Tracing Madame Brussels with Barbara Minchinton

We are delighted that esteemed historian Barbara Minchinton will deliver our September lecture based on the research for her latest book.

Madame Brussels was Melbourne’s most vilified brothel-keeper of the nineteenth century, but little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the woman who played the role. There were no Visitors’ Books to reveal her networks, and few letters written in her own hand. Family material that came to light in 2018 provided some clues, and a German genealogist found others, but for her biography the details of her life in Melbourne were largely sourced from newspapers and government records. The story that emerged was the story of Melbourne’s sex industry from 1871 to its criminalisation in 1908.

Barbara Minchinton is a historian and independent researcher who has worked extensively with the collections of the Public Record Office Victoria as a volunteer. Her first book The Women of Little Lon: Sex Workers in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne won the Victorian Community History Publication Award for 2022. Barbara’s latest book, published in July 2024 by La Trobe University Press, is Madame Brussels: The Life and Times of Melbourne’s Most Notorious Woman.

Barbara’s books will be available for purchase on the night and Barbara is happy to sign copies.

Housekeeping

This event will be hybrid so presented in person in our rooms and also via ZOOM. Those purchasing Zoom tickets will be sent the log-in details 24hrs before the event.

An automatically generated confirmation of booking email is sent on booking – please check your Trash or Spam folders if this email does not turn up in your In Box.

As with most of our events, refreshments will be served from 5:30pm – 6pm when the lecture starts (the Zoom session also starts at 6pm). There will be Q&A at the end of the lecture.