Police rules and the organisation of policing in Queensland,                1905–1916

Finnane, Mark

doi:10.1177/000486588902200203

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Such ambiguities have been illuminated elsewhere. See M. Finnane, ‘Police Rules’, 95–108; Garton, Out of Work ; see also Davies, ‘“Ragged”’, 141–165.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Poor Laws: A Historiography of Vagrancy in Australia

Kimber

2013

History Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The study of vagrancy forms part of a larger investigation into the social origins of law, the structures of inequality and the gendered and racially discriminatory aspects of societies. A full analysis of vagrancy in Australia must necessarily begin with the inherited traditions of its colonial master, its convict origins and the defensive nature of European settlement. While the former provided the moral and legal framework, the latter played a longer and more influential role in establishing the interventionist nature of government in Australia. Despite sharing significant commonalities with the British, Australia's vagrancy laws differed in their application in important ways. As with other colonial regimes, most notably the United States and South Africa, vagrancy laws provided authorities with broad powers, which enabled them to punish vice and to impose social order on the structures of inequality in class, race and gender.The image of the vagrant 1 is both place bound and universal. In Australia, the swagman, captured in the poem turned song Waltzing Matilda, lingers in the popular imagination, with his 'apotheosis' described in Russel Ward's The Australian Legend. 2 While 20th century vagrants would borrow heavily from the language and culture of the North American hobo, his 19th century counterpart was a bushman, beloved in abstract and romanticised in print. But as with other places, the personification of the vagrant-as-swagman contradicts the realities of Australian society: increasingly urbanised and just as prone to moral panics about the degenerate and criminal class as elsewhere. As this suggests, the popular image of the vagrant and the laws of vagrancy are not synonymous, though their coexistence reveals something of the propagation of myths about personal liberty despite the limits of freedom.Laws against vagrancy can be found in almost all states that rely on the buying and selling of labour. Australia's vagrancy laws were, like other former British colonies, inherited and adapted to suit local conditions. 3 William Chambliss, the pre-eminent scholar of vagrancy laws, has noted their earliest iteration, directed at free labour, in England in 1349. In Caleb Foote's words, these laws became a 'substitute for serfdom', 4 designed to provide labour for landowners 'at a price he could afford to pay'. 5 As has been described elsewhere, these laws prohibited the giving of alms to those who could work, while later amendments circumscribed people's movements by criminalising those leaving towns during harvest times. 6 While work lay at the heart of vagrancy laws, it was the fear of idle hands and the mobility of the mob that gave these laws their moral force. In this, distinctions were made between the 'settled' and the 'vagrant' poor. 7 Despite debate as to the extent to which the vagrancy laws were enforced over the subsequent 200 years, there is consensus that by the mid-16th century they were being used to construct a 'social order of England'. 8 By the early 19th century, numerous changes had b...

show abstract

“…Such ambiguities have been illuminated elsewhere. See M. Finnane, ‘Police Rules’, 95–108; Garton, Out of Work ; see also Davies, ‘“Ragged”’, 141–165.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%