Madame Brussels: This Moral Pandemonium is a gorgeously designed, pocket sized historical biography of notorious Melbourne brothel owner, savvy businesswoman and entrepreneur Caroline Hodgson. The use of pink and white pages printed with black and red ink lends the book a little decadent flourish, perfectly suited to its subject matter. Madame Brussels has recently been immortalized by a twee bar and Melbourne City Council naming a laneway after the famous brothel, the continued popularity fueled surely by the legend, gossip and hearsay about the good madame.

Traveling from London, Caroline Hodgson arrived in Melbourne with her husband Studholme George Hodgson in June of 1871. Studholme joined the police force and was stationed in Mansfield, leaving his young wife alone in the growing city. By 1874 Hodgson had founded, presumably with the financial assistance of male benefactors, the successful brothel Madame Brussels in Lonsdale Street in inner Melbourne. Quickly established as a bagnio of the highest calibre, Madame Brussels was the destination of choice of a number of men of prominent, influential position. Attracting the attention of evangelist Henry Varley, Hodgson was the subject of numerous court cases in an attempt to rid the city of vice; which, it must be said, never effected her business. The economic Depression of the 1890s, after the boom years of the 1880s, saw business dwindling, but Madame Brussels continued to survive until Hodgson’s health deteriorated. In total, Madame Brussels operated for over 30 years.

The scandals of the business and Hodgson’s personal life are delightfully fleshed out in Robinson’s diminutive dissertation. Although there are many gaps between the documentation available, Robinson does a great job of considering the possibilities behind the historical blind spots. Some of the rumours surrounding Hodgson are hilarious in their extravagance, regardless of their possibly tenuous relationship to the truth:

But perhaps the greatest rumour was the one regarding the birth of an illegitimate daughter some time toward the end of the decade [1880s]. As befitting a mother dubbed ‘the wickedest woman in Melbourne’, the event was said to have been celebrated with a program of low festivities to which all the city’s ‘bloods’ were invited. After carousing with the brothel’s ‘nymphs’ and supping on high-quality liquor supplied by the Commercial Hotel in Spring Street, the invitees are meant to have cheered as a mock priest baptised the child in champagne and endowed her with the appropriately shocking name of Syphilia.

Then there is the captivating, and unbeknown to me until now, story of the mace stolen from Victorian Parliament in 1891. The mace has never been found and a reward ($50,000!) still stands for its return. The missing mace was one of the scandals which damaged, however slightly, the mutual relationship between the officials of Parliament and Madame Brussels. Hearsay from a Sydneysider (of course!) suggested that three women had stolen the mace and that the politicians were using Parliament House to entertain the flash ladies. Following the death of her first husband Hodgson married Jacob Pohl, who disappeared on her … twice. The book is full of so many equally fascinating stories.

Illustrated with beautiful engravings from the State Library of Victoria archives and snippets of articles from the sensationalist media of the time, Madame Brussels creates a vivid portrait of a fascinatingly ambiguous woman and the city of Melbourne.

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Here’s a number of ancillary links which I strongly encourage you to have a browse through if Madame Brussels or Melbourne history rouses your interest. Excerpts from an essay by John Leckey sheds further light on the brothel industry in Melbourne in the 1800s. Wikipedia’s entry on Caroline Hodgson provides a decent summary of her life and career, much of it taken from Madame Brussels: This Moral Pandemonium. There are also a couple of interviews with L.M. Robinson available online – from Moreland council and “The Real Madame Brussels: Love, Lust and More” -which elaborate further on Madame Brussels and Robinson’s research and attraction to the project.