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By Lucy Frost
From the crowded tenements of Edinburgh to the feminine manufacturing unit nestling within the shadow of Mt Wellington, dozens of Scottish ladies convicts have been exiled to Van Diemen's Land with their youngsters. this can be a wealthy and evocative account of the lives of ladies on the backside of society 2 hundred years in the past. within the early 19th century, crofters and villagers streamed into the burgeoning towns of Scotland, and households splintered. Orphan women, unmarried moms and ladies all alone all struggled to feed and dress themselves. For a few, petty robbery grew to become part of existence. Any girl deemed "habite & reputation a thief" may possibly locate herself prior to the excessive courtroom of Justiciary, attempted for yet one more minor robbery and sentenced to transportation "beyond Seas." Lucy Frost memorably paints the portrait of a boatload of ladies and their childrens who arrived in Hobart in 1838. rather than serving time in felony, the ladies have been despatched to paintings as unpaid servants within the homes of settlers. Feisty Scottish convicts, unaccustomed to bowing and scraping, usually aggravated their middle-class employers, who charged them with insolence, or refusing to paintings, or getting inebriated. A stint within the girl manufacturing unit grew to become their punishment. many girls survived the convict procedure and formed their very own lives when they have been unfastened. They married, had childrens and located a spot locally. Others, although, endured to be tormented by error and failures till loss of life.
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Additional info for Abandoned Women. Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas
Example text
Five women were breastfeeding infants, including Sarah Ferguson, whose daughter born on the Atwick would shortly be baptised as ‘Hoseannah’, though she would be buried the following year as ‘Oceana’. Nursing mothers and their babies went through a door on the left into the nursery yard, where the older children went as well. This may have been the last time two of the Scottish convicts ever saw their children. Jean Smith and Elizabeth Brown were unmarried mothers who left their children confined by the state even after they themselves were freed.
Little more than 34 years had passed since the British set up their tents in Van Diemen’s Land. The new colony had grown slowly as an outpost dependent on New South Wales, until in 1825 it became a separate colony with its lieutenant governor no longer subservient to Sydney, though he could make no important decision or even issue a conditional pardon without consulting London. Numbering over 40,000, the European population of Van Diemen’s Land in 1838 was already nearly half that of New South Wales—and growing with the arrival of every convict transport, for this was still a penal colony in spite of the influx of free settlers dreaming of fortunes made in a new land.
Hours and hours must have passed as each of the 150 women stood in turn to answer questions, hours and hours while the others milled about the deck with nothing to do except wait. Or stand to be measured. Another examination, another list, a printed form with details to be filled in: name, trade, height, age, complexion, head, hair, visage, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, remarks. ‘Native place’, unasked-for by the form, was entered on the right-hand side of the page. V. Jackson, ‘to see deep into the life they are leaving behind.