School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 9 of 9
-
ItemProstitution and the state in Victoria, 1890-1914( 1986)The later decades of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth centuries were marked by considerable change in Victorian society. Rapid urban expansion and industrialization were among the most profound of these developments. They resulted in increasing problems of urban over-crowding, poverty, sanitation and, despite the youth of the cities, decay. Those in power began to see these urban problems as being partly related to the nature of working-class life, so sought to control aspects of working-class culture to an unprecedented degree. During this period, legislation relating to liquor, tobacco, drugs, and gambling, for example, were brought into effect for the first time or became more intrusive. Street life was becoming increasingly regulated. In 1891, for example, amendments to the Victorian Police Offences Act made important changes to the social construction of anti-social behaviour and placed increased power in the hands of the police and legal institutions to control the behaviour of individuals in public places. As part of this development, soliciting prostitution was made an offence for the first time. Women, too, had become subversive. Feminists demanded the vote, increased educational opportunities and threatened the established power differential between the sexes. At the same time, legislation was being passed and medical practices were emerging which increasingly impinged upon women's bodies and upon the areas of women's traditional power - life itself and child life. Kerreen Reiger has traced the increasing attempts to professionalize and rationalize family life, resulting in greater intrusion into the lives of women in relation to childbirth and motherhood.' Increasing attempts to control prostitution in Australia date from this same period, and can be seen as part of these processes. It was from the 1860s that an edifice of laws was constructed. Firstly, legislators were concerned with how women were forced into prostitution (procuring), the relationships between women working in prostitution and their children, and the spread of venereal disease. Later, from the 1890s, there was a new spate of legislation related to soliciting, the ownership and management of brothels, procuring, and living on the earnings of prostitution. During the same period a centralized, bureaucratized police force, which was crucially involved in the increasing control of prostitution, was established in Victoria. The prison system, too, became more organized and intrusive. By the later part of this period the move toward greater state intrusion into the area of prostitution was clear; the years 1890 to 1914 have been chosen for detailed study. This period was marked at the beginning by important new amendments to the Police Offences and Crimes Acts in 1891 and at the end by the advent of the First World War, which created new contexts and problems. (From Introduction)
-
ItemLabour pains: working-class women in employment, unions, and the Labor Party in Victoria, 1888-1914( 1987-05)This study focuses on the experiences of working-class women spanning the years from 1888 to 1914 - a period of significant economic growth and socio-political change in Victoria. The drift of population into the urban centres after the goldrush marked the beginning of a rapid and continual urban expansion in Melbourne as the city’s industrial and commercial sectors grew and diversified. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the increasing population provided a larger workforce which also represented a growing consumer market. The rise of the Victorian manufacturing industries in this period also saw the introduction of the modern factory system. With the increasing demand for unskilled labour in factories, it was not only men who entered this new factory workforce. Young women and older children were, for the first time, drawn in appreciable numbers into the industrial workforce as employers keenly sought their services as unskilled and cheap workers. Women were concentrated in specific areas of the labour market, such as the clothing, boot, food and drink industries, which became strictly areas of “women’s work”. In the early twentieth century, the rigid sexual demarcation of work was represented by gender-differentiated wages and employment provisions within industrial awards.
-
ItemStudies in the relations between Indian and Australian colonies in the nineteenth century( 1987?)Geoffrey Blainey's reference to India in The Tyranny of Distance initiated my interest in researching the relationship between India and Australia in the nineteenth century. While Blainey made several references to India in the early development of colonial Australia, other historians have not developed that issue. I started my research with Blainey’s lead that there were some years in the nineteenth century when Australia seemed to be a satellite of India as well as a colony of England and that cargoes from Bengal fed and equipped the colony and also gave it a hangover. It seemed so obvious that the two 'neighbouring' British colonies have contact with each other and as Blainey pointed out, Australia was so far from England, and communication between the two was so irregular, that Sydney slowly drifted into Asia's net of commerce. (From introduction)
-
ItemThe controversial campaigns: the role of the Australian Army in the South-West Pacific area, 1944-1945( 1982)During the final year of the war in the Pacific, the Australian Army was confined to “mopping-up” by-passed Japanese forces in the New Guinea area and Borneo, left behind by the American advance through the Philippines and towards Japan. The Australian Army did not have any combat forces in any of the well known Pacific campaigns of 1944-45, such as, Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Nevertheless, mopping-up involved the Australians in many bloody clashes against the Japanese, who always fought with great tenacity, and by the end of the war the Australian Army had more troops in the field than at any other time. On the other hand, the Australian campaigns were, by the standard of that period of the war, on quite a small scale, and overall Australian casualties were fairly light.
-
ItemThe remaking of youth: a study of juvenile convicts and orphan immigrants in colonial Australia( 1987)One aspect of the development of modern western society upon which liberal democracy has always been self-congratulatory is the ongoing reforms made in the care and treatment of criminal, destitute and neglected youth. Almost every decade since the late eighteenth century has brought with it new, more 'enlightened' juvenile penal and welfare policies. As a corollary, the policies of preceding decades have been disowned, shunned and condemned. This has been the pattern of 'progress'. Progress has always rested on the invocation of an essential dissimilarity between 'then' and 'now'. The past is thus used only to serve as a distant and sometimes shocking backdrop to the enlightened present. If there is one general characteristic of the bulk of work done to date on the history of childhood and youth in western societies, and indeed on the more general history of penal and welfare reform, it is that it celebrates this notion of progress. The past is examined merely in order to assure us of our present state of advance. And so the past, in all its complexity, is not really examined at all. (From Introduction)
-
ItemThe acceptable face of feminism: the National Council of Women of Victoria, 1902-18( 1988)This study focuses on the broad question of post-suffrage feminist activity in Melbourne. When contrasted with the political ferment and air of sexual confrontation which characterised women's struggle for the vote, the post-suffrage period has been seen to represent an acceptance by women of traditional sexual roles and gender stereotypes. Underlying this general view of the period, however, is a complex set of historical factors. It is argued here that the fate of first-wave feminism in Victoria can be more clearly understood through an analysis of the composition and activities of the most broadly-based women's organisation of the early twentieth century the National Council of Women of Victoria. Officially formed in 1902 and continuing today, the National Council of Women is an umbrella organisation for a large and diverse number of affiliated women's gro.ups. From its inception, the Council functioned as a political lobby group, attempting to influence local, state and federal government on issues affecting women, children "and humanity in general". In the early twentieth century, the Council had connections with most publicly active women's groups in Melbourne. These ranged from the most radically feminist of the suffrage societies to the most conservative, both politically and in terms of feminism, of upper:"'class philanthropic organisations. The size and scope of activity of the National Council of Women (hereafter NCW) make its historical significance clear. (From Introduction)
-
ItemColonial Cornish: Cornish immigrants in Victoria, 1865-1880( 1985)The Victorian Cornish were participants in a mass movement of people in the 19th century from Cornwall to the United States, British colonies and other lands across the seas. While this migration was unprecedented in terms of Cornwall’s history, it was but a part of a much larger migration of Europeans abroad. The Cornish in Victoria, then, were a small segment of those who emigrated from Europe in this enormous migratory movement of the nineteenth century. In particular, they were a component of the mix of British immigrants, and their descendants, who comprised 95 per cent of Victoria’s population in the years 1865-1880.
-
Item"Gentlemen, the ladies have come to stay!": the entry of women into the medical profession in Victoria and the founding of the Queen Victoria Hospital( 1987)In 1890 Emma Constance stone became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in Australia. Unable to gain admission to an Australian medical school, she obtained her qualifications overseas. While she was away women gained entry to the Melbourne Medical School. Stone, and the Melbourne pioneering medical women, the first of whom graduated in 1891, later went on to perform a wide variety of medical work, but their most outstanding achievement was the foundation of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for Women in 1896. The pioneers encountered hostility from the medical profession, especially from the male medical students, and enjoyed widespread support: from women who welcomed a hospital where they would be treated only by qualified female practitioners. American and British medical women had already started their own hospitals in order to provide health care for women after established hospitals had refused to appoint them. In Melbourne, although similar opposition limited the opportunities of women, they were not completely excluded from hospital staffs. Unlike the overseas hospitals on which it was modelled, the Queen Victoria Hospital was not founded only, or even, perhaps, primarily as a result of exclusion. The more positive aim of providing health care for women by women was a powerful motive behind the setting up of a hospital for women officered by qualified female doctors. (From Introduction)
-
ItemSubminoan Crete: the first post Minoan period: a gazetteer and survey of sites and finds in Crete ca. 1100-1000 B.C.( 1987)This is a study of the Subminoan period. In the absence of detailed evidence, this phase, which covers approximately the eleventh century B.C., and initiates a so-called "Dark Age", has been considered obscure and of little importance. More recent evidence suggests otherwise, and provokes the need for a systematic presentation of available evidence of the period. The present work includes a comprehensive and up-to-date gazetteer of the sites where evidence for Subminoan occupation has been reported, and an account of finds therefrom. Through an examination of this material I attempt to assess the validity of son1e commonly held conceptions of the period. (From Introduction)