Tag / Coolgardie

by Eddie

Drop-in prophets

I foresee you liking the following snapshot of Perth history

I foresee you liking the following snapshot of Perth history

Madams Zona, Mora and Carlotta were fortune-tellers working in the CBD in 1907. Unfortunately for them, back then being a psychic was illegal. So when a young undercover policeman, Constable Smith, was sent to visit, it was never going to end well.

Constable Smith first entered Madam Mora’s premises in Wellington Street. The plain-clothed bachelor pretended to have a wife who had abandoned him at Coolgardie. He asked the psychic if she could locate this imaginary woman. Mora picked up her cards and told Smith to divide it into three piles.

Using her ‘psychic’ abilities, she read the cards, announcing “You will find your wife shortly.” The cards also revealed a dark man who was connected with Smith’s troubles, and this stranger would try to kill the copper.

Smith paid Zora half-a-crown, and she warned him to say nothing about his visit. Strangely, her clairvoyance did not extend to noticing he was an undercover law enforcement official.

Madam Carlotta was a palmist. In exchange for Smith’s money she also revealed the non-existent wife would soon show up. Not only that, but he would have four children. Even more excitingly, Smith was soon to become an engineer, who would gain fame through an amazing invention.

The final visit to Madam Zona also promised a happy reunion for the policeman. And still the psychics didn’t discover their immediate destiny was to be a trip to court. There, they were spared jail on condition they agreed to cease telling fortunes.

Dodgy Perth does not know what happened to Zona, but Madam Carlotta—known to her friends as Ethel Daley—was unable to give up her trade, and was prosecuted again a few years after.

Mora’s future, though, turned her card skills in a surprising direction. She became an illusionist, regularly appearing at the Melrose Theatre in Murray Street. She also became renowned as a debunker, exposing spiritualist scams and teaching people about gambling tricks.

Now who would have seen that coming?

by Eddie

White Australia, I could be one of your kids

Frederick_Vosper

Frederick Vosper, looking bohemian and not at all like a bigot

We in the Dodgy Perth office are in favour of people using their democratic right to protest against mosques. It makes organising dinner parties much easier when the bigots have outed themselves.

But before we get too smug and believe only the Victorians have a racism problem, a quick look back at the Anti-Asiatic League which was formed at Coolgardie in 1894 to ensure only white folk worked the goldfields.

All-round racist, and founder of the Sunday Times, Frederick Vosper explained to a public rally that the average Afghan had first come to Coolgardie as a mere camel driver. By working hard he had gradually become a storeman, then a member of the police force. Eventually, some Afghans had obtained work with the council.

Naturally such an evil could not be allowed to go unchecked, Vosper explained, so whites had been forced to found the Anti-Asiatic League to stop hard-working Muslims getting jobs.

Being a clever chap, Vosper had noted whites and Afghans had different religions. Therefore, he said, the two races could never be on friendly terms. Not only that, the buggers were so dirty they polluted the water supply just by using it.

Warming to his theme, Frederick explained that since dogs were quarantined to stop rabies, Muslims should be quarantined to prevent leprosy. And just like he would today, Vosper read a few out-of-context lines from the Qur’an to prove Muslims hated Christians.

Either the white man or the Afghan must go, he declared. The miners, at any rate, were determined that it should be the Afghan.

The Anti-Asiatic League roared its approval and this tolerant nation took one more step on the road to White Australia.