5 The Lesbian Accusation

1 Statement to the Police, 5 June 1935, EMP.

2 PF, Part IV

3 Harcourt (I Appeal) does claim that during the first trial 'salaciously-minded females revelled in seeing rumours transformed into facts by the authoritative backing of the Crown. So the gossips were right after all. The information, which had been bandied round the town for months, threw a new light upon the relationships of the Mareos' (p.72). However, it was not 'stated' in court that she was a 'lesbian' and this was certainly not given 'the authoritative backing of the Crown'. It seems that in his enthusiasm for Mareo's cause, Harcourt wants to discredit not only these 'gossips' for spreading such a rumour but also Thelma by verifying that it was true. In another book written after the trials the question of whether Thelma was a 'pervert' is raised but not answered. Richard Singer, 24 Notable Trials (Auckland: Oswald-Sealy, 1944) p.126.

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4 Truth, 4 March 1936.

5 NZH, 26 February 1936.

6 AS, 16 June 1936.

7 NZH, 27 February 1936.

8 Edward Shorter, From the Mind into the Body: The Cultural Origins of Psychosomatic Symptoms (Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan, 1994), pp.42, 44.

9 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.51.

10 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.28.

11 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, pp.80-1.

12 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.9.

13 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.80.

14 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.52.

15 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.83.

16 PF, Part V

17 First Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.29.

18 Second Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.215.

19 Second Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.91.

20 Julie Glamuzina and Alison Laurie, Parker & Hulme: A Lesbian View (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1995), p.160.

21 Glamuzina and Laurie, Parker & Hulme, pp.158, 150.

22 Riano to O'Leary, 3 March 1936, EMP.

23 Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London, New York: Quartet Books, 1977), p.12. See also Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (New York: Vintage, 1980), pp.43, 101.

24 George Chauncey, 'Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion? Homosexual Identities and the Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War One Era', Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, edited by Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey (New York: New American Library, 1989), pp.294-317.

25 Weeks, Coming Out, p.12.

26 Stevan Eldred-Grigg, Pleasures of the Flesh: Sex & Drugs in Colonial New Zealand (Wellington: Reed, 1984), p.124.

27 Report by Sir William Willcox, EMP.

28 P.P. Lynch to the Under-Secretary for the Department of Justice, 2 December 1941, EMP.

29 Quoted by Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (New York: Vintage, 1995), p.26.

30 Mental Health and the Community, edited by P.J. Lawrence (Christchurch: Canterbury Mental Health Council, 1963), p.373.

31 Second Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.251.

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32 Quoted by Miller, Out of the Past, p.190. For a recent account of the trials, see Diana Southami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (London: Virago, 1999)

33 Second Trial Notes of Evidence, EMP, p.254.

34 Truth, 18 March 1936.

35 See Julie Glamuzina, 'An Outstanding Masquerade', and Jenny Coleman 'Unsettled Women: Deviant Genders in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth- Century New Zealand', Lesbian Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand, edited by Alison J. Laurie (Binghamton, NY: Harrington, 2001).

36 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (London: Penguin, 1992), p.48.

37 Faderman, Odd Girls, p.1.

38 Faderman, Odd Girls, pp.13, 14.

39 See Sally Irwin, Between Heaven and Earth: The Life of a Mountaineer, Freda Du Faur 1882-1935 (Melbourne: White Crane Press, 2000), p.283-5. See also Aorewa McLeod, 'New Zealand's Lost Lesbian Writers and Artists', Alison J. Laurie, 'Frances Mary Hodgkins: Journeys into the Hearts of Women', and Jenny Coleman 'Unsettled Women: Deviant Genders in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century New Zealand', Lesbian Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

40 Truth, 18 March 1936.

41 Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships among Contemporary Lesbians, edited by Esther D. Rothblum and Kathleen A. Brehony (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), p.34-5.

42 PF, Part V.