The Women of Little Lon by Barbara Minchinton

Author:Barbara Minchinton [Minchinton, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Australia & New Zealand, Women, Social Science, Prostitution & Sex Trade, Modern, 19th Century
ISBN: 9781743821886
Google: AKkaEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Black Inc.
Published: 2021-08-16T01:05:33+00:00

WESTCOTT

In fond and loving remembrance of my dear mother, Emma Westcott, who departed her life on the 2nd day of May, 1877, aged 38.

With patience great she bore her pain,

That suffered her to die.

But the hearts that wish her back again,

Please God will meet her by and bye.

– Inserted by her loving and only daughter, Emma Westcott.

The Age, 2 May 1893, p. 1

So where did Emma and Charles go in the early years after their mother died? We don’t know; they certainly left their mother’s house in Leichardt Street, at least initially, but it seems they did not go far. At the time of the inquest, Charles had an apprenticeship with a French polisher, and within a few years he was married and raising a family of his own. He carried on with his trade, living in and around Little Lon at first, then moving as far away as Carlton and North Melbourne. His first wife died very young, leaving him with three sons, but he married again and lived out the rest of his life – with children coming and going – at 16 Bayles Street in Parkville. His sister, Emma, however, lived a more colourful life. She disappeared from the records after her mother’s death in 1877, and did not reappear until 1885, when a theft at her brothel was reported.

Emma Westcott and her brother had grown up in Little Lon and spent their childhood in and around the back lanes; they would certainly have been familiar with the business of prostitution as it was practised in Leichardt Street, and given that their mother worked at Mrs Fraser’s flash establishment, they probably also knew about the goings on there. There is no evidence that Emma became a ward of the state, and as Mrs Fraser kept her mother’s wage going through her illness it is possible that she took an interest in Emma’s welfare, which might explain Emma’s eventual choice of profession. The police, however, kept an eye out for young girls in brothels and tended to try to rescue them if it seemed they were in danger of being ‘procured’ for the trade, although there were few other places for girls such as Emma Westcott to go. Back in 1877, on the day her mother died, a constable noted that ‘the deceased had two children living with her’ and that ‘the girl was younger [than thirteen years]’, which suggests that the police would look out for her the way they did for Mrs Manton’s granddaughter.36

Mother Manton (as the police called her) was living at 208A Lonsdale Street the same year that Emma Westcott’s mother died. According to the constable on the beat, she had formerly kept a brothel there, but was now operating a fruit and confectionery shop from the premises.37 By 1882, not only was Mother Manton still there, running a brothel, but so was her daughter. Their brothel was in full flight with a number of ‘girls’ in their employ.38 Mother Manton’s daughter also had

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