End of year celebration

Caroline Ingram - Women on Trial: The criminal trials of women in colonial Western Australia

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Caroline Ingram is a research assistant at the University of Western Australia. Her research interests include Western Australian history, Australian legal history, women’s history and the history of marginalised people. She presently works for the Australian Legacies of Slavery project and the Two Centuries of Chinese Heritage in Western Australia project. She received her PhD in 2024 for the thesis ‘Women in the Court:  An Examination of Women’s Trials Heard in the Court of Quarter Sessions and the Supreme Court of Western Australia, 1830–1890.’

Women on Trial: The criminal trials of women in colonial Western Australia

Criminal records can tell us a lot about how women in the colony of Western Australia were treated by the criminal justice system – but, when read ‘against the grain’ they are equally as good at shedding light on the everyday lives of working-class women. By combining information from the criminal indictment records, newspaper articles and various diaries and journals from the State Library collection, we can also get an idea of the pathways that led women to offending and the impact that the trials had on their lives. Caroline’s talk will discuss how different legal rules and institutions affected the trials of colonial women, how the trials were gendered and what the trial records can tell us about the lives of these women. 
 

Members and guests are warmly invited to join us before the meeting for drinks and nibbles. 

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Join us for the end of year function for details please email Nick Drew - nickdrew@bigpond.com

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