Drunks, Pests and Harlots

Drunks, Pests and Harlots
Author: Leigh S. L. Straw
Publisher: Zeticula
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781846220425

Esther Warden was the 'terror' of West End Fremantle and the most dangerous woman in Western Australia. Lilly Doyle kept company with thieves and rogues and was listed as an 'undesirable'. May Ahern was a 'fallen' woman who lured men into dark street corners, tempting them away from the paths of virtue. Esther, Lilly and May were notorious female criminals in early twentieth-century Perth and Fremantle. Criminalised as drunks, prostitutes and vagrants, women committing offences against good order faced a double punishment for their social and gender transgressions. 'Drunks, Pests and Harlots' takes a trip through the underworld streets of Perth and Fremantle from 1900-1939. It offers a glimpse into the lives of criminal women facing close police surveillance, negative media coverage, strict incarceration and institutionalisation. These lives present historical perspectives on female offenders and the development of public critiques of women who fail to meet the expectations of society.

After the War

After the War
Author: Leigh S. L. Straw
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781742589497

"In Collie in 1929, a murder-suicide took place. The killer was identified as Andrew Straw. Dressed in war uniform and a slouch hat, a hauntingly familiar face stared out at me from the front page of Truth. Andrew Straw bore a striking resemblance to my husband. I had unearthed an unexpected family story." Of the 330,000 Australian men who enlisted and served in World War I, close to 60,000 never returned home. As much as it is important to commemorate the war dead, it is also imperative that we remember the survivors as they moved into peacetime. Of the 32,000 Western Australian men who enlisted, 23,700 returned from the war. These men tried to create a semblance of a civilian life following the traumas of war. War receded from immediate view as these men readjusted to civilian life, but its impacts endured. Many returned with disabilities, mental health problems and a lowered sense of self-worth that led some to take their own lives. This book charts the emergence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a diagnosable condition in an Australian context. In this deeply personal account, historian and writer Leigh Straw seeks a better understanding of what soldiers experienced once the fighting stopped. After the War uses the personal struggles of soldiers and their families to increase public understanding of the legacies of World War I in Western Australia and across the nation. The scars of war-mental and physical-can be lifelong for soldiers who serve their country. This is a story of surviving life after war. [Subject: Military History, History, PTSD, Psychology, WWI, Australian Studies]

Khaki Crims and Desperadoes

Khaki Crims and Desperadoes
Author: Russell Robinson
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Aus.
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2014-08-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 174351817X

When Australia entered World War I, volunteers swarmed to enlistment centres in their thousands. But among the recruits were criminals with extensive police records. Some had assumed false names to start lives afresh; others made no secret of their criminal histories. They were hardened criminals, fresh out of jail or on the run from the law, or fleeing family responsibilities or debts. Once in uniform, some became persistent deserters, fleeing the training depots before embarkation. Those who did make it overseas spent much of the time going AWL to avoid being sent to the front. There were some who showed great courage and endeavour while under fire, and were awarded medals and citations. In most cases, however, the encouragement failed to distract them from their misbehaviour. Others used their military training to expand their unlawful enterprises overseas, joining gangs of like-minded desperate diggers. And then there were those who saw the war as a chance to hone their skills for use in the criminal underworld on their return. They were Australia's khaki crims and desperadoes.

Treading Air

Treading Air
Author: Ariella Van Luyn
Publisher: Affirm Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1925344770

In 1920s Queensland, Lizzie O'Dea wants to get away from her dad and the memories of her mum that haunt her. At the races she meets attractive, war-scarred Joe and sees her chance to escape. But life with Joe isn't what she dreamt it would be. Finding herself on the fringes of society, Lizzie discovers a new sense of independence and sexuality, love and friendship. It's a precarious life, though, always on the edge of collapse. Two decades later, Lizzie is sick and worn out. Lying in a Brisbane lock hospital, she thinks about Joe, who's been lost to her for many years. But she's a survivor. There's hope yet. Set between Brisbane and Townsville, and based on real events that the author uncovered from historical archives, Treading Air is the remarkably vivid tale of a young Australian working-class rebel who clashed with the expectations of her world.

The Petticoat Parade

The Petticoat Parade
Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1760990566

Josie de Bray, aka Madam Monnier, aka Marie Louise Monnier, was a brothel madam who owned most of Roe Street, Perth from WWI up to the 1940s. A returned soldier tried to shoot her dead in her brothel in 1917 and her 'bungalow' was at the centre of underworld violence in the 1920s. She returned to France before WWII to visit family and was bombed repeatedly out of homes there and captured by the Germans. She was a prisoner of war and one story has her in a concentration camp. She survived, returned to Perth in 1947, and took up business again in Roe Street, having made a fortune from the rent collected from her brothels while she was a prisoner of war, up until her death in 1953.

The Ballroom Murder

The Ballroom Murder
Author: Leigh Straw
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2022-08-02
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1760990582

In August 1925, Audrey Jacob shot dead her former fiancÉ, Cyril Gidley, in full view of hundreds of guests at a charity ball in Perth's Government House. When she was arrested, she still held the gun in her hand. It was a open and shut case of wilful murder—that is until Jacob assigned prosecutor Arthur Haynes to her defence. His ability to play the press and the jury for sympathy would lead to a sensational result. Not only did Jacob escape the gallows, she was found not guilty of Gidley's murder. Straw, the author of a number of books about notable Australian female criminals, tells a story that is rich with first-hand newspaper accounts from the day.

Policing Women

Policing Women
Author: Jo Turner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2023-11-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000994511

Policing Women examines for the first time the changing historical landscape of women’s experiences of their contact with the official state police between 1800 and 1950 in the Western world. Drawing on and going beyond existing knowledge about policing practices, the volume discusses how women encountered the official police, how they experienced that contact, and the outcomes of that contact in the modern Western world. In so doing, it is an original and much needed addition to the literature around changes in policing, women’s experiences of the criminal justice system, and women’s experiences of control and regulation. The chapters uncover such experiences in a range of countries across Europe, the USA, Canada, and Australia. Importantly, the collection focuses upon a crucial epoch in the history of policing – a 150-year period when policing was rapidly changing and being increasingly placed on a formal level. Bringing together scholarly work from expert contributors, this unique volume draws to the fore women’s experiences of policing. It will be of great use to both scholars and students on undergraduate and postgraduate criminology and history courses, working on the history of crime, historical criminology, the history of criminal justice, and women’s history.

Women's Criminality in Europe, 1600-1914

Women's Criminality in Europe, 1600-1914
Author: Manon van der Heijden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108477712

Places female criminality within its everyday context, bringing together the most current research on crime and gender.

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism
Author: Jacqueline Z. Wilson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 1038
Release: 2017-05-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137561351

This extensive Handbook addresses a range of contemporary issues related to Prison Tourism across the world. It is divided into seven sections: Ethics, Human Rights and Penal Spectatorship; Carceral Retasking, Curation and Commodification of Punishment; Meanings of Prison Life and Representations of Punishment in Tourism Sites; Death and Torture in Prison Museums; Colonialism, Relics of Empire and Prison Museums; Tourism and Operational Prisons; and Visitor Consumption and Experiences of Prison Tourism. The Handbook explores global debates within the field of Prison Tourism inquiry; spanning a diverse range of topics from political imprisonment and persecution in Taiwan to interpretive programming in Alcatraz, and the representation of incarcerated Indigenous peoples to prison graffiti. This Handbook is the first to present a thorough examination of Prison Tourism that is truly global in scope. With contributions from both well-renowned scholars and up-and-coming researchers in the field, from a wide variety of disciplines, the Handbook comprises an international collection at the cutting edge of Prison Tourism studies. Students and teachers from disciplines ranging from Criminology to Cultural Studies will find the text invaluable as the definitive work in the field of Prison Tourism.

Sophie's World

Sophie's World
Author: Jostein Gaarder
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 735
Release: 2007-03-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466804270

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.