The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women (28 page)

8

The Yellow C

The Valley of Sorrow

Cradling little William Houston against her grey duffel shift and smiling with contentment, Janet watched her new son grow stronger by the day. It was the end of August 1841. The sun was setting later now, and soon the winds of spring would bring the island back to life. Outside, the temperature drifted toward the fifties, ending a mercifully mild winter. Certainly it was nothing like the freezing nights she’d spent on Goosedubbs Street with Agnes. Still, occasional Antarctic winds blasted and shook the windowpanes facing the front of Liverpool Street. For good measure, Janet sat right next to the warm kitchen stove. Nurse Tedder smiled and offered the new mother a large slice of bread and a cup of tea with sugar, making certain the breast-feeding mothers received their full share of the rations delivered from the cook at Cascades.

The month before, on July 22, Janet had turned twenty-two and on her birthday carried a present, kicking and turning within her swollen belly. She tried to hide her pregnancy, but when she approached full term, doubt no longer lingered about her condition. On August 2, a policeman delivered the winsome Scot to the Factory, “being advanced in pregnancy.”
¹
Janet held her middle and ambled back to her cell after Reverend Bedford’s evening rant. Above the yard, in the clear black sky, a full moon hung suspended.

A few days later, the redheaded lass went into labor and delivered her “currency lad,” as the son of a convict was called. Currency lads and lasses were so named because they were viewed as a product, unlike the “sterling” born to free settlers. As soon as the young mother was able to walk, she and her newborn were sent down the valley to Liverpool Street, where today she stared into the eyes of her little infant. Janet had been born the same year as Nurse Ludlow’s dear departed daughter Frances, who passed away at age seven and lay buried in a tiny plot a world away.

The motherly Mrs. Tedder immediately developed a deep affection for the soft-spoken new mother, with her enchanting Scottish brogue and rather wicked sense of humor. Ludlow felt both relieved and gratified to see an infant thrive, especially because she had seen so many perish. Since her first day in the nursery two years before, twenty-four children from Liverpool Street had been hastily laid to rest in St. David’s Cemetery near the harbor.

Inside the tiny house where she worked six days a week and often Sundays, Widow Tedder learned many truths about the girls and women who were returned to the Female Factory for what Reverend Bedford proclaimed the sin of adultery. At this time, the adulterer label was attached to every unmarried convict mother, regardless of her circumstances. Many were the victims of rape by a master, a male servant, or a settler. Others carried the child of a lover or common-law husband. Reason mattered not. In the eyes of the Crown, they were all sinners relegated to the same punishment.

Superintendent of Convicts Josiah Spode argued for placing the prisoners in local homes, where, he surmised, the “proper” citizenry would provide role models “both in a moral point of view and in teaching them those useful habits of domestic life.”
²
For many among the transported women, assignment to settlers yielded the opposite effect, rendering them angrier and more rebellious as their sentences unfolded.

Most reports of abuse were promptly swept under the rug. Yet the abuse became so widespread that eventually the Crown reluctantly agreed to an Inquiry into Female Convict Prison Discipline, which commenced in 1841. The investigation revealed that recourse for sexual assault was nearly impossible, though a few desperately sought justice after being attacked in their master’s care. Grace Heinbury was twenty-six when she arrived in Van Diemen’s Land on the convict ship
Atwick
, which anchored on January 24, 1838. The black-haired nursery maid with the dark hazel eyes reported rather matter-of-factly to the committee the horror that soon befell her. During one assignment, she was raped by a man whose wife had unwittingly selected her for their servant. After she reported the attack to the authorities in Hobart Town, the police did nothing. Superintendent Hutchinson promptly assigned her to another household, where she was again assaulted, this time by several male servants. With no recourse via the police to end her abuse, Grace walked off the job. She was punished with six months’ hard labor for leaving her assignment, but accepted it as a fair trade.
³
Absconding seemed a reasonable choice. Temporary refuge could usually be found in the safe houses and grog shops tucked into the back alleys and shady streets around Hobart Town.

In caring for the mothers and infants housed on Liverpool Street, Ludlow began to understand the terrible secrets kept by the figures she had first viewed in Yard One two years before. Young women confided in the well-spoken nurse with the soft hazel eyes, who reminded them of their mothers back in Britain. Even if a convict mother wanted to love the child conceived by rape from a master or a male servant, the Female Factory “Rules and Regulations” stifled this natural inclination at every opportunity. The unnatural separation of mother and child caused some to give up entirely, as they sank toward emotional numbness.

A disreputable master could commit the perfect crime with any female under his charge: There were no witnesses and virtually no one to believe the hysterical tale told by a convict maid. There was no way to win. If she ended up pregnant, she was charged an adulterer. Once weaned, her child was taken away and she began a sentence of hard labor in the Crime Class. Police Magistrate John Price admitted that many masters were “totally unfit to be entrusted” with the indentured women “from a perfect disregard to the morality of their female servants.”
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After her sixth return to Crime Class for misconduct in 1840, Janet avoided attention until she was found pregnant and living with a free man, the suspected father of dear William. When she reported back to the factory on August 2, 1841, Janet knew the punishment she faced. Along with her newborn arrived a sentence of a year’s hard labor, six months for “living in a state of adultery with a free man” and an additional six for “being advanced in pregnancy.”

The colony’s government absolved itself of responsibility for the rising number of unmarried mothers at the Female Factory by making it a crime to give birth to an illegitimate child. Superintendent of Convicts Josiah Spode believed “the regulation was ‘the best check . . . of immorality’ and that it would ‘restrain the promiscuous intercourse of these depraved women.’”
⁵
His reasoning backfired exponentially. As the number of female transports rose, so, too, did pregnancies among the women, most in their twenties and thirties.

In some cases, a colonist used the system to free a sweetheart from Cascades, requesting her assignment and then setting up household together. Fathers wishing to marry the mother of their child were sometimes denied permission. The lieutenant governor was required to review all marriage requests from 1829 to 1857. If both parties couldn’t prove they were legally single and not married to someone else, or failed to pay the exorbitant application fees, their request was denied.
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Female Factory Superintendent Hutchinson’s approval was also required, according to the rules and regulations, which stated: “No Female will be allowed to marry from the 2d. or 3d. Classes, nor, indeed, from the 1st., unless she can obtain a favourable certificate from the Principal Superintendent.”
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Adding insult to injury, the Reverend Bedford also held veto over betrothed couples. Fancying himself the moral magistrate for Hobart Town, Holy Willie refused to wed convicts who had been married to someone left behind in Britain. It made no difference that there was virtually no chance of ever seeing their first husbands again. Many spouses left behind were already remarried or cohabiting with another woman. Although some preachers applied common sense in such decisions, the ever-unyielding Bedford, himself a well-known adulterer, often refused to marry transported women and men who desired a fresh start.

If not wed to the child’s mother, fathers in Van Diemen’s Land bore neither blame nor responsibility. The Hobart Town coroner deplored “the fact that unmarried female convicts who became pregnant were punished ‘whilst the Father of the child whether he be the Seducer, or paramour, is rarely if ever punished.’”
⁸

Despite this double standard, Janet discovered a silver lining when she returned to the Female Factory and especially to Liverpool Street. Shortly after giving birth to baby William at the Cascades infirmary, a stern matron named Mrs. Slea ushered her down the valley to the lying-in room at the nursery. Passing the tiny kitchen on the first floor, Janet spotted a familiar frame standing with her back turned and scrubbing a giant stack of pots. It was a sputtering Agnes, clanging the pans and silverware as the greying water sloshed over her feet and onto the floor. It was the last place Janet expected to see her friend.

Looking forward to the spring in 1841, Janet had much to celebrate. Only a few weeks old, William was already thriving in her loving arms. Kindly Mrs. Tedder offered her valuable guidance on caring for her newborn. Celebrating this happy event with her dear Agnes was bloody good luck indeed, especially because they hadn’t seen each other for nearly three years.

The last time had been in summer’s heat, shortly before Christmas 1838, when Agnes stood ankle-deep in water hunched over a stone washtub in Yard Two. Janet had returned to Cascades for her fifth offense, one fewer than the feisty Agnes. The slightly less rambunctious of the two, Janet was assigned to the Reverend W. Orton after twice disobeying her first mistress. The incident started on November 4, when the reverend reported his convict maid absent without leave overnight. She got away with only a reprimand, but ten days later she again walked off the job. This time a constable found her in a “disorderly house,” a rowdy tavern specializing in strong liquor, gambling, and prostitution. This offense sent Janet back to the prison for a month, picking oakum in solitary confinement.

For the first six days, Overseer Cato passed only bread and water through the grates in her cell door. Upon completion of this latest discipline, Mr. Hutchinson assigned Janet to a different settler. By now, it had become a bit of a game to return to Cascades from a dangerous or dreary placement as quickly as possible. Janet’s next position lasted only six days.

Indifferent to the punishment awaiting her, Janet strutted back to the Female Factory that December 20, 1838, where an auspicious surprise awaited her. Agnes, too, had returned to the valley to serve two months at the washtubs for being absent without leave. The two celebrated Hogmanay together as they brought in the new year in 1839. Their reunion was bittersweet because each would be sent her separate way. It would be nearly three years before their paths crossed again, although each returned to the Female Factory at different times. Sent out on four more country assignments, Agnes managed to run away from each. Her fate, however, took a turn for the better when, in 1840, Superintendent Hutchinson dispatched her to the most remote location he could find. While working in Oatlands, located in the middle of nowhere, the twenty-year-old met a dashing older man who captured her heart.

Her most recent spate of trouble involved insolence toward her master. The superintendent had run out of assignment options for the indomitable #253, who was about to turn twenty-one. She’d been sent to work all over Van Diemen’s Land, from Richmond fifteen miles north of Hobart Town to the remote Oatlands. Agnes always managed to run away from her master, no matter how distant or isolated the assignment, so a frustrated Hutchinson returned the untamable Scot to a place he could monitor. His wife, as matron, was required to inspect the nursery every day.

Because Agnes had experience as a governess for Mr. Harvey, she was well suited to work at Liverpool Street, although most prisoners who weren’t mothers considered it an undesirable assignment. Babies wailed day and night, the stench of diarrhea and vomit invaded every corner, and mothers fought for private space where there was none. The cramped little house was staffed primarily by convict mothers still nursing their infants. In addition to nursing their own child, they also cared for children separated from their mothers and housed in the nursery until transfer to the Queen’s Orphanage at age two or three. Agnes’s heavy responsibility inside Liverpool Street lightened considerably when she heard Janet’s Scottish brogue echo through the front entryway.

The two mates, fully blossomed into womanhood, still found unadulterated joy in recounting the girlish escapades they’d shared. Agnes had picked up a completely new repertoire of rebellious tunes about the regrets and the dreams of a convict maid:

I toil each day in greaf [
sic
] and pain
And sleepless through the night remain
My constant toils are unrepaid
And wretched is the Convict Maid

Oh could I but once more be free
I’d never again a captive be
But I would seek some honest trade
And never again be a Convict Maid
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Sitting inside the Liverpool Street nursery, Agnes excitedly confided in the loyal chum she considered a sister. They’d managed to survive the first five years of their transport sentence, suffering neither the illnesses nor alcoholism afflicting so many at Cascades. Picking up exactly where they’d left off, the two mates laughed, cursed, and cried through the stories and adventures they hadn’t been able to share. As Agnes took a turn cuddling William after her kitchen shift ended, they dared to dream about the promise of their freedom in 1843. Knowing instinctively that this might be their last time together, Agnes and Janet filled the present with recollections from their past. Together, they stayed out of trouble, or at least weren’t caught by Mr. Hutchinson.