The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [88]
Because Ludlow was literate, she may have sent letters from Newgate to her older children, Eliza, Ludlow, and John Tedder, and to her own six surviving brothers and sisters—Fanny, William, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, and Henry. Mrs. Fry and her volunteers, devoted to comforting prisoners, helped deliver parting messages to those families soon to be torn apart.
In the well-ordered confusion of the transports’ departure, small dramas unfolded on the dock. Each individual created a farewell ritual, unique and intensely personal. Some uttered not a word as they stared helplessly into eyes they would never see again. Many pressed a lock of hair into the palms of their relatives, a small loving token of remembrance that preserved the final moments they shared. Ludlow may have exchanged strands of her hair for those of the two daughters she would leave behind. For all social classes, hair from a loved one was treasured like gold and often tucked inside a locket or small tin.
Prisoners left love tokens in many forms. Some used old nails to carve inscriptions into pennies while they awaited transport in Newgate cells. Hundreds of patient taps into the metal imprinted family initials, outlines of a heart, or a message of hope—“until I gain my liberty,” “may we live to meet again,” “from a friend whose love for you will never end.”1 Defacing a penny and filing off its original design also represented a small act of rebellion against the Crown, encouraging transports to steel themselves for whatever lay ahead.
A woman known only by the initials E. A. left for her father a copper penny, etched with a drawing of her home and her dog. Underneath she chiseled the words “This was once my cottage of peace.” The penny’s other side decreed her unwelcome fate in exile: “Going out of her cottage for life.”2 Her pocket-sized piece of original art left a tangible memento, as it recorded a piece of her history that would lie undiscovered for many decades.
Transported from London to Van Diemen’s Land in 1832, twenty-two-year-old Mary Ann Whitlock gave her aunt a coin before she boarded the transport ship Hydery. It was inscribed with the simple words “Adieu, Dear Aunt, Adieu” on one side and her name on the other. Sentenced to fourteen years’ exile for stealing a purse, Mary Ann instinctively knew she would never again see her only relative. She wanted nothing more than to be remembered, and her inscription ensured she would. This small token marked her passage more permanently than a tombstone that would later crumble.
Fourteen years before, on the docks where Ludlow stood today, Ann Maloney left behind a large English penny engraved with two doves above two crossed hearts and the initials of her loved one, W. F. The raven-haired beauty with light grey eyes also inscribed the coin with her full name and the message “Tho lost to sight the Memory dear 1825.” At age seventeen, she was convicted of shoplifting in London and received a life sentence to Van Diemen’s Land. Ludlow would later meet athirty-one-year-old Ann by the washtubs at the Female Factory.
The Woolwich docks departure platform framed a family portrait that would both haunt and comfort Ludlow in the years to come. The public farewells were soon brought to an end. It was time. Ludlow and Arabella climbed into the small boat waiting below. The coxswain motioned his female cargo onto their seats. Clutching Arabella’s hand a little tighter, Ludlow lifted her irons and shuffled toward the back of the skiff. Arabella tried to steady herself