Madame Brussels: The Life and Times of Melboue’s Most Notorious Woman

by: Barbara Minchinton (Author)

Publisher: La Trobe University Press

Publication Date: 2024/7/2

Language: English

Print Length: 336 pages

ISBN-10: 1760644935

ISBN-13: 9781760644932

Book Description

A must-read biography of an enigmatic personality who helped shape early MelboueMadame Brussels, the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melboue, is still remembered and celebrated today. But until now, little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the woman behind the alter ego.Bo in Prussia to a working-class family, Caroline arrived in Melboue in 1871. Left alone when her police-officer husband was sent to work in remote Victoria, she tued her hand to running brothels. Before long, she had proved herself brilliantly entrepreneurial: her principal establishment was a stone’s throw from Parliament House, lavishly fuished and catered to Melboue’s ruling classes.Caroline rode Melboue’s boom in the 1880s, weathered the storm of the depression years in the 1890s and suffered in the moral panic of the 1900s. Her death in 1908 signified the end of one kind of Melboue and the beginning of another: in terms of prostitution, the city went from tolerance to complete prohibition in her lifetime.Drawing on extensive research, author and historian Barbara Minchinton deftly pieces together Madame Brussels’ story and recreates a fascinating, colourful period in Melboue’s history. This is a major biography of an Australian icon.

About the Author

A must-read biography of an enigmatic personality who helped shape early MelboueMadame Brussels, the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melboue, is still remembered and celebrated today. But until now, little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the woman behind the alter ego.Bo in Prussia to a working-class family, Caroline arrived in Melboue in 1871. Left alone when her police-officer husband was sent to work in remote Victoria, she tued her hand to running brothels. Before long, she had proved herself brilliantly entrepreneurial: her principal establishment was a stone’s throw from Parliament House, lavishly fuished and catered to Melboue’s ruling classes.Caroline rode Melboue’s boom in the 1880s, weathered the storm of the depression years in the 1890s and suffered in the moral panic of the 1900s. Her death in 1908 signified the end of one kind of Melboue and the beginning of another: in terms of prostitution, the city went from tolerance to complete prohibition in her lifetime.Drawing on extensive research, author and historian Barbara Minchinton deftly pieces together Madame Brussels’ story and recreates a fascinating, colourful period in Melboue’s history. This is a major biography of an Australian icon.