In the shadows of the Convict Era, more than 12,000 women were transported to this island colony, each carrying tales of resilience and survival.
Women were typically sentenced to 7 or 14 years, for crimes as petty as pilfering a loaf of bread or a piece of fabric from her employer. For these transgressions, their destinies unfolded in the penal colony of Tasmania, where they became pawns in a complex game of survival.
Upon arrival, the women found themselves in a stratified society, divided into the Punishment Class, the Crime Class, and the Hiring Class. Solitary cells echoed with tales of the Punishment Class, while the Crime Class bore the weight of their misconducts within the prison walls. The Hiring Class enjoyed privileges within the Factory, eventually transitioning to serve as domestic servants to the elite settlers.
Sadly, these Female Factories also housed the babies of convict women in dedicated nursery wards. An enforced early weaning age and unhygienic conditions resulted in very high infant mortality rates within the factories.
Said Charles Mundy of his visit to the Cascades Female Factory in 1851:
‘It is nothing to say that many of these poor brats will never know their own fathers – their mothers, perhaps, know them no better: and many of the wretched little ones, in the hands of the nurses, will never know either parent. The public consoles itself with the dry fact, that they will all come into the labour market. A large ward was allotted to the midday sleep of the poor little babes. There were a score or so of wooden cribs, in each of which lay two, three, or four innocents, stowed away head and tail, like sardines à l’huile; while others were curling about like a litter of kittens in a basket of straw.’
The Ross Female Factory was one of four networked women’s prisons that operated during Tasmania’s convict era. Some 40 women were housed here, awaiting hire. The factory doubled as a laying-in hospital, and a large nursery was a prominent part of the site.
Eleanor Casella, from the esteemed Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, led ambitious excavations of the Ross Female Factory in 1995 and again in 1997. These archaeological endeavors became portals to the past, revealing artifacts that now stand as poignant snapshots into the starkly different daily lives within the prison’s walls.
Alongside iconic landmarks like Port Arthur and the Cascades Female Factory, the Ross Female Factory is a crucial chapter in our island’s convict narrative.
The Ross Female Factory is open to the public seven days a week, free of charge. Further information on the archaeological findings can be found in the Tasmanian Wool Centre Museum at 48 Church St, Ross.