MASQUERADED AS A MAN
ITALIAN WOMAN’S MANIA. RELEASED FROM GAOL. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) SYDNEY, February 19, Eugene Falleni, the so-called manwoman, who in 1920 figured in a sensational murder case, was released from Long Bay gaol. Born in Italy, she was taken to New Zealand as a child. As she grew up she was possessed with a mania to pose as a man. She signed on as cabin boy on a Spanish ship, of which her father was captain. She roamed the seas till she came to Newcastle, then she stayed ashore masquerading as a man. Finally she married a widow named Birkett, and lived with her for some months, neither Birkett nor her son suspecting the truth. Falleni treated them decently till one day in 1920, overcome by a strange mania, she took Birkett to Chatswood, made her helplessly drunk in the scrub, and shockingly battered her skull with a stone. She was condemned to death for murder, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 21265, 20 February 1931, Page 9
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170MASQUERADED AS A MAN Otago Daily Times, Issue 21265, 20 February 1931, Page 9
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