At around 3 PM on the twenty-third of August, 1842, seventeen prisoners in the Crime Class
shop at Cascades Female Factory began to dance and sing, refusing to stop
when ordered to do so. The women could
have been protesting the fact that they were denied access to the Crime Class
Yard because the
authorities were determined to prevent
communication between the women prisoners
and the workmen doing repair and construction work in the buildings. This was not
the first time the women had rioted; there had been several riots over the years and the leaders became known as the "Flash Mob." The riots were the result of overcrowded conditions, poor food
rations, protest against the use of
solitary confinement and other harsh forms of punishment for infractions, which at times
included rations of bread and water
while in solitary, neck irons, and head shaving. Sometimes the women
seemed to riot from sheer boredom and
frustration. This particular riot went on for several hours before the prison
superintendent called in constables who were able to separate the rioters from
the other prisoners.
One month and one day later, on September 24, 1842, Jane
Ogden and her fellow shipmates arrived and were processed into the Cascades
factory. Even though there was another
riot five months after her arrival, there is no indication that Jane Ogden
participated, nor is there any record
of her being the subject of any disciplinary action for the first nine or ten
months of her sentence. It is likely
that after an initial period at
Cascades, she was hired out as a
servant to a local freeholder, a common
occurrence with the female convicts.
However, on August 23, 1843, on the anniversary of the 1842
riot, Jane was written up for “foolery and insolence” and was reprimanded. One month later she was charged with being absent without leave
and was “severely” reprimanded. She
seemed on a downhill trajectory, her infractions becoming more serious and her
punishments more severe. She received
six days in solitary confinement for drunkenness later in September 1843. In April 1844 Jane did apply for and was granted permission to
marry a William McGee, but I can find no record that the marriage actually took
place. However, Jane did not lack for male “companionship”
because in early September of that year
her sentence was extended by six months at hard labor for “harbouring a man in her master’s
house.” There is no mention of who the man was nor whether he, too, received punishment.
Gay Henriksen, in
her paper, “Women Transported: Myth and
Reality” writes that the convict women were much maligned as a group. John Hunter, Governor of New South Wales in
the late 1700s described the convict women as a: “…disgrace of their sex, are
far worse than the men, and are generally found at the bottom of every infamous
transaction committed in the colony.” The cleric Samuel Marsden saw the female factories as “…a grand source of
moral corruption, insubordination and disease, and spreads its pestilential
influence through the most remote part of the colony.” As to the activities of
the women, he saw them as “…destructive of all religion, morality and good
order.” The convict women found few champions among their own sex either, as shown by the attitude of the writer Louisa Anne (Mrs. Charles) Meredith, who wrote, “Their inherent propensities to
do evil, every shape of vice and depravity seeming as familiar to them as the
air they breathe…”
Despite these attitudes,
the authorities saw marriage as having a calming influence on the prisoners, both male and female, and in the case of the
female convicts, marriage relieved the prison authorities of some of the
responsibility of providing for the women.
Women outnumbered men by a ratio of roughly 39 women to every 100 men,
so women, even convict women,
had a good chance of receiving a marriage proposal, and many female
convicts applied for and were granted permission to marry.
After she finished her term of hard labor, Jane managed to
stay out of trouble for the next six months. Then in August of 1845 she was
absent without leave and sentenced to
ten days in solitary confinement. Again
in November 1845 she refused to work
and was again sentenced to hard labor, this time for 14 days. But never again
did she get written up for “harbouring a man,” and on April 18, 1846 Jane Odgen and John Lovell requested and
were granted permission to marry. The marriage took place on June 5, 1846 in the Brown’s River parish church.
The
marriage record, unfortunately, proves that the John Lovell who married Jane could not have been my ancestor, since this John Lovell was only
23 years old at the time of the marriage.
John and Jane lived, after
their marriage, in Huon, Tasmania, about 38 km
(about 26 miles) south of Hobart. Jane
went on to receive her Certificate of Freedom
on July 17, 1851. A notation on
her record, written in the same ink and by the same hand as the notation of
her freedom, mentions a surgeons
report of “one boy, George 3 months” but I haven’t been able to find out
when or where he was born, nor what became of Jane, John and George after 1851. I can only hope that after all her difficulties Jane found some satisfaction and happiness in
her new life as a free woman, wife, and
mother.
Jane Ogden was just one of nearly 25,000 women transported
to Australia as criminals between 1803 and 1853. The large majority of the women, despite popular
perceptions, were not hardened criminals, n were they prostitutes, lazy and depraved. Most of them were poor, and had been convicted of petty theft,
often made necessary by the harsh
economic conditions of the times that saw many
with little food and few, if any, resources. Less than ten per cent of the
transported women had multiple convictions and more than sixty-five per cent
had no prior convictions when
transported. They were not a
threat to the national well-being, but they were useful to a colonial power in need of
settlers. The majority of the women
were of child-bearing age with nearly sixty-five per cent being under 34 years
old. They brought many skills and occupations with them, including spinning, weaving, and sewing in addition to skills in housework, farm
work and child care. In addition, they
brought with them, despite all accounts
to the contrary, what the government considered a “civilizing influence” upon the
men in the colony.
These women,
transported against their will to Van Diemen’s Land, were maligned and
often mistreated, but not only did they survive, large numbers of them triumphed over
adversity. These former convicts settled down in their new
lives and founded families. They and
their descendents went on to become the farmers, shopkeepers, business and professional people who helped build
the Tasmania of today.
Sources:
Images from digitised records held by the Archives Office of Tasmania
Female Convicts Research Center
Statistics of Tasmania 1804 to 1850, population figures
annually.
http://foundersandsurvivors.org
Life in Van
Diemen's Land Factories, Dr Trudy Crowley
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