Prostitution is often called 'the oldest profession', suggesting that it has always existed in human society. Login or signup to continue reading. In Maitland it featured early: in about , when the place was barely a town, W Allan Wood in Dawn in the Valley refers to travellers on High Street being greeted by a "tumult of assorted shrill whistles, shrieks, raucous laughter, jeers.
It's not hard to decipher what the suggestive invitations were about. The infant Maitland was a rough and raw frontier town with drunkenness, violence and riotous behaviour common. A large majority of its adult population was male. Women had few work opportunities outside domestic service, and to some of them prostitution would have made economic sense.
The unbalanced gender ratio guaranteed a demand for 'negotiated affections' from those who offered them, often in the streets. The premises used would have been easily identified. Prostitution was, of course, illegal. When the Maitland Mercury appeared, court cases about it were routinely reported. Terms like 'bawdy house' and 'house of ill-fame' were aired, the activities conducted in them described discreetly and only "as fully as their nature would allow".
Community sensitivity required women and children to leave when hearings involved prostitution. In October the Mercury reported that John Fleming was charged with keeping a 'disorderly house' at Campbell's Hill. Two women "constantly resorted there," their prostitution allegedly Fleming's only means of support: it was for his "lucre and gain". Fleming called the charge a "made up plot", but he was found guilty and sentenced to six months' hard labour in Parramatta Gaol.
Evidence was provided that women of "known bad character" were seen entering the Lambs' house, at night, with "strange men" leaving in the morning. A neighbour complained that the Lambs were nearly always drunk and that the noise from their house kept him awake. The couple were found guilty of keeping a disorderly house and both were sentenced to hard labour he in Darlinghurst Gaol and she in Maitland Gaol.
