Norah O’Donnell was born in 1851 in Limerick, Ireland to Michael and Catherine (Kirby) O’Donnell. She was part of a large family – ten other children – who emigrated to Brisbane in 1862, as part of the assisted migration scheme. Apart from the deaths of Bridget at 22, Mary at 42 and Norah herself at 48, nothing very dramatic happened to the other O’Donnells. They married, had children and lived very long lives in Queensland.
Something happened with Norah in her early twenties. She began to get in trouble with the law, became involved in prostitution, drank heavily, and found herself sentenced to more and harsher terms of imprisonment than the other forlorn women of Brisbane.
1873 was the year that Norah began to offend. In September, she was living in a house in Fortitude Valley with a friend named Rebecca Templeton, and their neighbours complained about what would today be called their partying. Norah was fined 10 shillings, and Rebecca was discharged. Respectable people did not party in residential areas, apparently.
On the 4th of October, Norah was arrested for being drunk and fined another 5 shillings. Three weeks later, Norah was living in the Victoria Hotel in Elizabeth Street, Brisbane. The proprietor, William Drummond, was charged with being the keeper of a disorderly house (brothel) and allowing prostitutes to assemble and work there. Norah was one of the working girls. The case collapsed because of incorrect dates on the summons.
A month later, Norah was again involved in a court case, this time as a witness. She obtained a certificate from a Dr Smith (for the purposes of the Contagious Diseases Act). Dr Edward Smith was prosecuted by the Queensland Medical Board for holding himself out as both a Doctor and a homeopath. The matter was dismissed, because the Act was not designed to pursue homeopathy, but instead unqualified practitioners working as chemists or druggists.
The following week, Norah was charged with habitual drunkenness, and the Bench sentenced her to three months’ imprisonment in Toowoomba Gaol. She was 22. This sentence was much harsher than those given to other working girls, particularly for drunkenness.
Four months later, April 1874, Bridget was out, back in Brisbane and drunk again. A fine of 40 shillings this time.
In August 1874, 23-year-old Norah did something that so outraged the Police and the Bench that she received a six-month term of imprisonment, with hard labour. She was convicted of indecency. Just what that entailed is not stated, although it appears to be more than just indecent exposure (nudity). No-one was arrested with her, which may just be because Norah was a fallen woman, and the client was let go. Other cases of this type generally involve a sexual act in a public place or within view of others.
Apart from an arrest for drunkenness in 1875, Norah became very quiet until 1877. Searches in State Archives, Hospital Records and Births, Deaths and Marriages do not disclose any childbirth, hospitalisation or imprisonment during this time. I find myself hoping that she spent a couple of quiet years with one of her many family members.
In April 1877, the young woman broke out of the quiet life, and received a £5 fine for indecent behaviour and a three-month term for habitual drunkenness within a week of each other. The rest of the year would be spent in and out of Court and ended in gaol again. Her offending had started to change, too. Where once it would be drunkenness, or indecency that got her into strife before, now she had begun to steal from her customers. Victorians cherished money and property as much as they did the appearance of virtue, and Norah’s sentences would reflect that.
On the 14th September, Norah lifted £4 18s. 6d., from the person of one Michael Rogers. She walked on that one, but the next one was real trouble. She had teamed up with Susan Bolton, a local Madam, and had emptied the purse of a visiting miner from North Queensland. Norah didn’t actually have the money on her when she was arrested and suggested at trial that Susan Bolton most likely had it. The Judge agreed, but Norah was the one charged and convicted. Six more months at Toowoomba Gaol. And poor Mr Woege learned not to flash his money about when in the company of loose ladies.
After that sobering experience, Norah went quiet again until February 1879, when she behaved in a riotous and disorderly manner (from contemporary cases, that would comprise being drunk and fighting), and the Bench sent her back to Toowoomba for another 6 months’ imprisonment, this time with hard labour. Clearly the Bench did not think her previous terms were sobering enough.
The year did not improve, though, and she was picked up twice for more alcohol-related street offences in September, and once in December. Fines were the punishment for these slips, but a count of behaving in a riotous and disorderly manner on December 30 got her another six months with hard labour.
Clearly by this stage, Norah O’Donnell was a self-destructive alcoholic, but in 1879 there was no treatment program short of a hospital stay, and she couldn’t afford that. Finding a regular job would be impossible with her reputation and record, and her large family would be painfully aware of her activities through the newspapers. Hopefully there was some compassion, but they all had their own, respectable lives to live.
In July 1880, and fresh from a stay at Toowoomba, Norah got into quite a barney at the Waterloo Hotel. She was found guilty of “wilfully destroying a water bottle, jug and two bottles of pepper-mint valued at 10s.” (two weeks’ gaol with hard labour) and obscene language (a fine). A charge of assault was withdrawn.
By 1881, the Bench was becoming a little more tolerant, and imposed fines or cautions for several charges of drunkenness, disorderly behaviour and obscene language.
On 30 November 1881, Norah became a victim of crime when she was stabbed by a neighbour. This case marks the first time she was publicly linked with Brisbane’s Chinese community, and indeed Norah had begun to call herself Norah Hop Yen and asserted that she was married to Hop Yen. There is no official record of this marriage, so it was most likely a common law marriage.
STABBING. – Ah Pan was brought up, on remand, charged with having stabbed Norah O’Donnell, alias Hop Yen, in a hut in Rosetta’s paddock, on the 29th November last. Sub-inspector Douglas prosecuted. Dr Thomson stated that on the 29th ultimo he examined Norah O’Donnell at the hospital, and found she had an incised wound on the head, which might have been caused by the knife produced. It was about an inch and a-quarter in length, and the true skin was cut through. The witness dressed the wound, and she remained in the hospital till yesterday morning. The wound was not dangerous. She was under the influence of liquor when brought to the hospital.
Norah Hop Yen deposed that the accused came to her house at 10 o’clock on the morning of the day in question and asked her for a bottle of beer. She said she would send for it, and the accused gave her 1s. She took the shilling next door to Mrs Harrington, and remained there until her husband came home, leaving the prisoner in her house. Some time after this she saw the accused leaving her house by the back door, carrying an umbrella of hers – he took it to his own house. He afterwards returned to Mrs Harrington’s house, and took the beer from the table, returning to his house with it.
About two hours after this her husband returned, and she informed him of what had occurred. While she was telling her husband this the accused came up, her husband went out to meet him, and they commenced to fight. While they were fighting, she went down to the peach tree to get some peaches. The accused ran down towards her and stabbed her with a knife on the head, after which he went to his own house and locked himself in – her husband tried to get into the hut but could not. He then went to the police station; some time after her husband had left the accused came up to her again and struck her several blows on the arms and body with a stick. He then ran away. The witness was afterwards taken to the hospital by constable McDonnell.
Hop Yen corroborated most of the evidence given by his wife. Sergeant Browne stated that when Hop Yen made the report to him, he went to Rosetta’s paddock in company with constable McDonnell, and went into prisoner’s hut, where he found the knife produced lying on a table. There were stains apparently of fresh blood upon the blade of the knife. The hut was in great disorder inside, the crockery being broken and everything else being strewed about.
Brisbane Courier (Qld: 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 6 December 1881, page 3
This was probably a turning point for Norah O’Donnell, in the eyes of the community and the press. From this time forward, she would be associated with the Chinese community, and would make another marriage – this time a registered one – in 1883 with a Chinese man.
One would assume that inter-racial relationships would have been social death at the time, and in strict European households it probably was. However, there were a lot of other European young women who made marriages with Chinese men in Queensland at the time, as a glance through the Marriages section of Births, Deaths and Marriages registers attests. Presumably Irish Norah developed a working knowledge of the language and customs of her new families, but she retained her drinking habits and the behaviour that came with them.
1881 ended with one more arrest for being drunk and disorderly, and then 1882 started with a bang. Norah used abusive language to Annie Young Chung (fined), destroyed some property belonging to Ah Moy (fined) and capped her introduction into Chinese society by stealing a bunch of bananas from Ah Que’s shop and throwing them into the street for the children to have. She was discharged by the Bench upon a promise to pay for the bananas.
Norah was fined for two more offences of disorderly conduct in 1882. The press noted that she had now 57 convictions against her name.
1883 should have been a happy year for Norah O’Donnell. She met and married Chong Hai, but her wedding day on 23 May 1883 ended with her committing a violent, potentially fatal, assault on Bridget Pearce, another of the Irish Frog’s Hollow girls. The account of Norah’s District Court trial sums up the events:
SOUTHERN DISTRICT COURT,
UNLAWFULLY WOUNDING. Norah Chong Hai alias Norah O’Donnell was charged with having, on the 241 h of May, in Albert-street, Brisbane, unlawfully and maliciously wounded one Bridget Pearce. Mr. Murray Prior prosecuted. Defendant, who pleaded not guilty, was defended by Mr. Sheridan. In this case it appeared that on the 24th of May, or the day previous, the defendant was married to a Chinaman named Chong Hai. On the night of the 24th three women living in Albert-street — Bridget Pearce, Alice Farroway, and Mary Clyne — heard screams proceeding from the residence of the Chinaman and running in that direction they saw a constable taking away Chong Hai in custody.
Defendant followed the policeman and her husband a short distance out of the yard, and immediately afterwards struck Bridget Pearce on the left side of the head with a tomahawk, inflicting a wound two inches long, and extending through the scalp to the bone. Subsequently, about, half-past twelve, the woman Pearce was taken to the hospital where she was treated by Dr. Jackson. The doctor stated in court that the wound was of a dangerous nature, and that it might have been inflicted by a tomahawk such as that produced in court, or by a fall on some sharp hard substance.
Both the defendant and Pearce were under the influence of liquor at: the time of the occurrence. One witness for the prosecution. Alice Farraway stated that the blow was dealt while Pearce was standing on the footpath near Hai’s house. Another, the prosecutrix herself, stated that when the defendant struck, she was standing on a green spot at the side of the house. Defendant’s counsel called no evidence In his address to the jury, he commented upon the character of the witnesses of the Crown, and argued that the evidence of the women examined was unworthy of credence, as they were all intoxicated at the time of the occurrence and went down to Hai’s house for the purpose of creating a disturbance, and because a different version was given by each as to the place where the prosecutrix was standing when the blow which caused the wound was struck. The Judge then summed up, and the jury retired, returning into court after an absence of forty minutes with a verdict of guilty, adding that, in their opinion, prisoner received great provocation. Prisoner was sentenced to eleven months’ imprisonment, with hard labour, in Toowoomba Gaol.
It’s not hard to imagine the great provocation – her husband was arrested, and the local girls came to mock her for marrying a Chinaman. Still, the tomahawk attack was brutal and shocking, and introduced physical violence to the things Norah would do when drunk and angry. Norah was now thirty-two and had spent a total of three and a half years in Toowoomba Gaol, not to mention the countless nights in the Police cells, waiting for Court. What happened with her husband is not known.
In 1884, Norah returned to Brisbane and was fined for obscene language, but everything was otherwise peaceful until March 1885, when she stole a purse and a silver watch (which she pawned) from the person of a Samuel Johnson “in a Chinaman’s house in Mary Street”. Six months at Toowoomba Gaol with hard labour.
Although she sobered up in custody, she did not or could not, change her lifestyle once out of gaol, and gathered more convictions for obscene language, and a fine for destroying panes of glass belonging to Ah Chong.
In May 1886, Norah was arrested for fighting in public in Albert Street, together with Susan Johnston, whose criminal record of 116 convictions dwarfed Norah’s 70. Later that month, Norah was again given six months imprisonment, this time for disorderly conduct as a prostitute in Petrie Bight. She went to Toowoomba Gaol, and did not return to Brisbane.
In 1889 Norah had settled down to something like domesticity in Warwick, a town south-west of Toowoomba, and some 97 miles (157 kilometres) from Brisbane. In February that year, she charged G. Man Sing with assaulting her while she was hanging out the washing. G. Man Sing insisted that Norah had attacked him with a Chinese chopper, and he ran away. At all events, G. Man Sing was fined 5s. It should be noted that Norah now styled herself Norah Man Sing, so this was probably a domestic dispute. (There was no divorce from Chong Hai, and Norah Chong Hai remained her legal name for the rest of her life.)
Norah was again in Gaol at Toowoomba by the end of the year (the Darling Downs Gazette omitted to describe the offence that got her there). She left the Gaol, asking for a train ticket to Warwick, and was given the fare. As the newspapers noted, there was no train line to Warwick, and “Norah slighted Warwick for a Chinaman’s den. She had in former years graced one as a mistress.” Norah became involved in a dispute with Johnny Tung over cabbages, and she stole 11 shillings from him in the process. Johnny Tung went to the Police, and Norah was arrested again. (I have translated this from a sensationally racist article in the Darling Downs Gazette. The above quote is probably the mildest thing in the article.)
There were two arrests in 1890, one for disorderly conduct and one for destroying the property of Tommy Ah Young. She paid her fine in the last matter but was picked up drunk by the end of the day, to the amusement of the local press. Norah was nearly forty, and given her tumultuous life, would have looked every minute of it.
By the late 1880s, the Salvation Army had set up a number of successful programs and establishments for the care of people like Norah, but it appears the Courts did not consider diverting her to them. Susan Johnston, by then in her sixties, was reported to be doing very well in a Salvation Army home and was finding work and avoiding drink. Perhaps Norah refused their help. Perhaps it was not considered.
Still, Norah spent the ensuing years away from the Courts and prisons, going to Brisbane Hospital on 4th May 1899 and passing away there at the age of 48 on 20th May 1899.
SOURCES:
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld: 1872 – 1947), Friday 26 September 1873, page 2
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Saturday 4 October 1873, page 2
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Tuesday 21 October 1873, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Thursday 27 November 1873, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 1 December 1873, page 2
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 30 March 1874, page 2
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Wednesday 8 April 1874, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 24 August 1874, page 2
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Wednesday 7 April 1875, page 2
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Friday 6 April 1877, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Wednesday 11 April 1877, page 3
- Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld. : 1866 – 1939), Saturday 28 July 1877, page 19
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 17 September 1877, page 2
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Wednesday 19 September 1877, page 2
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Tuesday 9 October 1877, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 15 October 1877, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 16 October 1877, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Tuesday 16 October 1877, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 17 February 1879, page 2
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 9 September 1879, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Thursday 25 September 1879, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 9 December 1879, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Wednesday 31 December 1879, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Saturday 10 July 1880, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Monday 13 September 1880, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Friday 8 April 1881, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Monday 2 May 1881, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Friday 20 May 1881, page 3
- Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser (Qld. : 1861 – 1908), Saturday 28 May 1881, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Thursday 29 September 1881, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Friday 7 October 1881, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 18 October 1881, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Wednesday 30 November 1881, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Wednesday 28 December 1881, page 2
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 17 January 1882, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 18 April 1882, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Wednesday 21 June 1882, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Thursday 6 July 1882, page 3
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Thursday 9 November 1882, page 5
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Wednesday 7 February 1883, page 3
- Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Queensland: 1883/B/8286 – Marriage to Chong Hai
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Saturday 26 May 1883, page 6
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 18 June 1883, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 4 August 1884, page 5
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Tuesday 3 March 1885, page 6
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Friday 4 September 1885, page 3
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Thursday 4 March 1886, page 5
- Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), Monday 10 May 1886, page 2
- Warwick Examiner and Times (Qld. : 1867 – 1919), Saturday 2 February 1889, page 2
- Warwick Examiner and Times (Qld. : 1867 – 1919), Saturday 14 September 1889, page 2
- Darling Downs Gazette (Qld. : 1881 – 1922), Wednesday 16 April 1890, page 3
- Darling Downs Gazette (Qld. : 1881 – 1922), Wednesday 17 September 1890, page 2
- Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), Thursday 1 June 1899, page 3
- Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Queensland: 1899/B/31806 – death of Norah Chong Hai
PICTURES: cdlib.org, victorianparis.wo
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