Marriage: Love and Law exhibition catalogue - Flipbook - Page 57
DISCRIMINATION,
DEDICATION
Respectability and the adoption of western middle-class values enabled
acceptance into society for some couples, and this was the case for Gwok
Ah Poo and Emma Ann Lowe, who married in 1876 and raised a family in the
Shoalhaven area, then Parramatta.
From the 1880s the State increasingly controlled the lives of Aboriginal people.
Under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 children were removed from their
families and placed in institutions such as the Cootamundra Girls Home.
Aboriginal people—who were regarded as non-citizens until 1967—did not
have the same freedom or rights enjoyed by the rest of the population.
The State determined where Aboriginal people lived, who they associated
with, their education and employment, who they formed relationships with,
and, as a consequence, married.
While the State exercised control over marriage suitability among
the convict classes up until the 1850s, other forces came into play
over who should and who should not marry. There was an influx
of Chinese men into the NSW gold, silver and tin fields in the
1850s and 1860s. Many struck it lucky and sought to consolidate
their success. They established relationships with women of
British or Irish descent, raised families and attained naturalisation
– a prerequisite to property and business ownership, and the
legitimacy of children. Women found their Chinese partners
hardworking, and they did not favour liquor over family.
Such men gladly embraced a woman’s existing children as their
own. But these relationships often faced public and government
scrutiny. Racial anxiety over ‘aliens’ manifest in laws and social
attitudes throughout the 19th Century and beyond. In places
such as Sydney’s slum area, The Rocks, where ‘China towns’ had
developed in the 1870s and 1880s, there was an oft-held belief that
Chinese men had ‘corrupted’ white women into cohabitation.
41 Aborigines Welfare Board
The wedding of Bessie
Richards and Victor Murray
Black and white photograph
1929
NSW State Archives,
NRS 30 [4/8566] aperture 8347
Overleaf
42 Photographer unknown
George (Gwok) Ah Poo and
his family, 1896
Black and white photograph
1896
Powe Family Collection
41
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