Mabel Freer: The Cause Célèbre of Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act? By Elizabeth Hinchcliffe

Before the scandal: how did this come to be?

The Commonwealth of Australia, as it is now known, came to be in 1901. No longer a penal colony answerable to British laws, Australia became its own country determined to make its mark on the global stage. In doing so, the idea of ‘White Australia’ was born, and became the primary goal of the new Australian government. A way they attempted to make this vision a reality was by implementing policies such as the Immigration Restriction Act, which refused entry to migrants who failed a dictation test on their arrival to the border. The Act was supposed to be used to deny entry to people of colour, and it was under this premise that the Act was supported, even popular. Thus, when the Act was used to deny entry to a white woman, Australian media and society went wild. This article will discuss the case of Mabel Freer, and why the Australian government refused her entry to the country. It will use the case of Mrs. Freer to demonstrate how the Immigration Restriction Act was used by the Australian government to propagate the idea of ‘White Australia’, not just by excluding people of colour, but also by excluding those who did not meet morality standards. It will discuss Mrs. Freer’s life prior to this case, her exclusion under the terms of the Immigration Restriction Act, political and social reactions to the case and how the scandal was eventually resolved, as well as the impact of the case on a variety of factors - Australian politics and law, Australian society, and Mrs. Freer’s life. It will conclude by briefly discussing why Mrs. Freer’s case created such a social and political scandal as opposed to the thousands of other migrants who were refused entry at the border because of their skin colour, as well as whether or not the cause célèbre of Mrs. Freer truly achieved anything long-term. First, let’s cover Mabel Freer herself, and what her life looked like prior to her public scandal. Born in British India (now Pakistan) in 1911 as Mabel Magdalene Ward, she grew up in India as a white British woman. At the age of 18, she married her first husband, Ronald Freer, with whom she had two children. Just six years later, in 1935, Mabel filed for divorce. Although increasingly common, divorce still held its own stigma in British culture during the early-to-mid twentieth century, however it was not this divorce that led to Mrs. Freer’s exclusion from Australia on morality grounds. The following year, in 1936, Mrs. Freer began a relationship with Edward Dewar, who was training with the Australian Army in British India. More importantly, Mr. Dewar was married and had a young daughter back in Australia. In mid-1936, Mr. Dewar wrote to his wife and asked for a divorce so he could marry Mrs. Freer - an action that was seen as reprehensible by many people, including Dewar’s own father. The disapproval for Mr. Dewar and Mrs. Freer’s relationship was only heightened when Ronald Freer named Mr. Dewar as a co-respondent in his divorce case against Mrs. Freer, further highlighting the ‘immorality’ of the affair. It was Robert Dewar (Mr. Dewar’s father) who approached the military authorities in Lahore, India, where the couple lived, and asked for assistance regarding the matter. Mr. Dewar’s commanding officer was shocked and horrified by what he considered to be the brazenness of the couple’s relationship, and recommended that Mrs. Freer should not be allowed to enter Australia should she attempt to, on account of her lacking morality. Mr. Dewar’s father-in-law then contacted the military authorities in Australia and informed them of the affair, also expressing his concerns that Mrs. Freer was putting Mr. Dewar’s career at risk. When it became known that the couple were intending to return to Australia soon, the Department of the Interior became involved, and recommended that Mrs. Freer should be denied entry to Australia as an ‘undesirable person’.

White Australia and why Mrs. Freer didn’t fit the image.

This idea of being denied entry to Australia as an ‘undesirable immigrant’ was acceptable to contemporaries, however Mrs. Freer’s case represented somewhat of a break from this norm. Typically, those who were turned away at the Australian border were people of colour. This was done in an attempt to create a new, ‘White Australia’. The unification of the various colonies within Australia in 1901 created the Commonwealth of Australia, making the country its own independent nation rather than a set of states answerable to the British government (although, of course, it retained its loyalty to the British monarch). In an attempt to set themselves firmly on the global stage, early Australian policy-makers, including Alfred Deakin, who would become Prime Minister of Australia in 1903, decided it would be prudent to maintain the white, British ideals of morality as the foundation of the country’s principles. Thus, the ‘White Australia’ ideal was created, and those at the top of Australian politics in the early-twentieth century were determined to uphold it and to create a country of white, ‘decent’ people, presenting a glowing image of the new Australia on the world stage. It was Deakin who wrote the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which allowed immigration officials to administer dictation tests to any attempted immigrants of their choice, as well as gave them the power to refuse entry to a wide variety of people. These dictation tests were used to provide a reasonable excuse for turning away those of non-European descent without including an explicit mention of race in the legislation - something the British government had requested, and the new Australian government were certainly highly reluctant to do anything that would displease the British, relying on them as an ally in the early days of the federation. Upon arriving at the Australian border, anyone (in theory) could be required to undertake a dictation test, where they were asked to write a passage of fifty words, dictated to them in any European language of the immigration official’s choice. Should they fail this test, they would be prohibited entry to the country. Of course, this was an almost impossible ask, since the language chosen for the dictation test was at the discretion of the immigration official and could easily be (and was) chosen to ensure failure on the immigrant’s part. Even white, European, ‘desirable’, immigrants were likely to fail this test should it be applied to them. It was, however, almost never done so, and was applied solely to people of colour, particularly Asian people, who were considered the most undesirable immigrants in the face of the ‘White Australia’ ideal. When they failed the dictation test, they were turned away at the border without having to make explicit reference to their race, and almost no-one batted an eye. Why, then, was this not the case for Mrs. Freer, who’s first attempt to enter Australia came in October 1936? Despite her British passport, and the fact that she was white, she was asked to complete a dictation test in Italian, and failed, thereby being refused entry to the country and being told she was unable to disembark from the ship on which she had arrived. Instead, she went to New Zealand, where she was accepted into the country, and hired a lawyer to prepare for her next attempt to enter Australia. Mrs. Freer also rallied the press on her behalf, giving interviews to journalists during the period of her exclusion. This case took off rapidly in the weeks following her exclusion, with condemnation coming from many sides of Australian society. Feminist groups criticised the Minister of the Interior, Thomas Paterson, for the treatment of Mrs. Freer, and a wide variety of both men and women commented on the fact that Mrs. Freer was taking all the blame for the failure of Mr. Dewar’s marriage while he received no denunciation. Australia became concerned that the dictation test was used to prohibit entry to a white, British woman rather than being used for what they saw to be an ‘acceptable’ use; that is, to exclude people of colour from the country. In November, Paterson gave a statement in parliament claiming that he had taken the decision to exclude Mrs. Freer based on her failing morality, arguing that he was protecting the sanctity of marriage in Australia by excluding her. Here, it can be seen that Paterson believed he was upholding the moral standards of the ‘White Australia’ policy, and although there were cases of women being refused entry to Australia based on their ‘moral character’, these cases had always been those of sex workers. Mrs. Freer did not fall into this category, and her image in the press became one of a wronged, good, British woman. Therefore, Paterson’s statement did nothing to quell the controversy her exclusion had caused, and he became desperate for any evidence that would make her exclusion seem more justifiable. In late November, he used an unverified telegram from a Sydney resident to attack Mrs. Freer’s character, claiming that she was actually mixed-race, and that she was a serial adulteress who was no better than a sex worker. These terms would have made her exclusion seem much more acceptable, however, it became clear soon after that the telegram insinuating these things about Mrs. Freer was not true. The author had previously been charged with perjury, and no other sources found any evidence that any of this was true. This led to even further condemnation of Paterson, not just in popular culture, but from his colleagues in parliament, from backbencherse to those in the cabinet.

Australian customs officials boarding ship

Resolution and Impact: Was there any?

Mrs. Freer’s second attempt to enter Australia came two months later, in December, whereupon she was once again administered an Italian dictation test, and once again failed. Her denial was extraordinarily damaging to the government, with failures in the Marcy 1937 referendum and shock defeats in a May 1937 by-election being attributed to the negative press surrounding Mrs. Freer’s case. In June 1937, the decision to deny Mrs. Freer entry was overturned, and she was received in Sydney the following month, greeted by crowds of people. In October 1937, Thomas Paterson resigned as deputy leader of the Country Party and from his post as Minister of the Interior. Though Mrs. Freer was finally allowed entry, her relationship with Mr. Dewar did not become immediately uncomplicated, with the military authorities transferring him across the country as soon as she was permitted entry. Their relationship did not survive. Two months after her arrival in Sydney, Mrs. Freer attempted to gain financial compensation from the government in regards to her deportation, but was denied. In 1939, Mrs. Freer became Mrs. Cusack, marrying a fish merchant in Sydney. Little is known of what became of her after this, though it is thought that she died in Sydney in 2004 at the age of 92. Mr. Dewar died in 1978 after a distinguished war career, but, estranged from his wife and daughter, was buried as a pauper with no ceremony and no-one but a priest at his funeral. After Mrs. Freer was allowed to enter Australia, the public uproar for and interest in her died down and the woman who had taken on the Immigration Restriction Act and won faded into obscurity almost as quickly as she had risen to fame. Academic works on the Mrs. Freer case are relatively few and far-between, though there has been more interest in it in recent years. Most likely, this is due to the fact that, despite its contemporary fame, Mrs. Freer’s scandal had little lasting effect on any area of Australian society. Of course, it contributed to the resignation of Thomas Paterson and damaged the reputation of the Lyons government, but it made little difference to politics beyond that. The White Australia policy was left unquestioned and unchanged for many more years, with the Immigration Restriction Act only being repealed in 1959 and countless more people of colour being turned away at the borders simply because they were not white. Mrs. Freer’s case shocked and scandalised the Australian public because she was British and white; her moral character seemed irrelevant in light of these facts, and it could even be argued that her skin colour and nationality made people less inclined to see her as immoral. Conversely, people of colour were automatically seen as having different moral standards, even considered to be ‘uncivilised’, and so Australians saw no problem with turning them away at the border and refusing to integrate them into their white, ‘civilised’ country. The country at large was not scandalised by the treatment of those immigrants because they saw it as right, but Mrs. Freer did not fall into this category. As such, the case of Mrs. Freer, though causing nationwide scandal at the time, did little to change anything long-term in terms of the propagation of White Australia. The eventual repealment of the Immigration Restriction Act could not be contributed to this case, instead to shifting boundaries of what ‘civility’ and ‘morality’ was, as well as changing attitudes towards race in the mid-twentieth century.

Cartoon depicting Thomas Paterson’s attitude toward the Freer case.

About the Author

Elizabeth Hinchcliffe is a Yorkshire-based historian with a masters degree in Social and Cultural History from the University of Leeds. Usually focusing on the early modern period, Elizabeth’s secondary area of research is the history of Australia from colonisation to modern day. Elizabeth’s career goal lies in writing and talking about history in an accessible way for everyone to enjoy and understand, regardless of educational level or background. Within the next year, she hopes to write a wide variety of articles for her own blog, which is in the works and hopes to be released in early-2025.