i Mark Peart Sodomy Re/verse : Reading and re-writing the sodomitical archive on nineteenth century New South Wales Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Department of English The University of Sydney Supervised by: Associate Professor Kate Lilley A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Year of Award: 2019 Abstract: In “Queer Spectrality” Carla Freccero writes that “queer historicism harbors within itself not only the pleasure, but also the pain, a traumatic pain whose ethical insistence is to ‘live to tell.’” Historical trauma, she argues, appears in the form of the unresolved spectres, as the troubled past made present by their unresolved demands to be made right, in the returners’ demands to be mourned and to impel the process to an as yet achieved historical justice. This thesis is haunted: it is haunted by the minor sodomitical figures of nineteenth century New South Wales who sound relentlessly the conditions of the injustice they experienced, and who speak in the name of the “queer.” In this way I do not so much, or only, look back to history, but I encounter a history that looks back towards my present. If the conditions of state persecution and disciplinary regulation under sodomy laws and general antisodomy rhetoric in this context made “queer” lives less liveable, it is the force of their sodomitical queerness – gender transgressors, racial “abominations,” lumpen class rogues, criminal recidivists, the imprisoned (convict) poor and petty offenders – that speaks back to the still limited, intolerable and in too many cases unliveable conditions of present heteronormative hegemonies. Writing on the state of the antipodean convict colonies in 1832, William Molesworth, the Radical reformer, commented that the convict transportation system “barbarizes the habits, and demoralizes the principles of the rising generation, and the result is… ‘Sodom and Gomorrah.’” In 1879, during the sodomy cases against William Albion (alias Moore, alias Ernest Steele), William Tindall, police constable at Sydney, stated that he found on Albion when arresting him in Sydney’s Hyde Park “a handkerchief” and a “silk turban,” and that “his face was powdered.” Furthermore, when cross examined by the defendant Tindall answered that he had watched Albion in the act, stating, “your posterior was turned towards each man as they came to you in turns.” The leitmotifs in each of these examples index the central tropes that animate the dissertational prose and poetry of this thesis: disciplinary disorder and gender inversion (in the above examples: disciplinary barbarization and demoralization, and the gendered turning of the posterior to the anterior). The central argument of this thesis is that sodomy in nineteenth century New South Wales, as articulated by commentators and lawmakers and as lived by sodomitical offenders, indexes question of reversals, principally in relation to disciplinary penal order and gender order; and I dilate on this thesis mainly iii through close readings in dissertational prose as well as in documentary poem form. Scholars have most often interpreted the history of sodomitical discourse in relation to the nineteenth century New South Wales as evidencing previously censored histories of homosexual subcultures (Aldrich; Wotherspoon), or in the case of penal reform documents as evidence of the hyperbolic rhetorics of this bourgeoise reform movement (McKenzie; Reid). I use a double headed approach by drawing on the fields of queer historicism and queer theory, (Foucault; Freccero; King; Edelman), as well as on archival poetics, and objectivist poetics and criticism (Howe; Reznikoff; Niedecker; Quartermain; Du Plessis) to add to and revise this scholarship. I also made many new discoveries in state archives in relation to individuals I document in poems, thereby adding to existing scholarship on the history of sodomy. For example, I document in poem the extensive criminal record of one Samuel Jones, an incorrigible convict proximate to multiple attempted mutinies and transported, once again, in 1834 for sodomy to the notoriously severe penal island, Norfolk Island, then commonly known as “Sodom Island.” A version of Chapter 2 of this thesis, of which I am the author, is published as: “Sodom Island: Pandæmonium and the Botany Bay of Botany Bay,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 28, no. 2 (2019): 263-296, https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS28204. v Statement of originality This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. X Mark Peart Signature* Name: Mark Andrew Peart Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Illustrations ix Tables xi Abbreviations: xii Notes on style: xiii Introduction: Sodomy Re/verse 1 Penal Discipline 70 Slade’s Lash, “the fancy girls of men” and “twigging” 71 Sodom Island 136 Solomon John) 185) جان الہ دین & William Williams Samuel Jones 206 Bodily/Gender Disorder 243 Smooth and Hairless, a Finger and a Cauliflower 244 Sodom’s Public 280 Francis Quincey 328 Portrait of Hyde Park and The Domain, 1834-1895 341 Harrison, als. Carrie Swain 344 William Albion, als. Moore, als. Ernest Steele 357 Conclusion 369 Bibliography 382 Parliamentary Papers 382 Legislation 382 Archival and manuscript collections 383 Newspapers 389 General References 393 vii Acknowledgements Many thanks and much love to my mom, Joan. Your support throughout this project has been invaluable, and your tolerance of me not returning home as often as I should has, as always, shown your kindness and patience. Thanks and love to my sister, Kim. I’m tempted to say I owe Kate Lilley a great debt for her generous supervision, and for giving me, in many ways that this word can mean, a place. And, of course, I do. Though, perhaps to see this in the structure of debt is to mistake the form of a gift. I hope in turn to reciprocate; and much of the work in this thesis has, with pleasure, been unavoidably written towards this. Thank you to Melissa Hardie for liking so many of my social media posts – this may seem trivial, but the little “thumbs-up” and “hearts” have brightened many difficult moments. Special thanks are due to Anna Breckon and Annalise Pippard for brilliant conversation and friendship, and for reading earlier drafts of parts of this work. For friendship, and for all the joys and perils of being in the same boat, thanks to Matt Clarke, Paul Kelaita and Alifa Bandali. So much in this thesis would be impossible without the many and varied queer communities, places, houses and friends I’ve spent my life in and with over the years – thank you! Special thanks and love to Arben. Thank you to Kieryn McKay for employing me, for giving me time, and for being incredibly supportive. For debate, collaborative learning and general queer smarts, thank you to everyone involved in the Doctoral Queer Theory Reading Group, particularly Matt, Annalise, Paul, Grace and Jaya. Thank you to Lee Wallace for facilitating queer theory masterclasses through the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre, and for giving me supportive feedback. Thank you to the visiting academics, Amy Villarejo and Robyn Wiegman, and to all the participants, for feedback on early versions of parts of this thesis. For patience and assistance with my many enquiries and requests, few of which were properly formulated, thank you to the archivists, curators and librarians at the State Records of New South Wales, the Tasmanian Heritage and Archives Office at the State Library of Tasmania, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney, the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales, various reading rooms at the British Library, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / the National Library of Wales, and the Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Site Museum at Norfolk Island. I am very grateful to the University of Sydney for an Australian Postgraduate Award/ Research Training Program Stiped, which materially supported me and gave me so much time to research and write this thesis. I’m also very grateful to the Department of English for a Thomas Henry Coulson Scholarship, a Doctoral Research Travel Grant and for Postgraduate Research Support Scheme funding which enabled me to do research at various archives, museums and libraries in England, Wales, Tasmania and Norfolk Island. ix Illustrations FIGURE 1: REPRODUCTION OF SLADE’S LASH, HYDE PARK BARRACKS MUSEUM, SYDNEY. PHOTO BY AUTHOR 96 FIGURE 2. ROBERT JONES, “THE FLOGGING OF CHARLES MAHER,” IN RECOLLECTIONS OF 13 YEARS RESIDENCE IN NORFOLK ISLAND AND VAN DIEMEN’S LAND, DATED 1823, PROBABLY 1850, 13, MITCHELL LIBRARY, STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 102 FIGURE 3: WILLIAM HOGARTH, “THE FIRST STAGE OF CRUELTY,” PRINT, 1751. 130 FIGURE 4: HENRY WILLIAMSON LUGARD, “PLAN, SECTIONS AND ELEVATION FOR PROPOSED NEW GAOL, NORFOLK ISLAND," JANUARY 31, 1839, TAHO: PWD266/1/1887. 156 FIGURE 5: DETAIL FROM LUGARD, “PLAN, SECTIONS AND ELEVATION OF THE CONVICT HOSPITAL, NORFOLK ISLAND," JANUARY 31, 1839, TAHO: PWD266/1/1906. 159 FIGURE 6: DETAIL FROM LUGARD, “PLAN, SECTIONS AND ELEVATION OF GAOL, NORFOLK ISLAND," JANUARY 31, 1839, TAHO: PWD266/1/1886. 161 FIGURE 7: LUGARD, “PLOT AND PLAN OF THE CONVICT BARRACK, NORFOLK ISLAND," JANUARY 31, 1839, TAHO: PWD266/1/1896.