The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [124]
As Mary strutted through Hobart Town, the dark-complexioned, dimpled gypsy with deep brown eyes would certainly have turned heads, especially at five feet, four inches, which was tall for that time.29 She’d endured four miserable months at sea and eight days more anchored in Sullivans Cove, because of the time it took to process the first women who were to be incarcerated at Cascades. In appointing staff for the new prison in 1828, Superintendent of Convicts John Lakeland recommended a staunch Methodist couple, stating:
The immoral habits and general bad conduct of the female convicts will require all the energy and nerve that any individual may possess to keep them in a proper state of subordination and discipline.30
The newly issued rules and regulations for the Female Factory reinforced a strict regime under Esh and Ann Lovell, both former Sunday school teachers. Within a month of Mary Boswell’s arrival, the first of many riots erupted at Cascades. It started after a group of sympathetic soldiers tossed cheese, bread, and butter over the stone wall into Yard One. When a prisoner tried to share the bread in the mess hall, an overseer took it away. The women went wild, stomping and clapping until locked down in their cells, where one lit cloth and pine, setting the yard ablaze. Superintendent Lovell shortly erected a fence around the perimeters of Cascades.31
Mary, the independent firebrand, had no intention of spending a lifetime under the Crown’s stifling rules and regulations. She opted out of her sentence via the fastest escape route from the Female Factory. She got married. Arriving in a wild frontier, the exotic vixen had little trouble finding a spouse, wedding an infatuated Robert Bailey six months after she arrived in Van Diemen’s Land. Released to Robert’s care to serve out her life sentence, Mary found the loophole to early emancipation less than ideal, bristling at the intent to foster “respectable” women.
After eight years of marriage, Mary earned her Ticket of Leave in 1837, shortening her sentence and reducing government expenses. A year later, her union with Robert turned rocky, and on February 21, 1838, she was recorded “Absent from her husband’s premises. Severely reprimanded.”32 By 1840, Mary’s Ticket of Leave was revoked, following her arrest for larceny. She faced twelve months’ hard labor back at Cascades.
Abandoned by his wife for the past three years, Robert fell in love with Janet Houston. They met on the streets of Hobart Town, and she somehow managed to live on his farm in Richmond for nearly a year. Returned to the Female Factory and carrying a child, she was separated from the dashing Mr. Bailey until the warm autumn day she held Certificate of Freedom #339. Unfortunately, her grand reunion did not go quite as planned.
In 1842, Mary Boswell had absconded from her assignment in a tiny village called Green Ponds (later Kempton), more than twenty miles from Hobart Town. She was returned to her husband, but by March 1843 she left him once again. Two months later, Janet arrived at Robert Bailey’s home and by the following year was pregnant with twins. John and James Bailey were born in their parents’ cozy stone cottage on May 20, 1845.
Robert prospered breeding horses and developed an upstanding reputation. The Colonial Times recommended his farm as one where “good grass and well watered paddocks are provided for mares sent to him.”33 He also invested in land to support their expanding brood. William Houston Bailey was born in May 1847 and named after the little boy Janet had lost five