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Madame Brussels: The Life and Times of Melbourne's Most Notorious Woman
A must-read biography of an enigmatic personality who helped shape early Melbourne
Madame Brussels, the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melbourne, is still remembered and celebrated today. But until now, little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the woman behind the alter ego.
Born in Prussia to a working-class family, Caroline arrived in Melbourne in 1871. Left alone when her police-officer husband was sent to work in remote Victoria, she turned her hand to running brothels. Before long, she had proved herself brilliantly her principal establishment was a stone's throw from Parliament House, lavishly furnished and catered to Melbourne's ruling classes.
Caroline rode Melbourne's boom in the 1880s, weathered the storm of the depression years in the 1890s and suffered in the moral panic of the 1900s. Her death in 1908 signified the end of one kind of Melbourne and the beginning of in terms of prostitution, the city went from tolerance to complete prohibition in her lifetime.
Drawing on extensive research, author and historian Barbara Minchinton deftly pieces together Madame Brussels' story and guides readers on a journey through a fascinating, colourful period in Melbourne's history. This is a major biography of an Australian icon.
Madame Brussels, the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melbourne, is still remembered and celebrated today. But until now, little has been known about Caroline Hodgson, the woman behind the alter ego.
Born in Prussia to a working-class family, Caroline arrived in Melbourne in 1871. Left alone when her police-officer husband was sent to work in remote Victoria, she turned her hand to running brothels. Before long, she had proved herself brilliantly her principal establishment was a stone's throw from Parliament House, lavishly furnished and catered to Melbourne's ruling classes.
Caroline rode Melbourne's boom in the 1880s, weathered the storm of the depression years in the 1890s and suffered in the moral panic of the 1900s. Her death in 1908 signified the end of one kind of Melbourne and the beginning of in terms of prostitution, the city went from tolerance to complete prohibition in her lifetime.
Drawing on extensive research, author and historian Barbara Minchinton deftly pieces together Madame Brussels' story and guides readers on a journey through a fascinating, colourful period in Melbourne's history. This is a major biography of an Australian icon.
336 pages, Paperback
Published July 2, 2024
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128 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Minchinton
3 books4 followersBarbara Minchinton is a historian and independent researcher. For several years she collaborated with a team of archaeologists on the interpretation of artefacts from Melbourne’s Little Lon district. She is the co-editor of The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne, a historical archaeology of the city’s working-class and immigrant communities, and the author of The Women of Little Lon.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 15, 2024
This book is both companion and expansion of Barbara Minchinton's The Women of Little Lon which looked at the sex work industry in nineteenth century Melbourne. Madame Brussels is one of the brothel keepers that Minchin described in the earlier book as part of the ecology and economy of Melbourne's brothel precinct, but here she deals with Madame Brussels as biography, rather than one name among others.
...
This book stands on its own two feet, but I think that I appreciated it more for having previously read The Women of Little Lon, a book which has firmer evidentiary foundations than this one. But I guess that's part of the challenge of biography: finding the individual person while confronting the dearth of evidence.
For my complete review, please visit:
https://residentjudge.com/2024/10/15/...
...
This book stands on its own two feet, but I think that I appreciated it more for having previously read The Women of Little Lon, a book which has firmer evidentiary foundations than this one. But I guess that's part of the challenge of biography: finding the individual person while confronting the dearth of evidence.
For my complete review, please visit:
https://residentjudge.com/2024/10/15/...
February 10, 2025
I’ve read two books by this author now in quick succession – but this is the only one I will review. The other The Women of Little Lon, wasn’t nearly as good as this one. Both are about sex workers in early Melbourne, but because this one is about the most famous of these and more or less only about her, it has a power and narrative that the other one lacks. So that, unless you are particularly interested in the broad sweep of these women, this is by far the better read. I might end up confusing things that are in one book with what is in the other – or even do that intentionally – but we will see.
Madame Brussels is moderately famous in Melbourne. There is a laneway named after her. She owned a number of brothels around the area of the lane. Most of the houses in this area were pulled down for slum clearances, and then in the 1980s, when the government buildings that now occupy the site were about to be built, archaeologists picked over the site to see what they could learn about the lives of those who had lived in the slums. This is an area very close to the state parliament house, but a change in building regulations requiring buildings in the area to be replaced with stone or brick buildings to remove the fire hazard the old wooden ones had presented, had meant that there was little incentive to invest in such expensive buildings in what was a slum. One of those cases where a good intention has the opposite effect.
This area had long been the heart of Melbourne’s sex trade. I was going to say red light district, but apparently that wasn’t a term that had been used back then – or rather, it was used, but mostly to refer to sex districts in the US. The brothels weren’t exactly confined to Little Lonsdale Street, but Little Lon became notorious for them. I’d been told once that the 1880 exhibition had meant that not only had Stephen Street had a name change to Exhibition Street (to liberate it from the stain of association for sex work) but also that many of the brothels had also been forced to move to St Kilda – an inner city suburb that was still associated with sex work when I was growing up. The author doesn’t mention anything about this – despite her book covering the period when this was meant to have occurred. I have to assume this was something that was either not true or exaggerated. It is very clear that Madame Brussels was still running her brothels in the area well into the new century.
Her brothels were upmarket – there is a lot of description here of the expensive furnishing and so on they contained, and of the expensive clothing she dressed her sex workers in. It isn’t clear whether or not she ever worked as a prostitute – and it is also not clear how she avoided run-ins with the law. In part this is easier to explain, since prostitution was not illegal at the time – something I was surprised about, given this is what we now refer to as the Victorian Era – and define as one obsessed with prudish morals – in word, if not in deed. All the same, because she was so well known in town, she attracted more than her fair share of attention from local moralists – what Australians call wowsers – people who object fiercely to other people enjoying themselves. The Salvation Army in particular began a vendetta against her, creating various stories about her acting as a procurist – someone who can get you an underaged girl to have sex with. The motivation for sex with a very young girl (and given the age of consent at the time was 12, well, we are talking very young, I guess) was that there was a myth at the time that having sex with a virgin was a way to cure syphilis. These were the days before antibiotics or before we had a germ theory of disease. We still thought most diseases were caused by bad smells. And Melbourne had no shortage of bad smells – it was known as Smelbourne…
She appears to have been close to the opposite of what she was accused of. She kept an orderly brothel, seems to have sought to get medical treatment for women infected with VD and to look after her workers. There were very few occupations open to young women and those that were open to them paid very low wages. Moralists have not really changed over the years – they hate the victims, but do nothing to stop them being victims. There was talk that one of the reasons judges were so lenient on Madame Brussels was that they were customers – which might be true, perhaps, but it might also be true that they knew that if they put her out of business that she would quickly be replaced by someone else, and likely someone else who would not manage the brothel nearly so well. As she said, no one was ever robbed in one of her brothels – which certainly, from the other book, was not something that could be said of many of the other brothels at the time.
The book speculates that her husband had been homosexual – but that she had loved him, despite him leaving her to become a policeman, and moving to the country. When he was dying he came back to her and she cared for him and appears to have remained very fond of him. Even ensuring that her surname was not the same as his while he was working as a policeman – something that would hardly have been great for his career otherwise. Still, this was found out and put about the local scandal sheets at the time. Names seemed to be much more fluid at the time than they are now. This was not just because, then as now, prostitutes were likely to adopt an alias, you know, as we say today, a porn name, but also it just seemed to be much more common, particularly among the working class. Being called Mrs didn’t necessarily mean you were married, either. This causes the author a lot of trouble tracking people, who may or may not be the one person under multiple names.
She adopted a daughter and spent a considerable amount on her education. But Madam Brussel’s life, as someone says at one point, reads like a novel by Balzac. In the end, although she hadn’t lost everything, she had come pretty close. Her brothels were no longer upmarket and filled with finery, but dilapidated and showing their age.
I’ve always intended to read some of Marcus Clarke’s journalism – I’d been told that he would go into slums and such places, dressed appropriately, and then report back on his adventures. But it seems he was more of the time’s tabloid journalist with an unhealthy does of moralism too. So, I might not bother trying to track his writing down after all. That said, I didn’t mind his novel, His Natural Life.
One of the bits of this that I found particularly interesting was the link to flagellation. The author says that although it isn’t at all clear if this was something practiced in Brussel’s brothels, it was something that grew out of the British public school system. That the depravation and brutality of those schools for the upper class meant that when these boys became men, flagellation was often one of the only ways they could achieve something like sexual gratification. I’ve no idea if this is the case or not – but it is hardly a high recommendation for sending your kids off to such an institution.
If nations can be divided into male and female ones, Australia is a distinctly male nation. Almost all of our myths are about men – taming the bush, going off to war, fighting and drinking. For a lot of Australian history there was a shortage of women – perhaps part of the reason why prostitution was overlooked if not ignored. Madame Brussels – or rather, Caroline Hodgson – is an interesting character. And quite likeable. As the author says at one point, she seems to have craved respectability – something she particularly wanted for her daughter – but that was unlikely, given how she made her money. Even so, given the lack of options, it seems churlish to complain that her entrepreneurial skills were forced to find the only outlet available to her.
Madame Brussels is moderately famous in Melbourne. There is a laneway named after her. She owned a number of brothels around the area of the lane. Most of the houses in this area were pulled down for slum clearances, and then in the 1980s, when the government buildings that now occupy the site were about to be built, archaeologists picked over the site to see what they could learn about the lives of those who had lived in the slums. This is an area very close to the state parliament house, but a change in building regulations requiring buildings in the area to be replaced with stone or brick buildings to remove the fire hazard the old wooden ones had presented, had meant that there was little incentive to invest in such expensive buildings in what was a slum. One of those cases where a good intention has the opposite effect.
This area had long been the heart of Melbourne’s sex trade. I was going to say red light district, but apparently that wasn’t a term that had been used back then – or rather, it was used, but mostly to refer to sex districts in the US. The brothels weren’t exactly confined to Little Lonsdale Street, but Little Lon became notorious for them. I’d been told once that the 1880 exhibition had meant that not only had Stephen Street had a name change to Exhibition Street (to liberate it from the stain of association for sex work) but also that many of the brothels had also been forced to move to St Kilda – an inner city suburb that was still associated with sex work when I was growing up. The author doesn’t mention anything about this – despite her book covering the period when this was meant to have occurred. I have to assume this was something that was either not true or exaggerated. It is very clear that Madame Brussels was still running her brothels in the area well into the new century.
Her brothels were upmarket – there is a lot of description here of the expensive furnishing and so on they contained, and of the expensive clothing she dressed her sex workers in. It isn’t clear whether or not she ever worked as a prostitute – and it is also not clear how she avoided run-ins with the law. In part this is easier to explain, since prostitution was not illegal at the time – something I was surprised about, given this is what we now refer to as the Victorian Era – and define as one obsessed with prudish morals – in word, if not in deed. All the same, because she was so well known in town, she attracted more than her fair share of attention from local moralists – what Australians call wowsers – people who object fiercely to other people enjoying themselves. The Salvation Army in particular began a vendetta against her, creating various stories about her acting as a procurist – someone who can get you an underaged girl to have sex with. The motivation for sex with a very young girl (and given the age of consent at the time was 12, well, we are talking very young, I guess) was that there was a myth at the time that having sex with a virgin was a way to cure syphilis. These were the days before antibiotics or before we had a germ theory of disease. We still thought most diseases were caused by bad smells. And Melbourne had no shortage of bad smells – it was known as Smelbourne…
She appears to have been close to the opposite of what she was accused of. She kept an orderly brothel, seems to have sought to get medical treatment for women infected with VD and to look after her workers. There were very few occupations open to young women and those that were open to them paid very low wages. Moralists have not really changed over the years – they hate the victims, but do nothing to stop them being victims. There was talk that one of the reasons judges were so lenient on Madame Brussels was that they were customers – which might be true, perhaps, but it might also be true that they knew that if they put her out of business that she would quickly be replaced by someone else, and likely someone else who would not manage the brothel nearly so well. As she said, no one was ever robbed in one of her brothels – which certainly, from the other book, was not something that could be said of many of the other brothels at the time.
The book speculates that her husband had been homosexual – but that she had loved him, despite him leaving her to become a policeman, and moving to the country. When he was dying he came back to her and she cared for him and appears to have remained very fond of him. Even ensuring that her surname was not the same as his while he was working as a policeman – something that would hardly have been great for his career otherwise. Still, this was found out and put about the local scandal sheets at the time. Names seemed to be much more fluid at the time than they are now. This was not just because, then as now, prostitutes were likely to adopt an alias, you know, as we say today, a porn name, but also it just seemed to be much more common, particularly among the working class. Being called Mrs didn’t necessarily mean you were married, either. This causes the author a lot of trouble tracking people, who may or may not be the one person under multiple names.
She adopted a daughter and spent a considerable amount on her education. But Madam Brussel’s life, as someone says at one point, reads like a novel by Balzac. In the end, although she hadn’t lost everything, she had come pretty close. Her brothels were no longer upmarket and filled with finery, but dilapidated and showing their age.
I’ve always intended to read some of Marcus Clarke’s journalism – I’d been told that he would go into slums and such places, dressed appropriately, and then report back on his adventures. But it seems he was more of the time’s tabloid journalist with an unhealthy does of moralism too. So, I might not bother trying to track his writing down after all. That said, I didn’t mind his novel, His Natural Life.
One of the bits of this that I found particularly interesting was the link to flagellation. The author says that although it isn’t at all clear if this was something practiced in Brussel’s brothels, it was something that grew out of the British public school system. That the depravation and brutality of those schools for the upper class meant that when these boys became men, flagellation was often one of the only ways they could achieve something like sexual gratification. I’ve no idea if this is the case or not – but it is hardly a high recommendation for sending your kids off to such an institution.
If nations can be divided into male and female ones, Australia is a distinctly male nation. Almost all of our myths are about men – taming the bush, going off to war, fighting and drinking. For a lot of Australian history there was a shortage of women – perhaps part of the reason why prostitution was overlooked if not ignored. Madame Brussels – or rather, Caroline Hodgson – is an interesting character. And quite likeable. As the author says at one point, she seems to have craved respectability – something she particularly wanted for her daughter – but that was unlikely, given how she made her money. Even so, given the lack of options, it seems churlish to complain that her entrepreneurial skills were forced to find the only outlet available to her.
May 20, 2025
‘The first recorded use of the name ‘Madame Brussels’ was in 1879, as the ‘occupant’ listed in the rate books of the houses Caroline Hodgson was renting in Lonsdale Street East.’
While in Melbourne recently, I visited the Melbourne Museum. While viewing their ‘Melbourne Story Exhibition’ (particularly the exhibition recreating life in Little Lonsdale St in the 1890s) I was reminded of Ms Minchinton’s ‘The Women of Little Lon’ which I read some years ago. More recently, I read Ms Cleary’s novel ‘The Butterfly Women’ which also referred to ‘Madame Brussels’ and tempted me to read this book.
So, who was Madame Brussels? Apparently, she was the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melbourne, the best known of the ‘flash madams’, now immortalized with both a lane and a roof-top bar named after her. Born Caroline Lohmar in Prussia, around 1851, she arrived in Melbourne with her husband Studholme ‘Stud’ Hodgson in 1871. When her husband left Melbourne to work in the country as a policeman, Caroline opened a boarding house in Lonsdale Street. She bought more properties: with her lavishly appointed principal establishment close to Parliament House. Caroline Hodgson became known for her business acumen and stylish lifestyle, thus becoming known as a ‘flash madam’.
While she presided over her establishments, there is no evidence that she was a sex worker. I wonder whether that is important, and to whom? Certainly, Caroline Hodgson was an astute businesswoman and benefitted from the ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ land boom. But she suffered during the recession of the 1890s and by the early twentieth century her health was failing.
I was intrigued by Ms Minchinton’s presentation of Caroline Hodgson’s story and the light shown on late nineteenth century Melbourne. After her first husband died, Caroline Hodgson remarried. But this marriage was not successful, and after a couple of years she returned to managing brothels.
I kept reading. And while I learned quite a lot about Madame Brussels, I found Caroline Hodgson quite a shadowy figure. By the time she died in 1908, Melbourne had changed. Tolerance had been replaced by prohibition which, I imagine, has led to ‘uncomfortable’ history being ignored or forgotten.
Ms Minchinton’s book sheds light on Melbourne’s history and one of the women who certainly added colour to it.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
While in Melbourne recently, I visited the Melbourne Museum. While viewing their ‘Melbourne Story Exhibition’ (particularly the exhibition recreating life in Little Lonsdale St in the 1890s) I was reminded of Ms Minchinton’s ‘The Women of Little Lon’ which I read some years ago. More recently, I read Ms Cleary’s novel ‘The Butterfly Women’ which also referred to ‘Madame Brussels’ and tempted me to read this book.
So, who was Madame Brussels? Apparently, she was the most legendary brothel keeper in nineteenth-century Melbourne, the best known of the ‘flash madams’, now immortalized with both a lane and a roof-top bar named after her. Born Caroline Lohmar in Prussia, around 1851, she arrived in Melbourne with her husband Studholme ‘Stud’ Hodgson in 1871. When her husband left Melbourne to work in the country as a policeman, Caroline opened a boarding house in Lonsdale Street. She bought more properties: with her lavishly appointed principal establishment close to Parliament House. Caroline Hodgson became known for her business acumen and stylish lifestyle, thus becoming known as a ‘flash madam’.
While she presided over her establishments, there is no evidence that she was a sex worker. I wonder whether that is important, and to whom? Certainly, Caroline Hodgson was an astute businesswoman and benefitted from the ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ land boom. But she suffered during the recession of the 1890s and by the early twentieth century her health was failing.
I was intrigued by Ms Minchinton’s presentation of Caroline Hodgson’s story and the light shown on late nineteenth century Melbourne. After her first husband died, Caroline Hodgson remarried. But this marriage was not successful, and after a couple of years she returned to managing brothels.
I kept reading. And while I learned quite a lot about Madame Brussels, I found Caroline Hodgson quite a shadowy figure. By the time she died in 1908, Melbourne had changed. Tolerance had been replaced by prohibition which, I imagine, has led to ‘uncomfortable’ history being ignored or forgotten.
Ms Minchinton’s book sheds light on Melbourne’s history and one of the women who certainly added colour to it.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
September 3, 2024
Thoroughly researched, and wow, amazing the amount of information they found. As well as the information they weren't. However they were able to bring her to life, and the conjecture was believable and well explained. They bring to life how women survived (financially) during the late 1850's, the trials and tribulations as well as humanising them, which many of the media of the time tried to dehumanise and humiliate. An interesting slice of early Melbourne - for women. Some small niggles, that aren't worth mentioning here, just my issues.
October 29, 2024
Good to have a history of a famous independent Melbourne woman. Thoroughly researched and written in an academic style, but many of the questions asked (repeatedly through the book) couldn't be answered due to lack of records. There was a minor obsession, carried over several chapters, about whether Madame Brussels' brothels offered flagellation - with the answer being that there is no evidence that it was - so why spend so much time on it? Tighter editing would have improved readability.
October 25, 2025
Minchinton and Bentley have laboured long to bringing Madam Brussels and her world to life, with engaging facts recovered about the life of this Melbourne brothel owner, the hierarchical male systems, both personal and legal - her two marriages - what a disaster and she survived and thrived. Prostitution - a taboo topic and how as a female business owner was shunned by males with ongoing harassment. Melbournes colourful heritage exposed, vibrant and intriguing.
August 6, 2024
Probably more of a 3.5 stars. Really interesting trip into Melbourne's history, focused on of most famous Madame. The sequencing of the biography means there's a bit of repetition. Given the interesting subject matter, sometimes this felt unnecessary - in saying that, the biography highlights the success of an iconic businesswoman at a time when much was stacked against women
December 16, 2024
I really enjoyed this book -so well researched and showed so much of this notorious woman of the 1800's and her life in Melbourne.
April 18, 2025
Minchinton and Bentley have done a great job of bringing Brussels and her world to life, with engaging coverage of what is known, and what isn't, about the life of this Melbourne brothel owner. There was perhaps a little bit too much speculation at times, but the picture of the city that emerges from this story of a life, is vibrant and intriguing.
November 23, 2025
3.5* rounded up.
This felt like a text book, a lot of the information was speculative based on what written records were available, but a fascinating insight into late 19th century Melbourne.
This felt like a text book, a lot of the information was speculative based on what written records were available, but a fascinating insight into late 19th century Melbourne.
December 29, 2025
Boring. Ditched
January 6, 2025
Interesting but overwritten as is often the case with academic authors.
May 9, 2025
My first non-fiction for 2025 and ‘Madame Brussels’ didn’t disappoint!
Barbara Minchinton tells the story of Caroline Hodgson, a well known and prosperous brothel keeper in Melbourne during its boom time. She provides great insight into ‘Marvellous Melbourne’s’ social mores during the late 1800s and early 1900s, highlighting that women’s emancipation is not a linear struggle. Assumed rights and freedoms are never far from being curtailed.
Minchinton makes important observations about how women and their bodies are policed – echoes of which continue to be heard loudly today – and the impacts this has on women’s choices and their ability to live full lives.
This non-fiction biography is a well-researched accessible and colourful tales – highly recommend!
Barbara Minchinton tells the story of Caroline Hodgson, a well known and prosperous brothel keeper in Melbourne during its boom time. She provides great insight into ‘Marvellous Melbourne’s’ social mores during the late 1800s and early 1900s, highlighting that women’s emancipation is not a linear struggle. Assumed rights and freedoms are never far from being curtailed.
Minchinton makes important observations about how women and their bodies are policed – echoes of which continue to be heard loudly today – and the impacts this has on women’s choices and their ability to live full lives.
This non-fiction biography is a well-researched accessible and colourful tales – highly recommend!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews