Two hundred years ago, the Morley sailed from London to Hobart Town. This was the first time that convict women were sent to Van Diemen’s Land directly from England. The convict women on the Morley arrived at a time before the Hobart Town Female Factory was established, raising the question of how they were managed. The Morley disembarked 50 of its cargo of 121 women; the reminder sailed to Sydney. This pattern of shared voyages continued for some time and it was not until the Providence in 1826 that a female convict ship disembarked its entire shipment of convict women in Hobart.
 
Our Seminar for 2021 (cancelled in 2020) explored the experience of those convict women who came directly to Hobart Town and compare it with those who came via Sydney. Why was the system changed? What impact did it have on the lives of the convict women?  

Seven of the presentation were audio recorded.  If you would like access to listen to these, please email us.

Session 1

Dianne Snowden:  An overview of the early years

John Ewington:  Catherine Tobin: notorious strumpet and dangerous girl? No!

Alison Alexander:  Maria Lord: convict, entrepreneur and governor’s lady

Session 2

The Morley was the first ship to bring female convicts direct to Van Diemen’s Land

Elaine Crawford:  The voyage of the Morley, part one

Rhonda Arthur:  The voyage of the Morley, part two  (read by Colette McAlpine)

Dianne Lowe:   Hobart Town and Sydney: a comparison of the lives of Morley women (pdf file of slides available on request)

John Stephenson:  Virtual Hobart Town: a digital exploration of the convicts’ new home

Session 3

Don Bradmore:  The shocking ordeal of Johanna Lynch (read by Wendy Donnelly)

Graeme Boxhall:  Maria Allen: assigned to Sarah Island – twice

Topic: "A more hopeless class of subjects?"

Convict Women at the New Norfolk Asylum

Held on Sunday 20th October, 2019 at the Hobart Town Hall.

In 1859, the Commissioners of the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk wrote, ‘It must be borne in mind that a large majority of the patients … confined in the asylum have been of the convict class, the offspring of diseased parents, inheriting in very many cases a defective intellect, brought up from the earliest childhood in misery and vice, and leading in after years a life of sensual debauchery and crime, resulting in enfeeblement alike of body and mind – a more hopeless class of subjects it would be impossible to collect together in one institution’ (cit Gowlland, Troubled Asylum, p.54)

This seminar explored the lives of convict women admitted to the New Norfolk Asylum. Presentations included:

Session 1

The New Norfolk Asylum: an overview – Dianne Snowden

Women convicted at Liverpool and admitted to NNA – Stephanie McComb  

Mary Ann Lowe – a convict – Margaret Schmidt

Session 2

Balancing silent treatment and silent histories – Catherine Rees

The Last Ladies – Chris Woods

Apprehended in Liverpool Street: Female delinquency and madness in the Van Diemen’s Land colony – Honey Dower

Session 3

Deaths at the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane – Leonie Mickleborough

Solitary confinement exposure and psychiatric admission rates – Hamish Maxwell-Stewart

The Anson and the Probation System

held on Sunday 5th May, 2019

at the Hobart Town Hall, Macquarie Street

From 1844 until the end of transportation in 1853, female convicts were required to serve six months’ probation upon arrival In Van Diemen’s Land. This probation period was designed to teach convicts desirable skills, including reading, writing, ciphering (numeracy), needlework and domestic service. It was also designed to separate newly arrived convicts from the more hardened criminals in the female factories. When the probation period was completed, a convict became a probation pass-holder.

The HMS Anson arrived in Hobart as a male convict transport in 1844 and was subsequently refitted as a probation station for female convicts. It was then towed to New Town Bay and shortly after to Prince of Wales Bay, Risdon, near Hobart, where it was moored. Between 1844 and 1850, this hulk housed female convicts serving their six month probation period. Dr and Mrs Bowden were appointed to manage the Anson Probation Station. Women from the Woodbridge and the Angelina were among the first to be housed on the Anson. The Anson held from 250 to 520 women at any one time The Anson was dismantled in 1850 and the women were transferred to the Cascade Female Factory.

A Great Blessing? Convict Women and Orphan School Children

To mark the 190th anniversary of the Orphan School, the Spring 2018 seminar was held jointly by the Female Convicts Research Centre and the Friends of the Orphan Schools, Sunday 28th October, 2018 at the Orphan School, St. John's Avenue, New Town.

'The Hobart Town Female Factory and the move to the Cascades, 1828'

held Sunday 22nd April, 2018

at the Hobart Town Hall, Macquarie Street

Spring 2017:  Tales of the Unexpected.

Online Audio files are available on our website for 8 of the presentations. To help us cover seminar costs, these will be made available to FCRC members at an introductory fee of $10.  Please contact us by email if you are interested in listening to these presentations.

Session 1: Not your usual convict women

Leonie Mickelborough: Bodies from the grave

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart: Female Convicts Runaways

Ros Escott: Cross Dressing Convicts

Session 2: The young and the old

Alison Alexander: 'Very Decrepit": The grim fate of elderly convicts

Arthur Davidson presented by Lilian McDonald: Margaret Grey

Diane Snowden:  ‘Expect the Unexpected: My Dear Father & Mother’

Session 3: Outside Van Diemen’s Land

Colette McAlpine: I want to go back to Tasmania

Cheryl Griffin: Jemimah Champion, Pioneer of Oregon

Tamsin O'Connor: Women at Morten Bay

Convict motherhood

Sunday 7 May 2017

Hobart Town Hall

Session One: Mothers and Children

Lucy Frost: Motherhood under sentence: analysis

Dianne Snowden:  Convict mothers accompanied by their children

Nicola Goc:  ‘Deviant’ mothers in the Van Diemen’s Land convict system

Session Two: Birthing and Babies

Colette McAlpine:   Convict Midwives

Jessica Walters:  From the Crime Class to Confinement: giving birth in the Cascades Female Factory

Ros Escott:  Infant feeding in the convict era

Robyn Everist : Mothering Denied – the development of infants when separated from their convict mothers

Session Three: Mothers on Convict Voyages

Colleen Arulappu:   ‘I’ll take the two youngest’. Mothers from the East London convict ship

Meredith Hodgson:  ‘It terminated fatally’: illness and death for mothers and children on the transport Anna Maria

Alison Alexander:   Women who did not have children – why not?

Prologue: women's lives before transportation

Sunday 23 October 2016

Hobart Town Hall, Macquarie Street

Session One: The situation in Britain

Janet McCalman: Analysis of the background of female convicts’ lives

Anna Jacobs: The reformers: Elizabeth Fry’s aims in aiding convicts

Stephen Lucas:The Irish legal system: was it particularly harsh to poor women? (based on his paper entitled Trials in Ireland of Female Convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land. The paper was published in the December 2016 edition of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Papers and Proceedings. http://www.thra.org.au​)

Session Two: Group Crimes

Cheryl Griffin: Thieves from the Potteries (presented by Colette McAlpine).

Stephanie McComb: Female convicts from Liverpool

Lilian MacDonald: 'Circuit Journeys' (1889). A view from the bench.

Session Three: Enterprising female convicts

Donald Bradmore:  Wicked Women: Females Transported to Van Diemen’S Land for Highway Robbery

Libby Prescott: Bigamists (One Husband Too Many…Female Convicts Transported from England for Bigamy)

Bruce Lindsay paper and slides: Mary Lindsay and the Highland Travellers: a dangerous liaison

Riot, repression and reform: the Cascades Female Factory

Sunday 24 April, 2016

Hobart Town Hall

10.15:   Session One

Alison Alexander: The history of the Cascades Female Factory

Colette McAlpine:  Life and Death at the Cascades – from the inquests of female convicts

Sally Rackham: Insights into the female convict system: the 1843 Inquiry into Female Convict Discipline

11.45: Session Two

Lucy Frost:  One final attempt at a convict nursery: Yard 4 of the Cascades Female Factory

Dianne Snowden:  Serving the poor: the Sisters of Charity at the Female Factory

Colleen Arulappu: A Voyage – a Riot – the Factory

2.15: Session Three

Brian Rieusset: The due course of the law

Robyn Everist:  Comments from beyond the walls

Kevin Green: Treated like convicts: some immigrants’ experience of the Female Factory 1854–1856

What the convict women brought with them—and what they left behind

Saturday 7 November 2015

Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay

Convict women sometimes brought tangible things with them on the voyage, money, bags of clothes, children. Some brought intangible baggage as well—the skills of a trade, a proficiency in writing, the songs they learned as children and the songs they sang in pubs. Some carried tattoos on their bodies, and some carried injuries and disease. As they disembarked, they left behind the worlds they had known. For some this meant mothers and fathers, husbands and children. For some it meant the workhouse, or life on the streets.

Session 1:

Janet McCalman: “Invisible burdens: mental and physical health”.

Lois Newham: ‘Tattoos written on their bodies’

Lilian Macdonald: ‘The town they left behind: woman convicts from the “Fair City of Perth”, Scotland'

Session 2:

Chris Leppard: ‘“There are besides many little articles too numerous and insignificant to be noted here”: understanding convict women through their 'checked in' luggage’

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Capital Offending: An Historical Audit of Convict Bank Accounts’

Trudy Cowley: ‘How did the pre-transportation trades of female convicts transfer to the colony of Van Diemen’s Land? (analysis of differences between trades named on embarkation lists with those on the appropriation lists)’

Session 3:

Don Bradmore: ‘Convict School Mistresses in Van Diemen’s Land’

Maureen Bransden: ‘Women Who Cared: convict nurses and midwives’

Tamsin O’Connor, ‘"Unpacking her Black Economic Bags": Smuggling, sly grog, sex and the price of gossip on the penal frontier.  Female economic mobility and the penal station of Newcastle 1804-1822’

Jan Richardson: ‘Convict Women at Their Needle in Moreton Bay’

Succeeding in the regular economy: the aftermath of convict sentences

Saturday 9 May 2015

Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania (Bass and Flinders Room), Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay

Session 1: Marriage as an arbiter of success

• James Parker: Could marriage change convict women, as the authorities believed? Could it increase their economic security?
• Ros Escott: Far from Jane Austen's World: the importance of marrying well
• Jennifer Garvey: The Next Generation: a convict daughter makes good

Session 2: The up-and-down fortunes of publicans

• Alison Alexander: Women at the Bar: ex-convict publicans
• Meredith Hodgson: "I am still keeping the same house as when I last wrote I am keeping out of debt but saving no money"
• Ian Leader-Elliott: Colonially Convicted Innkeeper Turned Litigant: Catherine Connelly

Session 3: A land of opportunity?

• Doug Wilkie: The Adventures of a Brothel Keeper: Bad Girl Bess and Polly the Nipper
• Deb Norris: From Ireland to the Huon Valley of Van Diemen's Land: Ellen Talbot's contribution to building a community
• Fiona MacFarlane: What Lies Beneath: Some of the best discoveries require a little digging ... An archivist's journey of exploration through the records of the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office

Crime and Crime Families: relocation and reconnection

Saturday 15 November 2014

Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania (Bass and Flinders Floor), Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay

Session 1: Female Convicts and their Crimes

• Trudy Cowley: Crimes of Transportation: findings from our female convicts database
• Hamish Maxwell-Stewart: Crime as a product of societal failure
• Melissa Fraser: Criminal Women? An exploration of petty session court records in 1860s Hobart

Session 2: Crime families by their descendants

• Elizabeth Friedrich: 'It was the taties that druv us to this country'—the story of Mary and Julia McCarthy
• Allison Ellett: Arsonists on the MIdlothian and Duke of Cornwall
• Yvonne Jackson: 'So Grave a Crime': redemption and legacy in Van Diemen's Land

Session 3: Families in crime

• Cheryl Griffin: Getting Rid of Problem Families: Mary Beacroft and her three sons
• Eilin Horvik: Josephine and Marcelin—'The Artful Dodgers' of Port Louis, Mauritius
• Colette McAlpine: The Mountains of Proctor's Road
• Bernadette Dewhurst-Phillips: 'O Lord, it is all over with us now': a story of three Marys

Voyages of Female Convict Ships

Saturday 10 May 2014

Old Sunday School, St John's Park Precinct

Session 1

• Trudy Cowley: A Statistical Overview of the Voyages
  
• Hamish Maxwell-Stewart: Female convict voyages: an overview
• Deborah Norris: Children on the voyages

Session 2

• Colleen Arulappu: Five surgeons and their influence
• Stephen Lucas: Medical conditions experienced by female convicts
• Dianne Snowden: Developing skills on the voyage

Musical Interlude

• Peter MacFie and Hamish Pike provide music of the period

Session 3: Individual Voyages

• Raelene Mibus: Gilbert Henderson 1840 (this is a copy of Raelene's powerpoint presentation - a written paper will be available soon)
• Brian Rieusset: Mexborough 1841
• Jo Brodie: East London 1843
• Mary Landers: Earl Grey 1849

From the Edges of the Empire: female convicts born or tried outside the British Isles

Saturday 9 November 2013

Penitentiary Chapel, corner Brisbane and Campbell Streets, Hobart

Feature article, Untold story of our deep convict past, in The Mercury (9 November 2013) about the seminar.

Session 1

• Cheryl Griffin: Life on the edge: How six black women from the British Caribbean found themselves in New South Wales
• Jan Richardson: Stories from the Caribbean: The transportation of female convicts born in the West Indies to New South Wales in the 1830s
• Darryl Massie: Maria—from runaway slave to convict

Session 2

• Maureen Mann: The Canadian Connection
• Alison Alexander: French women in the Antipodes
• Douglas Wilkie: Eugenie Caroline Lemaire: Woman of fashion and influence; or con-woman?

Tour of the Penitentiary Chapel

Session 3: 3 papers

• Eilin Hordvik: Policing in the Indian Ocean: Four women convicted to transportation on the Island of Mauritius
• Cassandra Pybus: From Mauritius to New South Wales: the childhood exile of Elizabeth and Constance
• Lucy Frost: Writing biographies for the website: the story of Mary Jane

General discussion

Resilience?

Saturday 11 May 2013

Old Sunday School, St John's Park Precinct

Report on the day by Alison Alexander. 

First session: Traditional female methods of coping

• Alison Alexander: Marriage as a panacea
• Don Bradmore: Prostitution as a Response by Female Convicts to the Trauma of Transportation to Van Diemen's Land: Questions and Cases
• Norma Watt: Embroidering the Past
  

Second session: Escape through the mind

• Cyndy and Maureen Brandsden: Better or Worse
• Nicola Goc: Understanding Resilience through the Frame of Madness

Tour

• Tour of the Orphan School buildings with Joyce Purtscher

Third session: Desperate action

• James Parker: Keeping out of trouble
• Jan Richardson: Queensland's Female Convicts: tragedy and resilience
• Trudy Cowley: Self-Harm by Female Convicts: Is there any evidence for it?

Women in a Man's World

Saturday 10 November 2012

Junior Medical Officers' Quarters, Port Arthur Historic Site

First session: Women in a man's world

• Meredith Hodgson: Caroline Leakey's account of convict women at Port Arthur
• Stephen Lucas: Female Convicts: Fertile Grounds for the Development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Robyn Everist: Un-natural Acts: The plight of lesbian convicts

Second session: Female convicts, their records and their masters

• Maureen Mann: Absent Without Leave: the Navarino (1841) experiences
• Deb Norris: Treatment of convicts by masters/gaps in records
• Brian Rieusset: "Lord Jesus, receive my soul": The life and death of Margaret Coghlin

Tour

• A Walking Tour with James Parker: Women and Children at Port Arthur

Third session: Lives of female convicts

• Hilary Jones: Eliza Stout: Murder or suicide? You decide ...
• Group of volunteers from the Cascades Female Factory Historic Site: Convict women assigned to Captain Haig
• Irene Schaffer: From finger tinker to first woman horse trainer in Van Diemen's Land

The Working Lives of Convict Women

(held in conjunction with Runnymede as part of Tasmanian Heritage month)

Saturday 12 May 2012

'Runnymede', Bay Road, New Town, TAS

What did convict women actually do when they were assigned as domestic servants? Papers discussed many aspects of this fascinating topic.

Session 1

• Meredith Hodgson: Maids of all work (paper available on request)
• James Parker: To The Tubs: The laundry as female punishment
• Gemma Webberly: 'I rise at dawn': Daily chores of a servant girl in a colonial homestead

Tour

• Tour of the convicts' working areas at 'Runnymede', conducted by Gemma Webberly

Session 2

• Trudy Cowley: Trades, Skills and Occupations: A statistical analysis
• Robyn Everist: Heavy Metals, Herbs and Hope: Health care for convict women

Session 3

• Deborah Norris: poem Accidental Housemaids
• Colette McAlpine: 'I will not have women of that kind in our house Robert': Convict governesses in Van Diemen's Land
• Dianne Snowden: Margaret Shaw of the 'Rajah'
• Alison Alexander: Roasting Jacks and Sugar Choppers: what convict women put up with in the kitchen

Saturday 5 November 2011
Old Sunday School, Orphan School and St John's Precinct, New Town, TAS

• Trudy Cowley: A Statistical Overview of the Voyages
• Alison Alexander: The Voyage of the Henry
• Margaret Lindley: Nature, Quality and the Sailing of the Margaret

• Colette McAlpine: The Voyages of Women Convicted Across the Empire - available upon request
• Lucy Frost: Caring for the Children at Sea
• Meredith Hodgson: Steerage or Stay Behind

Session 3—Journeys Through Life

• Susan Hazell: The Journeys of Mary Carr Hobson
• Cheryl Griffin: Unintended Journeys: the life and crimes of Mary O'Neil
• Brian Rieusset: The Journeys of Mary Murphy

Saturday 9 April 2011
Old Sunday School, St John's Precinct, New Town, TAS