Deborah J. Swiss - The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australias Convict Women

Table of Contents

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swiss, Deborah J.

eISBN : 978-1-101-46442-7

1. Penal transportationAustraliaTasmaniaHistory19th century. 2. Women prisonersAustraliaTasmaniaHistory19th century. 3. Convict laborAustraliaTasmaniaHistory19th century. 4. ExilesAustraliaTasmaniaHistory19th century. I. Title.

HV8950.T3S95 2010

994.6020922dc22

[B]

2010014357

http://us.penguingroup.com

To Digney Fignus

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like Agnes McMillan and Janet Houston, Im blessed with true-blue mates. Digney Fignus patiently edited chapter draft after chapter draft, transcribed stacks of nineteenth-century newspaper accounts and convict records, and composed the beautiful song All for Love, which honors the transported women. My children, Alex and Alison Rice-Swiss, cheered me through each deadline and across the finish.

Molly Lyons, my agent at Joelle Delbourgo Associates, is exceptional and believed in me from our first meeting. Berkley Books editor Natalee Rosenstein and associate editor Michelle Vega were outstanding at all the details that moved The Tin Ticket into production. A giant thank-you to Berk ley publisher Leslie Gelbman, managing editor Jessica McDonnell, Richard Hasselberger and Andrea Tsurumi in the art department, and everyone in publicity, promotion, and sales.

An extraordinary team helped build this book. Anne Raisis provided excellent editorial expertise and moved mountains to gather photo permissions from around the world. Ames Halbreich added atmosphere and poetry as she edited chapters. Connie Hadley helped shape The Tin Ticket s tone by asking the right questions, and generously delivered healthy care packages for the final crunch. Audrey Block contributed brilliant edits through every phase of this project, along with humor at just the right moments. Shannon Hunt, Mary Kantor, Judy Noonan, and Judy Walker offered comments and suggestions that improved each chapter. Charlie Mitchell quickly answered several thorny research questions. Magnificent technical expertise came from Tom Coy and Yamil Suarez. Kay Coughlin, David Holzman, Jo Hannah Katz, Dari Paquette, and Wendy Tighe-Hendrickson also extended wonderful support.

Special thanks to Shirley McCarron, project manager for the Cascades Female Factory; Father Peter Rankin, parish priest in Kilmore, Victoria; and Rob Valentine, Lord Mayor of Hobart, Tasmania. Members of the Female Factory Research GroupTrudy Cowley and FionaMacFarlaneprovided superb transcription services for Tasmanian records. Cary Memorial Library staff Heather Vandermillen and Jean Williams located many obscure reference materials through interlibrary loan that, in turn, led me to other original sources.

My research journey began with inspiration from Tasmanian artist Christina Henris poignant and thought-provoking work 900 Bonnets , an installation that honors the children who perished at the Cascades Female Factory, and her recent Roses from the Heart project, for which people on many continents are sewing bonnets to honor each of the twenty-five thousand transported women.

I first fell in love with Tasmania and then with the convict women who helped shape a nation. Over the course of the past six years, Ive been rewarded with the gift of friendship, wit, and wisdom from convict descendants and their families, including Mary and Chris Binks, Sherilyn Butler, Edna and Phil Cullen, Lisa and Denis Samin, Joy and Joe Sharpe, Kaye Williams, and Glad and Bob Wishart. Agnes, Bridget, Janet, and Ludlow would certainly smile at their legacy.

INTRODUCTION

Lifes most interesting journeys often begin with a surprising coincidence. Sometimes a story finds you. In 2004, I traveled to Tasmania to join two wilderness treks. Challenging myself among a group of highly experienced trekkers, I completed the eighty-kilometer Overland Track in the Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park and climbed Mt. Ossa, Tasmanias highest peak. I also explored the Bay of Fires in Mt. William National Park, where huge Aboriginal middens mark Musselroe Point.

During a break from hiking, I happened to meet Christina Henri, a Tasmanian commemorative artist whose work honors the twenty-five thousand women exiled from the British Isles to Australia. She was standing in line ahead of me in a post office in Launceston, Tasmania. Without knowing that Im a writer, she turned to me and said: I have a story I want to tell you.

I knew little about this chapter in history until that day I stood in the queue chatting with Christina. Out of the blue, she began to describe the piece of paper she held in her hand, a pattern for a christening bonnet. Christina was mailing one of nine hundred bonnet patterns to a volunteer helping her create a traveling memorial honoring the nine hundred infants and children who died at the Cascades Female Factory. Newspapers of the day had labeled the damp, converted distillery, hidden under the cliffs of Mt. Wellington, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This was the prison that housed the women featured in The Tin Ticket .

The backdrop for these womens lives exposes a time in history still unknown to many. The journey of the convict women began in slums all across the British Isles, where the destitute struggled to survive. Profit trumped morality as wigged and powdered Parliamentarians sold grain at inflated prices to other countries and ignored widespread hunger and homelessness among their own citizens.

High levels of unemployment, created by the Industrial Revolution and an exploding urban population, left a working-class girl with few options in the early 1800s. Even a woman fortunate enough to find work was always paid less than a man. When thousands of soldiers returned from the Napoleonic Wars, many female factory workers lost their jobs to the men. The Glasgow Courier suggested that if a woman was not ugly, she might find relief in prostitution instead of a crippling life in the textile mills. Many girls had no choice but to resort to selling their bodies, which was not a crime in nineteenth-century Britain. Others staved off starvation by collecting and selling bones, singing ballads for pennies, picking pockets, or pilfering small items that might be traded for food or a place to sleep. Petty theft was a way of life for women, men, and children desperate to make it through another day. As a result, prisons across the British Isles were packed far beyond capacity.