The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [14]
The pleasure palace of the poor was located in the smoke-filled pub, which could suddenly transform to a theater. Clowning, rowdy song, ribald humor, and parodies that poked fun at political figures took center stage as spectators, standing shoulder to shoulder, packed this den of amusement. Such bawdy acts later gave birth to vaudeville and the music hall. The pub’s enthusiastic audience, most arriving with empty stomachs and dirty clothes, cherished distraction in the wisecracking, dancing, and drunken choruses. The precocious twelve-year-old and her red-haired chum sometimes joined in the animated merriment. This was a precious penny well spent, whether earned, stolen, borrowed, or begged.
These brief respites for fun were one of the anchors for Agnes’s exuberant spirit, creating some small consolation in a world where every step, every breath, every sip of water, carried the risk of catastrophe. Life was usually short and cheap. Any mistake Agnes made among the street people might be her last.
Some dangers weren’t visible, though they were no less treacherous for the ragamuffins of Goosedubbs Street. As she and Janet meandered through the wynds that fateful night in December 1832, the tough two-some had already avoided a cholera outbreak that killed ten thousand Scots earlier in the year. Scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, and whooping cough ravaged thousands more.
From a haughty distance, the mighty rich blamed these epidemics on the struggling masses. They believed that the lower classes brought disease onto themselves because they failed to practice religion. Succumbing to typhoid fever was seen as a sign of God’s wrath, a fitting retribution for moral corruption. Local papers like the Scotsman declared that the wealthy caught diseases from “the ragged, the starved, and the degraded.”16 While the Church recommended humiliation and prayer to purge afflictions from the poverty stricken, the radical press began to focus on sanitation, or the lack thereof, as the primary cause for contagious illness.
Agnes proved sturdy enough to resist air- and waterborne disease. But now the grey-eyed girl could hear the heavy footsteps of the gaoler and the rattle of his keys. The holding cell swung open, and a gruff hand reached inside. As she was dragged off to face the sheriff for sentencing, Agnes knew that her life was about to change forever.
Mr. Green’s Mill
Across the British Empire, children age seven and older were subjected to the same punishment as adults but were exempted from the death penalty. The last hanging of a child took place in 1708, when a seven-year-old boy and his eleven-year-old sister were convicted of theft and sentenced to death. Agnes was considered an adult at age twelve, and in Scotland adults were hanged as late as 1963. Once accused, she had no right to counsel in court even if her neck was about to be strung up. Thankfully, the wayward waif escaped the gallows, though she couldn’t elude Glasgow’s mandate to crack down firmly on young offenders. Thomas Johnston, Scotland’s secretary of state in 1941, described justice during the times in which Agnes lived: “Theft was the great crime; a man guilty of culpable homicide got only half the sentence of the man who stole the 23s. [shillings] in silver.”17 Essentially, a person’s life was worth less than the cost of a teapot.
Organized police were a new concept in the early nineteenth century, allowing for arbitrary sentencing, widespread bribery, and wholesale corruption. When it came to standards of behavior, there was a fine line between the uniformed officer and the common criminal. The police generally came from