BENJAMIN AND SARAH WHITE ARE RECORDED IN "SOUTH AUSTRALIANS 1836-1885" BOOK TWO.DESMA FAY NICHOLSON OF 160 FRANCIS ST RICHMOND NSW PROVIDED THE INFORMATION FOR THE BOOK. DESMA IS A DESCENDENT OF JOHN WHITE, FIFTH AND YOUNGEST SON OF BENJAMIN WHITE BENJAMIN WHITE PARENTS BENJAMIN AND JANE (NEE LOWDEN- SHOULD BE SOWDEN) BORN 1819 CAMBORNE, CORNWALL DIED JAN 1874 VICTORIA, BURIED IN CRESWICK ARRIVED SA 29/10/1847 FROM ENGLAND ON DUCHESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND DEPARTED SA C. 1852 FOR VICTORIA OVERLAND OCCUPATION MINER AND SECTON RESIDENCE: KAPUNDA ALLENS CREEK SA RELIGION: WESLEYAN HE MARRIED SARAH (SALLY) BAILEY ON 02/08/1845 IN CAMBORNE ENGLAND, SHE DIED 12/08/1891 IN CRESWICK CHILDREN: SARAH ANNE WILLIAMS 07/09/1845 TO 18/06/1890 ELIZABETH ORRINGE 22/02/1847 TO 16/10/1920 BENJAMIN 22/04/1849 TO 19/02/1889 HARRIET 29/08/1850 TO 15/05/1851 WILLIAM BAILEY 22/10/1851 TO 14/03/1916 JOSEPH 20/11/1853 TO 17/05/1910 THOMAS HENRY 15/05/1855 TO 15/08/1917 JOHN 14/04/1857 TO 27/02/1935 HARRIET 17/01/1860 TO 14/06/1863 DECIMA JANE CHEGWYN 04/01/1862 TO 28/02/1940 EMILY WILSON 07/03/1864 TO 19/08/1937 BENJAMIN WHITE MARRIED SARAH BAILEY IN CORNWALL IN SEPTEMBER 1845, JUST ONE MONTH BEFORE THE BIRTH OF THEIR FIRST CHILD SARAH ANN. SECOND CHILD ELIZABETH WAS BORN IN MARCH 1847 JUST SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE FAMILY SAILED FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA ON THE NORTHUMBERLAND. THE MANNING INDEX OF SOUTH AUSTRALIAN HISTORY REC9ORDS THAT BENJAMIN WHITE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR "CREATING" THE ALLEN CREEK VILLAGE 5 KM NORTHWEST OF KAPUNDA C. 1849. CERTAINLY AT ONE STAGE BENJAMIN HAD A CONSIDERABLE LAND HOLDING ADJACENT TO ALLEN'S CREEK VAL LAWRENCE SUGGESTS THAT THE WHITE FAMILY TRAVELLED BY SEA FROM SA TO VICTORIA, NOT OVERLAND AS SUGESTED BY DESMA NICHOLSON IN "SOUTH AUSTRALIANS 1836-1885 ACCORDING TO CRSWICK HOSPITAL RECORDS BENJAMIN WHITE WAS ADMITTED JUNE 27 1873 (AGE 49 MARRIED, GRAVEDIGGER AT CRESWICK, BORN IN ENGLAND, WESLEYAN) AND LEFT HOSPITAL JULY 14 1873. A CHRONICALLY ILL CONDITION WAS RELIEVED. BENJAMIN WHITE DIED DECEMBER 22, 1873. A SPECIAL CHURCH SERMON WAS CARRIED OUT ON SUNDAY JANUARY 43 1874benjamin white, sarah white, sarah bailey

Newspaper cuttings relating to the University of Ballarat, SMB Campus. These are from various newspapers and include The Age, Ballarat Courier, The Australian, The Herald. The cuttings cover the period from 1 January 1998 to 4 April 1998. . `Book with yellow cover, front. Spiral bound.employment advertisements, application for enrolment, outline of courses, university of ballarat, smb campus, ub, new university opens, secretaries conference, h h smith, artist's legacy, amalie colquhom, anne beggs sunter, director of tafe, peter morey, work skills olympics, peter bailey gold medallist, meat industry workers, joint venture, tafe prepares to deliver courses, jobs pathway program, professor geoffrey blainey, professor david caro, chancellor, michael aldermann, centrelink first call for jobless, colour and great music, marion's pots, marion popplewell, doug sarah - community service identity, michael adermann, neville french - potter, exhibition in new york, farm field day, ballarat demonstration farm, vocational training critical, powerful drama at the courthouse, $1.5m ararat campus opened, combined talents forge forest course, apprenticeship program begins

This collection of approximately 20 letters between Melbourne men Ben Morris and Harry Bruin, covering a period of several months in 1919, consists of original letters handwritten by Morris and carbon copies of Bruin’s replies. Love letters between men from this period are extremely rare in an Australian context, and globally. They were seized by police from Bruin’s home in Harcourt Street, Auburn in October 1919. The police were investigating a report that Bruin and Morris were conducting an intimate affair. The relationship came to light when the mother of one of Morris’ friends, having failed in her attempt to blackmail Bruin, went to the police. Blackmail was an ever-present danger to homosexual men at that time. Homosexual sex was against the law and even gossip alone could ruin reputations, careers and social standing. In refusing the demands of his attempted blackmailer, Bruin took an enormous risk. However, Morris and Bruin were lucky that their letters contained no descriptions of sex acts. It was not illegal to express love for a person of the same sex and when the matter came before the court, the police had no choice but to let the matter drop without laying charges. Letters like these are rare as potentially incriminating correspondence between men was usually destroyed by the writers or the recipients, to prevent it falling into the hands of the authorities, blackmailers, or disapproving third parties. These letters survived only because they were seized by the authorities for the purpose of prosecution. Morris and Bruin’s letters are also important because, together with the statements taken from the two men and others involved in the case by police prosecutors, they provide insight into the development of the liaison over an extended period. The emotional letters provide rare evidence of a deep romantic affection between two men in their own words. Quoted from "A History of LGBTIQ+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects" by Graham Willett, Angela Bailey, Timothy W. Jones and Sarah Rood.

A file previously held in the collection of the Supreme Court of Victoria and now in Public Record Office Victoria contains records of the annulment of the marriage of Florence Cox in 1919. As the earliest known record of a person with intersex variations in Victorian history, Cox’s story – and this record – are of unique historical significance to the LGBTIQ+ history of the State. Florence Cox (1887–1950) had a middle-class upbringing in Melbourne. In 1914 she travelled to Bengal to marry her fiancé Frank Paice and to join him in his missionary work for the Baptist church. The couple returned to Melbourne in 1918 and the following year the Supreme Court of Victoria, at Paice’s request, annulled their marriage. The Supreme Court file reveals that Paice declared he had been unable to consummate the marriage, due to ‘a malformation frigidity or other defect of the parts of generation’ of his wife. Both Paice and Cox were subject to medical examination, which established that Cox had what is recognised today as the intersex condition complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. The court determined that marital intercourse, as it was understood at the time, was impossible for Paice and Cox, and granted the request for an annulment. Paice remarried, fathered children and led a successful professional and civic life, serving a period as Mayor of Nunawading, in the middle- class eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Cox’s life was very different. It is unlikely that anyone in her life would have known what had prompted the end of the marriage, but gossip would certainly have focussed on her part in it. She never remarried and, although she remained connected to her family, her story was rarely discussed. Cox was admitted to Mont Park Mental Hospital in Melbourne’s northern suburbs in 1945, where she died five years later. The Supreme Court file preserves one of the most detailed medical descriptions of a person with intersex variations from that period. It is particularly striking that following the court case, the file was closed ‘forever’. This indicates how seriously the court took the case, and its determination to protect Cox and Paice from public scrutiny. It speaks loudly to the thinking of the time on a matter that was rarely, if ever, raised in public. In 1997, Cox’s great-nephew Ian Richardson set out to investigate the secrecy surrounding his great-aunt Florrie. Following a relentless, two-year campaign by Richardson and other descendants of Cox and Paice, the Supreme Court file was finally opened to the public. Richardson’s book, God’s Triangle, recounts his quest and brings Cox’s story out of the archives and into the light. Quoted from "A History of LGBTIQ+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects" by Graham Willett, Angela Bailey, Timothy W. Jones and Sarah Rood.

In Victoria’s State archives there is a remarkable cache of letters written by George Bateson, who was arrested and convicted of sodomy in late 1860. There are some 200 letters addressed to notable Victorians including the governor, premier, inspector-general of penal establishments, members of parliament, and lawyers. These rare documents provide powerful evidence of homosexual life and the impacts of mid-nineteenth century laws relating to sodomy. The story begins on an evening in November 1860, when 19-year-old William Gardner went to the police to complain that the previous evening, when he was staying at a city hotel with George Bateson, he had been subjected to Bateson’s sexual advances. The police asked Gardner to meet with Bateson again the following evening and when their sexual connection was sufficiently advanced, Gardner should cough twice. He agreed to the plan, and when Gardner coughed the police emerged from a closet in the hallway, catching the two men in the act. Bateson was convicted of sodomy in 1860, but his death sentence was recorded rather than pronounced. In due course the Governor of Victoria commuted the sentence, as was usual for the crime, and instead sentenced Bateson to 15 years’ hard labour, with the first three years to be spent in chains. In 1871, Bateson was released, having spent four years less in prison than his original sentence. During and after his time in prison, Bateson wrote letters to the authorities to assert that he was innocent, falsely accused and the victim of a conspiracy. He demanded that this terrible miscarriage of justice should be reversed and a pardon granted to him. Bateson was not the first man in Victoria to be convicted and sentenced in this way; nor was he the first to petition for redress. But the extent of his letters and the scope of the issues raised in them offer a remarkable insight into homosexual life in the mid-nineteenth century, such as how men might meet each other, and approaches to police and punish homosexual behaviour. Bateson’s letters provide crucial evidence to expand our understanding of Victoria’s queer past. Quoted from "A History of LGBTIQ+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects" by Graham Willett, Angela Bailey, Timothy W. Jones and Sarah Rood.

In October 1901, Mr B. Cleal wrote to the Chief Commissioner of Police complaining about the large number of effeminate young men using ‘various conveniences’ for ‘an evil of the most terrible description’. Mr Cleal’s letter is part of a remarkable collection of documents held by Public Record Office Victoria that are valuable to LGBTIQ+ history and heritage in providing unparalleled insight into where and how beats operated in and around the city at that time. By ‘conveniences’ Cleal meant public toilets, and he listed the busiest of them: the corner of Rathdowne and Victoria streets; Lansdowne Street, East Melbourne; under the viaduct opposite the Customs House in Flinders Street; at the rear of the old City Court in Little Collins Street; and under the viaduct at the foot of King Street. Cleal described in detail how these beats worked: ‘One cannot enter but two or three of the above fellows rush in and on pretence of using same will pass some disgusting remark concerning one’s person etc’. The Chief Commissioner despatched one of his officers, Sergeant Canty, to investigate. Canty’s report provides further detail and description of who he encountered at the public toilets. He reported that men ‘known by the term “Pufters” [sic], are generally well dressed, sober, quiet in their manner and some of them very well connected’. Canty further noted about these men: 'it is often very difficult for the police to catch them offending, and if they do at any time make filthy or indecent overtures to any man, they believe him to be similarly inclined, but should they make a mistake the man insulted never thinks of giving any of them in charge [complaining to the police], but sometimes gives the offender a well-deserved blow or kick instead, of which the recipient never complains.' Sergeant Canty admitted that the problem had existed for some time. But, he added, ‘I don’t think the evil complained of is as great as said in attached [Cleal’s letter]’. In reviewing the file, Canty’s supervisor noted that Cleal, ‘appears to have given these resorts considerable attention’. Much of the evidence for same-sex activity in Melbourne in the early twentieth century comes from court cases and sensationalist news reports. With their eyewitness accounts of the use of local beats, these documents in the collection of Public Record Office Victoria provide a more detailed, understated account, making them some of the more unusual and historically significant records in Melbourne’s queer history. Quoted from "A History of LGBTIQ+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects" by Graham Willett, Angela Bailey, Timothy W. Jones and Sarah Rood.