A Portrait of Two Mariages

11 May 2022

Same-sex marriage became truly possible in New Zealand in 2013, although, before that, some couples held ceremonies in wedding garb with friends in attendance. But a few took matters further. Teachers Josie Trequhair, 30, whose birth name was Josephine Robinson, and Florence Lance, 27, married in 1891 after meeting at a Sydney girls’ school run by Florence. It was not unheard of for two women to officially marry during the nineteenth century, one of them presenting to the celebrant as a man – and a few European and American cases turned up in New Zealand’s newspapers. On this occasion, Josie arrived at the Presbyterian Manse in Newtown, Sydney, in male attire, and she gave her name as Joseph Robinson Stuart Trequhair. Joseph was the name of both her father and a brother who died as a baby, and Stuart was the last name of her former husband, but the origin of the Trequhair surname remains a mystery. The ceremony over, Josie swiftly swapped her suit for women’s clothes.

Bathurst during the early years of the nineteenth century.

Josie and Florence shared a house in the regional centre of Bathurst before living on a farm near Locksley and presenting themselves to others as ‘Mesdames Lance and Stuart’. Then they crossed the Tasman to set up in Auckland. The relationship carried on more-or-less uneventfully for several years until, in 1900, Josie fell in love with thirty-year-old Janet Minchin, known as Jean. Josie and Jean formally wed in Auckland that same year. This time, Josie was Joseph Robinson Stuart, with no sign of the Trequhair surname. But that was not the only confusion: Florence had no idea that Josie was embarking on a bigamous double life.

Things were bound to come unstuck. Files in Archives New Zealand show the two marriages required a complex juggling act: Josie would go ‘on holiday’, as she put it, supposedly staying at an out-of-town hostel, and she sent to Florence frequent letters to keep the illusion alive. On 9 October 1901, Josie told Florence she was stopping at a boarding house in Howick, some 12 miles from the marital home in Mount Albert Road. ‘I went for a walk down to the sea today and then after lunch I went for a delightful drive’, she wrote, neglecting to mention the most important part. Although the claim about going for a ‘delightful drive’ is true, the journey ended at St Matthew’s church where Jean joined Josie at the altar. The Howick address was not in fact a boarding establishment, but a small furnished cottage in which Josie and Jean set up house.

Howick, early 1900s.

Josie wrote to Florence again four days later to tell her, with a trace of irony, ‘I feel so much better and have been enjoying myself so much’. She signed the letter ‘Goodnight with love, yours affectionately, Josie’. But Jean asked questions, and Josie’s deception collapsed:

Mr Stuart … appeared gloomy. I asked him what was troubling him, was it a crime. I said this because he had often said he had done wrong and was not worthy of me and I could not think what it was. I asked him one or two things often said in a joke you have not been married before. He said nothing for some moments then said yes, I have a wife living. For a few minutes I refused to believe it then he said he was married in NSW to a Miss Lance.

Jean walked out after only two weeks and filed for a formal divorce on the grounds of bigamy. Josie tried to patch things up with Florence, and the pair moved to Dunedin to attempt a fresh start. ‘I fell with Jean’, Josie admitted to Florence, pleading for forgiveness. ‘I shall live and work for you always let come what may … forgive me little woman for I know I am not all bad. I want to belong to God and to you henceforth and to put the past behind me’. But it was too late. Florence decided she’d had enough and, like Jean, filed for divorce.

Florence told the court she had only recently discovered that Josie was a woman – even though the pair had been together for nine years, referred to themselves as Mesdames Lance and Stuart, and Josie mostly dressed in women’s clothes. Florence also mentioned a sex life involving a dildo, which she euphemistically referred to as an ‘instrument’. She subsequently claimed Josie was most likely a ‘hermaphrodite’, but Josie was having none of it: ‘I am not even imperfectly made but am a woman absolutely but with the inclinations and passions of a man’. She echoed the idea of gender inversion that became increasingly influential at the time. Here is the closing sentence of one letter to Florence, whom Josie called ‘Girlie’: ‘Goodnight my own darling little treasure with all my love and thousands of kisses yours forever and ever, Boysy’. Josie refused a medical examination and skipped court, but officials annulled the marriage anyway. They declared ‘Trequhair is not a male person’.

'A woman absolutely but with the inclinations and passions of a man'.

The annulment of Josie and Florence's marriage.

After this second divorce – which Josie blamed on gossip and dissembling among the teachers at St Hilda’s School in Dunedin where Florence worked – Josie vanished from the public record. Florence stayed on at St Hilda’s for a while, teaching ‘physical culture’ to the girls – the school magazine suggested her stretching exercises were ‘as lovely as a cold bath’ – and then she returned to Auckland to enrol for a university degree. She continued to call herself Florence Trequhair rather than Florence Lance, at least for a while. The portraits of two marriages had begun to take shape, but ultimately the trail ran cold.

 

Sources

Ancestry.com [with thanks to Rachel Sonius at Puke Ariki].

Brickell, C. (2020) ‘Josie and Florence: A Same-sex Marriage at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, New Zealand Journal of History, 54, 1: 29-48.

Divorce files, Florence Lance and Janet Minchin, Archives New Zealand.

May, M. (1969) St. Hilda’s Collegiate School: The First Seventy Years, 1896–1966.

Newspapers: Otago Daily Times, 28 August 1892, p.6; Evening Star, 18 December 1903, p.2.

New Zealand University Calendar.

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