Karen Fox review of Barbara Minchinton with Philip Bentley, <i>Madame Brussels: The Life and Times of Melbourne’s Most Notorious Woman</i>

Abstract

(Collingwood: La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc, 2024), 322 pp., PB $36.99, ISBN 9781760644932

Madame Brussels: The Life and Times of Melbourne’s Most Notorious Woman tells the story of Caroline Hodgson, otherwise known as Madame Brussels. Described as ‘the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melbourne’ (back cover), Madame Brussels has become ‘a cult figure of sorts’ in the twenty-first century (p. 1), with a lane named for her at the location of one of her brothels, a city rooftop bar bearing her name and even a guided walking tour visiting some of the locations associated with her. Yet, despite her present-day fame and past notoriety, until the publication of this biography relatively little has been known about the flesh-and-blood woman behind the alias...