Imprisonment of female urban and rural offenders in Victoria, 1860–1920

This paper examines imprisonment data from Victoria between 1860 and 1920 to gather insights into the variations in incidence of women being convicted by rural versus urban courts, including close focus on the difference in types of offences being committed in urban and rural locations. This paper also details women’s mobility between both communities as well as change in their offending profiles based on their geographic locations. Our findings suggest that while the authorities were broadly most concerned with removing disorderly and vagrant women from both urban and rural streets, rural offending had its own characteristics that differentiate it from urban offending. Therefore, this demonstrates that when examining female offending, geographic location of an offender and offence must be taken into consideration.