Damned Whores and God's Police

by Anne Summers

  Spreading ‘the family’

  In 1926 the Racial Hygiene Centre of New South Wales was formed and had as its objects, ‘the Teaching of Sex Hygiene and the Prevention and Eradication of Venereal Disease’.22 The centre was at first comprised entirely of women, but at its second meeting, on 25 May 1926, it was resolved to try to interest men in joining and assisting with its proposed work. That work included honest and informative sex education lectures and films. One of the centre’s co-presidents, Ruby Rich, urged mothers to give their children correct sex information and ‘no more sham and humbug, no fairy tales of cabbages and stories, no more cant and hypocrisy of life’s development but simple Truth, which is not a menace but a safeguard … Remember Ignorance is not Innocence’.23 The women printed leaflets about sex education and placed them in library books, thereby gaining a wide dissemination of their ideas. They wrote to all broadcasting stations and department stores asking to be allowed to advertise their aims and, in 1927, obtained the permission of the Teachers’ Federation to speak to meetings of headmasters and headmistresses. But their beliefs also included eugenist notions about race improvement. The group had originally called itself the Race Improvement Society of New South Wales, but at a public meeting held in June 1926 had adopted the less eugenist-sounding ‘Racial Hygiene’ name. At its first committee meeting, one woman had queried the use of the word ‘eugenist’ in the group’s draft constitution, but after some debate it was retained. Ruby Rich spoke at a Mother’s Day service at Bourke Street Congregational Church of the need for racial hygiene: ‘If sex education was spread and understood I think there would be considerably fewer of these cases [of “compulsory marriages”], and many mistakes would be eliminated. The trouble is partly due to alcoholism and partly to mental deficiency’.24

  The centre aimed to prevent both immorality and race degeneration by a combined policy of sex education and moral exhortation (to prevent young girls from being seduced or from wanting to experiment with sex), by trying to curb prostitution and the spread of venereal disease, and by urging that ‘before the release of any prisoner, man or woman, guilty of sex aberrations, steps should be taken to prevent the said prisoners being a further menace to the public’.25 They collected evidence of the relationship between venereal disease and mental disorder and estimated the cost to the community, in terms of maintaining mental asylums, of such disease. In order to try and curb its spread they urged that all immigrants should obtain medical certificates furnished by Australian doctors in England, and that similar certificates be obtained prior to marriage.

  Their obsession with venereal disease was not merely a hangover from the war. As Chapter Ten pointed out, syphilis had reached near epidemic proportions in the immediate postwar years. Despite the efforts of health authorities and voluntary bodies such as Racial Hygiene, it was not easily or quickly contained. In 1935 it was found that 10 per cent of all women who were confined in three public hospitals in Melbourne and Sydney had syphilis.26 In May 1927 Sir Charles Rosenthal addressed the Sydney Legacy Club on the subject of VD and said that medical authorities estimated it to be directly or indirectly responsible for 80 to 90 per cent of lunacy and that the sum of half a million pounds annually that was needed to maintain New South Wales asylums was largely a consequence of the disease.27 Within a short time, the Racial Hygiene Centre (later Association) had attracted a good deal of prestigious support. In June 1927 the governor and his wife agreed to become patron and patroness of the organisation, and the governor’s wife, Lady de Chair, volunteered to approach the Minister of Education about showing the group’s sex education films in schools.

  A similar concern for the social and moral wellbeing of families inspired the various temperance groups to pursue their activities into the 1920s. A proposal to introduce early closing of hotels during the war had been widely supported by the general public and by the War Committee, the Minister for Defence, Federal Parliament and various other authorities. Legislation for six o’clock closing was enacted in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. This inspired some women’s groups to urge total prohibition of the sale of liquor – at least for the duration of the war. They were not successful, but the introduction of Prohibition in the US in 1920 gave impetus to the struggle for peace-time prohibition here and provided many women with an opportunity to pass an opinion on the effect of alcohol on the home. Ms Maybanke Anderson declared her voting intentions for a Prohibition plebiscite in terms of support for ‘the family’:

  Emphatically, I must vote for Prohibition for the sake of the children of to-day, and for the future of the race; for the children – the ill-born and often deficient offspring of vice. One may see them everywhere – in mean streets, in fine homes, as well as in hospitals, where doctors and nurses will tell you that though statistics are impossible, they know that the greater part of their patients suffer because of the vice of their parents, and because of poor food and foolish clothing. The drunkard, father or mother, is seldom wise and careful.28

  The demand that the State pay a child endowment was also motivated by a desire to uplift the conditions of family life by ensuring that children were adequately fed and clothed. The first system of child endowment in Australia was begun within the Commonwealth Public Service in November 1920 when, following the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Basic Wage, an endowment of five shillings a week for each dependent child was paid to all officers who received a salary of £400 per annum or less.29 In 1923 these allowances were confirmed as a permanent part of the salary scheme and the fund to meet them was created by deducting the average value of the payment from the basic wage of all officers. But this measure was of little use to the majority of the population who were not, or who were not married to, Commonwealth public servants. In June 1927 a Premier’s Conference in Melbourne considered the question and then referred it to a Royal Commission appointed by the Commonwealth Government. The Commission filed two separate reports, a majority report (submitted by three commissioners) claiming that such a scheme was ‘both unnecessary and unjustifiable’, and a minority report (submitted by two commissioners, including the only woman) which argued that a child endowment scheme was ‘the logical corollary of the living wage doctrine’ and ‘a measure of justice’. The prime minister told a conference of Commonwealth and state ministers in Canberra in May 1929 that the government was not prepared to adopt a scheme financed entirely from the proceeds of taxation as recommended in the minority report; the government agreed with the majority report that child endowment could not be separated from the control of the basic wage, which was a power the Commonwealth did not possess and which the states were not prepared to relinquish. The government did not, therefore, propose to establish an endowment scheme and the matter was left to the states.30

  New South Wales was the only state to adopt a scheme; it had in fact already done so. The Family Endowment Act of 1927 allowed the amount of five shillings per child to be payable to all families with dependent children under 14 years, subject to a means test.31 The scheme was financed by a payroll tax and ‘where practicable, the endowment is paid to the mother’.32 Excluded from eligibility were most illegitimate children (in certain cases an exception would be made), also children whose fathers were aliens, Asiatics, or aboriginal natives of Africa, the Pacific Islands or New Zealand unless born in Australia, and children who received endowment from the Commonwealth scheme for its public servants or from the NSW Widows’ Pension scheme. By 31 March 1928, 23 310 claims had been granted, 5245 refused and 371 withdrawn.33 Two years earlier the Widows’ Pensions Act had provided for an endowment of one pound per week plus ten shillings for every dependent child under 14 to widows in New South Wales. This was also subject to a means test and every claim had to be investigated by a police or stipendary magistrate. The scheme began from 10 March 1926, and by 30 June 1927 pensions were being paid to 5449 widows and 11 654 children.34

  All these reforms, whether they were achieved or still being so
ught, were designed to consolidate, improve and strengthen ‘the family’, especially among groups of people who were poor or who were considered to be disadvantaged in other ways. But, as the NSW Family Endowment scheme made brutally clear, they were only to be made to what were considered to be acceptable family groups. The single mother and her child were both excluded from assistance.

  These campaigns recognised that not even the most ardent homemaker could keep her family together and instil in them civic virtues if she had to contend with such uncontrollable forces as drunkenness, disabling disease or poverty. The so-called sinners – the anti-family forces – were not to be helped except, as in the case of venereal disease, where they were a potential social danger. They were to be either prevented from access to their crime, in the case of drink, or were to be punished with poverty as happened to single mothers. None of the campaigns had more than a token success in attaining the changes or reforms they sought, but they were successful in drawing public attention to the ills they identified and were at least partly responsible for creating the heightened consciousness about the quality of family life that existed in the 1920s.

  The 1920s in Australia did not produce a sexual revolution comparable to that which occurred in the US or even in Great Britain. Certainly women shortened their skirts and bobbed their hair. Many took up cigarette smoking and danced the Charleston. They went unchaperoned to dances and had ‘dates’ with men they had no interest in marrying. But the ‘jazz age’ and all that that phrase implied for sexual emancipation in America never reached our shores. The wave of repression and Puritanism described in Chapter Ten was still very much in evidence.

  The rate of ‘shotgun’ marriages declined sharply in 1921 and although it began to rise again, by 1932 it had still not reached the pre-war level.35 There was also a sharp decline in the birth rate, as the following table shows, and although the general birth rate dropped less sharply than the nuptial rate – suggesting that ex-nuptial births had far from disappeared – the figures are not high enough to imply that the renowned sexual emancipation of the American flapper was much in evidence in Australia.

  Birth rate in Australia 1880–192236

  Period

  Births per 1000 women aged 15–44

  Nuptial births per 1000 married women aged 15–44

  1880–82

  170

  321

  1890–92

  159

  332

  1900-02

  117

  235

  1910–12

  117

  236

  1920–22

  107

  197

  It could be the case, perhaps, that single women in Australia were well equipped with contraceptive information and equipment, but this seems unlikely. The dissemination of published sex information was not explicitly prohibited, but the moral orientation of the publication seems to have determined whether or not it was allowed distribution. Farmers’ Department store in Sydney had refused to display material from the Racial Hygiene Centre37, but generally this body had little trouble in distributing its pamphlets. This was undoubtedly because it advocated chastity for both sexes and countenanced the use of contraceptives for married couples only. Other publications, which dared suggest that sexuality was something to enjoy, and that this criterion was important when choosing a contraception method, were far less likely to reach a wide audience. A pamphlet called Parenthood Controlled written and published by a Ms SJ Marsden in Melbourne in 1923 had to be privately circulated. Ms Marsden was an enthusiastic promoter of the female orgasm as well as of birth-control methods and products. Her pamphlet contained a catalogue of contraceptives for both women and men, which could be purchased by mail order and she gave an address to which readers could write to her for further information about sexual and contraceptive techniques. She explained in detail how a husband could delay his orgasm so that his wife could enjoy satisfaction as well, and she roundly denounced the ‘coitus interruptus’ method of birth control because ‘unless the woman has reached the culminating point before the withdrawal she is left in a disappointed, nervous state, which leads to irritation and lack of sexual desire’.38

  Such views were articulated rarely, however, for they could be construed as undermining the dualistic view of women as either mothers or whores. Australia in the 1920s was not willing to accept a blurring of the distinction, and to acknowledge the sexuality of women implicitly challenged the view that motherhood was a totally fulfilling vocation. The war had re-emphasised the traditional division of labour between the sexes as it is enshrined in the bourgeois family and, with the inability of feminism to convert the gains it had made in the early 1900s into a challenge to the sexist status quo, had provided further justification for that division. Daring views such as Marsden’s were disturbing for they undermined a fundamental tenet of that division and their dissemination was not encouraged.

  Although there were variations to some of the patterns of family and marriage considered usual in the nineteenth century, by the end of the 1920s the basic structure of ‘the family’ was unchanged and had evidently become stronger and more widespread. Divorce began to increase after 1921 as the following table shows, but although the number of divorces rose substantially in 1921, there had been an even larger increase in the number of marriages, so the actual divorce rate had risen only slightly.

  Divorce rate in Australia 1891–193639

  1891

  8.0

  Divorces per 1000 existing marriages

  1901

  14.4

  Divorces per 1000 existing marriages

  1911

  13.1

  Divorces per 1000 existing marriages

  1921

  32.0

  Divorces per 1000 existing marriages

  1931

  50.3

  Divorces per 1000 existing marriages

  1936

  42.9

  Divorces per 1000 existing marriages

  In 1911 there were 0.1 divorces per 1000 of population and by 1921 this had only risen to 0.3, so that fewer than one in a 1000 people were divorced.40 According to the 1921 census, there were 4298 women and 4230 men described as divorcees41 – fewer than 10 000 people in a population of almost five and a half million. It was impossible to see this divorce rate as threatening marriage and ‘the family’ while the marriage rate continued to rise and while many divorcees tended to re-marry.

  The Depression: Myths about men and realities for women

  The 1930s were the years of the Depression. My generation, born during the next decade, has been presented with a collection of cultural lore about this time of great economic catastrophe. We have received images of thousands out of work, often for years, forced to beg and steal while trying to eke out an existence on the dole, their psyches seared forever with a ‘Depression mentality’, which led them to value the certainties and securities of a steady job and close family bonds. However, the images that have been handed down convey almost exclusively the male experience of the Depression; we have been told little about what it was like for women during the 1930s. None of the folklore tells us whether women’s experience of the Depression differed from men’s and, if so, how. Nor do we know if women have inherited a different ‘Depression mentality’.

  Most historians of the Depression do not mention women. One account, for instance, states:

  In the 1930s, even more than today, Australia was culturally and ethnically homogeneous; there were not – at least by international standards – profound divisions of religion, wealth or opportunity. The effects of the Depression were widespread, and to some extent indiscriminate: many businessmen, professionals and farmers lost their incomes; not all the unemployed were unionists. To the extent that the Depression was seen as an external calamity, a visitation from outside – and it was thus commonly portrayed – then it may have acted as a unifying rather than as a divisive influence. Instead of setting class against class, it ma
y have made Australians aware of their common nationality, or desperateness. In any case, it seems likely that the fact that the calamity was shared tended to mute rather than exacerbate class antagonisms.42

  The authors do not think to consider whether sex antagonisms were created, or exacerbated, by the Depression. In looking at some of the consequences of the Depression, Gollan writes:

  For governments of all persuasions the Depression became a nightmare which must not be permitted to recur. Public policy must be directed towards this end and, in the thirty years following the Depression, one of the main criteria on which the performance of governments has been judged is the extent to which they have maintained a high level of employment.43

  He does not inquire whether governments have found it politically necessary to maintain a high level of employment for women, nor does he consider what effects the Depression had on women’s participation in the workforce. Russel Ward describes one aspect of the Depression: ‘For a time nearly 30 per cent of breadwinners were unemployed. Thousands tramped the bush roads again with swag and billycan, often ready to work for their keep if only work of any kind could be found’.44 He does not say if any, or how many, of those breadwinners were women and he does not specify that those who took to the roads were all men, although his footnote describing a swag as ‘a bushman’s rolled-up bundle of belongings’ certainly implies this.

  These recent historical accounts of the Depression have served to perpetuate myths and to obscure realities. Women’s experience of the Depression differed from men’s in several fundamental ways. They had to endure several particular forms of suffering or deprivation that were a consequence of being female. They did not have access to the same range of compensations or escapes that enabled men to forget temporarily the devastation around them; and those who were married were expected to summon up resources to try to alleviate the physical and psychological distress of their husbands and families in ways that were rarely expected of men.