The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [67]
Janet underwent the same processing as Agnes, but the Hutchinsons directed her to a different mess. It was noon, and Mrs. Cato rang the bell for dinner, as the midday meal was called. Straggling at the back of the line, Agnes lifted her eyebrows the moment she caught Janet’s eyes. What in the bloody hell have we gotten ourselves into?
Prisoners rotated the duty of serving the meal to those seated on wooden benches at long tables. The menu remained the same, every day, every week. The two Glasgow lasses sipped their first taste of watery ox-head soup, garnished with a big hunk of brown bread. Prepared without regard for nutritional value, the recipe called for twenty-five pounds of meat for every one hundred quarts of broth. When the ox head wasn’t all bone, each girl received about four ounces of gristly protein a day.24
After the meal, Agnes and Janet milled about aimlessly until everyone was bathed and checked off the roster list. With a clap of her hands, Matron Hutchinson corralled the assembly of newly uniformed women and shushed their restless children. It was time for the first of many lectures by Superintendent Hutchinson. He opened his black leather book to the page inscribed “Rules and Regulations for the Management of the House of Correction for Females.” Rule Number One: No talking, no laughing, no whistling, no singing. No singing? The ballad crooner was appalled. Even London’s Newgate allowed song and conversation.
The governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1824 to 1836, Colonel George Arthur, was a consummate bureaucrat. He wrote the Cascades rules and regulations himself. With military precision he demanded of “all the Female Convicts on their admission . . . the utmost cleanliness—the greatest quietness—perfect regularity—and entire submission. . . . If these be observed . . . patient industry will appear, and reformation of character must be the result.”25 The rules were printed everywhere, including in the Hobart Town Courier because “so many of our readers having expressed a desire that they should be printed. . . .”26 Yet most of the women at Cascades couldn’t read a word.
The Female Factory’s strict regulations relied on the presumption that if prisoners weren’t allowed to converse, disruptions and bad influences could be controlled. What the authorities never anticipated was how quickly creative measures arose among women who were told they couldn’t talk.
Not surprisingly, Reverend Hutchinson warned the Westmoreland transports about punishments suffered for smoking tobacco and using profanities. When the straight-laced superintendent read the rule that forbade bringing poultry, pigeons, or pigs into Cascades, several of the youngest prisoners let out a giggle. How in the bloody blazes could a girl get a pig over the top of these thick stone walls? Their merriment was quickly extinguished when Mrs. Cato hustled over to the troublemakers and hissed a stern warning from behind their shoulders.
Standing himself a bit taller, Superintendent Hutchinson concluded his monologue with a review of the daily routine, including mandatory chapel attendance twice a day, after breakfast at half past eight and after supper at eight P.M. The little church was designed to double as a school between services and provide space for quiet study. Although superintendents were supposed to teach prisoners to read, it rarely happened. The reality of managing more than three hundred women and their infants allowed Mr. Hutchinson little time to do anything beyond managing the paperwork it took to run the institution. Though Mrs. Fry argued fervently for a school within the female factories, Governor Arthur