Ruth Ford | 'Prove first you're a male': A Farmhand's Claim for Wages in 1929 Australia | Labour History, 90

'Prove first you're a male': A Farmhand's Claim for Wages in 1929 Australia

Ruth Ford^*

'Prove first you're a male' considers the case of a farmhand's claim for wages through the civil legal system in 1929 Australia, in which the claimant, William Smith, was exposed to be 'female'. The article examines the court case and the press coverage, and considers the treatment of William Smith by the legal system, the press, the medical profession and rural communities. Smith's gender-crossing challenged a legal, wages and arbitration system based on divisions between male and female. Once defined as biologically female, Smith posed the threat of trespassing on the domain of male labour and receiving male wages. The article analyses why Smith was glorified in the press as an Australian rural battler and heroine, when other 'men-women' at this time faced severe condemnation. The article contends that rural nationalism and settler colonialism enabled Smith to be recast into a national legend which glorified hard work, courage and refusing convention.

William Smith worked in Queensland, Australia as a farm labourer, drover, railway navvy and cane-cutter in the 1920s. He took up selection of 851 acres of land in Queensland, only to lose his cattle and property two years later, after a severe drought. Smith returned to labouring and, like many Australian farm workers, he moved often, following seasonal farm work.¹ In 1928 (finding work scarce in Queensland) Smith rode south to New South Wales and worked on several orchards in Central Cumberland. Smith entered the employ of Thomas Waters, the manager of Waterside Estates Ltd of Kenthurst (New South Wales), as a permanent farm hand and ploughman on 10 November 1928. The agreement was that he was to be paid £3 10s a week, his horse was to be fed, he was to receive a dozen eggs weekly and would camp on the road at the back of the property. In mid-January, after nine weeks' employment, and in the midst of a drought, Smith agreed to wages of £2 10s a week, on the understanding that when the drought broke, he was to receive full wages of £4 4s a week. The drought broke in mid-March, but Smith did not receive the higher wages. In fact, he alleged that he had received no wages at all since 10 March. On one occasion, he was given a cheque by his employer for £10, which was not honoured. Waters kept promising to give Smith the money, but did not do so. On 17 May, Smith gave a week's notice and subsequently left the Waters farm and gained other employment in the region.

In June 1929, Smith took legal action against Waters, claiming £39 12s 3d for unpaid wages as a general farm hand. The case was non-suited, as Thomas Waters had declared bankruptcy — after transferring the property and accounts over to his wife Matilda Waters. Smith then claimed the unpaid wages from Mrs Matilda Waters through the Small Debts Court. In mid-July, Thomas Waters told the police 'that he believed that his former employee, although she worked well at ploughing and other heavy tasks, was a woman'.² Sergeant Roberts of Parramatta Police Station began investigating the case.

Smith — perhaps after being questioned by police — gave a life story interview to the (Sydney) Sun tabloid newspaper, admitting to not being male, on the condition that he was not to be identified. On 18 August the (Sydney) Sun and (Sydney) Truth broke the story of a 29-year-old female who had been living and working as a man for several years.³ The Sun's headline pronounced 'Woman Masquerades as a Man for twenty years, Hard Work, Navvy, Farmer, Drover, Never in Love'. She was admired in Truth as an adventurous, plucky 'Sydney girl', a 'brave battler' trying to survive.⁴ Ten days later, on 28 August 1929, William Smith appeared at the Parramatta Small Debts Court suing his ex-employer Matilda Waters of Kenthurst, NSW for £39 12s 3d for nine weeks' unpaid wages. Matilda Waters had made a counter-claim of £45 8s 6d against Smith for '31 weeks agistment and feeding of Smith's horse, 126 meals supplied to Smith at 1/meal' and '7/6 in connection with the sale of a halter'. After several adjournments, a second hearing was held on 13 November of that year. The Sydney newspapers — both the tabloids (the Sun, Truth and Daily Telegraph) and the broadsheet press (the Sydney Morning Herald and the Evening News) — all reported the case. The local Parramatta paper, the Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, provided the most detailed press coverage. The case was also reported in interstate papers; however, the left-wing Australian Worker made no mention of the case.⁵

This case provides an opportunity to consider questions pertinent to labour history, gender history, and to queer theory and history. Australian labour history has been dominated by a focus on urban workers while rural labour has been given little attention.⁶ Jacques Ferland and Christopher Wright argue that spatial realities have often been disregarded and emphasise the need to examine the different experiences of workers in rural and urban contexts.⁷ Feminist labour historians have drawn attention to the gendered nature of the Australian arbitration and wages system.⁸ They have pointed to the refusal of male unions to support feminist campaigns for equal pay and the attacks on women workers during the Depression.⁹ Feminist history has also pointed to the masculinist national tradition, which glorified the (white) bushman, drover and independent bachelor, and excluded the contributions of women.¹⁰ Finally, queer theory, particularly work by Marjorie Garber and Judith Butler, has highlighted cross-dressing as transgressive and destabilising to naturalised binary gender categories and heterosexuality, by exposing all gender as performance.¹¹ However, historians of cross-dressing in Australia have highlighted the diverse and shifting public attitudes to women who dressed, lived and worked as men.¹²

This case encompasses all these areas and questions a number of assumptions. First, it explores the ways an individual rural labourer took legal action to obtain his wages, outside a trade union context. Secondly, it contributes to understanding the diverse attitudes towards women workers receiving equal pay, by the male-dominated press and legal system and male workers, in this period. Thirdly, it suggests that the masculinist rural nationalist tradition could be drawn on and appropriated by men-women. Fourthly, it emphasises that female masculinity shored up and glorified masculinity while simultaneously exposing the construction of masculinity. I argue that performing masculinity through rural work was tolerated, almost glorified — although sensationalised — while performing masculinity through sexual activity was inevitably condemned. Finally, the case challenges the separation between labour history and sexuality history. It attempts to sexualise labour history by raising issues of gender/sexual transgressions. It also seeks to make labour more central to queer history by stressing the significance of work in the formation of attitudes to gender-crossing women.

Reading the press reports, I was fascinated. Why was the press so sympathetic to Smith? How might the context of the Depression and attacks on the arbitration system and workers' wages have affected attitudes to Smith? Why didn't the police take legal action, as they had against other women dressing and working in men's clothes? Why was she glorified as an Australian heroine, when other men-women at this time faced condemnation? How did the rural context and Smith's ability to situate himself in a nationalist rural tradition affect how she was regarded? In this article, I examine both the court case and the press coverage surrounding it. I am focusing on the representation and treatment of William Smith by the press, the police, the legal system, the medical profession and rural communities.¹³ (Smith was variously called a 'man-woman', a 'boy-girl', a 'masquerader' and a young woman, and I use this terminology, as well as referring to Smith as male, as this was how Smith identified himself.) First, I consider the context and the remarkable court case.

Early in 1929, the Bruce-Page (National/Country party) coalition Federal Government made major public expenditure cuts — resulting in considerable unemployment — and attempted to cut award wages. It also proposed to dismantle the Commonwealth arbitration system and extensive industrial unrest followed. In October 1929, in between the first and second hearing of Smith's claim for unpaid wages, the Bruce-Page Federal Government suffered electoral defeat by the Labor Party, largely attributed to rising unemployment and its industrial reform policies. The Scullin Labor Government took office in the week of the Wall Street crash.

The Court Case

Smith appeared in court on 28 August 1929 wearing a suit with a double-breasted coat, waistcoat, tie and pencil striped trousers. He was dressed as a respectable working-class man and was represented by a solicitor, Mr S.P. Kemp. Smith gave evidence about the agreed wage levels, the wages received and a dishonoured cheque. He denied there was any arrangement that he should pay for feeding his horse or for meals. He testified that he camped in a tent nearby, had received some meals — which he had given to the dog — and that Christmas day was the only day he spent in the farmhouse.¹⁴

Smith was then cross-examined by Mr E. Roper, the solicitor for the defendant, Matilda Waters.¹⁵ Roper did not cross-examine Smith in relation to agreed or received wages, meals or horse feed at all. He began his questioning by going straight to the question of Smith's sex:

What's your real name?

S: William Smith.

What's your real name?

S: That's my right name.

Kemp (Smith's solicitor) asked:

Has this anything to do with the case, your Worship?

The Magistrate, Mr Flyn, ruled that:

It may have a lot to do with it.

Roper continued his interrogation:

What's your real name?

S: My real name is William Smith.

In what name were you registered at the time of your birth?

S: William Smith, I suppose.

As a matter of fact, you were born a girl, were you not?

Kemp (Smith's lawyer) interjected:

I object to that. These questions are being asked for the purpose of annoying the witness. What has this got to do with the case?¹⁶

The magistrate overruled his objection:

It has this to do with it. ['A very important question of law is involved'.¹⁷] The claim is made under an award. That award is for male persons. If she is a woman, how can you claim under this award?

Kemp replied:

Waters employed the plaintiff as a male, and agreed to pay the male wage.

However, the magistrate rejected his objection and Roper continued:

You're a girl, are you not?

S:I have always understood from my mother that I'm a hermaphrodite. As far as I know, that's what I am.

Roper took a different tack:

You have represented to the world at large that you are a woman.

S: I have not.

Although you are masquerading as a man. You have seen certain articles in the press?

Kemp again objected:

This has nothing to do with it. The defendant is determined to humiliate the plaintiff.

The magistrate overruled his objection, saying:

The defendant is entitled to know whether the plaintiff is a male or female.

Roper asked:

I put it to you that you know you're a woman?

S: No.

Did you not represent that to be a fact to reporters?

S: No.

Did you have an interview with a report from "Truth"?

S: No. I saw a Sun reporter.

And you supplied the "Sun" representative with information?

S: Only as an article of adventure.

Did you not supply information as to your sex?

S: No.

Is it not a fact that you are a woman?

S: No.

Is it a fact that you are not a man?

S: I suppose I'm half-and-half.

Roper then cast aspersions on Smith's sexuality:

Do you remember telling Mr Waters that you were going to Moss Vale to get married?

S:That was a joke. That's what all the chaps say when they're going away.

It's no joke when it comes off (laughter).

Roper applied for a non-suit, arguing that 'there was no proof that the plaintiff came within the terms of the award'. Kemp asserted: 'we'll put the award in'. The magistrate warned:

If you are claiming under the award, you are claiming at the rate for male employees. You take a risk that way. 'It would have to be proved that the person claiming the male award is a male person.'¹⁸

Smith was recalled and gave evidence that he had been working as a 'general farm and orchard hand' and had done 'ploughing and all the work that a male worker would do'. He produced a copy of the Orchard and Vineyard Employees award. Roper argued that this award applied only to certain irrigation areas. The two Counsels retired to confer on an adjournment. On their return, the magistrate asked: 'Have you determined the other question in the meantime — the question of sex?' Kemp replied: 'I think I'll leave that to your Worship. It may not be as difficult as the judgement of Paris'. The Magistrate suggested that 'expert medical evidence be called'.

The case was adjourned for 14 days to 11 September. After several adjournments, the rest of the case was heard on 13 November 1929.¹⁹ The first witness called was Dr Waugh of Parramatta, 'who said that he had examined Smith and found her to be of female sex':

On questioning her, I found that she did not function as a woman. Her muscular development was such that she was able to carry out the laborious duties of a man — as well as a man. Professor Windeyer also examined Smith at my request and he expressed a similar opinion as to sex and also to Smith's ability to perform the duties of a man.²⁰

The Magistrate questioned the doctor intensively:

Would you say that the muscular development was as great as in a man of similar age and weight?

Dr Waugh:I should say so, on account of her having done those duties.

Would muscular work of that character prevent the organs of the female from functioning?

Dr Waugh:It would tend to do so.

You won't say it would do so absolutely?

Dr Waugh:Not absolutely.

There is no doubt whatever about her sex?

Dr Waugh:None at all.

It is not correct that she is an hermaphrodite?

Dr Waugh:No; although she had the impression that she was.

Then the case turned to the industrial issues. The Orchard and Vineyard Employees award 'provided only for certain kinds of female labour, and did not cover the work that Smith claimed to have done — general farm work'. Kemp, Smith's solicitor, pointed out that 'in the Industrial Arbitration Act, there was no definition as to sex'. Smith testified about the type of farm work he undertook — 'ploughing and general farm work',²¹ his hours ('from daylight til dark') and wages paid, despite the entries in Water's wages books.

A current employer gave evidence about Smith being a 'most competent farm hand', and an honest and conscientious worker, and of the highest character. Matilda Waters cross-examined Smith. Smith admitted 'that at first she had stated that she would not take orders from any woman'.²² Waters also questioned Smith about his story of going away to get married. Through cross-examination, Kemp revealed that Thomas Waters had a previous conviction of obtaining £350 through false pretences, was a declared bankrupt and had been recently committed for trial on two charges of false pretenses.²³

In summing up, the Magistrate Flyn commented:

There is a great deal of difficulty about this case ... The plaintiff represented herself as a man and sued as a man, well knowing that she was a woman. I am not all together satisfied with some of her replies ... Her own statement shows that she is not an absolutely reliable witness ... In fact, I am satisfied that she is not an entirely Truthful witness.

However, the magistrate concluded that

On the whole I am satisfied that Smith worked for the period she states. Considering all the facts, I am reasonably satisfied (not satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt as I would have to be in a criminal case) that the plaintiff has established her claim.

The Magistrate Flyn gave a verdict for Smith for the full amount claimed, £39 13s 6d with £1 5s 3d costs, but declined to allow Smith's witnesses' expenses. Matilda Waters claim was non-suited.

Troubling Bodies

The emphasis given to Smith's sex by the defendant's solicitor and by the magistrate indicates the threat s/he posed to the gender order by crossing gender boundaries. The ambiguity of her gender troubled clear distinctions between male and female bodies. Both the law and the medical profession desired to assign Smith a fixed female gender identity. Smith, on the other hand, asserted that he was not female. It was only under intense questioning that he reluctantly claimed to be a hermaphrodite or 'half and half'. He drew on biological, medical understandings to justify and make sense of his preferred gender identity.

As well as threatening gender boundaries, Smith's gender-crossing challenged the legal, wages and arbitration systems, based on divisions between male and female. As mentioned above, Smith's legal case attempted to use the award covering farm work to support his wages claim arguing that 'there was no definition as to sex' in the Industrial Arbitration Act. Once defined as biologically female, Smith posed the threat of trespassing on the domain of male labour and receiving male wages. The defendant's solicitor's claim — and the magistrate's assertion — that Smith could not claim male wages under an award if he were not a man needs to be seen in the context of intense battles over women's pay and areas of work.

The unease about Smith's trespass into the territory of male work and wages was perhaps intensified by the onset of the Depression.²⁴ Male workers and trade unions — and the press – were extremely concerned about women being employed, taking 'men's jobs' while men were out of work.²⁵ During the depression, the attacks on women's pay and women working intensified as growing numbers of men faced unemployment.

Wages Cases

Smith took action for his unpaid wages via the civil court, engaging the services of a lawyer. This suggests that either Smith was not a trade union member or that the union was unwilling to support his wages claim. Seasonal farm labourers, particularly sole employees on family farms, were less likely to be union members than shearers.²⁶ However, Smith was clearly aware of his rights as a worker, and of award wages and conditions. He was willing to make a stand for his right to fair wages and back-pay. He persisted with his wages claim, going to court despite the fact his ex-employer went to the police exposing his biological sex.

There had been several cases in which women working in areas of 'men's work' were the subject of arbitration. In the 1912 Fruitpickers Case at the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, Justice Higgins noted of the claim of 'equal pay for equal work' by the Rural Workers' Union and the South Australian United Labourers' Union:

The phrase has an attractive sound, and seems to carry justice on its face; for, obviously, where a woman produces as good results as a man in the same kind of work, she ought not to get less remuneration.²⁷

Higgins, however, re-advocated the principle of the [male] basic wage from his 1907 Harvester Judgement, that the 'living wage' was based on 'the normal needs of the average employee regarded as a human being living in a civilised community'. For Higgins, one of the normal needs of an average [male] employee was the need for a domestic life. So his basic wage was based on the assumption that the male wage earner had to be capable of supporting his dependents (his wife and children) — regardless of whether he had any — 'as he [was] under an obligation ... to maintain them'. Whereas, a woman employee was not, 'unless perhaps in very exceptional circumstances, under any such obligation'. However, as he regarded women fruit pickers in competition with men (as opposed to female fruit packers), he determined that the minimum rate had to be for a 'class of workers, those who do work of a particular character':

If blacksmiths are the class of workers, the minimum rate must be such as recognises that blacksmiths are usually men. If fruit-pickers are the class of workers, the minimum rate must be such as recognises that ... most of the pickers are men ... and that men and women are fairly in competition as to that class of work. If milliners are the class of workers, the minimum rate must ... be such as recognises that all or nearly all milliners are women.²⁸

Higgins concluded that female and male fruitpickers 'should be paid on the same level of wages'; but women in the packing sheds performing 'lighter work, adapted for women with their superior deftness and suppleness of fingers' should be paid a woman's fair minimum wage, on the assumption that 'they have to find their own food, shelter, and clothing' and not food, shelter, and clothing of a family. Higgins set the minimum rate for adult women working in processes in which men were 'hardly ever employed' at 75 per cent of the adult male rate. So although Higgins accepted the principle of equal pay, he emphasised that 'women's occupations' differed from men's work and reasserted the idea that working women needed lower minimum wages than working men.²⁹

In the two decades following, several other cases of women's wages came before Commonwealth and State Arbitration courts.³⁰ In December 1929, four weeks after Smith's successful claim, the Commonwealth Arbitration Court heard another case between employers and the Rural Workers Union in relation to the fruit-growing industry in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The employers argued that in the current economic context, equal wages should not be paid to women fruit pickers. Chief Justice Dethridge supported the employers' claim, discontinuing the practice of paying some adult female employees the same rates of wages as adult male employees and fixed the minimum wage for adult female employees at two-thirds of the male basic wage.³¹

Attitudes to Cross-dressing

Stories of working-class women who lived, dressed and worked as men circulated widely within the press, literature and film in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia.³² The famous Australian 1903 classic, Such is Life, included a character based on the real-life Jack/Johanna Jorgenson. A 1922 Australian silent film, Sunshine Sally, told of two young women who, after being sacked from a laundry sweatshop in working-class Woolloomooloo, cross-dressed in men's clothes as they looked for work, and partook in men's pleasures — attending a boxing match at the Sydney Stadium. In a more romantic genre, the 1925 Australian film Jewelled Nights (based on Marie Bjelke Petersen's popular romance novel) centred on an heiress fleeing her society wedding, and going to the mining camps in the Tasmanian Wilderness disguised as a boy.³³ Stories of 'impersonators', and 'masqueraders' appeared regularly in the press and existed alongside a theatrical tradition of male impersonation.

Despite these popular and vaudeville narratives and some community acceptance, gender-crossing wo/men were subject to state and police intervention. There was no law in the statutes to prevent a woman from dressing as a man, however, police attempted to regulate such behaviour, seeing it as fraudulent, offensive and possibly criminal. Women who wore men's clothing faced police harassment and interference, and were threatened with arrest for offensive behaviour. In 1916, Jockey Jack/May McDonald of Albury, New South Wales was asked by police to 'change her clothes'. She refused. 'Police gave her 'a month to either change her clothes or leave the State'.³⁴ Police investigated Smith, after the tip-off by his ex-employer. Such police involvement reveals contradictions between statute law and policing. Some police clearly saw men-women as deviant, and investigated and policed their behaviour. Gender-crossing could be criminalised by laying charges of offensive behaviour or fraud.

In addition to intervention by the police, there was increasing involvement in men-women cases by the medical profession. Doctors were more frequently quoted as authorities in court cases and in the press. This needs to be seen against the cultural backdrop of the developing power and authority of the medical profession, and particularly of psychology and psychiatry. Between the wars, the medical-pathology account of men-women as a congenital abnormality was increasingly taking hold in medical and police circles; and it was seeping into the tabloids that now brought the stories into the public domain — and often to the attention of the medical profession.

Sensational Stories and Rural Nationalism

In the week prior to the case, the tabloid press, as mentioned above, reported admiringly of Smith's exploits, depicting her as a plucky female adventurer. The stories recounted the 'daring female' who passed as a man for 20 years, detailing her hard work and battle for survival. 'She has been farm labourer, railway navvy, cane-cutter, drover, orchard worker, cattle-breeder, horse-breaker, kangaroo and wallaby shooter in Western Queensland', reported Truth.³⁵

Smith was described as 'queer to the verge of impossible' and certainly, she was regarded with curiosity and fascination. Yet, she also commanded admiration. Her defiance of convention made a good story and journalists made the most of it. Articles emphasised her strength and the men's work she had done, recounting her work as a drover, a farm labourer, a railway navvy, and a selector. Her ability on horseback, which earned her the title 'the jockey' and her skill as a horse-breaker was particularly emphasised.

The praise for Smith's work in male jobs is similar to press admiration for other single women who dressed and worked as men in this period.³⁶ Perhaps, the context of the Depression, combined with the Australian glorification myths of battlers and loners eking out a living on the land, produced a particular local form of admiration. Furthermore, boy-girls such as Smith could be recast into the national — and also Anzac — legend, which glorified independence, resisting authority and refusing convention.

Smith was cast as an Australian battler through and through. Truth concluded that she typified 'the spirit of Australia, debonair, self-sufficient, challenging' and as riding 'through the pages of romance and unfolding nationhood'. Truth's images emphasised Smith's heroic status as a rural Australian heroine. Truth included a line drawing of Smith astride a bucking horse, bush hat in hand, depicted as a horse-breaker and bushman (see Figure 1). In another article, a photograph shows Smith leaning on a farm gatepost (see Figure 2). In the rural nationalist tradition, she was contrasted favourably with city girls:

The tale brings to the city a breath of high adventure, as brave as it is appealing ... It brings a breath of high enterprise into the arid great city, the knowledge of that stripling, living down sex, footing it with husky men, battling spiritedly to success.³⁷

The press told — and sold — Smith's story in an adventure genre, as 'the astounding adventures of a young woman, who has dressed and worked and acted, first as a boy and then as a man, for 20 years'.³⁸ Accounts of her pluck, bush skills and adventures drew on a literary genre starring tomboys who forsake feminine activities for the freedom of the bush, particularly the 'Little Bush Maid' herself (Norah), from Mary Grant Bruce's Billabong series.³⁹ Smith's image in the press cannot be separated from the romance of the bush evident in much Australian cultural representation. In these representations, the bush eternally represents youthful vigour and renewal, clean virtues of decency and courage as opposed to the more morally dubious city. Smith is clearly identified with this bush spirit.

Figure 1:

'Sydney Girl has lived 20 years as man...Australia's Most Romantic Figure.'

Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p.13. (State Library of New South Wales)

Figure 2:

'The romantic man-woman, who in court gave the name "William Smith", leans on the gate posts of the farm where "Truth" sought "her" out last week. "Her" arms bear witness of the hard toil they have been called to over 20 years, and "her" sun-tanned face tells of the years of outdoor life in the Australian and New Zealand bush.'

Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p.20. (State Library of New South Wales)

The press constructed an ambiguous position for Smith in relation to mateship. On the one hand, they placed her as on the fringes because she kept to 'herself' and was reluctant to take part in the male bonding activities of drinking, smoking and swearing. Truth alleged 'never has she smoked or drunk ... and the husky fellows with her must have chivvied their "boy" on his rectitude in these matters'. This they praised her for, emphasising her higher feminine moral qualities.

It was a strange sop to a forgotten birthright that this girl refused to go the limit most others in similar circumstances would have gone, but her abstinence in not smoking or drinking is a tribute to a clean, forthright character.⁴⁰

On the other hand, they referred to Smith's part in campfire mateship and its superiority over superficial female friendship: 'The girl speaks of her camp experiences with the relish of a sundowner'; 'She has formed friendships which are based on something more than philanderings in slender-pillared indoor "gardens"'.⁴¹ Smith's story served to shore up the superiority and attractiveness of life in the rural masculinist tradition and to glorify mateship, while denigrating urban women and women's friendships.

Masculine and feminine ideologies come into sharp relief in the relating of Smith's life-story. At times, feminine moral qualities were contrasted against brute and violent masculinity. Reader sympathy was generated when the press recounted that as a child 'her mother died ... and her father took to drink and treated her cruelly', emphasising the importance of the mothering influence. The article goes on:

she stood it for a time and finally ran away to Bendigo and tried to get a job. As a girl she found this impossible, so she secured boy's clothes and secured a job on a farm.⁴²

'So at the age when most children look to their parents for care and guidance, this lonely wandering waif was left to fend for "herself".'⁴³ And, it is implied, without clear and positive gender role models.

Smith was represented — and cast himself — as a hard worker, of good character and a decent farm hand. They quoted Smith saying: 'I believe in giving a man a fair day's work for my money' and 'I have never had a complaint from a boss as to my work'.⁴⁴ He displayed bush values of solidarity on the land when he took a cut in wages during the drought, to help his employer out until he could be recompensed during better times. The favour was not reciprocated as his employer, Waters, then ripped him off. Smith played to the crowded court, emphasising the miserly nature of his employers: 'The pony was fed, but pretty scantily';⁴⁵ 'I got the eggs for a while and then they knocked them off'.⁴⁶ They gave prominence to both Smith's good character and her hard work: 'I save my money and I don't drink or swear or gamble, and if I got into dresses I would not be able to earn a living'.⁴⁷

Rural Work, Citizenship and 'Settler' Nation Tales

The press reports on Smith had shed light on the difficult nature of rural work. Smith had worked on a dairy in Richmond, describing it as:

terribly hard work. Milk, milk, milk. Why, in winter when I got up in the morning, my hands were clenched and I had to force the fingers open. I had to plough, and ride and do all kinds of farm work and I was only 15.⁴⁸

Later, Smith took to droving where: 'with other drovers, she took great mobs of cattle across Northern Queensland'.⁴⁹ The work, she argued, was 'hard for one was in the saddle day and night'.⁵⁰ During station work, one of her jobs was breaking in the horses. The Sun quoted her as saying: 'That's where you learn to ride some roughies. And some of those Queensland brumbies can buck! I can ride any horse you bring along'.⁵¹

The press also described how Smith had 'ploughed and cultivated land' and that '[h]er arms bear witness of the hard toil.'⁵²Truth quoted Smith's current employer, who they claimed 'has no idea that his employee is a female'. The employer described Smith as 'the best worker I have had for years, and a champion ploughman. He is a very reserved little chap, but he works like a nigger. He's worth two of the last man I had.'⁵³ The press quoted another of Smith's employers who had testified as to his competence and hard work at the court hearing. Patrick Dorahy, a dairyman of Dundas, who had employed Smith for the past three months, stated that 'he is the most competent farmhand I ever had. I have never set him a job that he couldn't do.'⁵⁴

Thus, in the eyes of the press, Smith had earned her status as a male — and masculine privileges — through her hard work. She should, it was thought, therefore be entitled to a male's wages. As Truth had asserted:

'She' chose a man's way and went through as a man should ... Never did 'she' wilt under the strain of hardship nor quail at the prospect of back-breaking tasks and muscle-tearing occupations ... And now it is sought to prove that the 'man-woman is not a male' and therefore not entitled to the wages of a male, seeing that the award is 'for male persons'.⁵⁵

The press saw her as a deserving underdog, not as a threat to the gender order and morality.

Smith's ability to cast herself a role as pioneering settler/bushman in the 'settler' nation narrative was central to the press glorification of her as an Australian heroine.⁵⁶ The Sun recounted that 'she took up selection' in an 'unsettled part of Qld'. 'Some of her land was heavily timbered and she set to work to clear it. She felled timber and split fencing posts, and ploughed'.⁵⁷ Smith was cast as the lone, brave pioneering settler who tamed the land and made it productive. Her participation in the colonising/settler project earned her respect and praise. Yet, her gender was emphasised along with her whiteness. Truth claimed that she 'camped out for months on end without a tent' and lived in the wilds of Western Qld with no whites within fifty miles'. 'She (hunted and) camped by herself miles away from the nearest white people, and often she met ... with the aboriginals, sometimes attending to their sickness and wounds'.⁵⁸ The image of a potentially vulnerable female amongst 'the wild blacks' is invoked, but instead Smith is cast as a kind and competent white man tending to the 'poor dying blacks'.

Gendered Bodies

The key to the man-woman's masquerade and identity must be her appearance and all the press were fascinated with it. They described her dress in detail. Truth reported of her 'as she toiled at the plough in a field near Eastwood' as 'behind her team in grey flannel, sleeved short, in tweed trousers; around her neck a silk handkerchief, blucher boots on'.⁵⁹The Sun's initial article described her: 'dressed in her best she is rather a handsome looking "man". She wears a well-cut grey-worsted suit, a felt hat and black shoes'.⁶⁰ At the first court hearing, The Cumberland Argus recounted that 'he wore a navy blue coat and waistcoat, and dark trousers with a light pencil stripe', while Truth reported that 'dressed in a man's blue striped [double-breasted] suit ... [he] presented a neat and trim appearance'.⁶¹ 'The heliotrope tie toned gently with the blue suit and nicely set off the white silk shirt and a soft collar'.⁶² These descriptions suggest that Smith himself was not only acutely conscious of his appearance, and appearing respectable, but something of a dandy. The flowery language drew attention to Smith's sense of aesthetics and itself mimicked the genre of the fashion page.

However, the press was also interested in Smith's physical body and the way hard physical labour had transformed it, as if this might hold clues. Truth declared: 'work was plainly written on the rather large hands, and there was more than a suggestion of strength in the wrists that peeped out from the blue coat sleeves'.⁶³Truth described her as 'a small rather slim figure' with 'hands big and arms brown and muscular'. 'Years of outdoor toil have given this "man-woman" finely developed shoulders'.⁶⁴ The Daily Telegraph made a point of the fact that 'he gave his evidence in a soft feminine voice, declaring that he did not know to which sex he belonged' but later described Smith as 'of small stature', 'a handsome, powerful-looking "man"', 'stockily built, with powerful biceps'.⁶⁵ It was suggested that Smith obtained her masculine characteristics through physical hard work. Her 'female' body had been transformed into a strong muscular body. All the press quoted the medical expert at the trial, Dr R. Waugh, who had examined Smith. He testified that Smith 'was of the female sex but her muscular development was such that she would be able to perform the work of a man'.⁶⁶

'She had never been in love'

The press placed Smith within an economic survival narrative — drawing on his own accounts, as well as the then dominant explanations for passing. Both the Sun and Truth gave weight to the economic necessity of her masquerade — as part of 'the battle to live and succeed'. They explained that as a child, her mother had died and 'her father took to drink and treated her brutally' so she left.⁶⁷ As a female child, she could not get a job, so she got into boy's clothes and obtained work. Cast out as a child it was the only way she could survive. After years working as a youth, she could not revert 'to her own feminine ways'. The press quoted Smith as saying:

I can't go back to my sex ... How could I? I could not do women's housework. I had lived with men mostly and I could not cook much or look after a house. I had to either continue as a man or go on the streets.⁶⁸

The reclamation of Smith as a brave battler and quintessential Australian hero, despite her being 'queer', was possible because Smith had not been found guilty of sexual transgression. Efforts had been made by Waters' solicitor and Matilda Waters to impute immorality through allegations about his courtship and marriage. However, this mud did not stick as no evidence was found of actual sexual relationships or marriage with women. This meant Smith was able to successfully cast her/himself as asexual and single. The Sun declared that 'she had never been in love'. They stated that the motives for her masquerade were 'transparently honest' and emphasised the non-sexual elements of her masquerade and life. 'Far from a sordid sex-case; far from a cheap fraud', this story was 'of a young person's grim struggle to win through in life's battle'.⁶⁹Truth stressed her platonic friendship/mateship with the men she worked with and her single state. They also drew attention to her morality, decency and celibacy, describing her as a 'clean battler' who never smoked or drank.

Some of the press guided its readers against condemning Smith outright, while simultaneously representing 'masqueraders' as immoral. 'This girl is not presented to Australia as a cockshy for derision and ridicule', declared Truth.

The usual masquerader is, prima facie, a fraud, and often a coarse insult to the decencies, but the world will read this story with a generous impulse in favour of the lonely little figure ... You find approval to smother the first feeling of censure.⁷⁰

Truth stressed the popular acceptance of Smith: 'scores of letters have been received at this office commending the man woman for "her" courage and dour determination to win through'.⁷¹Truth described Smith as a 'great-hearted, courageous creature of circumstance' and declared that

it was far better that a human being should revolt against the tyranny of Convention and find expression for the will to succeed than submit humbly and forever despair of realising a legitimate ambition.⁷²

In their introduction to their story, Truth differentiated between Smith (described as a girl and 'lonely little figure') and 'the usual masquerader'. Only months earlier, in March and April 1929, Valerie Arkell-Smith's/Colonel Victor Barker's masquerade and marriage to Elfrida Howard, in Britain, had made Australian front-page news headlines for several days.⁷³ The papers had taken up the story, stressing the local angle. In her previous identity of Valerie Barker, she had married an Australian soldier during the war and had two children. The Australian press quoted Sir Ernest Wild sentencing Barker in 1929 to nine months' imprisonment for having signed a false declaration in a register of marriage:

The morbid interest your case has aroused ... is part of the punishment for your perverted conduct. You are an unprincipled, unscrupulous adventuress. You have profaned the House of God and outraged the decencies of nature.⁷⁴

Truth distinguished Smith from the English Colonel Barker, declaring:

When the world read the other day of the romantic and shameless frauds of Captain Barker, the English male impersonator who married and swaggered with supreme insolence through countless affairs, there was a feeling of revulsion against such an astonishing subversion of nature. That woman's career was set in a meretricious flamboyant major key, full of self cadenzas. The life of Sydney's masquerader is set in a minor scale, and the sadness and intensity that abound in it ring true, and offer insult to no one.⁷⁵

In March 1930, only months after Smith's court case and Truth's sympathetic portrayal, the same newspaper condemned the suggestion that 'man-woman' Eugenia Falleni be released from prison after 10 years of incarceration.⁷⁶ In 1920, Eugenia Falleni — who had lived and married as Harry Crawford — had been represented in the press as both a congenital 'man-woman' freak and a fraudulent masquerader, while on trial for murder of his first wife. Evidence of Falleni/Crawford's sexual relations with women was emphasised and in court, the marriages and evidence of an artificial phallus were central to the crown prosecution case, which constructed her as a sinful deceiver. Falleni was convicted of the murder of one of his wives and sentenced to death, a sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment.⁷⁷

Truth vigorously campaigned against Falleni's early release. Truth protested that Falleni had 'no right whatever to be again allowed loose among society' and that the death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment, was 'a fitting sentence' for this terrible 'human she-monster', who 'preferred to don man's apparel ... thus getting in touch with the women on whom she practised her nauseating deceit and mocked before the alter in marriage'.⁷⁸ A year later, in 1931, when Falleni obtained an early release, Truth condemned the decision and branded her a 'sex pervert', whose crime 'brought to light all her monstrous sex perversions, revealing her as a menace to the community'. Warning women of the dangers of claiming masculine privileges in dress and employment, Truth declared that 'her sex abnormalities probably followed upon her assumption of male habits and her mimicry of male characteristics'.⁷⁹

Conclusion

So, what can we make of the different treatment of these troubling bodies and of Truth's hope that the 'boy-girl' 'will be left to pursue her own destiny, queer to the verge of impossible'? The interwar years were a period of marked change in gender relations, in the (hetero) sexualisation of femininity, masculinity and marriage, and in the rise of the influence of psychiatry and psychology. The late 1920s provided contradictory possibilities for working-class passing wo/men. On the one hand, the Depression allowed a more tolerant attitude to cross-dressing women when they were seen to be trying to earn a living. On the other hand, the 1920s saw increasing medical and state intervention into people's private lives.⁸⁰ Changing gender relations — with women entering the workforce and rejecting or delaying marriage and motherhood — provided new possibilities for women, which in turn heightened concern over disruptions to the gender order.

Working-class 'masquerading' wo/men were the subject of fascination and fear as they threatened sexual difference. Masquerading women's masculine exploits meant many were celebrated as remarkable heroines, while being anxiously feminised. They were celebrated as rural battlers and examples of the remarkable 'Australian girl'. Australian national identity myths and the context of both the Depression and war — with pervasive images of bravery and courage — created space for many cross-gender identified women to be recast as asexual or heterosexual heroines. Unmarried wo/men's 'perverse deeds were translated into exemplary exploits'; assigned a 'symbolic role stabilised for our identification and entertainment'.⁸¹ Descriptions of their exploits both challenged — and affirmed — traditional gender boundaries — perhaps striking a chord with female readers' ambivalent feelings about the constraints of femininity and their desire for adventure while reminding men of the heroism of their masculine role. Young men-women could be both feminised and glorified within Australian masculinist nationalist mythology. They cemented white settler masculinity, while simultaneously troubling — perhaps even destabilising — gender boundaries. Because Bill Smith was a wo/man of remarkable talents 'she' represented no threat.

The context of modernity and feminist campaigns for equality were also significant. Truth's introductory sentence referred to the 'present century of emancipation and equal chance for the sexes'. Men-women such as Bill Smith challenged wages and awards based on biological sex, rather than on the work performed, directly contesting aspects of women's subordination, such as unequal pay and labour market segregation. They disrupted dominant meanings of middle-class femininity by adopting masculine identity and working in 'men's jobs' for male rates of pay. By 1930, feminism had became an enabling discourse for passing wo/men, as it justified their challenges to gender relations in an unequal world in terms of economic survival and independence. However, the feminist framework of economic and social gender inequality also heightened differences between 'acceptable' economic masquerading and deviant men-women who 'married'.

Rural and working-class communities generally accepted women's cross-dressing as an economic survival strategy, rather than as deviant. There was a long tradition — and acceptance — of women living, working and dressing as men in working-class communities. Considerable evidence suggests that rural and working-class communities often knew the biological sex of women working and living as men. Certainly, Smith's employer either had suspicions about Smith's biological sex or knew Smith to be female. Perhaps, working-class communities' acceptance of men-women was due to both an acceptance of the economic motives, a rejection of middle-class notions of femininity and a resistance to intervention by the police or state authorities. Truth noted that Smith's challenge to convention 'would have consigned her to an industrial school for girls' if she had been detected. Truth and the Sun both marketed themselves as newspapers for the workers. Truth particularly, depicted itself as being on the side of the battler and the underdog.

The sympathetic depiction of Smith in the press, compared to the condemnation of Falleni, reminds us that the treatment of men-women ranged from admiration to acceptance, derision and harsh condemnation. It points to the importance of locating transgressive bodies in a historical and geographical context. How they were depicted — and treated — was affected by the narratives women themselves presented, but also by their age, length of passing, class, ethnicity, occupation, the historical circumstances such as war or depression, their relationship to men and especially with other women.

Smith's story, compared to the prurient disgust with which Falleni was regarded, challenges us to distinguish between differently deviant subjects and not simply subsume all men-women into the broader categories of transgressive 'cross-dressing'. Young women who passed as youths and dressed in men's clothing were depicted as adventurous, plucky and high-spirited, albeit a bit wayward. Older men-women who passed for years and married — with possible or proven sexual relations with women — faced strong condemnation and were stigmatised as perverted, mad or congenital freaks. Passing became sexualised. Men-women who married and lived as men for decades disrupted the heterosexual and binary sex gender orders in different ways, ways which could not be as easily smoothed over as the troubling figure of 'the queer boy-girl'.

Smith earned a level of 'acceptance' through physical work and situating her/himself in the white, settler/pioneer bush legend. One employer at the trial testified to his hard work and competence as a farmhand. Smith displayed decency according to the bush code by taking a pay cut during the drought. Her situation as a rural worker, underpaid and exploited by an employer, evoked sympathy for an 'underdog', a battler taking on an unfair boss. This occurred in the late 1920s economic environment of high unemployment with many male labourers being forced to work for keep, others surviving on 'susso'. It suggests men-women, such as Smith, who performed masculinity through work and physical labour were less threatening and less condemned than men-women who performed masculinity via sex and/or marriage.

Finally, the case opens up an under-explored area of Australian labour history of the experiences of non-unionised seasonal rural labourers, in an era in which there was some protection provided by Arbitration awards. It raises questions about the different ways farm labourers exercised their agency and pursued their rights. Smith not only left an employer who treated him unfairly; he also used the civil legal system, backed up by an industrial award, to pursue his wages claim.

And as for Smith's destiny, we know little. Itinerant rural workers, especially ones with shifting identities, are hard to track through official electoral records. But he may have managed to pursue his own destiny, 'queer to the verge of impossible'. In the early 1970s, a man in his eighties, called Bill/William Smith, lived near Cairns as a recluse. In his youth, Bill had worked on Queensland cattle stations and had been a successful jockey in Queensland racing. During the 1920s, Bill left the state and 'went south'. By the early 1940s, he had returned to Queensland, where he trained horses and rode competitively into the 1950s. He was regarded as a local identity on country racecourses in North Queensland and had a reputation as an eccentric because he refused to undress in front of the other jockeys. On 29 May 1975, 88- year-old pensioner Bill was admitted to Herberton Hospital and found by medical authorities to be a 'woman'. Police began investigating. He died three weeks later on 23 June and was buried as Miss Wilhelmina Smith.⁸²

Ruth Ford teaches Australian history at La Trobe University. Ruth has published in the areas of sexuality history, gender history and rural history. She is currently researching white women's rural labour in south-eastern Australia 1901–45 and as part of that project is looking at female fruit pickers and fruit packers who were members of the Rural Workers Union. She is also continuing to research working-class wo/men who lived and worked as men.
<R.Ford@latrobe.edu.au>

Endnotes

^* Thanks to Lyned Isaac and the anonymous Labour History referees for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.

^1. On effects of seasonal employment in late nineteenth century, see Charles Fahey and Jenny Lee, 'A Boom for Whom: Some Developments in the Australian Labour Market, 1870–1891', Labour History, no. 50, 1986, pp. 1–27.

^2.Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 19 August 1929, p. 1.

^3. It is not clear whether the police leaked the story to the press who sought out Smith. Perhaps Smith, after his interview with police (possibly threatened with charges of offensive behaviour), approached the press, in an attempt to gain sympathy and have his version of the story told prior to the impending court case.

^4.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2; Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^5.Argus, 14 November 1929, p. 11.

^6. On rural labour generally, see Charles Fox, Working Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991, pp. 32–53. Studies have tended to focus on unionised rural workers. On shearers, see John Merritt, The Making of the AWU, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1986; Mark Hearn, One Big Union: A History of the Australian Workers Union 1886–1994, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996. On female fruit-pickers, see Ruth Ford, '"They Give up Domestic Help and Go out Harvesting": Women Fruit-Pickers and Fruit-Packers in 1912 Australia', History Australia, vol. 2, no. 1, 2004, pp. 07.1–07.12. On non-unionised agricultural labourers, see Charles Fahey, '"Abusing the Horse and Exploiting the Labourer": The Victorian Agricultural and Pastoral Labourer', Labour History, no. 65, 1993, pp. 96–114. On women's unpaid rural labour, see Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria, 1915–38, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 143–94.

^7. Jacques Ferland and Christopher Wright, 'Rural and Urban Labour Processes: A Comparative Analysis of Australian and Canadian Development', Labour History, no. 71, November 1996, pp. 142–169 at 142–43.

^8. Edna Ryan and Anne Conlan, Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work, 1788–1974, Nelson, Melbourne, 1975; Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour in Victoria, 1880–1939, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993; Raelene Frances, 'Gender, Working Life and Federation', in Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore (eds), Working the Nation: Working Life and Federation, 1890–1914, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2001, pp. 32–47.

^9. Ryan and Conlan, Gentle Invaders, and Marilyn Lake, 'Depression Dreaming', in Patricia Grimshaw, et al. (eds), Creating a Nation, 1788–1990, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 251–52.

^10. Marilyn Lake, 'The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context', Historical Studies, no. 86, 1986, pp. 116–131; Grimshaw, et al., Creating a Nation.

^11. Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, Penguin Books, London, 1993; Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York, 1990; Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1998.

^12. See Ruth Ford, '"The Man-Woman Murderer": Sex Fraud, Sexual Inversion and the Unmentionable Article', Gender and History, vol. 12, no. 1, April 2000, pp. 158–96; Ruth Ford, 'Sexuality and "madness": regulating women's gender "deviance" through the asylum in the 1930s', in Cathy Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon (eds), 'Madness' in Australia: histories, heritage and the asylum, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2003, pp. 109–119; Ruth Ford, '"And Merrily Rang the Bells": Gender-Crossing and Same-Sex Marriage in Australia, 1900–1940', in David Phillips and Graham Willett (eds), Australia's Homosexual Histories: Gay and Lesbian Perspectives 5, Australian Centre for Lesbian and Gay Research, Sydney, 2000, pp. 41–66; Ruth Ford, Contested Desires: Narratives of Passionate Friends, Married Masqueraders and Lesbian Love in Australia, 1918–1945, PhD thesis, School of Historical and Archeological Studies, La Trobe University, 2000, chs 2, 3, 6; Lucy Chesser, '"A Woman who Married Three Wives": Management of Disruptive Knowledge in the 1879 Australian Case of Edward De Lacy Evans', Journal of Women's History, vol. 9, no. 4, 1998, pp. 53–77; Lucy Chesser, 'Cross Dressing, Sexual (Mis)Representation and Homosexual Desire, 1863–1893', in Phillips and Willett (eds), Australia's Homosexual Histories, pp. 1–26; Lucy Chesser, 'Parting with my sex for a season': cross-dressing, inversion and sexuality in Australian cultural life, 1850–1920, PhD thesis, School of Historical and Archeological Studies, La Trobe University, 2000.

^13. I analyse William Smith's subjectivity elsewhere.

^14. As no court records exist, I am relying on transcripts of the court case in the press. See Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 29 August 1929, p. 1; Evening News, 28 August 1929, p. 10; Sun (Sydney), 28 August 1929, p. 11.

^15. Instructed by Harry R. Andrews and Co.

^16. The Evening News reported that the questions were 'annoying and humiliating to plaintiff'. Evening News, 28 August 1929, p. 10.

^17. This phrase came from the Evening News, 28 August 1929, p. 10.

^18.Sun (Sydney), 28 August 1929, p. 11. The Evening News reported the magistrate's statement differently: 'The claim was made under an award. It must first be proved that the person claiming is entitled to the male rate of pay'. Evening News, 28 August 1929, p. 10.

^19. On 11 September, Smith's solicitor applied for an adjournment to 25 September due to 'a hitch in the service of a summons'. On 30 October, the case was adjourned for a fortnight, as Mrs Waters was 'too ill to attend'. Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 12 September 1929, p. 7; Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 31 October 1929, p. 1.

^20. The transcripts of the November court hearing are from the press. See Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 14 November 1929, pp. 1, 7; Sun (Sydney), 13 November 1929, p. 19; Evening News, 13 November 1929, p. 10.

^21.Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 14 November 1929, p. 1. The Evening News reported Smith's account of his work as 'orchard work, ploughing and other heavy work'. Evening News, 13 November 1929, p. 10.

^22.Evening News, 13 November 1929, p. 10.

^23. This suggests Waters was probably well known to be dishonest in the district — and may in part explain community sympathy for Smith.

^24. Unemployment rose from seven per cent in the late 1920s to 25.8 per cent in 1931. Meanwhile, the proportion of women in paid work had increased from 26 per cent in 1921 to 33 per cent in 1933. Women 'were less likely to lose their jobs and more likely to regain them sooner then men' because the food, service, textiles and clothing industries they worked in were less severely affected by the Depression than were the building and construction industries. Lake, 'Depression Dreaming', pp. 240–42; Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1999, p. 176.

^25. On the one hand, trade unions were concerned that women's lower wages would result in male workers being replaced by lower paid women workers. On the other hand, many trade unions were against women workers gaining men's wages. Feminist campaigns for equal pay were not supported by male-dominated trade unions until 1938. Rather, their demands for equal pay were often met by resistance and hostility. In response to attacks on women workers, feminists organised and defended the right of women to work. In 1935, Muriel Heagney — a member of the Victorian Equal Status Committee — published Are Women Taking Men's Jobs? in which she highlighted both the sexual segregation of the labour force and women's low rates of pay. She argued that 'if women posed any threat at all to "men's jobs" it was because they received less pay'. Muriel Heagney, Are Women Taking Men's Jobs?, Hilton and Veitch, Melbourne, 1935; Lake, 'Depression Dreaming', p. 252; Lake, Getting Equal, pp. 97–98.

^26. On Australia's expanding union membership, which rose from 33 per cent in 1914 to 42 per cent throughout the 1920s, then to 52 per cent for men (and 33 per cent for women) by 1939, see Greg Patmore, Australian Labour History, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1991, pp. 120–26, 174.

^27.Rural Workers' Union and South Australian United Labourers' Union v Australian Dried Fruits Association and others (1912) 6 CAR 61.

^28. (1912) 6 CAR 61 at p. 71 quoted from 1907 Harvester Judgement, 2 CAR 3.

^29.Ibid. at p. 72–3.

^30. 1917 Theatrical Employees case.

^31. (1930) 28 CAR 597 at pp. 609–610.

^32. See Ford, '"And Merrily Rang the Bells"'; Ford, Contested Desires; Chesser, "Parting with My Sex for a Season"; Chesser, '"A Woman Who Married Three Wives"'.

^33. (Joseph Furphy) Tom Collins, Such is Life, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1975 (1903); Sunshine Sally (silent film), Austral Super Films, 1922 and Jewelled Nights (silent film), 1925 in Virgins, Vamps and Heroines: Women of the Silent Era, Selections from Australian Film, 1896–1930 (video recording), National Film and Sound Archives, Canberra, 1997; Marie Bjelke Petersen, Jewelled Nights, 4th ed., Hutchinson, London, 1923.

^34.Australian Worker, 1 June 1916, p. 13. Thanks very much to John Hirst for this reference.

^35.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^36. See Ford, Contested Desires, p. 116.

^37.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^38.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2.

^39. Mary Grant Bruce, A Little Bush Maid, Ward Lock & Co., London, 1910.

^40.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^41.Ibid.

^42.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2.

^43.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^44.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^45.Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 29 August 1929, p. 1.

^46.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^47.Sun (Sydney), 13 November 1929, p. 19.

^48.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2.

^49.Ibid.

^50.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^51.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2.

^52.Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 1929, p. 15; Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p.20.

^53.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^54.Truth (Sydney), 17 November 1929, p. 13.

^55.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^56. On the male pioneer legend and Australian identity, see Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1958; John Hirst, 'The Pioneer Legend', in John Carroll (ed.), Intruders in the Bush: The Australian Quest for Identity, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 14–37.

^57.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2.

^58.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^59.Ibid.

^60.Sun (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 2.

^61.Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, 29 August 1929, p. 1.

^62.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^63.Ibid.

^64.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^65.Daily Telegraph, 29 August 1929, p. 4; Daily Telegraph, 14 November 1929, p. 5.

^66.Sun (Sydney), 13 November 1929, p. 19; Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November 1929, p. 15.

^67. Motherless tomboys appeared in Australian storybooks. The tomboy Norah — in Mary Grant Bruce's 1910 A Little Bush Maid (Billabong series) — was motherless and a fine, fearless horsewoman.

^68.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^69.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^70.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^71.Truth (Sydney), 1 September 1929, p. 20.

^72.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^73.Evening News, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 March 1929, all on p. 1; Sun (Sydney), 6, 7, 8, 10 March 1929, all on p. 1; Daily Telegraph, 7, 8, 12 March 1929, all on p. 4; Sydney Morning Herald, 7, 8, 9, 11 March 1929, pp. 11, 13, 18, 11 respectively; Sun (Melbourne), 8, 9 March 1929, both on p. 4; Argus, 7, 11 March 1929, both on p. 9.

^74.Evening News, 26 April 1929, p. 1; Sun (Sydney), 26 April 1929, p. 1; Argus, 27 April 1929, p. 19.

^75.Truth (Sydney), 18 August 1929, p. 13.

^76.Truth (Sydney), 22 March 1930, p. 1.

^77. See Ford, '"The Man-Woman Murderer"', pp.158–96.

^78.Truth (Sydney), 22 March 1930, p. 1.

^79. The article on her release was on the front page with another about unemployed men facing gaol for arrears of maintenance and alimony: 'Mercy for Falleni: prison bars for husbands who can't get jobs'. Truth (Sydney), 22 February 1931, p. 1.

^80. Stephen Garton, Medicine and Madness: A Social History of Insanity in NSW 1880–1940, NSW University Press, Kensington, NSW, 1988.

^81. Julian Thomas' analysis of the reception of the British aviatrix Amy Johnson, on her solo flight to Australia in 1930, highlights the ways in which conceptions of gender and geography were both challenged and reaffirmed. Quote is from 'Amy!, a film by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen', Framework, no. 14, 1981, pp. 35–41 quoted in Julian Thomas, 'Amy Johnson's Triumph, Australia 1930', Australian Historical Studies, no. 90, April 1988, p. 72.

^82.Cairns Post, 25 June 1975, p. 1; 26 June 1975, pp. 1, 3; 27 June 1975, p. 3; Courier Mail (Brisbane), 26 June 1975, p. 8.

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