The search for Maltese troublemakers and criminals in Australia

Abstract

This paper describes the author’s search in Public Record Office Victoria and in Australian newspapers for criminal activity by the Maltese. What started as a search to find Maltese women criminals in the nineteenth-century evolved and changed into a more general search dictated by the history and availability of the historical sources. This paper gives some background on Maltese migration to Australia, followed by an explanation of how this history constrained the particular study on Maltese criminals. A possible explanation is given as to why no Maltese women criminals were found and how other women criminals proved to be quite interesting. Some comparison is also made between the crimes of Australian women who were not Maltese in the nineteenth century and the crimes of Maltese women in Malta in the eighteenth century. The author’s first encounter with Maltese women in the records are mentioned, and then the focus shifts to the small number of Maltese male criminals in Australia, giving some indication of what the nature of their crimes were in early twentieth-century Australia.