Over four years, Peter de Waal and his collaborators transcribed the records of 277 cases, filling three volumes and 2200 pages. They've put together witness depositions, judges' notebooks and newspaper reports. Unfit for Publication starts with the first documented case of sodomy (and punishment) on Australian soil, when the Dutch ship Zeewijk was shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1727.
Peter's online listing of newspaper sources (pdf, 387 KB) summarises over 700 newspaper stories used to document cases in Unfit for Publication. It's an invaluable index for research on the history of sexuality in colonial and early twentieth-century Australia. The stories date from 1800 to 1930, in Sydney and across New South Wales. The listing is a work in progress, and corrections and updates will be added.
For more details about Unfit for Publication, contact Peter de Waal, PO Box 6, Balmain NSW 2041, or see his ozhomohist posting.
Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788-1899, at Macquarie University, include several sodomy cases (findable through the subject index).
