I thought I had posted this excerpt from my Not Your Usual Australian Villains, but apparently not, because somebody posted a related short article on FB, and I went looking for this rather more detailed exploration. Hey ho, here it is, and as you can see, some of my 'villains' weren't that evil:
———
Was it ever against the law for women to wear trousers? The
answer is “probably not”, even if we know of at least one convict who was
wearing male clothes when she was arrested.
That was the lady you can see on the Australian $20
note, Mary Haydock, later Mary Reibey, who was convicted of horse theft in
Britain in 1790, but what horse thieves did, the ladies of the upper classes in
England did as well, soon after. Up until 1820, London women could attend
debates in Parliament, but then they were almost excluded from the House of
Commons and entirely barred from the House of Lords. Some of them found their
way around this, said The Sydney Gazette
and New South Wales Advertiser:
Curiosity has, however, sometimes defeated this selfish
order; and, in the disguise of male attire, many ladies of respectable rank in
life, have for whole nights enjoyed the pleasure which, in former times, was to
be derived from the animated debates of this enlightened body. [i]
When Sarah Webb joined her husband William in an 1826
robbery (which probably entitles her to be called the first woman bushranger),
she wore men’s clothes. Then there was Margaret Donnally, a convict who
absconded in male attire in 1827, and got six months in the female factory for doing
so. It may be worth noting, before reading the following, that in those days,
trousers and breeches were commonly coyly referred to as “inexpressibles”.
It is no new thing for ladies to assume the breeches when
they would escape from servitude and throw off its yoke: moreover it is
oftentimes a very successful plan. Now Margaret Donnally, not liking a far-away
up-country life, determined to try this plan; Achilles’ petticoats thought she,
are upon record, why not Margaret Donnally’s inexpressibles. [ii]
Given that she was arrested heading for Sydney, it is likely
Donnally’s offence was going AWOL, rather than cross-dressing. An unapproved
bid for freedom was probably also behind the charge levelled at an unnamed
servant girl who was caught, out and about in men’s clothes, in 1829. Here is
how it played out, according to The
Australian:
An assigned female servant to Mr. Shaughnessy, undertaker,
was charged with absenting herself from her master’s service. The girl had
indulged herself in a freak which ended in a watch-house. A constable who was
induced to take a ramble in the domain, to enjoy a little fresh air, happened
to come full butt when turning a corner, unexpectedly with the frail one. Her
appearance at once denoted her to be worth a salute. Good morning, says the man
— but oh what a silence — what a pause. The woman knew the man, but he just
then did not know his customer. A little time however sufficed to make them
close acquaintances — a feminine tone of voice discovered to the prying notice
of the constable that under the assumed male attire there was something of
frail woman. She was walked off to a watch-house. Mr. Jilks, the chief
constable, was immediately sent for, and to him was assigned the privilege of
making an enquiry into the matter. [iii]
The woman confessed that she was in disguise, and had left
her master’s home, using her disguise to avoid detection. She was sentenced to
one month in the Female Factory. Incidentally, Sarah Webb was not the only
woman to go bushranging, as two others were mentioned in the same paper in
1835:
The bushrangers are still at large about the Liverpool Road
They have been seen within the last two days by one or two persons in that
neighbourhood, and are reported to be partially armed; the two men with two
women in male attire, were last heard of as having taken up their quarters at a
place called Rocky Point, down towards George’s River. [iv]
Clearly, there was a sense that these women in trousers were
up to no good in some way, and it was probably her trousers which drew Sergeant
Toole’s attention to Mary-Ann Grenaine in 1851. There was no such offence as
being drunk in charge of trousers, but Toole was clearly not impressed with
what Empire called “a little
undersized, pug-nosed creature, about sixteen years of age”.
Instead, she was charged with drunkenness and disorderly
conduct in York-street, on the morning of Friday 14 November. She was in male
attire the paper said: not exactly the ‘bloomer’ costume that was then exciting
people in Philadelphia, but arrayed in blue jacket and trousers, with a neat
little oilskin hat upon her head.
He found the prisoner drunk outside Mr. Entwistle’s
Hotel, in York Street, where she “was dancing the sailor’s hornpipe to the
great enjoyment of the mob”. He knew where she got the clothes, said a report
in Empire:
… a person named Geddes, had called at the female watch-house
about the clothes in which the prisoner was dressed, and it appeared that
Geddes had slept during the previous night with the prisoner, who arose very
early on Friday morning, while Geddes was snoring, dressed herself in his
clothes, and left her gown, bustle, petticoats, &c. [v]
The prisoner pleaded with the magistrate to let her off, so
she could return the clothes, which she had only taken for a joke. The Police
Magistrate ordered her to post bonds for her good behaviour for six months, one
of £10 from herself, and two sureties of £5 each, or be imprisoned fourteen
days.
On the other hand, “Harriette Walters” was apparently a
virtuous young woman who adopted male garb to avoid unwanted attention as she
waited for her husband to arrive in Australia, according to Ellen Lacy. Mrs
Lacy was neither a chronicler nor a historian, rather, she was a writer of
almost factual fiction, and she made it clear that Harriette’s name was
something else, but insisted that the story itself was true.
The circumstances are easily told: Harriette and her
husband were ready to sail for Australia, but Harriette stayed behind to care
for a dying relative, who was expected to last for some months. Their plan was
that after the relative died, she would follow her husband to Australia, but
almost as soon as her husband’s ship left the wharf, the relative died.
Harriette finalised the relative’s affairs, hurried to
the docks, but missed her husband’s ship, and then by chance, found a faster
passage — something that could happen in the days of sail. She reached
Melbourne before him, so she was alone in a strange and expensive city. It was
not a good place, said Mrs Clacy, for any female to be without a protector.
… even the family with whom she had come out, had gone many
miles up the country. She possessed little money, lodgings and food were at an
awful price, and employment for a female, except of a rough sort, was not easily
procured. [vi]
Harriette had a slight figure, so she adopted the usual
colonial costume worn by men: loose trousers, a full, blue serge shirt,
fastened round the waist by a leather belt, and a wide-awake hat, which was a
broad-brimmed felt hat. Pretending to be a young lad, just arrived from
England, she found light work near the wharf, and was there for about three
weeks at a salary of a pound a week with board thrown in, along with permission
to sleep in an old tumble-down shed beside the store.
When her husband arrived, he did not recognise her at
first in her unexpected clothes, and when he said he was bound for the Bendigo
diggings, she put her foot down. There would be no further separation, and
while the others in their party knew her secret, she remained dressed as a boy
until their arrival at Bendigo.
There were quote marks in the 1851 reference to the
‘bloomer’ costume in Mary-Ann Grenaine’s trial. The quotation marks tell us the
idea was new then, but by 1860, the Bloomer revolution was old news. Here, Emma
Macpherson is writing of the floods that used to roar through Melbourne:
… at the time of my visiting it, the gentlemen had pretty
generally adopted the fashion of high waterproof boots, by the aid of which and
by washing them at intervals in these flowing rivers, they walked
about the streets in tolerable comfort; but as this fashion had not extended to
the ladies, the condition presented by their long flowing dresses was pitiable
in the extreme; I really think they will have eventually to adopt the Bloomer
costume, which, if allowable under any circumstances, would certainly be so
there, for the purpose of traversing these terrible quagmires. [vii]
Her point, when you come down to it, is that clothing needs,
above all, to be practical. Sour, grumpy old men might object to women in
trousers and mutter about the Monstrous Regiment of Women, but in time,
practicality would win out, and later generations would wonder why their
ancestors had been so upset.
No fashion is ever entirely
wrong, even the crinoline, which used up public space rather savagely. The
evidence in its favour comes from Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, who missed her footing
as she went to step into a boat, and was saved by her crinoline:
I had but to walk across a fallen trunk which projected over
the bank, to get into the boat, when, depending for support too much on a
branch overhead, it gave way, and in an instant I was floating in deep water
down the stream, my crinoline acting as a life-preserver; for up it went with
my dress, like a balloon, presenting, I have no doubt, a most ludicrous
appearance. My friend immediately pushed off to my assistance, caught my arms,
and told me to jump into the boat, which I easily accomplished, my petticoat
aiding me in the most extraordinary manner. Although I had been up to my waist
in water and my under-garments were saturated, my dress was scarcely wet, owing
I suppose, to the same friendly but much-abused crinoline! [viii]
For the most part, the crinoline was an impractical garment,
especially at colonial sporting events which were often a bit on the raucous
side. At the Copenhagen Ground in Ballarat in the summer of 1862, one of the
events for men was a wheelbarrow race in which the competitors pushed ordinary
wheelbarrows while blindfolded. With the exception of the winner, William
Brown, the field scattered, and some of them collided with each other, while
others hit the fence or the grandstand, and one was wounded when he ran into
the dancing platform.
Obviously, no woman could have taken part in the
wheelbarrow race in a crinoline. Still, two of them thought they could try
running, said the Ballarat Star:
About three o’clock an amusing incident occurred on the
ground, being no less than a 100 yards race between a lady from Ballarat and
another resident in Buninyong, and, as may be imagined, the affair caused much
merriment. The crinolines of this pair of pedestrians, however, somewhat
retarded their speed, and before they had got fifty yards they gave the matter
up in despair, one especially in consequence of her obesity being considerably
“blown.” [ix]
All the same, women must have occasionally worn male
clothing in bush areas. The naturalist, artist and writer Louisa Atkinson
apparently caused an unspecified stir among the ladies of Kurrajong when she
was wandering the bush in the 1860s, and that almost certainly means she was
wearing trousers. Luckily, her Good Works in other directions effectively
muzzled the venomous mouths of the vicious old biddies.
I think I can see some of Henry Lawson’s prose style in
Atkinson’s writing. He was only five when she died, and by the time he was
being published, Lawson could be matter-of-fact about cross-dressing in cases
of need, as we can see in The Drover’s
Wife, published in 1892:
The rain will make the grass grow, and this reminds her how
she fought a bush-fire once while her husband was away. The grass was long, and
very dry, and the fire threatened to burn her out. She put on an old pair of
her husband’s trousers and beat out the flames with a green bough, till great
drops of sooty perspiration stood out on her forehead and ran in streaks down
her blackened arms. The sight of his mother in trousers greatly amused Tommy,
who worked like a little hero by her side, but the terrified baby howled
lustily for his “mummy.” [x]
Ten years later, when Lawson wrote a prose version of his
ballad The Fire at Ross’s Farm, it
was still daring to cross-dress in public. In the story, Old Watt was a
squatter, Ross was a selector on Watt’s run, and they were therefore enemies.
Mary Watt grew fond of Bob Ross, the selector’s son, but she declared that she
would never marry. Then came a bushfire at Christmas, threatening the
selector’s 10 acres of wheat. Mary asked her father to help Ross, he refused,
so she rode off, against his orders, to help.
Mary saw Ross and Mrs Ross and the daughter Jenny, well up
the siding above the fence, working desperately, running to and fro, and
beating out the fire with green boughs. Mary left her horse, ran into the hut,
and looked hurriedly round for something to wear in place of her riding-skirt.
She only saw a couple of light print dresses. She stepped into a skillion room,
which happened to be Bob’s room, and there caught sight of a pair of trousers
and a coat hanging on the wall.
Bob Ross, beating desperately along a line of fire that
curved down-hill to his right, and half-choked and blinded with the smoke,
almost stumbled against a figure which was too tall to be his father.
“Why! who’s that?” he gasped.
“It’s only me, Bob,” said Mary, and she lifted her bough
again.
Bob stared. He was so astonished that he almost forgot the
fire and the wheat. Bob was not thin — but — —
“Don’t look at me, Bob!” said Mary, hurriedly. “We’re going
to be married, so it doesn’t matter. Let us save the wheat.”
In the morality of the time, as he had seen her in men’s
clothing, they must wed, but when her father and his men rode in to help fight
the fire, she fled back to the house to change, before her father or his men
saw her. The fire was beaten, and Lawson’s tale ended with a merry Christmas
had by all.
… in after years they used to nearly chaff the life out of
Mary. “You were in a great hurry to put on the breeches, weren’t you, Mary?”
“Bob’s best Sunday-go-meetin’s, too, wasn’t they, Mary?” “Rather tight fit,
wasn’t they, Mary?” “Couldn’t get ‘em on now, could you, Mary?”
“But,” reflected old Peter apart to some cronies, “it ain’t
every young chap as gits an idea of the shape of his wife afore he marries her
— is it? An’ that’s sayin’ somethin’.”
And old Peter was set down as being an innercent sort of ole
cove. [xi]
Before 1900, most Australians bathed naked, but in a
secluded place, and unless bathing as a family, they were segregated by sex,
because being seen naked by the opposite sex was “indecent”. Here, Miles Franklin
describes how, on a hot day, she and a number of girl visitors “… went for
bogeys in a part of the river two miles distant…”
Aunt Helen always accompanied us on our bathing expeditions
to keep us in check. She was the only one who bothered with a bathing-dress.
The rest of us reefed off our clothing, in our hurry sending buttons in all
directions, and plunged into the pleasant water. [xii]
Over time, swimming costumes were introduced, and both
public and mixed bathing were allowed. We will return to bathing later, but
what might be allowed on the beach remained indecent elsewhere. Then in 1928,
women began to wear trousers, away from the shore, said the Hobart Mercury:
I hear that at George’s mannequin parade to-day the smoking
suits invariably consisted of black satin trousers and embroidered sac coats.
My informant tells me they are extremely becoming to women with straight legs,
and that the only problem was whether ordinary straight bags or a sort of
glorified semi-slacks were to be preferred. [xiii]
By 1930, women were engaged in active sport, and something
had to give, said the Adelaide Advertiser.
Women have definitely taken to slacks and shirts for
strenuous outdoor sport, and apparently Adelaide has not even been mildly
shocked. [xiv]
What passed muster in the Antipodes could still shock
Britons, though. Miss Yvonne Henry, of Haywards Heath (Sussex), lost her job in
a chemist’s shop because she went to a dance wearing trousers instead of a
skirt. Her employer had given her a pay rise before she went on holidays during
1931, but then a photo of the offending pants appeared in the press, and even
the Adelaide Advertiser heard of what
happened next.
Miss Henry was delighted, but the chemist happened to see the
newspaper report and he wrote her a note in which, according to her mother, he
said that her appearance in public wearing trousers offended against his
religious principles and her services would no longer be required. [xv]
In 1932, Mrs Lucius Connolly, formerly Miss Jennie Falkiner,
a prominent socialite from a pastoral family, returned to Australia after 16
months driving from Durban to Cairo and told her story to the Perth Daily News.
During her trip she wore riding breeches, or khaki slacks in
hotter weather, and shirt. Shorts she avoided because of insect bites. They are
very rarely worn in Africa. In the smartest hotels in Kenya and Tanganyika she
was surprised to see women usually dressed in slacks and brilliant colored
shirts, and very wide terai hats. Her own wardrobe for the trip included, besides
her travelling kit, two tennis frocks, a skirt, and jumper, and a black lace
evening frock. [xvi]
In 1933, Marlene Dietrich told the world she wore men’s
clothing because it was comfortable, she looked better in those clothes, and
“…it takes too much time; money, and trouble to be a well-dressed woman.” Soon
other stars were, may I say it, following suit, and Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford
and Carole Lombard were all doing it. [xvii]
By 1933, some women golfers were wearing “…a man’s
orthodox grey flannel slacks to take part in the game” [xviii],
but lawn tennis associations were concerned about men and women wearing shorts
to play tennis. Women cricketers argued that the pads worn when batting or
keeping wicket did not work with skirts, that they needed trousers.
Aldermen and councillors had the vapours over the amount
of flesh exposed by the latest bathing costumes, [xix]
but it was a bad time to be a wowser, because all over Australia standards were
being eased.
Also in 1933, women in slacks might enter the nation’s
House of Representatives, though not the Senate, [xx]
but a few weeks later, Brisbane’s Lady Mayoress (Mrs. J. W. Greene), told The Queenslander that while she still
disapproved of women drinking and smoking in public, her holiday attire would
include slacks.
“As far as the question of modesty is concerned, I think
slacks are a very modest form of attire, and it is how one behaves more than
what one wears that counts.”
Asked whether her children liked the idea of her choice, the
Lady Mayoress replied in the affirmative. “It is really just as much a matter
of fashion for women as the wearing of plus fours is for men who play golf,”
she added. [xxi]
In January 1934, a Barcaldine paper reported that in
Canberra, Rev. Father Haydon was standing near the entrance to St. Christopher’s
Catholic Church, Canberra, before conducting (such a man would never celebrate)
a wedding. Seething with outrage, he stopped a girl who was in trousers and
ordered her to “Go home and get properly dressed.” [xxii]
In country areas, men could only dream of leering and
ogling at fresh young female bodies in trousers, but then in mid-1934, the
drought broke. A west-bound train stopped at Kalgoorlie, and 50 members of the
cast of J. C. Williamson’s musical comedy company’s show, The Girl Friend, stepped down: The Kalgoorlie Miner was excited:
Several of the young women created a sensation in Hannan
street, by appearing in green, blue and grey slacks. [xxiii]
One might suspect that a clever publicist arranged that, but
the window of opportunity would close, soon enough, as the unusual became the
normal. Nine years later, under wartime conditions, the Prime Minister, John
Curtin, allowed women Commonwealth employees to wear slacks to work “because of
the difficulty in obtaining suitable stockings and the expense involved”. [xxiv]
Slowly, the opposition was wearing down. Your chronicler
was a guest at the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club in Perth in 1967, when a
sailing colleague commented that a large majority of the people in the bar were
“so far up themselves they can look out between their teeth to check the
weather”. Your gentle chronicler politely and neutrally agreed that they were
certainly not attired for sailing small craft on the Swan in winds gusting to
50 knots as we had been doing, but twenty years earlier, in 1947, what were the
ladies wearing at the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club? The Perth West Australian had the details:
Over 600 persons were present when the Lieutenant-Governor
(Sir James Mitchell) officially opened the sailing season at the Royal
Freshwater Bay Yacht Club on Saturday afternoon. Among the groups on the lawns
and watching the regatta were representatives of the armed services and the
commodores and flag officers of kindred clubs.
The frocking of the women was particularly varied and ranged
from the bright slacks and linen suits favoured by the younger generation to
neat tailor-mades and bright afternoon frocks, worn in some instances with
wispy cocktail hats and long fur coats. [xxv]
Then in 1950, one of the last barriers fell, when women
golfers at Royal Queensland were permitted to play in golfing slacks, on
account of wet weather. [xxvi]
Now, all that is left is my friend Dorothy’s mystery of
why schoolgirls are still required to wear skirts.
[vi] Ellen Clacy, A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings, 136.
[vii] Emma Macpherson, My Experiences in Australia, 322 – 4.
[viii] Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, Social Life and Manners in Australia,
106 – 7.
[x] Henry Lawson, The Drover’s Wife, in Short stories in prose and verse, c.
1894.
[xi] Henry Lawson, The Bush-Fire, in The Children of the Bush, 1902.
[xii] Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career, 1901, 142.
