The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [102]
Although the Catos were dismissed from Cascades for their transgressions, there was nowhere to send the increasingly rowdy members of the Flash Mob. The more they were punished, the more unruly and outrageous their rebellion. Five months before Ludlow’s arrival, the infamous Ellen Scott was charged with “violently assaulting Mr. Hutchinson with intent to kill or do him some bodily harm.”43 The women at the factory realized they had nothing left to lose as their treatment worsened, and the Mob escalated from simple defiance into all-out war.
Among those involved in the May 6, 1839, riot was Ann Maloney, the Londoner who had left behind a penny for her loved one W. F., engraved with two hearts and two doves. Fourteen years into her life sentence for larceny in a boardinghouse, Ann turned bitter and ornery, her optimism long departed from the days she inscribed the love token inside Newgate Prison. A year after being admitted to Cascades, she attempted escape with a friend named Martha Griffith. While scaling the prison wall, Ann broke her leg, and the constable sentenced both girls to bread and water in solitary confinement. In 1829, Ann had married and was remanded to her husband’s oversight for the remainder of her sentence, an escape clause for female convicts. But when the couple was caught running a brothel in Hobart Town, she was returned to Cascades and the company of her Flash Mob mates.
Malnourished, neglected, and increasingly angry women were packed tight behind the stone walls. Seething frustration toward hypocrites like the Reverend Bedford, controller and abuser of many, fueled the Mob’s fury. Five others participated in the insurrection directed toward the often-tired, paper-pushing superintendent. Each was charged with insubordination for “forcibly, violently and in a turbulent manner resisting Mr. Hutchinson and refusing to obey his lawful commands.”44 He immediately sentenced Ann Maloney to twelve months at the washtubs and sent Ellen Scott to Launceston for two years’ hard labor.
The Hobart Town newspapers printed in-depth stories about the Mob’s escapades and included more details in the police report section. In an article about Ellen Scott and her conspirators, the Colonial Times wrote:
We have appended to the title of this article, the term “Flash Mob;” that this term is technical, is sufficiently obvious; but few of our readers,—few, indeed, of any who possess the ordinary attributes of human nature, can even conjecture the frightful abominations, which are practised by the women, who compose this mob. Of course, we cannot pollute our columns with the disgusting details, which have been conveyed to us; but we may, with propriety, call the notice of the proper Functionaries to a system of vice, immorality, and iniquity, which has tended, mainly, to render the majority of female assigned servants, the annoying and untractable animals, that they are.45
Despite these declarations of condemnation, the Colonial Times filled many columns with tasty tidbits about the women so often deemed unworthy of its time and attention. Ellen Scott was not alone in providing fodder for gossipmongers. Whisperers were all about town in the shops, gardens, and pubs.
After the departure of the Female Factory’s dark heroine, a new cast of colorful characters emerged more vibrant than ever from this theater of unimaginable horrors. Each player took an unspoken oath to torment her captors and stand by her sisters. Like Ellen Scott, Catherine Henrys reached legendary status inside Cascades and across Van Die-men’s Land. Twenty-nine, with deep pockmarks across her face, she was transported from Ireland in 1836,