‘I Was a Man of Honour’: Masculinities and Theft in Early Twentieth-Century Western Australia

Abstract

The interrelationship between masculinity and crime has been recognised when it comes to violent or explicitly ‘gendered’ offences. The role of gender in property offending has received less attention. This article draws on letters to judges and police character reports – items that went from being intermittent to almost standard inclusions in Australian legal briefs between the 1920s and 1950s – to examine the changing ideals of masculinity evident in men’s attempts to contextualise their property offending. These sources demonstrate that the conceptions of masculinity that men expressed were structured in relation to a range of changing social factors, from the evolution of the Australian economy and family unit to the psychological impact of war on the nation’s men. It will be argued that three models of masculinity – the tough man, working man and family man – influenced the ways in which male thieves presented themselves to Australian courts across the interwar period.