The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [100]
The emotional distance created by the prim and proper language of the Times reporter accurately reflected the sentiments of the day toward boys and girls of convict lineage. Because so few staff supervised so many children, the sick were often ignored or treated with callous disregard. With only one fireplace to stave off the cold in the oversized institutional wards, the children often suffered from chilblains, a condition marked by inflamed fingers and toes and caused by the shivering dampness. A school inspector recorded what he saw: “On one occasion in my presence the master gave an order ‘Sore hands and feet stand out.’ This dismembered several classes, particularly of the younger children. There were 36 with deep red hands or limping feet, formed a double line, and were marched out for the purpose of some remedial treatment.”33
Managed perhaps more kindly by Mrs. Gazzard since 1833, the orphanage began to hire women who were experienced as teachers. They instructed the children in reading primarily to support the government-mandated religious instruction. The mistresses, as they were called, also taught penmanship and basic arithmetic. Many decades later, the notes Arabella sent to her grandchildren on their birthdays bore the mark of well-practiced and well-learned cursive writing along with perfect spelling and grammar.
No birthdays were celebrated at the orphanage except Queen Victoria’s, each year on May 24. On this one observed holiday of the year, coming as winter approached the Southern Hemisphere, “if the weather permits, the teachers take the children out on a day’s ramble in the neighbouring country.”34 Unheated classrooms, a playground without equipment and supervision, and the absence of parental attention and care made for an austere childhood, save for the friendships that flourished. Yet a bit of education and the regular, spartan meals were more than what these children’s peers and relatives consumed back in the British slums.
Two months after Arabella settled into her routine at the orphanage, another ten-year-old, Catherine Mullins, arrived at its stone entrance. Before long, they were true-blue mates. Together, over the next four and a half years, the girls would mature into optimistic young women, inspired by friendship and monthly visits from their mothers. Every evening, Arabella and Catherine sat down to a meal of soup made with meat and vegetables, “a large piece of coarse, but sweet wheaten bread” and a cup of milk.35 Before a spoon was lifted, the roomful of children said grace out loud in near unison.
At about the same hour, Ludlow stared into her bowl of broth. Separated from Arabella, a listless #151 resisted swallowing the food she tried to eat. Although she had temporarily lost her youngest child, the Widow Tedder found some solace in devoting loving attention to the tiny babies under her care.
Despite her best efforts, calling upon both maternal instincts and nursing skills, seven more children died before the Christmas holiday. By January, the warm weather that arrived at summer’s peak seemed to slow the spread of illness inside the house Ludlow shared with her young charges and their mothers. The Liverpool Street nursery seemed ever more distant from the Keppel Street quarters she had left just one year ago.
Arrivals and Departures
For a year and a half,