Bigamy is much less common today. Paperwork is digitised, and marriage is no longer the sole criteria under which two mutually attracted adults may live under one roof. And for that, women should be eternally grateful. One hundred years ago, an unhappy or hasty marriage was for life. The law was written to preserve theContinue reading “Marriage and crime”
Category Archives: Women and the Law
The Crimes of Women.
Mary Eileen Hagenbach, 1919 Mary Eileen Hagenbach was a tall, slender young woman of 23 years of age. A little severe-looking perhaps, an impression not helped by the fact that her hair had been chopped off roughly during a long illness. She’d just spent nearly four months in hospital after hemorrhaging during childbirth, and nowContinue reading “The Crimes of Women.”
The Most Despised Woman in Old Brisbane Town.
In October 1851, Jane Ellis was the most despised woman in Brisbane. At her first Court appearance, crowds of angry citizens jostled for a seat in the public gallery, and when she was released on bail, Mrs Ellis had to be escorted through the hissing throng by two policemen. Mrs Ellis was the wife ofContinue reading “The Most Despised Woman in Old Brisbane Town.”
The Queen of the Artemisia
1848 was a year of unrest and revolution in Europe. The world seemed to be in uproar. And uproar would find its way to Brisbane Town that year, not in the form of an uprising, but in the form of the Queen of the Artemisia. Before Dr Lang rounded up industrious protestants to populate “Cooksland,”Continue reading “The Queen of the Artemisia”
The Scandalous Mrs Bailey.
The brief reign of an adventuress in Brisbane Town. Brisbane Town in 1847 was a rough and ready place. Free settlement had been permitted since 1842, but settlers faced an almost complete lack of amenities and commerce. Prior to the skilled immigration movement of Dr Lang, women fell into several distinct categories: wives of GovernmentContinue reading “The Scandalous Mrs Bailey.”
All the news fit to print – September 5, 1850
A glance through the Moreton Bay Courier of September 5 1850 shows the reader the era in Brisbane Town in a nutshell. Rosewood was out in the never-never, and locals banded together to discourage (in their worldview) indigenous raiders. This was the time when relations between determined free settlers, and dispossessed indigenous people was at itsContinue reading “All the news fit to print – September 5, 1850”
Mr Woodward and the Married Women’s Property Act.
In the 1890, the fifty-fourth year of Queen Victoria’s reign, the Legislative Assembly of the Colony of Queensland passed the Married Women’s Property Act. Similar legislation had already been enacted in the United Kingdom and other Australian Colonies. Prior to this Act, married women did not have the kind of property rights as single women,Continue reading “Mr Woodward and the Married Women’s Property Act.”
Moreton Bay and More 