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Between Me and Myself A Memoir of Murder, Desire and the Struggle to Be Free

Willson, Sandra; (2020) Between Me and Myself A Memoir of Murder, Desire and the Struggle to Be Free. [Book]. Text Publishing: Melbourne, Australia.

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Abstract

On 29 April 1959, Sandra Willson, a twenty-year-old trainee psychiatric nurse from Paddington, devastated by the break-up of her relationship with her female lover, left her home and hailed a taxi. Asking the driver to take her to a remote location on the coast near Cronulla, she waited until he had stopped to consult a map and then shot him in the back of the head. Found not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity and sentenced to detention at the ‘Governor’s Pleasure’, Willson spent the next eighteen years in prison and psychiatric hospitals, becoming the longest-serving woman prisoner in New South Wales. Her memoir, largely written in prison and now published for the first time, describes the events leading up to the shooting, the day itself and the years of incarceration that followed. Raw, compelling, Between Me and Myself is a fascinating insight into life on the social margins of post-war Sydney, an indictment of the justice system’s treatment of gay women, and a tragic story of abuse, mental illness, desire and repression.

Type: Book
Title: Between Me and Myself A Memoir of Murder, Desire and the Struggle to Be Free
ISBN: 1922330116
ISBN-13: 9781922330116
Publisher version: https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/between-me...
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176900
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