The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [75]
As she sat in a cell barely bigger than a coffin, Agnes cursed the captors who could never extinguish her spunk. Surprisingly, she found a small benefit in solitary confinement. The tiny opening to the outside was covered with iron grates but was wide enough to let in shades of light and shadows. Deprived of human contact, her senses became acute. She listened for the yellow wattlebirds and the kookaburra’s laughing call. She fingered the greyish-brown stone that never warmed to the touch. Assaulted by the disgusting stench from waste flowing next to her cell and into the rivulet, Agnes vowed to make it through the night. There was no other choice as she closed her eyes. Like heavy shadows in a jungle, blackness arrived in layers and lulled her into sleep.
Upon release from her solitary cell, Mr. Hutchinson assigned Agnes to a Mr. Harvey. The untamable lass was soon found “out after hours” and returned to Cascades for six additional days on bread and water. When Superintendent Hutchinson sent her back to Mr. Harvey, she immediately escalated her behavior, taking his two children on an excursion without permission. Agnes didn’t hurt the wee ones, who seemed to enjoy her company, but the magistrate was not amused. He sentenced her to one month in Crime Class, beginning with six more days on bread and water.
When Governor Arthur set the rules for solitary confinement, he had assumed that hunger would tame and temper a rebel like Agnes. In fact, malnutrition produced the opposite effect, rendering emotions more difficult to contain and increasing the likelihood that she would lash out with hostile confusion. Many girls and women imprisoned at Cascades broke under the stress and fell prey to the ills of depression, alcoholism, or madness.
Agnes turned more defiant with every return to the Female Factory. She and many of her cohorts quickly figured out the loopholes created by a high demand for maids and laborers. When she needed a break from service, she acted out, a pattern she would follow for her entire sentence. Seizing the upper hand and shifting the balance of power in her favor, she turned the tables on her captors. With every scrub of dirty drawers in the washtub, every mouthful of watery gruel, every chopping of her hair, Agnes McMillan willed herself to live for the day she walked free. Rather than breaking her, her captors made her stronger. Never remorseful yet ever hopeful, she remained open to what tomorrow would bring. At this point, there was little more they could take from her.
Agnes walked away from the assignment that followed Mr. Harvey’s. On December 7, 1838, she appeared before a now-familiar magistrate. He sentenced her to two months’ hard labor at the washtub and solitary confinement at night. Agnes would soon discover what a holiday blessing this proved to be. And her future would hold a series of surprising coincidences. As she glanced back toward the hills around Hobart Town, she had no way of knowing that, half a world away, someone she’d never met would influence both her life and Janet’s at the prison nursery on Liverpool Street.
6
Ludlow’s Choice
The Widow and the Barrister
Clickety-click, clickety-click. A slight matron, just over five feet tall, scurried across the cobblestone lane in the well-groomed residential neighborhood known as Bloomsbury.
On the first day of December 1838, Ludlow Tedder’s pursed lips bore her trademark press of determination. As London’s morning sun filtered through the “pea soup” fog, her wooden heels echoed off the tiny lane she now called home. The woman with hazel eyes and dark brown hair quickened her steps down Keppel Street and