“I'll have no man”: female families in Melbourne's criminal subcultures, 1860–1920

In recent decades, historians have produced a wealth of scholarship demonstrating the importance of the exploration of domestic contexts and familial dynamics to the development of understandings of women's historical experiences. However, the home lives of a particular group of women—those on the criminal margins of society—warrant further investigation. The study of such women challenges the hetero-orthodox assumption that women's relationships with men have historically been more important than their relationships with one another. This article suggests that men were often fleeting figures in the families of criminal women. Male absence encouraged women from criminal subcultures, instead, to draw together to form female-centred households. Such living arrangements were further facilitated by the general instability in the home lives of criminal women caused by financial uncertainty, periodic incarceration and crackdowns by authorities, as well as by separations from their natal families and a high degree of personal mobility. These issues are explored through archival material from late nineteenth- and early twentieth century Melbourne, and through the writings of prison poet Janet Dibben