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But we have a site of
our own just as infamous as “Cascades” not far down the road at Parramatta, so
last weekend I took a bunch of people and met our guide, Judith Dunn, for a two
hour tour. The Female Factory at Parramatta was the first purpose built establishment
designed to provide accommodation and employment for convict women.
It also functioned as a penitentiary and a maternity hospital.
I really felt like I had stepped into the shoes of those
women as we entered through the blue coloured gateway to where the third class
facility, which was for the poorest and the worst behaved, was. Once inside the
gates the stories came thick and fast and I wondered whether any of us, so used
to our soft and comfortable lives, could ever have survived what these women
had to endure.
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| The Dead House |
The small building that you see to the left of the doorway
was known as the “death house” or mortuary where bodies were kept before being
taken away for burial. This was a quite a sombre reminder of what the realities
of this place were.
As I walked the
grounds I listened to the stories of the ladies and how, in spite of their
tragic circumstances, they gave as good as they got. In the words of our tour
guide “they were feisty, they answered back “. We were asked not to feel sorry
for them. We were asked instead to honour their spirits and their determination
to survive at all costs.
Until 1826 the women were housed in what was either
the Merit Class or the Crime Class but this was later refined to
a three class system with First
class women the best behaved and eligible for assignment or getting out of the
Factory, a Second 'probationary' class and a Third class either on
secondary punishment or serving time for offences committed while having
been assigned to work on farms or houses of free settlers.
First and Second
class women were employed in a range of boring tasks such as wool picking,
cloth scouring, weaving, laundry, oakum picking, needlework, cleaning duties
and straw plaiting for which they received a small payment. Third class women
were restricted to menial tasks and hard labour such as stone breaking and
oakum picking. |
| Those huge standstone walls |
Yes, you heard right – stone breaking! The factory was surrounded by beautifully crafted sandstone blocks. It was the job of the women to break down damaged blocks into rubble with mallets.
To add even greater insult to these women’s lives the administration decided to remove children from these women in an effort to keep them working at their optimum levels. An orphanage was built right next door. Children were allowed to remain with their mothers at the Factory until they reached the age of four years at which time they were sent to the Orphan School.
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| The Orphanage |
This was later changed to two years of age just after “weaning”. The women lost all contact with their children until their release and often times longer depending on their circumstances. How heartbreaking would it be to be locked away so close to your children yet unable to touch, hold comfort or touch them.
It is estimated that about two thirds of the 12,600 or so convict women sent to the colony at Sydney spent time behind the Factory walls. In 1847 the Female Factory was re-assigned as a convict Invalid and Lunatic Asylum and in December 1849 a portion of the buildings was opened as a public Asylum. The stories of murders and strange goings on continued and it seemed to us like every corner held the ghosts of those poor individuals that were forced to spend time before those walls.
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| Buildings in Second Class |
As darkness fell and the cold breath of the Parramatta river crept under our clothes sending a chill up our spines I am sure that not only I could hear the far off voices of the women crying softly asking us to remember them and to keep this site as a reminder of what they went through.
Some information has been sourced from:http://www.parragirls.org.au/female-factory.php
Renata Daniel – Newcastle Ghost Tours
www.newcastleghosttours.com.au
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