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Convict Women in Australia

Convict women in Australia were the female segment of British prisoners transported during the 18th and 19th centuries to carry out their sentences in what is now Australia. Transportation to the penal settlement in Australia was an alternative for other harsh punishments such as death by hanging. The poverty stricken convicts were viewed as prostitutes when compared with the upper class women in Britain. Although many women were driven to prostitution during the hard convict life in Australia, none were transported for prostitution from Britain because it was never a transportable offense. During the long voyage from Britain to Australia and upon arrival, many women took advantage of their sex as a way of improving their situations. Those convicts who were not given assigned work were sent to female factories to carry out their sentences.

Background
18th century Britain experienced a huge gulf in economic wealth. A small minority lived in mansions filled with servants and other luxuries, while the huge majority of Britain remained in extreme poverty. This rift brought upon drunkenness, child labor, harsh living and working conditions, and crime. The prisons in England were overcrowded and there was no attempt to segregate the prisoners by level of offense, age, or sex. In response to growing crime, the British government issued harsh punishments such as public hangings or exile, and during the 17th and 18th centuries many prisoners were transported to Australia to carry out their sentence. A relatively small percentage of those transported were women. Between 1788 and 1852, male convicts outnumbered the female convicts six to one. The convict women who were transported varied from small children to old women, but the majority of the women were in their twenties or thirties. The British Government called for more women of “marriageable” age to be sent to Australia in order to promote family development for emancipated convicts and free settlers.

Despite the belief that convict women during the transportation period were all prostitutes, no women were transported for prostitution. The majority of the women sent to Australia were convicted for what we would now consider minor offenses, such as petty theft, and most women did not receive sentences of more than seven years. Many women were driven to prostitution upon arrival in Australia as means of survival because they were often required to house themselves at night or buy clothing and bedding on their own.

The voyage
The voyage describes the harsh journey on a ship from Britain to Australia. The voyage set the tone for the hard life the women were to lead in a penal society.

The First Fleet was the first set of ships to transport convicts to Australia. The First Fleet sailed in 1787 and the last ship transporting convicts to Western Australia was in 1868. The beginning of the transportation years brought ships at inconsistent timings and the death rate on these ships remained high. In the Second Fleet 267 out of 1,006 prisoners died at sea but at the peak of transportation, the death rate was a little more than one percent. The First Fleet took 252 days to reach its destination due to several stops made along the way, but with improved technology and planning, voyages made after the 1830s rarely went over 110 days. The conditions on the ship were difficult for the convicts; their clothes were tattered, the stenches and filth were almost unbearable, and disease raged. Some women suffered flogging, and many were chained up as forms of punishment for misbehavior.

Ralph Clark, a marine officer on board the Friendship (ship) in the First Fleet kept a journal of his journey to Australia. He described the women on board as "abandoned wenches” and continually expressed a negative attitude towards the convict women, which was common especially for men of Ralph Clark’s social standing. The behavior of the women was an extreme opposite when compared to the prudent characteristics of a respectable woman of upper class. When four marine sailors on board the Friendship were caught with four female convicts, the captain of the ship had the sailors flogged, and in Clark's journal he confesses, "If I had been the Commander I would have flogged the four whores also." However, Ralph Clark did not include in his journal that he fathered a child to a convict woman named Mary Branham in July 1791.

Despite the critical attitude towards the female convicts by many men onboard, some of the seamen developed relationships with the women while on the voyage. Women often used their bodies as ways of bettering their conditions, but the long voyages also stimulated emotional relationships between the convict women and the seamen. The Lady Juliana was a ship in the Second Fleet, the second set of convict ships to sail to Australia. The female convicts on this ship immediately began to pair off with the seamen, which mirrored the arrangement in subsequent voyages. John Nicol, a Scottish steward recalled, "Every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath." These relationships were not always exclusively sexual. Nicol himself expresses his desire to marry and bring back to England his convict "wife" Sarah Whitlam after her release.

Female Factories
Female Factories in Australia housed convict women who were awaiting assignment, pregnant, or undergoing punishment. They were called factories because the women were expected to work and the factories also employed free working women. Task work was established in female factories in 1849, which required the women to work general duties, do needle work and washing. If extra work was done, the convict could possibly shorten their sentence. Punishments for misconduct in the factories were often humiliating, and a common one was to shave off the hair on the woman's head.

Conditions in these factories were miserable for the women, given the example of the female factory in Parramatta. Those women were not given mattresses or blankets to sleep on and the social conditions inside were indecent.

Parramatta Female Factory

The Parramatta female factory was the first female factory built in Australia and was located in Parramatta, New South Wales. The factory only had room for a third of the female prisoners while the rest were to find lodging with the local settlers at some cost, usually about four shillings a week. Many women could only pay for this cost by offering sexual services. Their customers were usually male convicts who came and left the factory as they pleased.

In 1819 Macquarie had ex-convict Francis Greenway create a new design for the factory. This new design had the inmates divided into three categories: the "general", "merit", and "crime" class. The "crime" class women had their hair cropped as a mark of disgrace and were the incorrigibles. The "merit" class, or first class consisted women who kept good behavior for at least six months and women who had recently arrived from England. These girls were eligible to marry and eligible for assignment. The second or "general" class was made up of women who were sentenced for minor offenses and could be transferred to the first class after a period of probation. This class consisted of many women who had become pregnant during their assigned service. The factory at Parramatta was a source of wives for settlers and emancipated convicts. With a written permit from Reverend Samuel Marsden and a written notice to the matron a bachelor could take his pick of a willing "factory lass."

Family and Marriage
Marriage and family between male and female convicts was encouraged because of the government’s intentions of developing a free colony. It was the objective of the British government to establish a colony in Australia, and not have it remain as a penal settlement. This compelled the government to send more women to Australia, as a way of establishing a native population. At the arrival of female ships, colonists swarmed to the dock to bargain for a female servant. High ranked marine officers had first pick and it went down the ranks. Some women were taken as mistresses and others as servants. There were no legal ties for these assignments, so a settler could dismiss a convict woman freely. When this did occur, it created a class of woman who often resorted to prostitution in order to feed and house themselves properly.

Reverend Samuel Marsden categorized the women convicts into being married or prostitutes. If a woman were to have a relationship out of wedlock, Marsden considered this whoredom. Many couples lived and cohabited together monogamously without being officially married, yet these women were recorded as being prostitutes. They were either deemed as saints or as whores. The women were scarred from being convicted and could not redeem their status because it differed so greatly from the British ideal of a women, who was virtuous, polite, and a woman of the family.