The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [107]
As they headed through the warm January summer, Janet could not hold back the dreadful future that lay ahead. Forced to wean William in early February, precisely six months from the day he was born, Janet at first refused to leave the nursery. With the onset of six months’ hard labor for the crime of unwed pregnancy, she’d be allowed to visit her infant son only once a week. Ludlow tried to comfort the loving mother, reminding her that she could visit William the following Sunday, and Agnes would rock him to sleep once the kitchen was clean and tidy at night. Still inconsolable at being separated from her son, Janet trudged down Liverpool Street, a watchful magistrate at her side.
Janet’s Sunday visit never happened. Baby William Houston died on Wednesday, February 9, 1842. Over the next six weeks, Ludlow and Agnes were present at the deaths of six more children, ranging in age from seven to fifteen months. Janet’s sweet son must have succumbed to one of the deadly outbreaks that struck the overcrowded little house with neither warning nor recourse. Now it was Agnes’s turn to assume the role of protector for the loyal mate who’d always watched out for her. Somehow she persuaded nursery matron Mrs. Slea to allow her to tag along and retrieve Janet from the washtubs at Cascades. It was the worst moment the two childhood friends had ever faced.
Back at Liverpool Street, Nurse Tedder gently washed little William and wrapped him in a layer of off-white muslin. Numb with grief, Janet hurried into the nursery and snuggled her son against her heart one last time before his final passage toward the harbor. Mrs. Slea lined a wooden box with scraps of cloth before she placed the infant inside. Agnes held tight to one arm and Ludlow the other as they helped Janet down Liverpool Street to Harrington, walking the three blocks in silence. Onlookers fell to deferential quiet as they viewed the common sight of a roughly hewn gumwood crate turned tiny makeshift coffin.
As they neared the town’s oldest burial grounds at the corner of Harrington and Davey Streets, a summer breeze off the River Derwent spread the essence of eucalyptus over the ragged funeral procession. A bit run-down, St. David’s Cemetery was set on a quiet plot surrounded by twisted gum trees, their leafy branches cradling the edges of the burial plots.
Situated near the busy harbor, the cemetery was visible to many passersby who witnessed the two or three prisoner burials nearly every day of the week. So common were Hobart Town funerals that citizens spoke of the rare “maiden day” when not a soul was buried. Hugh Hull, a former Londoner and now government official, observed convict burials about the same time as William’s passing: “A few words are mumbled over the body by the purse-proud Clergyman, who as he receives nothing for the business, very soon hurries it over . . . and the hole is not filled up for two days. . . . The thistle takes the place of sweet, lowly flowers which usually bloom in churchyards and there is no one to cut them down. . . .”10 The occasional goat would slip through a hole in the stone wall and graze over the graves until someone shooed it away.11
On a bright and clear February morning between the summer storms, three women wearing the telltale Cascades grey shuffled across the cemetery to St. David’s far corner. An unpaid and uninterested minister joined the three prisoners and Mrs. Slea on the lush green near a freshly dug shallow grave. He opened his Bible and began to recite the words he already knew: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. . . .” Janet heard nary a word, as her eyes remained fixed on the smooth grey bark covering her son. “Surely goodness and mercy shall