Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930 - Flipbook - Page 93
1919
L O N G B AY
GAO L
OV E R 10 0 C O N V I C T I O N S
Mar y Maloney
O F F E N S I V E B E H AV I O U R
Mary Maloney, a 53 year old widow born in America, was photographed at the State
Reformatory for Women, Long Bay on 3 January 1919 while serving a six month sentence
for offensive behaviour.
Maloney lived in Glenview Street, Paddington, from the 1890s and worked
intermittently as a servant. She appears in Biloela Gaol records during the early
1890s, serving sentences for drunkenness. By 1918 she had 112 convictions, mostly for
drunk and disorderly, offensive behaviour, vagrancy and indecent language offences.
In the period 1909 to 1925 she was in and out of gaol constantly, serving sentences
ranging from twenty-four hours to six months. Maloney assumed various aliases
including Mary Richards, Mary O’Sullivan, Mary Ritchie and Mary Mitchell.
Alcohol seems to have been a constant battle in Maloney’s life. The Inebriates
Act 1912 established how intoxicated people such as Maloney who committed criminal
offences were to be treated. The maximum gaol time for public drunkenness was set at
fourteen days. If a person was convicted of a drunken offence three times in a twelve
month period, they could be placed in an institution for between six and twelve
months. It was thought that inebriates confined to an institution over a period of
time could recuperate and improve their health and moral attitude.
From December 1909 Maloney spent ten months in the State Reformatory Inebriates
Institution before being released to the Shaftesbury Institution at South Head. In
March 1911 she was again in the Inebriates Institution. In September the same year,
she received another twelve month sentence there and was then released to the
Newington Asylum on license. In early 1913, Maloney’s license was revoked after
several new convictions for drunken offences. She was incarcerated in the Inebriates
Institution once again in July before being discharged on license to the Convent of
Good Shepherd in Ashfield, but was back in gaol by September. Maloney’s last period
in the Inebriates Institution was in 1925. After six months there she refused to be
released to the Newington Asylum and was instead released into the care of her
son-in-law. Mary Maloney died in December 1927 in Sydney.
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