However, even the public record is subject to inconsistency and confusion. I have done some further ‘unraveling’ by checking, where possible, the public record to verify or disprove the evidence. People who claimed to have known her in Ireland or on the immigrant ship, the Ocean Monarch, came forward with hearsay and gossip trying to unravel the ‘mystery’ of this woman's life. The Evans case attracted many lurid reports in colonial and international newspapers and sensationalist pamphlets with headlines such as ‘Extraordinary Personation Case’ or ‘The Impersonation Case'. Perhaps the most interesting and mysterious of these women was Ellen Tremayne, or Tremaye, 9 who as Edward De Lacy Evans gained notoriety in Victoria in 1879. 6 Would he have made such a comment after a post mortem on a male? When she died alone in a labourers’ hut in 1893 the doctor reported that the body was that of a ‘perfect woman’ but had to add that the body was not ‘nobly planned'. A high-pitched voice had caused ‘a somewhat vague suspicion in regard to the sex’ of this person. As a man she became a respected member of the Elmore detachment of the Victorian Mounted Rifles. Moving to another district, she again assumed a male identity becoming a selector, and when this venture failed was employed in general farm work. 5 In 1873, at Heathcote, Victoria, Jorgensen had been charged with wearing male attire but was released with a caution.
Judith Rodriguez has shown that the original of this character was German-born Johanna Jorgensen who felt unable to live as a woman after she had been disfigured by a kick in the face by a horse. 4 The Such Is Life character, ‘Nosey Alf’, is a horribly disfigured woman who has assumed a male identity. Writing in the 1890s Furphy would have been familiar with the 1879 Evans case from its wide press coverage 3 and knew Johanna Jorgensen, another woman who lived as a man and who had died in 1893.
0 kommentar(er)
