This blog is about the history of the Koo Wee Rup Swamp and surrounding areas, including Garfield, and Western Port as well as some of my family history. It's my own original research and writing and if you live in the area you may have read some of the stories before in the Koo Wee Rup Swamp Historical Society newsletter or the Koo Wee Rup township newsletter, The Blackfish, or the Garfield township newsletter, The Spectator. Heather Arnold.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
100 years ago this week - Gay life at Garfield
100 years ago this week - from the Bunyip Free Press of February 14 2014 , under the headline Gay Life at Garfield there is a report of two men and a woman who were behaving in a disgraceful manner in the Garfield township. The Bunyip Police travelled to Garfield and found that the reports were true, so they arrested John and Elizabeth Fitzgerald and a Mr Moss. The police chartered two vehicles and transported the unsavoury cargo to the Bunyip lock-up.
At a subsequent court appearance, both men were fined £5 or ones month’s imprisonment and the ‘wife’ was fined £2 or a fortnight’s imprisonment. As the trio were all of the nomad travelling class they couldn’t afford the fine so they were sent to His Majesty’s hominy factory in Melbourne.
I had never come across the term hominy factory before; it means prison as apparently hominy is a slang word for prison food; hominy being a thin gruel or porridge made from cornmeal.
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