Document Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In the mid 1860s, Sydney was electrifed by the trial of Louis Bertrand, a dentist accused of murder and adultery. As the press and citizenry furiously debated Bertrand's guilt and motivations, a curious assortment of bigotry and superstition entered the public discourse. Explanations for the dentist's putative crime were sought in his ancestry, his gender and his reading habits. Thus Bertrand was rumoured (falsely) to be the son of a mixed marriage between a Jew and a Turk, to be an unmanly character prone to sentimentality and cross-dressing and to have a deplorable taste for frivolous French fiction.
ANZSRC / FoR Code
2002 CULTURAL STUDIES
COinS
Publication Details
Evans, N. J. (2005). Caviar and Friendship: Sensational Trials and the Reinvention of Public Space. Cultural Studies Review, 11 (1), 52-70.