The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (73 page)

29
Eliza Perrin's letters are held in the Montrose Cottage Collection at the Gold Museum, Ballarat.

30
The dirty picture scandal is recounted in the
Melbourne Monthly Magazine
vol. 1, no. 1 May 1855. The Sophia Lewis story is told in exhilarating detail by Melbourne criminal lawyer Ken Oldis in
The Chinawoman
.

31
See John S. Levi and G. F. J. Bergman's history of Jewry in the colonial era,
Australian Genesis.

32
The first purpose-built synagogue was consecrated in November 1855 in Ballarat East.

33
There was a large Jewish Harris clan in Cornwall, many of whom emigrated in the 1850s. A number of Henry Harrises came to Victoria between 1852 and 1854, making Ballarat Henry difficult to trace. Ballarat's current synagogue was built in 1861.

34
Stories drawn from
Records of Pioneer Women
.

35
Keith Pearce and Helen Fry
, The Lost Jews of Cornwall
.

36
Dyte was so lauded by Nathan Spielvogel, a Ballarat historian who specialised in Jewish history. His lionising of Dyte appears in his article ‘The Ballarat Hebrew Congregation'.

37
Quoted in Marise Lawrence Cohen, ‘Caroline Chisholm and Jewish Immigration'.

38
Levi and Bergman make this point in
Australian Genesis
.

SEVEN: THE WINTER OF THEIR DISCONTENT

1
Geelong Advertiser
, 25 May 1854.

2
Melbourne Monthly Magazine
, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1855, 28.

3
Neither Ellen nor Frederick's death certificates list any offspring, but it is clear from Ellen's writing that she once had a son.

4
Note that average life expectancy in the 1850s was less than forty years, but this is largely because the high rates of infant mortality skew what demographers call ‘the life table'. Having survived the first five years of life, many in the gold rush generation lived into their sixties, seventies and beyond.

5
The better-known Mary Fortune, for example, had journalism published in the Melbourne press from the 1860s under the by-line Waif Wanderer or WW.

6
Note, however, that there are Letters to the Editor of the
Ballarat Times
published from September 1854 signed by Justitia that could have been written by Ellen Young. I suspect, however, that they were penned by Clara Du Val Seekamp. Justitia, Lady Justice, was the Roman Goddess of Justice. She is often represented as a matron carrying a sword—the power of reason and justice—and a set of measuring scales. Justitia is considered an allegorical allusion to moral force within western legal systems. In art, aspects of Justitia are sometimes conflated with the goddesses Fortuna (luck), Tyche (fate) and Nemesis (vengeance).

7
Unsourced quotation in Laurel Johnson
Women of Eureka
. The Montrose Cottage Collection, now held at the Gold Museum but previously curated by Johnston for her now defunct Montrose Cottage Museum in Ballarat, includes a reference to Clara being interviewed by a journalist for the
Courier
on 8 January 1902.

8
Mr H. Brown noted these prices in a letter to his sister written in 1854. The State Library of Victoria holds the letter.

9
Noah's letter to his mother, written in 1854, is held by the State Library of Victoria.

10
Geoffrey Serle provides the figures for this analysis of the land problem in
The Golden Age.

11
This observation was made by Reynell Everleigh Johns, who was a police magistrate on the goldfields. The State Library of Victoria holds an extensive collection of Johns' diaries, papers and scientific writings, as well as a fragment of the Eureka Flag in Johns' possession at his death in 1910.

12
English historian Anna Clark explains the literary genre of Chartist melodrama in
The Struggle for the Breeches
.

13
See the work of Jutta Schwarzkopf in particular.

14
The poem may also have been published in the
Ballarat Times
, but no copies of the
Times
are extant for this period.

15
The Liberty Song
was written by patriot John Dickinson during the American Revolution. First published as a poem in the
Boston Gazette
in 1768, its lyrics contain the following sentiment:
Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all, By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.

16
PROV VPRS 1189/93 G54/7193.

17
PROV VPRS 1189/93 F54/5371, I54/5194.

18
John Bastin, ‘Eureka: An Eye-Witness Account',
The Australian Quarterly
, vol. 28, no. 4, December 1956, 78.

19
Hotham's speech was reported in the
Geelong Advertiser
on 26 June 1854.

20
Of Jane and her four sisters, only one had any children, suggesting the Hood girls may have suffered from hereditary infertility.

21
The
Argus
report was widely circulated. See the Hobart
Colonial Times
, 5 July 1854.

22
PROV VPRS 1085/08, despatch to George Grey no. 112.

23
Ballarat Times
, 2 September 1854.

24
The
Argus
correspondent also guessed that Lady Hotham was less than thirty: a gift, perhaps, of the English sun.

25
Simplex Munditiis
—simple, neat attire. Ben Jonson wrote a poem called
Simplex munditiis
: (Still to be neat, still to be drest/As you were going to a feast…), a telling indication of the much-touted superiority of education and culture of many diggers. Thanks to Barry Jones for the translation and Jonson reference.

26
Geelong Advertiser
, 12 September 1854.

27
Ballarat Courier
, 3 December 1904.

28
Reported in the
Geelong Advertiser,
12 September 1854.

29
See Paul Pickering and Alex Tyrrell,
The People's Bread
.

30
The petition claimed that coffee drinking caused impotence in men, who came home from coffeehouses with
nothing moist but their snotty noses, nothing stiff but their joints, nor standing but their ears
.

31
PROV VPRS 1189.245 A53/5241.

32
PROV VPRS 1189.244 L55/254.

33
PROV VPRS 4066.01. See also the letters and petitions contained in VPRS 4066.02/03 and VPRS 1189.244 and VPRS 1189.238–240.

34
VPRS 4066.02.

35
VPRS 4066.03.

36
VPRS 4066.02.

37
Esther McKenzie's letter was written on 13 January 1855 and Mrs O'Neill's letter is dated 15 January 1855. Both are found in PROV VPRS 4066.02.

38
Geelong Advertiser,
10 October 1854. When Ellen Young wrote directly to Governor Hotham on 10 September 1854, she made it clear that it was with her husband Frederick's
sanction
that she took the liberty. VPRS 4066.01.

EIGHT: PARTING WITH MY SEX

1
Argus
, 18 May 1854.

2
Geelong Advertiser
, 11 May 1854. A copy of the notice in the
Ballarat Times
was forwarded to the
Geelong Advertiser
by its Ballarat correspondent. The
Ballarat Times
began publication on 4 March 1854, but the earliest extant copies date from September. The Adelphi was a famous theatre in London's West End. There was also an Adelphi Theatre in gold rush San Francisco. Sarah Hanmer may have worked at either of them.

3
The anecdote is relayed in Ferguson's
The Experiences of a Forty-Niner
, written on his return to America in 1888. Sarah Hanmer made enough of an impression on Ferguson to include her in a memoir penned forty years after the event.

4
Geelong Advertiser
, 8 June 1854.

5
Ballarat Times
, 2 September 1854.

6
PROV VPRS 1189.244 M55/735.

7
Quoted in Alice M. Robinson et al.'s edited collection,
Notable Women in the American Theatre
(Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1989).

8
Melbourne Punch
, 14 September 1855, p. 65.

9
Howard's essay is found in the fascinating collection
Crossing the Stage
, edited by Lesley Ferris. Laurence Senelick's
The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre
also explores the themes of subversion, transgression and transformation in the nineteenth-century theatre.

10
Argus
, 3 August 1854.

11
For the full lyrics, see
Thatcher's Colonial Songster
of 1857. Thatcher himself was a critic of female suffrage. While in New Zealand in 1865, Thatcher wrote to a Dunedin newspaper mocking the idea of women having a legislative role. ‘A female Town Board I
should
like to see/Oh fancy what fine food there'd be for me'. Thatcher Papers, State Library of Victoria.

12
See, for example,
Melbourne Punch
, 28 February 1856 and 29 May 1856.

13
Miska Hauser's letters from Australia have been translated and published by Colin Roderick and Hugh Anderson.

14
Catherine Smith and Cynthia Greig's extraordinary annotated collection of nineteenth-century photographs of cross-dressing in America,
Women in Pants
, graphically illustrates these points.

15
It is sometimes claimed that Henrietta Dugdale wore the bloomer costume, but Susan Priestley's biography of Dugdale sets us straight. She wore a simple divided skirt but not the full bloomer costume, patterns for which could be obtained from Amelia Bloomer's magazine by women, for women,
The Lily
, published in Seneca Falls, New York, but readily circulated in England and continental Europe.

16
‘Females in Men's Clothing',
Bendigo Advertiser
, 20 September 1879, cited in Lucy Chesser's
Parting with my Sex
.

17
John Hargreaves gives this estimate in his study of Ballarat's hotels.

18
For a longer discussion of the legend and legacy of Big Poll, see my 2003 book,
Beyond the Ladies Lounge.
Folk singer Glen Tomasetti gives a rendition of Thatcher's song on her 1961 album,
Glen Tomasetti Sings
.

19
Melbourne correspondent to
Mt Alexander Mail
, 15 July 1854.

20
A copy of this document is in the hands of descendant Andrew Crowley. Catherine's signature can be clearly seen.

21
This extract from the
Ballarat Times
of 15 July 1854 is republished in John D'Ewes' memoir.

22
In Australia, Raelene Frances, with her ‘hidden history' of prostitution, and Elaine McKewon, with
The Scarlet Mile
, have begun this important, if difficult, project.

23
This point is made by Bronwyn Fensham in her MA thesis about women on the Ballarat diggings.

24
PROV VPRS 289.1.

25
Statistics and quotes drawn from Richard Holmes' masterful book,
Redcoat
.

26
Argus
, 8 February 1855.

27
Ballarat Times
, 11 February 1855.

28
Ballarat Times
, 3 September, 1858.

29
Raelene Frances makes this point clear in
Selling Sex
, 42.

30
Fred Cahir documents this experience in his PhD thesis, ‘Black Gold'.

31
The quote comes from Charles Gattey's 1967 history of the dress reform movement,
The Bloomer Girls
.

NINE: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

1
In
Scandal in the Colonies
, Kirsten McKenzie notes that subscription lists were used as a form of social gesture to divide the respectable from the dishonourable. Who was put on or off the list could create scandal in a community.

2
PROV Original Papers Tabled in the Legislative Assembly VPRS 3253/60.

3
Details gleaned from the Select Committee on Bentley's Hotel. VPRS 3253/60.

4
Diggers' Advocate
, 16 September 1854.

5
Ballarat Times
, 7 October 1854.

6
Ballarat Times
, 23 September 1854.

7
Diggers' Advocate
, 16 September 1854.

8
Ballarat Times
, 23 September 1854.

9
Geelong Advertiser
, 11 October 1854.

10
Diggers' Advocate
, 16 September 1854.

11
Diggers' Advocate
, 16 September 1854.

12
PROV VPRS 1189/94.

13
‘Col. Vern's Narrative of the Ballaarat Insurrection' was published in the
Melbourne Monthly Magazine
, no. 7, vol. 2, November 1855. It claimed to be the first account published by a miner. Vern accused James Johnston of bribery and said he was the most disliked officer on the goldfield. After the Eureka Stockade battle, Vern was spotted in Buninyong, disguised in female attire viz: black drawn silk bonnet, light shawl and light cotton gown. VPRS 937/10.

14
There is, however, a Victorian marriage certificate for a James Scobie in 1865. Andrew Crowley's theory is that another miner was killed that morning and a very alive James Scobie was transported in the dead of night, at Peter Lalor's behest, to the Abbotsford Convent, where he lay low. Crowley swears it was in fact a miner called John Martin who died from a blow to the head earlier in the day. Crowley believes Martin was the partner in James Scobie and others' gold claim, and that Scobie was involved in his murder. He argues that James Scobie then pretended to be ‘Peter Martin' when testifying at the inquest of the dead body brought to the Eureka Hotel later that day. Crowley lays out his case on his website
www.hereticpress.com/Dogstar/History/Bentley.html