New podcast: The life of South Yarra’s mysterious Madame Reprah

From her shop on South Yarra’s Chapel St, Madame Reprah offered a range of mysterious services. Here’s how she showed up a police chief.

Photo of Alice Harper, aka Madame Reprah, with daughter Anna. From the book "Anna Wickham: A Poet's Daring Life" by Jennifer Vaughan Jones.

If the mysterious Madame Reprah could be believed, she was a mind reader, hypnotist and magnetic healer, but most definitely not a fortune teller, which was against the law.

If she had been, she might have predicted the humiliating courtroom showdown she would cause for Victoria’s chief commissioner of police, when she was charged with that very crime.

Madame Reprah, whose real name was Alice Harper, is the subject of the latest episode of the In Black and White podcast.

The intriguing tale has come to light thanks to research by Melbourne writer and historian Michael Shelford, who found details while browsing through old police files.

He discovered that in the early 1900s, Madame Reprah had a shop in Chapel St, South Yarra, where she offered a range of remarkable services.

Flyer for Madame Reprah’s services from the Public Record Office Victoria. Image credit: Michael Shelford

She billed herself as a “consulting psychological physiognomist” and a “character reader of mind and face”.

Physiognomy was the supposed art of judging character from facial characteristics.

At the time Madame Reprah arrived in Melbourne in 1914, fortune telling was illegal, so she visited Chief Commissioner Alfred George Sainsbury to ensure her services were within the law.

He then sent an undercover detective to her shop, and was stunned by the accuracy of Madame Reprah’s assessment of the policeman’s character.

The police chief wrote to Madame Reprah with a ringing endorsement of her talents, confirming her services were legal.

He added that the officer in charge had told him, “This lady seems to me to be a genius.”

So when Madame Reprah was hauled before court during a crackdown on fortune tellers, she produced the letter from the police chief in her defence.

Shelford says the chief was far from thrilled to be dragged into court, even refusing to face the panel of magistrates while being questioned.

“He actually said he could have chosen for her not to have been charged but … it would have seemed like he was giving her favouritism,” says Shelford, creator and guide for Melbourne Historical Crime Tours.

Listen to the interview with Michael Shelford from 8am in today’s new free episode of the IB&W podcast on Victoria’s forgotten characters.

 

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