A Menace and an Evil": Fortune-telling in Australia, 1900-1918

Piper, AJ

A Menace and an Evil": Fortune-telling in Australia, 1900-1918

Piper, AJ

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Publisher:: Monash University ePress
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: History Australia, 2014, 11, (3), pp. 53-73
Issue Date:: 2014

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Piper, AJ
dc.date.accessioned	2022-03-28T05:20:29Z
dc.date.available	2022-03-28T05:20:29Z
dc.date.issued	2014
dc.identifier.citation	History Australia, 2014, 11, (3), pp. 53-73
dc.identifier.issn	1449-0854
dc.identifier.issn	1833-4881
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/155637
dc.description.abstract	Fortune-telling was hugely popular in Australia in the early 1900s. Frequently employed as entertainers at society and charity events, fortunetellers across the country plied their trade from shops, street-stalls, private homes or travelling sideshows, and advertised their businesses in the daily press. Yet fortune-telling was also a criminal practice under legislation inherited from England. Up until the early twentieth century, however, it seems to have been seldom policed. In contrast, the dawn of the new century saw spates of prosecutions against practitioners and decisions by a number of Australian states to affirm the practice’s criminal status under new laws. Divining the future was treated as ‘a menace and an evil’, and as an embarrassment in the face of the scientific and intellectual advances of the era. At a time when Australia was entranced by a vision of itself as a rational, forward-thinking nation of white males, fortune-telling was not only considered a relic of old-fashioned ignorance but was associated with female credulity, working-class superstitions and incursions by foreign cultures. The history of fortune-telling therefore offers new ways of understanding how questions of gender, race and class inflected the national identity developed during the Federation era. This article has been peer-reviewed.
dc.language	en
dc.publisher	Monash University ePress
dc.relation.ispartof	History Australia
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/14490854.2014.11668531
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.subject	2003 Language Studies, 2103 Historical Studies
dc.title	A Menace and an Evil": Fortune-telling in Australia, 1900-1918
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	11
utslib.for	2003 Language Studies
utslib.for	2103 Historical Studies
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Social and Political Sciences Program
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
pubs.consider-herdc	false
dc.date.updated	2022-03-28T05:20:27Z
pubs.issue	3
pubs.publication-status	Published
pubs.volume	11
utslib.citation.issue	3

Abstract:

Fortune-telling was hugely popular in Australia in the early 1900s. Frequently employed as entertainers at society and charity events, fortunetellers across the country plied their trade from shops, street-stalls, private homes or travelling sideshows, and advertised their businesses in the daily press. Yet fortune-telling was also a criminal practice under legislation inherited from England. Up until the early twentieth century, however, it seems to have been seldom policed. In contrast, the dawn of the new century saw spates of prosecutions against practitioners and decisions by a number of Australian states to affirm the practice’s criminal status under new laws. Divining the future was treated as ‘a menace and an evil’, and as an embarrassment in the face of the scientific and intellectual advances of the era. At a time when Australia was entranced by a vision of itself as a rational, forward-thinking nation of white males, fortune-telling was not only considered a relic of old-fashioned ignorance but was associated with female credulity, working-class superstitions and incursions by foreign cultures. The history of fortune-telling therefore offers new ways of understanding how questions of gender, race and class inflected the national identity developed during the Federation era. This article has been peer-reviewed.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/155637