VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2, NOVEMBER 2017 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA The Royal Historical Society of Victoria is a community organisation comprising people from many fields committed to collecting, researching and sharing an understanding of the history of Victoria. The Victorian Historical Journal is a fully refereed journal dedicated to Australian, and especially Victorian, history produced twice yearly by the Publications Committee, Royal Historical Society of Victoria. PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE Judith Smart and Richard Broome (Editors, Victorian Historical Journal) Jill Barnard Rozzi Bazzani Sharon Betridge Marilyn Bowler Richard Broome (Convenor) (Editor, History News) Mimi Colligan Marie Clark Jonathan Craig Don Garden (President, RHSV) Don Gibb John Rickard Judith Smart (Review Editor) Lee Sulkowska Carole Woods BECOME A MEMBER Membership of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria is open. All those with an interest in history are welcome to join. Subscriptions can be purchased at: Royal Historical Society of Victoria 239 A’Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Telephone: 03 9326 9288 Email: [email protected] www.historyvictoria.org.au Journals are also available for purchase online: www.historyvictoria.org.au/publications/victorian-historical-journal VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL ISSUE 288 VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2 NOVEMBER 2017 Royal Historical Society of Victoria Victorian Historical Journal Published by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 239 A’Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Telephone: 03 9326 9288 Fax: 03 9326 9477 Email: [email protected] www.historyvictoria.org.au Copyright © the authors and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 2017 All material appearing in this publication is copyright and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher and the relevant author. Design: Janet Boschen, Boschen Design Desktop Production: Centreforce Printer: Focus Print Group Print Post Approved: PP349181/00159 ISSN 1030 7710 The Royal Historical Society of Victoria acknowledges the support of the Victorian Government though Creative Victoria—Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources. Front cover: ‘Short Eared Brushtail Possum’, by Michael Piper, c. 1985 (Courtesy Richard Broome) VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2 NOVEMBER 2017 ARTICLES Introduction 143 Judith Smart and Richard Broome Ballarat’s Betsy Buckley: ‘victim of circumstance’ or 146 ‘habitual criminal’ Douglas Wilkie James Denham Pinnock: A Gentleman in Society 170 Liz Rushen Capital Punishment in Colonial Victoria: The Role of the 188 Executive Council John Waugh The Legend of Lalor’s Arm: Eureka Myths and Colonial Surgery 212 Nicola Cousen The Political Economy of Victoria’s Brushtail Possums, 235 1890–1975 Chris McConville Mixed Fortunes: The Postwar Lives of East Melbourne’s Great 256 War Nurses Janet Scarfe HISTORICAL NOTES Ladies and Libraries in Nineteenth-century Melbourne 281 Margaret Bowman The Victorian Letter Sheets from the 1840s to about 1865 292 John Lancaster REVIEWS Sullivan Bay: How Convicts Came to Port Phillip and Van 304 Diemen’s Land. By John Currey Frank Hindley Up Came a Squatter: Niel Black of Glenormiston 1839–1880. 306 By Maggie Black and The Enterprising Mr MacGregor: Stockbreeder and Pioneer 308 Pastoralist. By Fay Woodhouse Andrew Lemon A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off. 309 By Charlie Ward David Carment The Vagabond Papers: Expanded Edition. 311 Edited and introduced by Michael Cannon, with G. Flippen and Willa McDonald Margaret Anderson Mary Gaunt: Independent Colonial Woman. By Bronwen Hickman 314 Margaret Anderson Moments in Time: A Book of Australian Postcards. 316 By Jim Davidson John Arnold A Historian for All Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton 318 Edited by Stuart Macintyre, Lenore Layman and Jenny Gregory Ged Martin Catch and Kill: The Politics of Power. By Joel Deane 320 Jill Barnard Notes on Contributors 323 About the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 326 Guidelines for Contributors 327 Enhance your next book with an Index by Terri MacKenzie Professional Back of Book Indexer Member of Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers Honorary Victorian Historical Journal Indexer [email protected] Become a Patron of the Victorian Historical Journal The RHSV invites you to become a patron of the journal to guarantee its future for the next 100 years. HOW TO BE INVOLVED We suggest the following levels of pledge for your consideration. Annually: $250 $500 $1,000 Annually for the following periods I year 3 years 5 years (The RHSV is a tax-deductible entity and all contributions from patrons will be tax deductible) Please reply with your preferred pledge to Richard Broome, Chair of the Publications Committee, on [email protected] and you will be contacted regarding payment. If you are unable to become a patron at this time, please consider an RHSV membership, see http://www.historyvictoria.org.au/ and choose the ‘support us’ button on the service bar. CURRENT PATRONS Emeritus Professor Richard Broome, La Trobe University FRHSV; Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison, Monash University; Jonathan Craig; John Dwyer; Murray Johns; His Honour Paul R. Mullaly QC; Emeritus Professor John Rickard FRHSV; Professor Lynette Russell, Monash University; Adjunct Professor Judith Smart FRHSV; Carole Wood FRHSV Introduction Judith Smart and Richard Broome This edition of the Victorian Historical Journal contains six articles and two historical notes, as well as a number of book reviews. The six articles cover a diverse range of subjects and periods, and are evidence of the breadth and depth of research into Victoria’s history. They range in time from the 1840s to the 1980s. They deal with issues of social mobility (up and down), decisions about capital punishment, gender and access to libraries, changing technologies of communication (letter sheets), anaesthesia and surgery, class relations and political economy in environmental history, and the impact of war on women who served. The first two articles follow the very different lives of two early settlers. Douglas Wilkie traces the trajectory of a young female convict who came to Victoria in the early 1860s after completing her sentence and spending some years in Van Diemen’s Land. In debating the longstanding question of whether convicts were victims or hardened criminals, Wilkie provides fresh evidence and a more nuanced perspective through a meticulous investigation of the archival sources relating to Betsy Buckley. Liz Rushen’s focus on the career of a young male civil servant provides a complete contrast in settler type. James Denham Pinnock, who had worked in the Colonial Office to foster emigration to the colonies, arrived in Melbourne in 1841 as deputy registrar there of the NSW Supreme Court and subsequently achieved prosperity and success as a ‘gentleman’ through land acquisitions, appropriate marriages, lavish entertainments in the large homes he constructed, and church trusteeship. John Waugh’s article examines a little-known aspect of capital punishment in Victoria—the largely invisible role of the Executive Council in deciding whether and when to carry out death sentences handed down by the courts. Up until 1892, the decision to reprieve or execute was the personal responsibility of the governor, who took but was not bound by the advice of members of the council. After examining the minutes of this body from the 1850s to 1892, Waugh concludes that the Executive Council’s approach represented an idea of justice different from due process followed in the courts, instead 143 weighing responsibility, punishment and proof using whatever seemed relevant to moral culpability and criminal responsibility. Nicola Cousen, like Waugh, is concerned with the development of professional practice in colonial Victoria, in this case medicine and specifically anaesthesia and surgery. In focusing on the injury suffered by Peter Lalor at the Eureka Stockade and the subsequent amputation of his left arm, she is able to provide new and expanded insight into the depth of community values underpinning the uprising at Eureka, as well as the growing sophistication of colonial surgery and the role of doctors in the colony. The title of Chris McConville’s article, ‘The Political Economy of Victoria’s Brushtail Possums, 1890–1975’ sums up the key point of his historical analysis of the end of open seasons on possums and the implementation of wildlife protection measures in Victoria—that is, that changing rural labour relations and market demand for furs, combined with rising popular distaste for inhumane killing, counted for far more than ecological consciousness. McConville’s work thus makes a radical contribution to environmental history by questioning the dominant progressivist vanguard interpretation. As the end of World War I centennial commemorations approaches, it is appropriate that the journal should publish Janet Scarfe’s article on the wartime and postwar lives of a cohort of 54 Australian nurses. Drawn from information and materials presented in exhibition as part of the East Melbourne Historical Society Great War project, the article reveals the varied and multiple physical, psychological and aspirational effects of the war on these women and thus contributes to a more complex and nuanced understanding of the war’s impact on Australian society generally.