World Heritage Site reopens this March with $5 million state-of-the-art History and Interpretation Center
World Heritage Site reopens this March with $5 million state-of-the-art History and Interpretation Center
Charlotte Williams, 56, red-haired from Wales, was jailed for 14 years for stealing sheep; Mary Ann Cummings, 35, of Devonport, was sentenced to seven years for stealing blankets, shirts and quilts; And 20-year-old Sarah Baker of Penzance received life imprisonment for the murder. Their names are engraved on small plinths against the rusty benches of the sprawling prison yard in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital. of australia island state.
History is traced from every corner of the Cascade Female Factory, which operated as a prison for women from 1828 to 1856. Situated at the foot of Mount Wellington along a creek, it is a place with significant Aboriginal history, and continues as a prison under the administration of local authorities from 1856 to 1877.
It reopened in March of this year with a $5 million state-of-the-art History and Interpretation Center. Thanks to an ongoing advocacy campaign, the site is today preserved as an important part of Australia’s history.
Half of Tasmania’s population has criminal ancestry, and the site attests to the tenacity and strength of these women. In 2010 it was included in the World Heritage List.
I enter the museum and site on a cold autumn day, through a narrow walkway, with audio tracks of various female convicts ringing in from where they came. The actual site, divided into various yards, is today almost bare, separate from any building, except for a few matron’s quarters.
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punitive disobedience
I imagine the lives of these women taken thousands of miles away from home, some taking care of their children, facing loneliness, poor health and hard work, inside those grim sandstone walls.
Painted signs on the floor indicate areas that were once occupied by various chambers and yards, and rust-colored steel benches and signposts tell the stories of some of the convicts. A large copper plaque bears adjectives taken from prison records to identify women: beak-marked, forehead marks, a broken nose.
One yard holds a life-size bronze statue of a rebel woman in an 1800s-style dress and hat, with her chin pointed in the air. “Life inside the prison walls was tough, with up to 12 hours of duty a day, and rebellious women punished for singing as much as by cutting rations, solitary confinement, removing their bedding, Or they used to get their hair cut or hard work in the wash tub,” explains our guide.
As part of the prison tour, actor Karissa Lane performs a monologue playing the female convicts who spent their lives at the Cascades Female Factory. , photo credit: Kalpana Sundar
Bringing the brutal events of the past to life for me is the dramatic and evocative ‘The Proud and the Punished’ tour we take in the gorgeous Yard One, where local actor Karissa Lane, dressed in a simple gray Victorian gown and white bonnet, is in Stars a monologue starring six women who spend their lives within the walls: from Sarah Mason, who stole a pair of shoes and was sentenced to seven years and infamously sang during the silent treatment because ‘it gave her the sunshine ‘, said Mary Hutchinson, superintendent and matron, who established the first nursery inside the hospital premises and aspired to ‘give children a better life than their mothers’. “Three out of 10 children will not be able to do so because of neglect, poor hospital facilities and malnutrition,” says Lane, whose ancestor Mary Leary was also a prisoner here.
UK and Ireland criminals
At least 7,000 female convicts from Britain and Ireland have been passed through these portals for petty crimes such as theft of a pair of shoes or a bun. Transport to Australia became a popular method of punishment with increasing crime in industrial Britain, and as a move to colonize Australia which was rich in timber and flax. An estimated 160,000 convicts were deported to Australia between 1788 and 1868, of whom about 25,000 were women.
Not everyone escaped horror and hardship. “The factory was damp and cold with icy winds and poor ventilation. Between 1828 and 1879, 220 women died here – some during childbirth and some from diseases like tuberculosis,” says our guide.
As I walk out of the prison walls, Lane’s voice, that of a convicted character, rings in my ears. She says that prison can destroy everything but “cannot break his mind”. These resilient women who become extraordinary in the face of adversity finally have a site that celebrates their courage. After all, many of them are the founding mothers of Australia.
Freelance travel writer and photographer based in Chennai.