‘For some, those lives were poor and short, yet for others it was a better life than they might have had elsewhere, at least partly because they lived surrounded by peers and people who did not condemn them on sight – a small, safe space in a large disapproving world. It might seem a meagre and miserable space to us, but it was one of the few they had…’ – Barbara Minchinton, The Women of Little Lon
The rise of mainstream feminism over the last decade has been more positive than not, for sure. But much of its resulting popular literature doesn’t stray far from the optics of representation. In lazy, self-congratulatory discourse, authors parrot basic ideas and their readers – who probably already know better- join the pretence that gender equity started to find its way from 2010.
When touching on sex work, such texts barely go beyond charismatic Instagram infographic concepts, like ‘sex work is real work!’ and ‘fuck SERFs!’ It’s not groundbreaking to condone one of the world’s oldest industries, and it’s boring to virtue signal since the reader probably agrees (why would someone buy a book about women if they hate women?). As well, everything and anything is more complex than championing it. I have said before there’s only so much calling attention can do, and crafting a special angle, whether touching or just smart, adds breadth to how we think about it moving forward.
Sometimes, people finding their social justice feet need entry-level books. Accessible ideas are important, even if they aren’t new. Even then, it’s naïve not to start from the assumption that oppressed peoples have always resisted the conditions afflicting them. It’s high time authors and readers alike go beyond feminism 101 with its not-that-hot opinions and lean more critically into the historical context gender rights exist within. At least, that’s what I want as a reader from my authors.
Historian Barbara Minchinton’s The Women of Little Lon: Sex Workers in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne is as intricate as one could hope for. Her research on sex workers, as they flex around the social and economic constraints of their time, gives readers an example of society’s long-lasting resistance to the patriarchy’s chokehold. It takes them deeper, it takes them back.
What do we know about Melbourne's first sex workers?
Covering Melbourne’s first 70 years, The Women of Little Lon explores the loosely regulated sex industry in a pleasure-seeking city until it became subjected to moralistic fervour by the turn of the century. For working-class women, the brothels congregated along Little Lonsdale Street offered community cohesion, economic benefits – earning more than a servant and sometimes entering the property market – and the independence of dodging marriage or racist employers.
Little Lon’s women were intrinsic to the fabric and financial ecosystem of the young city: local businesses from bakers to furniture makers to liquor dealers relied on their business. Powerful men, from the Duke of Edinburgh to Chief Commissioner of Police Captain Standish, tolerated and even indulged in their work. The baby colonial city had little incentive to do away with an industry contributing to the economy. Law enforcement was tokenistic, and the sex industry remained, for the most part, legal.
Minchinton sets straight that The Women of Little Lon won’t cash in on entertainment value, as often done by Melbourne tourism providers covering the ‘slum’ district. Opening and closing chapters establish legal and social context, and chapters sandwiched between hone in on several noteworthy sex workers and brothel owning madams. It’s not until the work’s end does Minchinton condemn the judgement often plaguing the sex industry to pose a clean closure to her book.
Sometimes sociological, sometimes dramatic, sometimes wading the murkiness of criminal justice, The Women of Little Lon never ties itself down. It is as gripping as a true-crime podcast, but with a more intelligent than kitsch tone.
Even with the vaguest data, Minchinton conjures an objective yet compelling showcase of the era’s good and bad. The book generously includes archival transcripts which highlight the century’s colourful gendered language: the Ballarat Star described one woman as a ‘notorious nymph,’ another paper called a young woman a ‘meek and gentle dove,’ another noted a mayor asking a sex worker to be ‘less warlike’ after she argued with members of a rival brothel at the theatre.
Second-hand archival documents form much of what can speak to the women of Little Lon, who didn’t leave diaries and the like. Observations emerging from court, prison and hospital records, as well as scandal driven tabloids, give undue emphasis on crime or health rather than the humdrum of daily life. While Minchinton recognises these limiting ‘elastic facts,’ she doesn’t fold: “As with the best puzzles, even if we are not able to construct a perfect full-colour image, the outlines are sometimes enough to give us a worthwhile sketch.”
Redressing sexist sources for an objective truth
The book’s girth emerges from piecing this puzzle together. The indiscernible author reads between the lines of sources and scrutinises the many accounts written by men about women as ‘alternative facts’ of the ‘male imagination.’ Sex workers were not diseased, thieves or bad mothers because middle-class prudes thought of them as such.
Without creative twists or generalisations, Minchinton observes the wide range of experiences punctuating their lives. Their multifaceted personalities emerge – their love of fashion, their boldness to laugh and dance on the street – and the subjects take up more space in Minchinton’s book than within the male-controlled sources where she found them.
She asks the right questions, and follows appropriate routes of enquiry: where did these women acquire the taste to design their beautiful brothels? How did they win court cases from their social status as women and prostitutes?
As well, she doesn’t gild the lily – with fierce understanding of class she both praises the women’s prowess while noting hazards abating them. Pursuing background behind each footnote, The Women of Little Lon replaces neat sentiments and fun facts with wise conclusions and controlled speculations.
Readers aren’t spun round and round an argument, but rather pulled into a mesmeric narrative through a web of facts. Minchinton slowly pulls the web apart by deliberating through the historical record, judging her sources, and piecing together what we know to be true, what is more of an educated guess, what is rumour and what can never be distinguished from fact or fiction.
She develops a driving point by the book’s closing – well-timed, as the reader is now ready too. The thesis is straight and necessary: the moralistic attitudes that doomed Little Lon’s flourishing sex industry underpin the unsafe and discriminatory legislation regulating sex work in Victoria today.
She offers a clear through-line from then until now. The persuasion is gentle but foolproof: the Little Lon community benefited from prostitution. Consensual commercial sex, when driven by women, isn’t more dangerous than other work. Problems with sex work lie in undue criminalisation and stigmatisation.
Maybe the reader already believes this. But by seeing this historical community, they have chance to further flesh out their convictions.
More of this, less pop-feminism, please
Minchinton writes with neutrality. Her sex workers are never ‘Other’ nor homogenous in terms of why they entered the industry and their experience of it. With this, The Women of Little Lon has a refreshing dexterity compared to the regurgitated information, hyperbolic opinion, and moot debates flooding many recent feminist publications.
Sex work has and will always be real work; it’s an assumption Minchinton doesn’t need to breathlessly leverage. She understands nothing is so simple, and that’s why we need to look closer, further back. The book’s due diligence pursues dynamic but sound insights into the industry positioning of sex workers with a flexible existence hardly ever afforded to them by either historians or their contemporary feminist peers.
It’s a relief to pick up a book not desperate to push an obvious point, but rather richly imbue context to feminist thought.
Book review: The Women of Little Lon: Sex Workers in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne by Barbara Minchinton (Black Inc Books).
Read more of Tahney Fosdike’s arts criticism here.
P. Jackson September 19, 2021
Brilliant review, shows you are one very smart cookie.(and gorgeous)
Comments are closed.