawcett to Andrew Fisher, 17 November 1913, AA Series A1/1, item 1915/5651.

35 Letter from the prime minister to Miss A.B. Witham, hon. secretary, Women's Non-Party Political Association of South Australia, 13 November 1913, AA Series A1108, item 31.

36 AA Series Ai, item 1915/5651; also AA Series Arro8, item vol. 31.

37 Letter J. Scadden, premier of Western Australia, to prime minister, 6 July 1914, AA Series Arro8, item vol. 31. See also Frances, Raelene, “Australian Prostitution in International Context”, Australian Historical Studies, 106 (1996), pp. 129–130Google Scholar.

38 AA series CP78/23/1. item 14789/252 Pt I; Scates, Bruce and Frances, Raelene, Women and the Great War (Cambridge, 1997), ch. 6Google Scholar.

39 Smart, Judith, “The Great War and the ‘Scarlet Scourge’: Debates about Venereal Diseases in Melbourne during World War I”, in Judith Smart and Tony Wood (eds), An Anzac Muster: War and Society in Australia and New Zealand 1914-18 and 1939-45 (Clayton, VIC, 1992), pp. 58–85Google Scholar.

40 The first two conventions (1904 and 1910) were administered by the French government.

41 Letter, H.E. Jones, director, Attorney–General's Department, to the secretary, Home and Territories Department, 29 July 1927, AA Series 2998/I, item 51/576.

42 Memo, Io November 1931, AA Series A98I/I, item League Wom/I1.

43 Letter, H.E. Jones, director, Attorney-General's Department, to the secretary, Home and Territories Department, 29 July 1927, AA Series 2998/I, item 51/576.

44 See AA Series 1838/I, item 856/I4/8, part 4. “Abolitionists” sought the abolition of the system of policing prostitution known as regulation, that is, a system whereby prostitutes were required o t register with the local police and subject themselves to regular medical examination. The incorporation of the abolitionist principle was first adopted by the Traffic in Women and Children Committee in 1936, and expressed in the 1937 Draft Convention for Suppressing the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. However, the outbreak of World War II delayed developments of this draft. AA Series A18382, item 856/I4/8, pt. I.

45 File note on report on licensed houses for transmission to Secretary-General, League of Nations, 7 October 1926, AA Series A981/I, item League Wom/II.

46 International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, Congress Reports, London, 1930, cited in , Jeffreys, The Idea of Prostitution, p. 24Google Scholar.

47 Extract from Vigilance Record, March-April 1929, in International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women Papers, Josephine Butler Archives, Fawcett Library, London, ms. 4/IBS, box 112.

48 Letter, Atlee Hunt to Hon. P. McGlynn, 30 March 1915, AA Series Ai, item 1915/565I.

49 Ibid.

50 See memo 10 November 1931, director, Attorney General's Department to secretary, Prime Minister's Department, AA Series A981/I, item League Wom/II.

51 Davies, Suzanne, “Vagrancy and the Victorian Social Construction of the Vagrant in Melbourne, 1880–1907” (Ph.D. thesis, Melbourne University, Melbourne, VIC, 1990), pp. 115–116Google Scholar.

52 Letter from G.P. Finlay, barrister and solicitor, Wellington, NZ, to the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, 11 November 1936, Australian Archives (AA) Series A 432/85, item 36/1360. The Mabel Freer case is documented in the following files, held at the Australian Archives in Canberra: Series CP 290/1/1, item 16; Series A422\85, item 43/1139; Series A432/85, item 36/1360; Series A5954/1, item 973/13.

53 Letter from G.P. Finlay, barrister and solicitor, Wellington, NZ, to the Attorney–General of the Commonwealth of Australia, 11 November 1936, AA Series A432/85, item 36/1360.

54 Holland, Alison, “Feminism, Colonialism and Aboriginal Workers: An Anti-Slavery Crusade”, in Ann McGrath and Kay Saunders with Jackie Huggins (eds), Aboriginal Workers, a special issue of Labour History, 69 (1995)Google Scholar;Holland, Alison, “‘Saving the Aborigines’: The White Woman's Crusade. A Study of Gender and Race on the Australian Frontier”, (Ph.D. thesis, University of New South Wales, 1999)Google Scholar;Paisley, Fiona, “‘Don't Tell England!’: Women of Empire Campaign to Change Aboriginal Policy in Australia Between the Wars”, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 8 (1993) PP. 139–152.Google Scholar;Paisley, Fiona, “Feminist Challenges to White Australia 1900-1930S”, in Diane Kirkby (ed.), Sex, Power and Justice: Historical Perspectives on Law in Australia (Melbourne, VIC, 1995), pp. 252–269Google Scholar;Lake, Marilyn, “Feminism and the Gendered Politics of Anti-Racism, Australia 1927–1957: from ‘Maternal Protectionism to Leftist Assimilationism’”, Australian Historical Studies, 110 (1998), pp. 91–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 The importance of international influences on Australian feminists in this case has interesting resonances to the growth of the interest in issues of sexual domination, prostitution, venereal disease and the “white slave traffic” in the prewar period. See Caine, Barbara, “Vida Goldstein and the English Militant Campaign”, Women's History Review, 2 (1993), pp. 363–376CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Bennett to Australian Board of Missions Review, Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004/12/35, National Library of Australia, cited in , Lake, “Feminism and the Gendered Politics of Antiracism”, p. 100Google Scholar.

57 Frances, Raelene, “A History of Female Prostitution in Australia”, in Roberta Perkins, et.al. (eds), Sex Work and Sex Workers in Australia (Kensington, NSW, 1994)Google Scholar.

58 Fiona Paisley, “Don't Tell England!’”.

59 Curthoys, Ann, “The Three Body Problem: Feminism and Chaos Theory”, in Women/Australia/Theory, special issue of Hecate, 17 (1991), p. 15Google Scholar.

60 There is now an extensive literature on this subject, which is reviewed in Curthoys, Ann and Moore, Clive, “Working for the White People: an Historiographical Essay on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Labour”, in Ann McGrath and Kay Saunders with Jackie Huggins (eds), Aboriginal Workers, special issue of Labour History, 65 (1994). See alsoGoogle ScholarMarkus, Andrew, “Aborigines i n Labour History”, in Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells (eds), Australian Labour and Regional Change: Essays in Honour of R.A. Gollan (Wollongong, NSW, 1998), pp. 41–56Google Scholar; and Frances, Raelene, Scates, Bruce and McGrath, Ann, “Broken Silences? Labour History and Aboriginal Workers”, in Terry Irving (ed.), Challenges to Labour History, (Kensington, NSW, 1994), pp. 189–211Google Scholar.