Listen Again: Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History
Put Dr Rachel Franks and Michelle Scott Tucker in a room together and dullness simply doesn’t get a look in. Give them the women of colonial Sydney as their subject, and they will have an audience was eating out of their hands within minutes.
Mirth, horror, shock and empathy all made an appearance, occasionally in the same sentence. The topics ranged from the surprising link between toilets and equality (who knew?) to the first and last women hanged in Australia, and why the SMSA Ladies’ Reading Room was revolutionary. We learnt that Sydney’s first civilian jury was female, the Jury of Matrons of 1789, and that Judge Advocate David Collins ran his courtroom with no legal training, just a set of books. If that isn’t a masterclass in “fake it until you make it”, I am not sure what is! We also discovered that it took until 1994 for the law to change so the census recorded women’s work correctly, having been framed around men and their needs until then. Add Coughlin’s ban on married women in the public service (which was implemented in 1902 and only abolished in 1966), and it explains rather a lot.
One of my favourite snippets of the day was a colonial-era letter home: “Dear Mummy, I am in need of reading material and cheese…” Who hasn’t felt that at least once?
Missed it, or fancy hearing it all again? It’s all here!
