The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [115]
Beginning in 1840, New South Wales would accept no more female convicts. Now all were transported to Van Diemen’s Land by order of the Crown. As a result, both Cascades and the Launceston Female Factory were packed beyond capacity. Following the riots and disturbances that plagued 1842, superintendents tried to use the two locations to separate known collaborators, especially Flash Mob members, all to no avail.
Two months after Ludlow’s admission, the Crime Class women in Launceston locked out the constables and barricaded themselves inside the prison for more than twenty-four hours. “Only after about 30 prisoners from the men’s gaol next door were fetched to assist the constables, was the siege broken.”43 Five months later, simultaneous riots occurred at both female factories, attributable to either remarkable coincidence or crafty planning by the Flash Mob.44
Ludlow, however, returned to model conduct. Quietly biding her time, she picked oakum and sometimes scrubbed laundry at the washtubs. Under the Ticket of Leave policy, well-behaved prisoners were released on probation after completing at least four years of their sentence. Under watchful surveillance by local constables, convicts were allowed to work and to marry while serving the rest of their time.
Her excellent behavior yielded a harvest of good news for Widow Tedder in autumn 1844. Launceston Superintendent James Fraser submitted the paperwork for her Ticket of Leave, and Ludlow immediately sent for her daughter. Wasting not a moment, Ludlow must have passed Mr. Fraser every coin she had tucked away from underground trade, first on the Hindostan and later in the female factories. Her carefully managed stash paid stagecoach fare from the Queen’s Orphanage.45
On a crisp April evening in Launceston’s center, a dusty stagecoach door flew open, and fifteen-year-old Arabella ran into her mother’s open arms. Overhead, black cockatoos squawked a greeting of their own. The reunited pair spoke barely a word as they walked arm in arm along the banks of the Tamar, dotted with wharves, gardens, and lush farmland.
Within weeks of the joyful reunion, Ludlow held her Ticket of Leave. She read aloud the words that justified her early release: “Nearly two thirds of her term of transportation having expired and there being only one offence on record against her.”46 She’d served five years. Though the official document recorded her ten-year conviction delivered at the Old Bailey, the reference to “two thirds” applied more accurately to the seven-year sentence imposed on most transports.
On May 15, 1844, the fresh scent of freedom wafted over a relieved mother and daughter, who began to chart a course for their future. The ever-practical Ludlow Tedder began her search for a new mate. To survive in the colony, she’d need a partner. Taking full advantage of the nine-to-one ratio of men to women in Van Diemen’s Land, she set out to find a healthy younger man. In the end, she had Ann McCarty to thank for this turn of fate. Had she not been punished for helping Eliza Morgan and sent to Launceston, Ludlow wouldn’t have met the free settler who captured her heart.
Widower William Manley Chambers managed a farm just outside town and made a good living raising potatoes and sheep. Like Ludlow, he was literate, and seemed not to mind their difference in years. Though well beyond the bloom of maidenhood, Ludlow looked quite young for her age, and surely her wit and wisdom only made her more attractive. Besides, a woman with experience in cooking, housekeeping, and nursing was highly prized in a remote colony. With Ludlow’s blessing, William applied for permission to marry Widow Tedder. Astute woman that she was, Ludlow lied about her age on their marriage application, declaring herself forty years old. She was, in fact, fifty-one when she married the thirty-four-year-old farmer on July 29, 1844.
Eight weeks after