Henry Lawson was a remarkable poet. But he beat his wife. And his record remains somehow unblemished.

One Friday early in April in 1903, Bertha Lawson went to the Sydney Divorce Court and filed a blistering affidavit. (She had left her home four months earlier, fearing for her life.) In it she wrote: “My husband has during three years and upwards been a habitual drunkard and habitually been guilty of cruelty towards me. My affidavit consists of the acts and matters following. That my husband during the last three years struck me in the face and about the body and blacked my eye and hit me with a bottle and attempted to stab me and pulled me out of bed when I was ill and purposely made a noise in my room when I was ill and pulled my hair and repeatedly used abusive and insulting language to me and was guilty of divers other acts of cruelty to me whereby my health and safety are endangered.”

Poet, author and wife-beater Henry Lawson. Credit:State Library of NSW

Author Kerrie Davies, a lecturer in literary journalism at the University of NSW, unearthed this affidavit in the Lawsons’ divorce records buried in the State Archives and Records NSW in western Sydney.

No one has tried to tear down or deface his statues, pull his name from monuments, buildings, drag keys along metal plaques.