The use of public space has been acknowledged as important part of sexuality studies since Laud Humphries's classic 1970 study of beats in America. Increasingly, research by Australian historians of homosexuality has recognised the function that space has played, and continues to play, in the formation of sexual identities. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only the rich could afford their own privacy. For most young men, access to private space was a luxury. Single men lived either with their family or in cheap, shared accommodation.