The intriguing story of Madame Brussels.

Sad to learn that Madame Brussels, that quirky upstairs restaurant at the top end of Melbourne's Bourke Street is closing its doors.  Covid restrictions have affected its daily patronage and the people who opened the restaurant about sixteen years ago have decided to it close down. My wife, Lesley, and I enjoyed dining at Madame Brussels a few years ago. We were cruising on the Queen Mary 2 from Fremantle to Sydney. When we called in to Melbourne to meet  some friends they took us to Madame Brussels for lunch.  

 Madame Brussels had a rather risqué menu and an interesting drinks list. They serve jugs  of  many of the most popular cocktails. A Jug of Pimm’s seemed to be the drink of choice. The young people serving on the tables all wore sporting attire.  Our charming young waitress, wore tennis attire and the muscular hunk who brought us the Pimms wore a Richmond football club jumper and black footy shorts. Its advertising brochure promotes the place as Kooky, Kitsch and lots of fun. The inside lounge is fitted out with old world chairs and lounges while the outside deck sits between the tree tops of Bourke Street.  

I was keen to find out more about the lady after whom the place was named so I did some internet surfing. Madame Brussels was actually a notorious brothel madam of the late 19th Century. Her well-appointed brothels were situated in Lonsdale Streets, close to Melbourne’s Parliament House and the political and legal fraternity, from whence came many of her clients.                                                                                                                                                                        In fact, her brothels were referred to as Gentlemen’s Clubs and attracted the city’s political, judicial and police elite. It was said that her business thrived because of the formidable support she had from people in high places. Very high places.

Madame Brussels was born Caroline Lohman in Prussia in 1851. She travelled to England and married George Hodgson, a member of a noble family. He  was not favourably regarded by some family members. That was probably the reason that the couple soon sailed from the UK  to Melbourne, where George became a policeman.                                                                                                                                                                              In those goldrush days,Victoria needed policemen and was recruiting enthusiastically to bolster its police force. The one condition was that upon graduation newly appointed constables had to serve in a rural area. George became a policeman and was appointed to Mansfield in Ned Kelly country near Beechworth in northern Victoria. He went there on his own.  His wife, the 21 year old Caroline, stayed in Melbourne.

Living alone in Melbourne, the young Caroline had limited choices. She decided to think big. By 1874,  the 24 year old Caroline was known as Madame Brussels, and successfully running a number of brothels, which she continued to do until 1907. 

Why brothels? It was a matter of the choices available to her. She was a young woman in a strange land, with little financial support. She had very restricted job prospects, especially, with her poorly paid policeman husband living so far away from home. Perhaps, running a brothel was by far the best paying job open to a woman in those days.                                                               

 The respectable alternatives were teaching, nursing, secretarial work or even lower paid jobs in workshops or domestic service. It turned out that Caroline was quite skilled at running a brothel, or two, and they proved to be very successful and highly profitable.

Almost twenty years later,  in 1893, husband, George, died of TB. Caroline, who had placed him in a nursing home during his illness, arranged his funeral and wrote a loving death notice in the newspapers about the sad loss of her beloved husband. In the notice she also pointed out that George was connected to the British aristocracy. She continued to put notices in the paper on each anniversary of his death.

In 1895, two years after George  died, she married a much younger man, Jacob Pohl. She was then aged about 44 and Jacob about 30. However, the following year, young Jacob mysteriously disappeared in South Africa when the couple were en-route to visit family in Germany. They were re-united in 1898, when Jacob just as mysteriously showed up once again, only to divorce in 1907 on the grounds of his desertion. Definitely some very funny family business going on there.

In her later years, Madame Brussels was vigorously attacked by members of the moral and righteous community as “an accursed procuress”. She was taken to court in 1907. However, she won the sympathy of the court as a benevolent old lady (she was 56), reciting eloquently how she had been wronged.                                                                                                                                                       

No doubt she felt quite comfortable defending herself in the witness box in that Melbourne court house. After all, the Judge, Senior Council, several distinguished jurors and some members of the press gallery were all members of her Gentlemen's Clubs. She was acquitted, but closed her business down that same year and died of diabetes and pancreatitis a year later, in 1908, aged 57 years.

 In a coincidental connection with her first husband’s stint at Mansfield, where the legendary Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly and his family were well known, her lawyer in the 1907 court case was David Gaunson. In 1880, as a member of the Victorian parliament, Gaunson had been one of the leading lights at the large public rallies to have Kelly’s death sentence overturned.                                                                                                                                                                         Surely, someday, someone will write a novel or make a film about the remarkable Caroline Hodgson, nee Lohman who, as Madame Brussels, rose to wealth and power in Marvellous Melbourne in the second half of the 19th Century. If I was the Casting Director I would be trying to sign up Scarlett Johannsen or Charlize Theron in the starring role.

 It is sad that this saucy, kooky, kitsch and 'lots of fun' cafe is closing down. Hopefully, some courageous, enterprising restaurateur will take it on and keep  Madame Brussels saucily serving customers in upper Bourke Street. Hopefully too, an enterprising author and talented film maker will make fuller and more permanent records of the very colourful and intriguing Madame Brussels.