The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [110]
Punishment rarely stopped merriment when it erupted behind the Female Factory walls. In fact, it sometimes encouraged elaborate schemes designed to torment Superintendent Hutchinson and the others in charge. Repeat offenders harbored no fear for what they’d face in the Crime Class, as explained in the True Colonist newspaper: “Many women prefer this class to the others, because it is more lively! There is more fun there than in the others; and we have been informed, that some of the most sprightly of the ladies divert their companions by acting plays!”21
The always simmering readiness for revolution, fueled by absolute disdain toward their captors, persisted throughout the year into winter’s long nights. Under the big bright moon of August 23, 1842,22 the Flash Mob was at it again. Mr. Hutchinson sent his wife to investigate the boisterous sounds of song and dance, undoubtedly fearful of what he might see. The instant Mrs. Hutchinson opened the latch to the crime ward, it fell quiet, and she was unable to tell where the noise had originated. By the time she returned to her residence, the clamor started all over again. Back to the ward she trudged, only to face silent women sitting in their hammocks doing nothing at all. This went on for some time before Mr. Hutchinson made an appearance. In a feeble attempt to end the standoff, he demanded the names of the ringleaders. Without a word, he later reported, the women squatted down, “shouted and clapped their hands, stamped and made noise with their feet and this took place to such an extent that I conscientiously say it was a riot.”23
Somehow managing to quiet the mob, Mr. Hutchinson left the room, only to be followed by a fresh outburst of clapping and cheering. Tension reached the boiling point, and he called in the town police. The women greeted the officers with a solidarity chant: “We are all alike, we are all alike.”24 The stalemate lasted four hours until the now-crumbling and defeated Ann Maloney turned in the insurgent ringleaders. Her fun and games inside the Female Factory were over, and solidarity was not enough to keep her strong. Although she’d joined Ellen Scott’s infamous 1839 revolt and reveled in the wild sisterhood, Ann descended ever deeper into drunkenness and violence as her life sentence endlessly unraveled. The optimistic lass who’d so lovingly inscribed two hearts and two doves on a coin had long since departed.
The sisterhood of rebellious unity was not enough to counteract the darkest side of life inside the Female Factory. Hunger, malnutrition, filth, exhaustion, alcoholism, and a lack of personal space contributed to riots, fistfights, and incidents of sexual assault among the women. All sorts of scandals and uprisings kept the Flash Mob on the lips of many colonists. Lady Jane Franklin, though aloof from the prisoners she had promised Mrs. Fry she would help, bristled at Mob headlines splashed across the newspapers she perused every day.
Earlier in the year, an extension of the Female Factory opened in New Town. Known as the Brickfields Hiring Depot, it became the assignment center for transported women. Lady Franklin wasted no time in launching a campaign to institute harsher penalties for the Crime Class at Brickfields. The Colonial Times reported that she had taken over “management of the Female Convict Establishment, in conjunction with a committee of ten other ladies.” On the ladies’ recommendations, “those in the lowest crime yard are to be employed in breaking stones for the finishing course on the roads, not larger than the yolk of an egg, to be passed through an iron riddle according to Macadam’s plan.”25 The newspaper article concluded with a wholehearted endorsement of Lady Jane’s approach: “This is delightful. We shall soon hear no more of ‘send me to the Factory,’ from those heroines, where at present they are engaged in little else than studying how to