5 September at 7.30pm at Burnside Uniting Church, Cnr Fisher St, Burnside
SINGLE WOMEN AND THE LAW: Crime and Legislative Change in Colonial South Australia, 1836-1880. JADE HASTINGS
This presentation considers the prejudice directed towards unmarried women in the colonial South Australian courtroom 1836-1880. Single women, particularly working-class and non-white women, were sexualised and criminalised in ways that white middle-class married women were not.
Unmarried women, whether perpetrators or victims of crime, faced prejudice which influenced the outcomes. Such prejudice was the assumption that women frequently brought false charges for revenge or financial gain, and the insistence that testimony solely from the female victim of a crime was never sufficient evidence to convict. The experiences of single women were reflective of the wider prejudice directed towards unmarried women, specifically unmarried working-class women, throughout nineteenth century Britain and Australia. Strict social rules regulating single women’s behaviour were evident in every aspect of their lives, including: the ‘protection’ of single women on immigrant ships; the strict supervision of young women by their parents and/or employers in their homes and workplaces; the segregation of women of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ character in government institutions such as the Destitute Asylum; the strict supervision and control of women living in Female Refuges; and criticism of single women’s alleged immorality in the colonial media, with a particular focus on newly arrived immigrants and domestic servants. Inevitably, these stereotypes and assumptions influenced the outcome of court cases involving single women on both sides of the law.
Jade Hastings has a PhD from Flinders University. Her primary research focus is on single women’s involvement in crime and court proceedings in early colonial SA. She currently works outside of academia, pursuing her interest in colonial South Australian crime through a position at the Old Adelaide Gaol.