Lesbian Collection

---

Lesbians, like bisexual people and asexual people, are hard to find in the records from the 1800s. Usually, when people's stories are told in the newspapers, it's because they've been arrested. Lesbianism was not and has never been illegal, so they never turn up in the court reportings.

However, there are documented cases of women who lived together for years, and/or immigrated together, and there are articles that suggest women who love other women and you'll find these all here. 

There are a number of articles referring to 'spinsters' (unmarried women) or women referring to themselves as such, and some of these have been included as well. Spinsters depicted in the popular culture at the time were either the embodiment of charity or sour old women who were unhappy with everything. But between these lines, you can find women who are not just happy but proud to be unmarried.

Interestingly, the term 'maiden aunt' is rarely used by women to refer to themselves, but use of the term can be found as an object of 'fun' or a character that disapproves of things in fiction and rhetoric in the papers of the day.

You can also find a number of people assigned female at birth who wore traditionally masculine attire on this page. Dressing in male attire was and is not an unusual thing for lesbians to do for a variety of reasons, so we've included those people here.   

Image to the right is Josephine Bedford and Lilian Cooper with their horse and sulky c1900. Courtesy John Oxley Library, State Library Queensland. https://www.museumofbrisbane.com.au/mob-sunday-stories-lilian-cooper-and-josephine-bedford/