The Duchess

Margaret Gregson became something of a household name in Brisbane in the early twentieth century through her highly successful “bawdy house” on Montague Road West End, and frequent newspaper reports of her activities and appearances in court. Her movements were recognisable by the faithful Irish terrier that trotted along behind the cab driven by her long term friend ‘Jo Jo.’ Wilson. She became known as “The Duchess of Montague Road”, “Mother G.” to her employees or “Mrs. G.”.

Despite innumerable appearances in court, the Duchess avoided jail terms except for a two months spell in Boggo Road Gaol in 1907 for flouting the licensing laws. With her substantial income, she was easily able to pay what were considered to be heavy fines. Wise investment resulted in the Duchess leaving an estate worth over £25,000 on her death in 1926, which, depending on the method of calculation, is equivalent to as much as $13M today.

In this post, I’ll look at what led to her becoming becoming a brothel owner and some events in her life which give us some idea of what this entailed at the time.

Margaret’s origins

In 1853, Margaret Ellena McAuliffe was born at Sally’s Cross near Kanturk in County Cork, Ireland. She immigrated to Brisbane with her mother and two of her brothers on the Queensland Government immigration ship “General Caulfield”, which arrived in Brisbane in 1864 after a journey of 109 days.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate a photo of Margaret, but there are several sketches of her made by newspaper artists that are included in this post. Her jail admission in 1907 describes her as being of stout build, 5’ 3″ (152 cm) high and weighing 13s 7oz (83kg.) She had hazel eyes, dark brown hair and a sallow complexion.

Married Life

In 1869 at the age of 16, Margaret married William Alexander Fraser Gregson at Leyburn on the Darling Downs. Manchester born Gregson was 27 years old and on the marriage certificate gave his occupation as a bushman. He later worked as a bookkeeper and accountant, which was also his father’s profession.

The couple went to the rapidly growing township of Stanthorpe where tin deposits had been discovered in 1872, and opened a general store in partnership with Henry Prebble. The business became insolvent in 1873.

The family, now including one child, moved first to Ipswich, and by 1881 they were living in Brisbane in West End, and later Red Hill. In 1885, William, who had started another business as a carrier, once again became insolvent

In 1885, he found a job working as an accountant at the Brisbane office of the Dinmore “New Chum” colliery.

Part of his role was to calculate the weekly wages owed, have the owner James Gulland sign a cheque, withdraw the cash, and pay the staff. William was overstating the wages and pocketing the difference. He received an 18 months sentence with hard labour at Boggo Road Gaol for embezzling a total of £99.

Margaret was left to support her 7 surviving children, aged between 3 and 16 years. Three had died in infancy.

In early 1890, a few months after William’s release from jail , he took the three youngest children, then aged from 4 to 8, to the Diamantina Orphanage. It acted as a foster home and William was to pay 18 shillings a week for their keep. The admission register states the reason for the admission as – “Mother is a prostitute and drunkard. Father is unable to look after them.”

This was probably William’s statement and it’s hard to reconcile Margaret’s being a drunkard with her business prowess which would soon come to the fore.

The three children were discharged from the Diamantina Orphanage into their father’s care after 7 months. William later moved to NSW and worked as a bookkeeper. He died in 1898 at Goodooga. [

Early days in business

Margaret Street

The first indications we have of Margaret’s life having taken a new direction is in January of 1891, when there are reports of her running a “disorderly house” in Margaret Street, Brisbane. “Frog’s Hollow”, the area around Albert and parts of nearby Charlotte, Margaret and Mary Streets was notorious for its brothels.

She began to appear in court charged with keeping an “improper house” and for breaching the licencing act. Margaret was defended on these occasions by fellow Irishman, solicitor Terence Joseph O’Shea. “T. J.” was in partnership with his brother Patrick Joseph, or “P. J.”, who also acted for Mrs. G from time to time.

Between them. the O’Shea brothers had a formidable reputation for defending those accused in the lower courts. One newspaper commented that “whenever the O’Sheas pleaded for a man, they left their client smiling and the magistrate sobbing“.

The Duchess was to use the O’Sheas constantly over the years to pick holes in the prosecution’s cases, which led to her avoiding convictions and fines on many occasions.

Botany Villa

In 1894, the first of many newspaper references to Botany Villa appeared. This large house was to be Mother G.’s base of operations for the next 30 years. It was located on Montague Road between Donkin and Anthony Streets, adjacent to Hocking’s Nursery (see my post Albert Hockings and his “Rosavilla” Nursery”).

Mother G. purchased more land nearby, and by 1909 her establishment comprised Botany Villa, another house named San Toy after the then popular musical, a cottage known as Bleak House or The Laundry and another cottage called Moorooka or Musgrave Villa. She had probably benefited from the crash in land prices a few years earlier that I described in my post “Dishonourable Real Estate Practices of the 1880s“.

Some events from the Duchess’s colourful career

A selection of events from the Duchess’s career give us some idea of her life. These are based mainly on reports from the Truth newspaper. This publication revelled in reporting sensational items, but with inevitable journalistic and editorial distortions and biases. They highlight the spasmodic and inconsistent approach to policing brothels at that time.

Two days in court

On a Sunday in July of 1902, the Truth devoted page 3 in its entirety to a heavily attended case in the South Brisbane Magistrate’s Court. One Albert John “Nevermore” Thompson had complained that Mother G. had used obscene and indecent language to him in a confrontation at the gate to Botany Villa. The confrontation escalated and Mother G. started cracking her famous whip.

The whole affair seems to have been a trumped-up attempt to highlight the Duchess’s activities in a court of law, possibly to eliminate her as a competitor. She and the O’Sheas certainly saw it as a threat and engaged well known barrister Jimmy Blair, later Sir James William Blair, variously Government Minister, Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of Queensland.

Thompson seemed to be familiar with most of Mother G.’s flock and was known to frequent this and similar establishments, despite having a wife and 3 children. The Duchess accused him of regularly publicly humiliating her when their paths passed crossed in the city.

He had been tried a few years previously for maliciously damaging Killarney, another bawdy house. His companion on the night in question was Thomas Coogan, who was escorted to the court by a warder from Boggo Road Gaol.

With many witnesses called to give evidence, the newspaper artist was kept busy.

In the end, the Duchess was fined just £2 along with the costs of court.

A brawl at the gate

In 1903, the South Brisbane Summons Court heard three related complaints resulting from a brawl that had occurred at the gate to Botany Villa.

Despite neighbour Hermann Ober regularly doing carpentry jobs at Botany Villa, and his wife earning £1 a week doing sewing work, he turned up at the gate one Saturday night screaming that he was sick and tired of the nightly disturbances and threatened to break up the place. A flower pot was thrown through a window, smashing the glass. Laundress Amy Jones came out and claimed she was called an “old female dog” and punched on the nose.

One thing led to another and before long Ober’s son, other women from the villa, Mrs. G., and one of her sons were involved in an altercation involving the flower pot, Mrs G.’s whip, and a revolver shooting blanks also wielded by Mrs G. Ober was fined for assaulting Amy Jones but lack of evidence led to no others being found guilty.

Recruitment gone wrong

Mother G. used agents to procure the new workers that she regularly needed. One of these was Louis Ullmo, described by the Truth newspaper as a “miserable little French bludger“, who had successfully recruited for her in Sydney. The year 1903 found him in Melbourne where he placed an advertisement in the Age newspaper.

Two young women, Nellie Blake aged 20 and Ella Mealy aged about 17, accepted the offer, based on better wages and the promise of generous tipping at a wine bar on Montague Road owned by Margaret Gregson. However, on their way north on the coastal steamer SS Tyrian, they were told by passengers that their well known new employer was in fact the owner of a brothel.

The ship’s captain organised for Frank Woodcroft, the state and later national secretary of the YMCA, to take the two under his wing and he organised accommodation for them at the Lady Musgrave Lodge.

After a meeting with Woodcroft, Mother G. agreed to pay for their return journey to Melbourne and also showed him a letter from Ullmo in which he misled her by stating that the women “understand very well what they are to do“. He recounted to the Truth reporter that she had wept bitterly and told him that she “had determined to give up her life of sin and shame and go dead square“. But it was not to be.

The Baron who couldn’t pay

The rule at all houses of ill repute was “cash up, no tick” in the jargon of the day. On a warm February evening in 1904, a travelling musician going by the name of Baron Marsicovettro arrived at Botany Villa at 4am and stayed until midday. On his departure, the Baron had no money to pay and the Duchess took an umbrella and glasses from him, said to be worth £4/7/6. The Baron reported an assault and theft to the police.

The Truth had a field day, using its typical reporting style.

“He asserted that she called him several sorts of illegitimate and designated him as the ‘son of a female dog’ besides tapping him on the ‘boko’ in proper pugilistic fashion”

As usual, Mrs G.’s lawyer, T. J. O’Shea, was well prepared and claimed that the Baron was in fact a waiter named Grada. O’Shea further claimed that he had been thrown out of Brisbane’s prestigious Gresham Hotel for non-payment and they had kept items of his clothing to cover the debt. Also, he was wanted in Sydney for evading a taxi fare.

Charges against the Duchess were dropped, however she had to return the umbrella and glasses, and the Baron had a free visit to Botany Villa.

Bad blood between brothels

There was some rivalry between different bawdy houses which could fester over time. Bad blood between the Duchess and rival Alice Osborne burst into the public view on a number of occasions.

In 1906, Mother G. arrived at Osborne’s nearby Merivale Street establishment along with cab driver and confidante Jo Jo Wilson and Nellie Sinclair, who had switched allegiance from Osborne to Mother G. Osborne took them to court for abusive language and creating a disturbance but withdrew the charges at the last moment.

A few years later, Nellie Sinclair was arrested at Botany Villa. By this time Osborne had moved to Killarney on North Quay. Nellie had gone there at 11pm one night livid with anger, as she had heard that Osborne had written “letters of a damaging nature” regarding her suitability to retain custody of her child. The court report mentions that she had broken 33 panes of glass and damaged curtains and blinds. Nellie was ordered to pay £4 fine and another £4 to repair the damage.

In another reported incident. Nora McNaughton, a resident of Killarney, complained to police that Mrs. G. assaulted her at Botany Villa.

The Duchess by this time had become quite wealthy, as can be gauged by the journalist’s description of her taking the stand.

“Six great rings, studded with diamonds, and precious stones, formed a large cluster of glittering gems on the right hand of the witness, a couple more ornamented her left hand, and gold chains and costly brooches, and necklaces nestling in the rolls of her costly white lace bolero and fine white gown, denoted that a woman of more than ordinary importance was about to tell her story.“

Mrs G.’s version of events was that Nora was dragging one of her “boarders” Dora by the hair and the two fell over. Dora had probably defected from Killarney. The case was dismissed.

A few months later, Eva Woods also decided to move from Killarney to Botany Villa, and was told that she could not take her “frillies”, or undergarments, with her.

Eva had to take the proprietor, Alice Osbourne, to court to obtain them.

Animosity burst into the news once again later in the year, when Osbourne claimed that Mrs. G. had sent John Ferrish, commonly known as “Jacky the Rat”, along with two accomplices to disrupt business at Killarney. A tussle had occurred, and she was injured. “The Rat” was fined £5 or in default was to serve 2 months imprisonment.

The Duchess comes a cropper

An integral part of running a bawdy house was the sale of alcohol and this yielded good profits as prices were far higher than in a pub. However, without a liquor licence, there was a constant danger of selling alcohol to an undercover revenue officer. Astute assessment of visitors was required before they were admitted.

In mid 1907, one of Mother G.’s employees unwittingly sold a glass of Scotch to such an agent and she was prosecuted under the Licensing Act.

Mother G. didn’t appear in court, claiming sickness, and T. J. could do nothing but plead guilty on her behalf. His argument that she wasn’t aware that her employee had sold the whisky fell on deaf ears as the back verandah housed a large bar.

As Mrs. G. had a previous conviction from 1902 when she had been fined, on this occasion she was sentenced to 2 months imprisonment in Boggo Road goal as well as given a £50 fine. A large quantity of liquor was confiscated from Botany Villa, including 64 bottles of Pommery Champagne and 46 bottles of Guiness.

In 1914 another sting operation resulted in Mrs. G. and her employee Maud Miles being fined £50 and £25 respectively for selling beer without a licence. By this time, police were using agents commonly known as pimps in these operations, as most police officers were known faces.

The prosecution argued that high fines for illegal sale of alcohol were appropriate, as they protected victuallers who paid for their licence. The defence riposte was that “Men who go to this place don’t go there to drink“. The fact that it was an illegal brothel did not seem to be of particular interest to the court.

Breach of a bylaw

Despite the Queensland Criminal Code of 1901 specifying a penalty of up to 3 years with hard labour for keeping a bawdy house, action by the police was not common. However, running such an establishment also breached a council bylaw typically in force in urban areas.

Early in 1909, triggered by the required complaints from “two respectable householders“, the council sent an inspector to Botany Villa and took Mrs G.’s unnamed manager to court for keeping a house of ill fame, in breach of the bylaw. The Truth newspaper maintained that Mrs G. was being singled out as she was financially highly successful.

They claimed that other brothels in the area leased houses from alderman and their cronies who collected high rentals and that they would benefit from her demise. There were also claims that shutting Mrs. G’.s business down would enable certain parties to buy up her land holdings along the river at fire sale prices.

There were further complaints later in the year, this time by local clergymen and a prominent solicitor and member of Queensland’s then unelected upper house of Parliament, Magnus Jensen.

On this occasion, Mrs. G. was present when the council inspectors arrived. Her lookout warned the occupants of the raid, and whilst the inspectors found a number of known sex workers, many doors had been locked. The most incriminating discovery was a man naked in bed. Once again Mrs. G. had a fine of £20 to pay, a small amount in contrast to her profits.

Constable Dargan gave evidence in court that he had visited Botany Villa fortnightly for the last 10 years in his capacity as inspector under the Contagious Diseases Act, checking that registered prostitutes had completed their regular compulsory health checks. The police, it would seem, had no interest in enforcing the law regarding the keeping of a bawdy house.

Botany Villa was visited by council inspectors again in 1910 after further complaints, and Mother G. was fined for “harbouring four women in her home”.

A fractured skull

A combination of rowdy clients and the Duchess’s fiery temper could lead to unfortunate results. In 1913, a certain Edward Patrick Harvey confessed to a policeman that he had hit Mother G. on the head with a brick, but stated that he did it in self defence as she came at him with a bottle.

Mother G., who had a small fracture of the skull from the attack, had a different version of the story. She related how she had gone to one of her cottages used for accommodation and found Harvey in the bedroom of one of her boarders Nellie Barnes. She pushed him out of the room and Harvey picked up the brick and threw it at her.

Harvey was given what seems to have been a very light one year suspended sentence and payment of £10 to Mother G. in compensation.

The end of the line

There are no further mentions of the Duchess in newspapers from 1914 until her death. After living for many years in San Foy, adjacent to Botany Villa, Mrs. G. moved to a house on Annie Street, high above the river on Hamilton Hill. In 1926 she passed away aged 72 after suffering from uterine cancer.

By that time, only three of her seven children who had reached adulthood were still alive. Several of the younger children had changed their surname to Carter and Margaret herself had purchased property in Sydney using that name.

Her will left money to two of her three surviving children, not mentioning her eldest son William who lived his life in New South Wales, and probably left with his father in around 1891. She also left £500 to her old friend and right hand man, the West End cabbie William Liddle “Jo Jo” Wilson, who was also an executor of her will.

The major benefactors were eleven of Margaret’s grandchildren, who were bequeathed varying annual incomes of up to £2,000 a year from the estate until they reached 21 years of age, to pay for their education. They were the progeny of the three children of Margaret’s sent to the orphanage 26 years previously. The residual amount was to be distributed equally to these grandchildren and to Jo Jo Wilson.

One of the most interesting contents of the long and detailed will was that “San Toy” and her other properties were not to be used for “immoral or illegal purposes” and on her demise, any such activities were to be suppressed immediately by the trustees.

Margaret’s will also specified that she was to be buried in Ipswich General Cemetery alongside her children Jane and Oscar who had died as infants some 45 years earlier.

After her death, Margaret Gregson, the Duchess of Montague Road, slowly faded from public memory and today this colourful local character has been forgotten.

Unfinished business

Just a few weeks before Mrs. G. died, three undercover policemen managed to get past the door of “San Toy” and purchased beers. As a result, Millie Williams and Bertha Taylor, who were running the business for Mrs. G., received heavy fines. Soon after, the establishment closed down in line with the terms of the will.

Epilogue – San Toy back in the news

World War Two saw a huge influx of both Australian and American servicemen into Brisbane and its surrounds, with numbers reaching approximately 250,000 by late 1942. The shortage of prostitutes reached crisis level. The Queensland Government made a discreet call for assistance and the Federal Government obtained help from Sydney underworld figures, resulting in a trainload of volunteers arriving on what became known as “The Curtin Special” after the then Prime Minister.

In 1942, Nancy Wylie purchased San Toy from the Duchess’s estate and once again it was operating as a brothel. Wylie was repeatedly prosecuted by the police even though reportedly military forces were supportive of her operation, and it was patrolled by the Vice Squad, Australian and American MPs, and the U.S. Navy Shore Patrol.

By 1944 she had been convicted ten times with ever rising fines.

Appendix – The law and its enforcement

State Law

In 1899, the first Queensland Criminal Code Act was passed. Section 231, entitled “Bawdy House“, stated that

Any person who keeps a house, room, set of rooms, or place of any kind whatever, for purposes of prostitution, is guilty of a misdemeanour , and is liable to imprisonment with hard labour for three years.

Mother G. and others operated as boarding houses, charging high rents for rooms. This made it more difficult to prove that they were gaining pecuniary benefit from prostitution.

Council Bylaws

Local governments typically had a bylaw that allowed an inspector or police constable to lay charges against a person who was the proprietor or manager of a “house of ill-fame or repute” or who was harbouring “any female or females while practising prostitution“.

This was done “at the instance or request of any two respectable householders. “

The Contagious Diseases Act of 1868

The Queensland Contagious Diseases Act was contentious for its sexism and removal of human rights from when it was initially debated in Parliament, until it was replaced by the Health Act Amendment Act in 1911. It required undefined “common prostitutes” in specified towns to undergo regular medical examinations. Any such woman found to have a venereal disease was detained in what was termed a lock hospital.

The Brisbane Lock Hospital had a number of locations including controversially at the General Hospital, but from 1903 it was located at Boggo Road Gaol. Women refusing to comply or absconding from the lock hospital could be given a prison sentence. Inspectors regularly checked that registered prostitutes had undergone their required examinations.

After 1911, having venereal disease was no longer treated as a crime, but prostitutes were still subject to many of the same requirements of the old Act.

The Licensing Act

Obtaining a licence to sell alcohol was a drawn out process with public hearings and was impossible for all but traditional hotels run by people considered to be of high moral character. In any event, the 1885 Licensing Act introduced a process by which local rate payers could vote to ban further licences being issued, and this occurred in West End in 1886.

My post Nicholas Walpole Raven and the West End Pub With No Beer relates the story of a purpose built pub just down Montague Road from Botany Villa that never obtained a licence.

The illegal sale of liquor was usually policed through sting operations with paid agents or plain clothed police using marked banknotes to purchase drinks from an unwitting host who was then prosecuted.

© P. Granville 2023