Frog Hollow, as many Sydneysiders know, is a real place and has featured in several histories of the area, though nowadays the Hollow is a pleasant little park more likely to be frequented by office workers (myself included) eating their lunch than it is by razor gangs and grog-soaked prostitutes, though a small sign at the top of the escarpment discreetly reminds visitors of the park’s colourful and not-so-distant past. The Benevolent Asylum at the corner of Pitt and Devonshire streets provided essential indoor and outdoor relief for Sydney’s poor for almost a century until it was demolished in 1901 to make way for Central Railway Station, but extensive records still exist both of the asylum’s day-to-day workings and of the many thousands of unfortunates who used its services over the years. No anarchists were operating in Sydney at the time that this novel is set (though the burning of the effigy of the Premier at Darlington was an actual event), however a (somewhat amateurish) gang of anarchists called the Broad Arrow Gang were active in Melbourne during this period and have, in part, inspired incidents in this novel. Baby farming was, sadly, common enough in both Sydney and Melbourne in the early part of the 1890s, less so in the later years of that decade when new protective laws came in, and was well documented in the accounts of the day and in a number of books written since that time. And, finally, the ‘great man’ alluded to in chapter 32 was, of course, Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales for much of the 1870s and 1880s, and often referred to as the Father of Federation for his early championing of that cause.

Maggie Joel

Sydney, 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS