inspected. Some of them appeared respectable and kept aloof altogether from the bad characters. Their homes too were clean and comfortable and displayed the combined taste of both the Chinese and the Europeans. He also noted that the Chinese, and presumably their wives as well, showed great interest in the education of their children, and at the camps visited all of suitable age were attending school. Of the less respectable wives Brennan was scathing: Others of them made the lives of their unfortunate Chinese husbands miserable; they conduct themselves regardless of consequence... When not at war with their husbands they fight with one another, seek redress in the police courts, and the Chinese husbands have to pay the penalties incurred by their European wives, and consider themselves fortunate that they too have not been included in the litigation; most of those women have been prostitutes for years before they get married to the Chinese, and an alliance under such unfavourable auspices seldom produces any reformation in the moral character of the women.212
He had even more to say about the prostitutes and some of their clientele. There were 37 prostitutes in the camps, all between 18 and 30 years, but occasionally the camps contained twice that number. The females occupied one or two rooms each in the camp, where they were visited by Chinese and Europeans, men and sometimes boys [sic] The police have on some occasions hunted many as ten young men from off a Chinese bed, where the central figure would be one of the females already mentioned, and as soon as the police left the camps those fellow returned again... In the shearing season the camps, particularly those at Wagga Wagga and Narrandera, are thronged with shearers and others; they indulge in drink and contribute largely to the disquieting elements observable at that period. The women too find their harvest set in, assume a recklessness previously unnoticeable - to get money, when ‘sly grog’ selling, prostitution, gambling and robbery are resorted to for that purpose. On those occasions most of the married women act more defiantly towards the police because of the greater security which they think they enjoy from being made amenable to the Vagrant Act - in having husbands.213
Brennan stated that it was those females and most of the disreputable married women who were the ‘principal cause of all the disturbance, robberies and crimes, which have transformed the Chinese camps into dens of immorality’. The European women had committed more than three offences to every Chinese one and they have been instrumental in most of the cases for which the Chinese have been prosecuted. Of the 74 women in the camps, 50 were confirmed opium smokers. On the subject of Chinese seduction, Brennan attested that he had not been aware of even one case where a female living in the camps was there other than by her own free will. The Chinese allowed them full liberty of action, and in most cases made them the repositories of all their belongings and treated them with great kindness.214 His views were echoed some years later by Sir Frederick Darley, the Chief Justice, in a letter to Sir Henry Parkes. The letter was cited by a member of the Legislative Council in May 1888 in the debate on the Influx of Chinese Restriction Bill. Sir Frederick stated that when on circuit in April of that year he was Much struck with the crime traceable to the existence of the Chinese camps at the different towns, particularly Deniliquin, Narrandera, and Wagga Wagga. I found that these camps are frequented not only by the Chinese, but by the low criminal class of the white population; these latter encouraged there by a number of white women (prostitutes) who have their abode in the camps. 212
Brennan, ‘Chinese Camps’, pp.2-3.
213
Brennan, ‘Chinese Camps’, p.4.
214
Brennan, ‘Chinese Camps’, pp.3-4.
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