The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [104]
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.”4
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