How Spider dancer Lola Montez’s ‘war of the whip’ inflamed Ballarat’s dusty goldfields

THE performances of Irish dancer Lola Montez, entertained Sydney and Melbourne, but on February 20, 1856, miners in Ballarat woke to news of the “war of the whip”, after Montez horsewhipped newspaper editor Henry Seekamp in a hotel bar the night before.

The dancer Lola Montez, circa 1847-1855.

THE salacious performances of Irish femme fatale Betty James, then billing herself as Lola Montez, entertained Sydney and scandalised Melbourne for five months before she became the talk of the town in dusty Ballarat.

There, on February 20, 1856, miners woke to the “war of the whip”, after Montez horsewhipped newspaper editor Henry Seekamp in a hotel bar the night before. He retaliated in kind, then the two grabbed each other’s hair as onlookers drew revolvers.

The attack followed Seekamp’s criticism of Montez’s renowned Spider Dance, which she defended as a national dance when she charged Seekamp’s Ballarat Times with libel the next day.

Billing herself as Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, born in Ireland in 1818 or 1821, Montez, or Montes, courted scandal from the time she eloped as a teen. Her father was British army officer Edward Gilbert, disowned by his family after marrying a dancer who claimed descent from Madrid’s Oliverres de Montalvo family. Montez’s mother was Elizabeth, illegitimate daughter of Charles Oliver, of Castle Oliver, and a peasant on his County Limerick estate. In this account, Montez was born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert on February 17, 1821 in Grange, County Sligo.

Her father was posted to India in 1823 and died of cholera. In 1824 her mother married Lt Patrick Craigie in India. Eliza was sent to live with Craigie’s relatives in Scotland in 1826, then to boarding school at Bath in England in 1832. Her mother arrived in 1837 with plans to marry her to a wealthy, elderly judge in India.

The dancer Lola Montez, the Countess of Landsfeld, circa 1847-1855.

Montez instead ran off with Lieutenant Thomas James, 30, marrying him in July 1837 near Dublin. Montez accompanied him to Afghanistan in 1839, where James left for another woman. Montez returned to England in 1842, where James won a judicial separation on grounds of her adultery during her voyage home.

Although a poor actor, unable to sing and too old for ballet, Montez took dancing lessons in Spain. She returned to London as Spanish dancer Maria Dolores Montes, who was “snatched from her cradle” by gypsies. Urged by the Earl of Malmesbury, theatre manager Benjamin Lumley organised her debut at Her Majesty’s in June 1843. Praised for her exotic beauty, she “created a most novel and delightful sensation”, but fled when a spectator called out, “Why it’s Betty James”.

Montez next gatecrashed a military parade in Berlin where she was arrested after slashing an officer across the face with her whip, then seduced composer Franz Liszt in Dresden, moving to Paris when he left.

Despite choreographic coaching, only a press campaign by literary friends including author Alexandre Dumas secured her an act at the Paris Opera, when she threw her garter into the audience. Ballet fans dismissed her as unorthodox, while a review noted that although “very beautiful with a lovely figure ... Lola Montez doesn’t know how to dance”. Hired to dance in Munich in 1846, she was fired when the theatre manager saw her perform.

Montez won an audience with Bavarian King Ludwig I, who gave her a long theatre dance contract. He also granted her an allowance, built her a small palace and created her Countess of Landsfeld. As Montez convinced her ageing lover to introduce liberal reforms that offended Catholics, riots forced Ludwig’s abdication in March 1848.

Spanish dancer Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld (1819-1861).

In London in 1851, Montez married officer George Heald, whose aunt filed bigamy charges after learning Montez’s divorce from James forbid remarriage. She arrived in New York in 1852 dressed as a man, with spurred boots and a riding whip. In 1853 she married San Francisco newspaper publisher Patrick Hull, and opened a miner’s saloon and brothel at Grass Valley. Divorced again, in June 1855 she sailed for Australia’s gold fields.

She performed her Spider, or Tarantula, dance with its frenzied search up her legs under her dress for a spider, to some acclaim at Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre in August. But her first performance at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal in September drew a court application for a warrant to restrain Montez from “again perpetuating an outrage against common decency”.

Montez insisted the “dance ... is witnessed with delight in Spain by all classes and both sexes”. She was further irritated when Seekamp’s Ballarat Times in February 1856 described her as “having the form of a woman combined with characteristics of a man”, then argued it was “wrong to make much of a woman whose disregard of moral right has been of the strongest and most public kind”.

Seekcamp, a Eureka Stockade hero, called at the United States Hotel, where Montez stayed while performing next door at the Victoria Theatre. She took a whip and “laid it on with a hearty good will. Mr. Seekamp retaliated with a riding whip ... and before long the combatants had each other literally by the hair”. Montez performed around Victorian goldfields until May 1856, then returned to New York where she died in 1861.

Originally published as How Spider dancer Lola Montez’s ‘war of the whip’ inflamed Ballarat’s dusty goldfields