This page is a record of a written work relating to Fremantle.
- Part of:
- Title: Divorcing Bridget Taafe: The Mad, Bad and Sad Women of Fremantle, 1850-1900
- Authors: Deborah Gare
- Published: 2013 unpublished
- Reference URL: https://freopedia.org/Divorcing_Bridget_Taafe
- Tags: Bridget Taafe; Anne Tippett; Mary Kelly; Mary Higham
- Authority control:
The careful observance of good behavior in colonial Fremantle, by men and women, was an instrument used to set good society apart from what might have been considered ‘savage’. A ruthless code of etiquette regulated expectations of women in all aspects of the colonial world: on the street, in private company, in education and, most importantly, in their home. Fremantle’s middle class women rose magnificently to the challenge of abiding by such etiquette codes, despite the extra burden this added to life on an isolated frontier of Britain’s empire. A rare woman, like Mary Higham, might succeed despite living beyond the rules established for respectable women. But there were many who fell short of the rigid expectations of colonial women in Western Australia, and it was into the institutions of Fremantle the asylum, the courts and the prison that they were swept. Bridget Taafe, Anne Tippett and Mary Kelly were just a few. In fact, so many troubled women were flung into the town’s institutions that Fremantle might be considered the home of Western Australia’s abandoned women. The experiences of such women now point to the disconnection between expectations of colonial women and the reality of their existence; their forced separation from ‘respectable’ society; and the failure indeed, the complicity of the state in their disempowerment.