For the sake of the colony.(Book Review)

Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1829-1850, by Kirsten McKenzie; Melbourne University Press, 2004, $34.95.

THE PRIVATE LIVES of public figures have always been of interest to the voyeuristic inclinations of the public, particularly when the lascivious details of sex and scandal are involved. Yet, as Kirsten McKenzie argues in Scandal in the Colonies, the dynamic between sex and politics was quite distinctive in colonial culture. The broader ramifications of sexual mores, and their transgression, were particularly acute in colonial societies with their idiosyncratic anxiety over status, respectability and social advancement.

Issues such as an unexplained pregnancy, or assigned female convicts or slaves being taken as mistresses by their employer or master, may at first seem inconsequential breaches of etiquette and the class and racial boundaries evident in colonial societies. Yet the details of such transgressions often had profound ramifications on policy in Britain and the political debates that occurred between slave holders and the anti-slavery lobby, and also those who were considering the effectiveness and possible abolition of convict transportation.

Such scandals became fuel in broader political debate, and from the records we have it is often difficult to dig beneath the rhetoric and polemic to find an accurate account of what occurred. Orwell's pithy observation that ideological language seeks to "give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" is particularly apposite when it comes to politics, sex and scandal. McKenzie, consequently, admits that the historical record cannot inform us as to the guilt or innocence of any of the parties involved, for evasion and obfuscation were common. What the records do reveal, however, is the moral anxiety and attitudes towards sexuality, family and social acceptance in the British colonies during the nineteenth century.

To maintain political power and respectability, those seeking social status in the new colonies sought to manipulate public opinion. One example occurred in the 1830s during the scandal surrounding the Chief Justice of Cape Town, Sir John Wylde, and his daughter Jane Elizabeth. When Jane became iii with symptoms resembling pregnancy, accusations of immoral behaviour and the possibility of incest became frequent topics of conversation among women of the aspiring gentry. In May 1833 her father presented evidence, in a letter to the Secretary of State, that two doctors had examined her. They concluded that Jane was not pregnant, emphasising that the "condition of abdominal swelling was a common one at the Cape and that it produced the appearance of pregnancy".

Wylde was eager to defuse any accusations of his daughter being pregnant, for such a scandal would bring disrepute upon himself and his family name. Further, for a young unmarried woman in Cape Town, becoming pregnant would result in being socially ostracised and dash any hopes she had of marrying into a respectable family.

Initially Wylde's eagerness to refute any implication of impropriety only fuelled rumour and speculation. As McKenzie writes: