When I was researching last year, I came across so many stories that I just didn't have room for in my thesis. I've now written a few of them, and here is the first. (The others will follow soon, I promise!)
On 4 February 1901, 32-year-old Arthur Viant admitted himself to Adelaide Hospital with a stab wound in the middle of his back. It was three quarters of an inch deep, and could have caused considerable damage to the lungs if it had been a little deeper, and probably caused by a pen knife. Viant discharged himself within a few hours, after telling police that it was Violet Rawlinson who stabbed him.
Violet Rawlinson was arrested and brought before the Adelaide Police Court, but the charges were dismissed because Viant failed to appear at the hearings and, therefore, did not give evidence. Police Inspector Sullivan told the court that Viant was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the first hearing, which is why he did not attend, and asked for an adjournment for the next day. When he did not turn up again at the second hearing, the judge dismissed the case: “The fact of the prosecutor not appearing in this case leaves no course open but to dismiss it. The prosecutor was the man injured, and if he does not like to go on with the case it would better to let the matter drop.” Viant’s injuries do not appear to have affected him too much, as he was arrested for assault within a week.
Violet Rawlinson, although very young, was not unknown to the Adelaide Police Court. Since her first appearance as a child in 1886, she had a string of arrests to her name, mostly for drunkenness and using indecent language and one charge of ‘loitering’. Violet was a product of state care. She was sentenced to the Industrial School when she was ‘a little girl’ because her father, George Rawlinson, was “not a proper person, owing to his intemperate habits, to care for his child”. For reasons I don’t know (but I can only guess for bad behaviour), Violet was later sent to the Edwardstown Girls’ Reformatory from the Industrial School – the Industrial School was like a state-run orphanage, for children whose parents could not care for them, whereas the Reformatory was a juvenile prison.
In January 1895, Violet escaped the Reformatory and was hidden by her sister, Caroline, at Broken Hill. The authorities found her soon enough, brought her back to Adelaide and she was punished with three days of bread and water at the Reformatory. Her sister, for concealing her, was fined.
Three years later, she was released from the Reformatory, having turned eighteen. In August 1898, she was arrested for loitering with Emily Prettyjohn, Florence Barlow and Daisy Mullet, and they were all let off with a fine.
(I haven't been able to find any other information about Emily, Florence and Daisy.)
Girls who made it through the Industrial School or Reformatory were ‘educated’ to be domestic servants, although many did not receive work because of their pasts, especially the Reformatory girls. It carried a stigma and many people did not want girls who were possibly thieves or who displayed bad behaviour working in their houses. Prostitution was a realistic option for these girls to earn money. Although Violet was only caught ‘loitering’ once, she was always arrested in the west end of the city (Light Square, Hindley Street, Burnett Street and Eliza Street). The north-west quarter, especially Light Square and Hindley and Rosina Streets, was the red-light district. Violet would have been in the same company as prostitutes and violent, dangerous criminals (including Arthur Viant, who was very well-known to the police). Also the fact that she was walking the streets at night with a pen knife, and found herself in a situation where she stabbed someone speaks volumes about the sort of life she was leading.
After 1906, when she was arrested for using indecent language in Hindley Street on 14 February, Violet disappears from ‘public life’. If she was about eighteen in 1898, then she would have been just twenty-six years old.
