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Coding Desire: The Emergence of a Homosexual Subculture in Queensland, 1890–1914
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2016
Extract
Dropsy is a puff. It is not the first time he has done it. I can bring a witness who will swear that he got ten bob from a black fellow that stuffed him. I knew what he wanted when he went up the stairs so I followed him … there are plenty of others in Brisbane who do it besides us mob, so I am not the first.
— Conversation between Albert McNamara and Police Constable Lipp, Brisbane, 1905
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1 R v Albert McNamara and William Guilfoyle, in Briefs, Depositions and Associated Papers in Criminal Cases Heard, 1 November 1905 to 30 November 1905, Queensland State Archives (hereafter QSA), SCT/CC173.Google Scholar
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3 The most pertinent work on the formation of homosexual identity and subculture in Australia between the end of convictism and the rise of modern homosexual subculture includes: Clive Moore, Sunshine and Rainbows: The Development of Gay and Lesbian Culture in Queensland (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press in association with the API Network, 2001), esp. 25–89; Clive Moore, ‘Just Mates? Masculinity and Sexuality’ (unpublished manuscript, 2003), 1–17; Clive Moore and Bryan Jamison, ‘Making the Modern Australian Homosexual Male: Queensland's Criminal Justice System and Homosexual Offences, 1860–1954’, Crime, History & Societies 11(1) (2007): 27–54; Robert French, Camping by a Billabong: Gay and Lesbian Stories from Australian History (Sydney: Blackwattle Press, 1993); Clive Moore, ‘The Frontier Makes Strange Bedfellows: Masculinity, Mateship and Homosexuality in Colonial Queensland’, in Garry Wotherspoon, ed., Gay and Lesbian Perspectives III: Essays in Australian Culture (Sydney: Department of Economic History with The Australian Centre for Gay and Lesbian Research, University of Sydney, 1996), 17–44; Clive Moore, ‘That Abominable Crime: First Steps Towards a Social History of Male Homosexuals in Colonial Queensland, 1859–1900’, in Robert Aldrich, ed., Gay Perspectives II: More Essays in Australian Gay Culture (Sydney: Department of Economic History with the Australian Centre for Gay and Lesbian Research, University of Sydney Press, 1994), 115–18; Bruce Baskerville, ‘“;Agreed to Without Debate”: Silencing Sodomy in Colonial Western Australia, 1870–1905’, in Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, eds, Gay and Lesbian Perspectives IV: Studies in Australian Culture (Sydney: Department of Economic History with The Australian Centre for Lesbian and Gay Research, University of Sydney, 1998), 95–115; Walter J. Fogarty, ‘“;Certain Habits”: The Development of a Concept of the Male Homosexual in New South Wales Law, 1788–1900’, in Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, eds, Gay Perspectives: Essays in Australian Gay Culture (Sydney: Department of Economic History, University of Sydney, 1992), 59–76; Adam Carr, ‘Policing the “Abominable Crime” in Nineteenth Century Victoria’, in David L. Philips and Graham Willett, eds, Australia's Homosexual Histories: Gay and Lesbian Perspectives 5 (Melbourne: Australian Centre for Lesbian and Gay Research and the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, 2000), 27–10; Anne-Marie Collins, Women and Policing: Uncertain Histories, PhD thesis, Griffith University, 1997.Google Scholar
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5 For the purpose of this paper, a definitive charge is one that has been positively ascertained as relating to male-to-male sexual behaviour (as opposed to charges of bestiality or heterosexual sodomy). The charges have been calculated from information contained in the Register of Criminal Depositions Received held at QSA. The author acknowledges that the Register is a less accurate measure of the charges than the criminal indictments. Moreover, the taxonomy of criminal charges clouds the exact figure and the total number of offences is most likely higher than can be ascertained here. The numbers presented here are a criminal law estimate and it must be acknowledged that for every sexual story told within the criminal justice system many remain untold. The vast majority of homosexual incidences were never recorded. The information that remains is more accurately a reflection of the policing of particular offences than actual incidence.Google Scholar
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