A History of Crime in Australia: Australian Underworlds

247 Pages·2022·15.192 MB·English

by  Nancy Cushing

A History of Crime in Australia
This book provides a lively and accessible account of Australia’s most promi-
nent crimes and criminals of the nineteenth and twentieth century and offers
an informative background for those seeking to understand crimes commit-
ted today.
A History of Crime in Australia examines the imposition of English law
on this ancient continent, and how its operation affected both transported
offenders from Great Britain and Ireland, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples whose own systems of Law were overlaid. Drawing upon
cutting-edge research in the field, original work by the author, and essays
from leading crime history researchers, it addresses the question of whether
there was an Australian underworld. In doing so, it provides background for
well-known offenders including bushranger Ned Kelly and the razor gangs
of the 1920s and for sensational crimes like the Mount Rennie Outrage,
the Pyjama Girl Mystery and the Shark Arm Murder and the miscarriage
of justice following the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru in
1980. Through these case studies, the book draws out points of tension and
cohesion within Australian society, exposing the enduring anxiety around
those who were considered to be outsiders, and how the criminal justice
system was used to manage these concerns. This book includes a guide to
conducting research in the field of Australian crime history and sources for
further study.
Designed as an introductory text for students, this book will be of interest
to those studying criminology and crime history, and anyone who would
like to deepen their understanding of crime’s place in Australia’s social and
cultural history.
Nancy Cushing is Associate Professor of History at the University of New-
castle, Australia. She is an environmental historian interested in human-
other animal relations, most recently co-editing Animals Count (Routledge
2018) with Jodi Frawley. This book is based on her undergraduate course
Australian Underworlds which she has taught as an on-campus and massive
open online course to over two thousand students since 2017.

A History of Crime
in Australia
Australian Underworlds
Nancy Cushing
Designed cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Nancy Cushing
The right of Nancy Cushing to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cushing, Nancy, author.
Title: A history of crime in Australia : Australian underworlds /
Nancy Cushing.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022034295 (print) |
LCCN 2022034296 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032226538 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032226521 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003273561 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Crime--Australia--History. | Criminal
law--Australia--History.
Classification: LCC HV7173.5 .C87 2023 (print) | LCC HV7173.5 (ebook) |
DDC 364.40994--dc23/eng/20220718
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034295
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034296
ISBN: 978-1-032-22653-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-22652-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27356-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003273561
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
List of Contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
Essay: Crime History for Criminologists
Victoria Nagy
1 Law in Aboriginal Societies 13
Essay: Indigenous Law and the Intrusion
of the West
Tyson Yunkaporta and Michael Bryden
Primary Source: Wundanyuka kulu Jujuju
2 Australian Criminal Justice Systems 25
Essay: From Military Tribunals to Trial by Jury
Rachel Franks
Primary Source: Prisoners for Trial, Adelaide,
1846
3 The Criminal Class Theory and Its Enemies 45
Essay: British and Irish Convicts and the Idea of a
Criminal Class
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart
Primary Source: Female Convict Indents,
1845
vi Contents
4 Aboriginal People and Settler Colonial Law 65
Essay: Entangled in the Colonial Justice System
Laurie Allen
Primary Source: “Proclamation to the Aborigines,”
C. 1828–30
5 The World of Ned Kelly 84
Essay: The Other Bushrangers
Meg Foster
Primary Source: The Jerilderie Letter, 1879, Excerpt
6 Identifying Underworlds 104
Essay: Underworld Figures? Describing Vagrants
Catharine Coleborne
Primary Source: From the Victoria Police Gazette, 1901
7 Race, Class and Sexual Violence 124
Essay: Sexual Violence, Racism, and the Death Penalty
Andy Kaladelfos
Primary Source: Opposing Capital Punishment,
the Bulletin, 1889
8 Husband Poisoners and Baby Killers: Women Criminals 145
Essay: The Ordinary Crimes of Female Offenders
Alana Piper
Primary Source: Victoria Gaol by Janet Dibben, 1904
9 Popular Crimes 167
Essay: “Unnatural” and Unpopular Crimes
Yorick Smaal
Primary Source: The “Pyjama Girl Conundrum,” 1944
Contents vii
10 The Long History of Australian Gangs 184
Essay: Whatever Happened to the Larrikin Pushes?
Melissa Bellanta
Primary Source: Kate Leigh Prison Record, 1915
11 Innocent Criminals 203
Essay: The Media Versus Lindy Chamberlain
Michelle Arrow
Primary Source: Azaria Chamberlain's Matinée Jacket, 1980
12 Researching the History of Crime in Australia 220
Essay: Using Digital Archives of Crimes and Criminals
Michael Kilmister
Index 232
Contributors
Laurie Allen is an early career researcher in the field of Indigenous history
in Australia. His PhD thesis at the University of Newcastle was entitled
“A History of the Aboriginal People of the Central Coast of New South
Wales to 1874.”
Michelle Arrow is Professor of History at Macquarie University. She
specialises in cultural history and histories of popular culture and the
women’s movement. Books include Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture
in Australia Since 1945 (2009) and The Seventies: The Personal, The Political
and the Making of Modern Australia (2019), which won the 2020 Ernest Scott
Prize for Australian History.
Melissa Bellanta is Associate Professor of Modern History in the Australian
Catholic University’s National School of Arts. She is a social, cultural and
gender historian with interests in historical material culture, fashion, the
history of emotions and masculinities. Her book Larrikins: A History was
published in 2012.
Michael Bryden is a Research Associate at the Jumbunna Institute for
Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney, and
a PhD candidate at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, University of
Cambridge. A palawa man of Tasmanian Indigenous descent, his research
focuses on police legitimacy, Indigenous self-determination, and public
policy. Bryden’s doctoral study examines police self-legitimacy in the
United Kingdom. He is also the host of the Rethinking Deviance podcast.
Catharine Coleborne is Professor and the Head of the School of Humanities,
Cultural Industries and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle.
She publishes in the histories of mental health, families, colonial worlds
and medical institutions, with a particular interest in vagrancy. Her books
include Why Talk About Madness? (2020), Insanity, Identity and Empire (2015)
and with Professor Katie Pickles, New Zealand’s Empire (2016).
Nancy Cushing is Associate Professor of History at the University of
Newcastle. She is an environmental historian interested in human-other
Contributors ix
animal relations, most recently co-editing Animals Count (Routledge
2018) with Jodi Frawley. This book is based on her undergraduate course
Australian Underworlds which she has taught as an on campus and massive
open online course since 2017.
Meg Foster is Mary Bateson Research Fellow at Newnham College,
Cambridge, where she is researching the connections between British
highway robbery and the origins of Australian bushranging. She is an
intersectional historian working across race, class and gender histories
as well as imperial, colonial, ethnographic and public histories. Her first
book, Boundary Crossers: The hidden history of Australia’s other bushrangers,
was published by NewSouth in 2022.
Rachel Franks is the Coordinator for Scholarship at the State Library of
New South Wales and Honorary Associate Lecturer at the University of
Newcastle. Holding doctorates from both the University of Sydney and
Central Queensland University, her research spans crime fiction, true
crime, popular culture and information science. Her biography of Sydney
hangman “Nosey Bob” Howard, An Uncommon Hangman, was published
by NewSouth in 2022.
Andy Kaladelfos (they/them) is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the
University of New South Wales. Kaladelfos’ research specialities are
sexual and gender-based violence, queer criminology, immigration
regulation, and homophobic and transphobic violence. Their research is
interdisciplinary, examining the nature of the criminal justice system, and
the shifting relationship between law and society. Kaladelfos is the author
with Lisa Featherstone of Sex Crimes in the 1950s (2016) and a co-creator
of “The Prosecution Project.”
Michael Kilmister is an Instructional Designer at the University of Reading,
United Kingdom. He holds a PhD in political history from the University
of Newcastle (2011) and has published on Anzac mythology and authentic
assessment in history. In parallel, he has developed expertise in learning
design. Kilmister has been awarded for his work in supporting excellence
in university teaching, including in the course upon which this book is
based.
Hamish Maxwell Stewart is Professor of History and Project Lead in
Heritage Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of New
England, Australia. He has made a major contribution to the reinvigoration
of studies of convicts transported to Australia through the application of
digital methods, in particular in the form of life course studies. Maxwell
Stewart has over 100 scholarly publications in this field and has led
numerous large-scale projects including Founders and Survivors (https://
foundersandsurvivors.com/) and the Digital Panopticon (https://blog.
digitalpanopticon.org/).