Welcome!
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The Female Convicts Research Centre promotes interest in the female convicts of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), by encouraging and facilitating research. From 1803 to 1853, 12,500 female convicts were transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), as punishment for crimes, mainly theft. After serving their sentences they were released into the community. Their transportation left a lasting legacy. The Female Convicts Research Centre encourages research into these female convicts, mainly through its database, website and twice-yearly seminars. When you register with the FCRC, you gain access to our database where you will find information entered by our volunteers as we attempt to reconstruct the life course of each female convict. We update this website and our database regularly and sometimes daily, as our volunteer transcribers continue to provide new information. Please bookmark this page and return soon.
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Annual General Meeting of Female Convicts Research Centre - 6th August 2018
The Annual General Meeting of the Female Convict Research Centre Inc. will be held in on Monday 6th August at 4.30pm at the General Office of the Female Factory Historic Site, 16 Degraves St., South Hobart (entry via the rear carpark). The business of the meeting will be to elect office-holders, to adopt new Rules of Incorporation as attached, and to table reports, including financial accounts. See attached agenda. If you would like further information about the proposed changes to the Rules please contact the Public Officer at info@femaleconvicts.org.au
The Annual General Meeting of Convict Women’s Press Inc. will be held at the same place at 5.15pm. Please see the Convict Women's Press website for further information.
Following the two meetings, all members are invited to dine with the Committees at the Cascades Hotel.
Ros Escott
Public Officer
Australian Historical Association Kay Daniels Award won by Joan Kavanagh and Dianne Snowden for ‘Van Diemen’s Women. A History of Transportation’ |
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Congratulations to Dr Dianne Snowden AM (President of FCRC) and Joan Kavanagh. The Australian Historical Association has announced the winners of its 2018 prizes and awards. The Kay Daniels Award recognises outstanding original research with a bearing on Australian convict history and heritage including in its international context. The winners of the Kay Daniels Award 2018 were Joan Kavanagh and Dianne Snowden, Van Diemen’s Women: A History of Transportation to Tasmania (The History Press Ireland Ltd). |
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Citation This is a very impressive work in which the authors have mastered a prodigious quantity of primary sources. It follows the lives of the 138 Irish women (and their 35 children) transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the convict transport Tasmania (2) in 1845, the year that the potato blight first struck Ireland. The study sets out to examine the women, the conditions in which they lived in Ireland, the reasons for their sentencing and the social impact of their transportation. In this it succeeds admirably. Moreover, the exploration of the women’s descendants emphasises the role convictism played in the formation of contemporary Australia, as well as the global familial connections forged through the results of forced migration and transportation. This book is weighty contribution to our knowledge of female convicts and as such is a worthy recipient of the Kay Daniels Award. It will be valuable in a scholarly sense, by adding to our knowledge and by providing research insights. It may also offer insights to family historians working on convict lives by providing new research directions. |
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Forty South Publishing 'The Van Diemen History Prize 2018/19'
To foster quality writing about Tasmanian history, Forty South Publishing is initiating a biennial prize for non-fiction history articles written for a general audience. Entries open July 1, 2018 and must be lodged by September 24, 2018. The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $500 and publication in Tasmania 40°South magazine.
A selection of the best entries will be published in an edited volume, The Van Diemen History Anthology 2019
(publication estimated to be in mid-2019). For further details, Terms and Conditions and entry form, please visit https://fortysouth.com.au/tasmanian-writers-prize/
Spring Seminar, 28th October 2018Topic: A Great Blessing? Convict Women and Orphan School ChildrenRegistrations open 28th JulyLieutenant-Governor Arthur believed it would be ‘a great blessing’ for the children of convicts to be removed from their parents. Our next seminar explores the relationship between the Orphan School, the orphans and convict women. In 1828, women convicts transferred from the old Hobart Town Female Factory to the new Factory at the Cascades. In 1828, the King’s Orphan Schools opened. To mark the 190th anniversary of both institutions, our next seminar will be run jointly by the Female Convicts Research Centre and the Friends of the Orphan Schools and it will be held at the Orphan School, St John’s Avenue, New Town (http://www.orphanschool.org.au). |
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania |
New Rowan Gillespie StatuesIrish sculptor Rowan Gillespie has agreed to create a statue of a convict woman for the Cascades Female Factory and two statues, a boy and a girl, for the Orphan School site as part of a new Tasmanian project. More information will be provided as it comes to hand. Enquiries to dsnowden@tassie.net.au |
Convict Lives at the Cascades Female Factory (Volume 2)The Latest Publication from Convict Women's Press. |
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THE FASCINATING LIVES of 29 female convicts who spent time in the Cascades Female Factory, between 1829 and 1855, are the subject of this book. The women range from young offenders to prosperous matriarchs; from tough customers to those educated enough to write letters home. Some got through the convict system fairly easily; some struggled, committing offence after offence – insolence, neglect of work, theft. Some had children, some did not. Many saw their children die. Some died in childbirth. The 24 authors of the stories come from Tasmania, the Australian mainland and as far afield as Canada. Some are descendants of the female convict they write about, and bring family knowledge to their story. Others are academics, general historians or just interested people. This is the fifth book in the Convict Women’s Press series of Convict Lives in Van Diemen’s Land’s female factories. It is a wonderful collection of stories, showing the ups and downs of Tasmania’s convict system, and the important role of the Cascades Female Factory. Format: Paperback, (colour plates). Pages: 200. ISBN: 978-0-9943859-1-8. Edited by Alison Alexander and Alice Meredith Hodgson. Published by Convict Women's Press
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Save The Dates:Spring Seminar 2018: 28th October 2018 Autumn Seminar 2019: 28th April 2019 |
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Recent Updates
- Ships - Surgeon's Journal Greenlaw 1844. Transcription courtesy of Colleen Arulappu (6/07/2018). The journal has a complete set of names from his Sick List, including convicts, crew and master of the ship. There were five deaths during the voyage and in the General Remarks at the end of the journal the surgeon commented on the diet in Irish jails which he felt contributed to the outbreak of scurvy on board. He also recommended changes in the provisions supplied, especially for those ships which carried Irish convicts.
- Research Seminars - Prologue: women's lives before transportation - Libby Prescott: Bigamists (One Husband Too Many…Female Convicts Transported from England for Bigamy) (30/07/2018)
- The East London - Chapter 15: Related or Tried on the Same Day. By Colleen Arulappu (1/07/2018). Did crime occur in isolation? Many women on the East London were tried with other members of their families. They committed crimes together. In this chapter Colleen researches the relationships between female convicts on the East London.
- Ships - Surgeon's Journal from the Gilbert Henderson 1840. Transcription courtesy of Rhonda Arthur (19/06/2018).
Sir John Hamett MD was Surgeon Superintendent and highly qualified for this command. 184 female convicts, 15 free women and 24 children embarked at Woolwich. 1 female convict died, 3 were sent to the Colonial Hospital on arrival and 1 infant was unintentionally given a fatal dose of Laudanum by her devoted mother. There were 9 deliveries of women on board: 7 were healthy and 2 were stillborn. These women and infants together with other bad cases repeatedly required Castor Oil, a “valuable medicine”, of which 2½lbs first supplied at Deptford was replenished by the surgeon when the ship anchored at Teneriffe (2lbs) and at Table Bay (1lb). Constitutional hysteria together with a few complicated cases were necessarily palliative and with these exceptions constipation was the most prevalent. The other complaints in general were not severe and treated with cathartics, sudorifics and tonics.