The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women

by Deborah J. Swiss

  Like all adolescents, Agnes and Janet primped a bit for special occasions, though their clothing was never laundered and was worn until it fell apart. As temperatures rose to a comfortable sixty-five degrees, Agnes and Janet joined the many poor who washed their faces, arms, and feet in the River Clyde, cleansed a bit by runoff from the highland snows. Bathing from head to toe was a rarity for every class, not just the homeless.

  With their new friend, Helen Fulton, in tow, the girls linked arms and headed straight to the Glasgow Green, just steps from where Agnes had been born. Early summer harvests brought a temporary freshness to the city’s dingy wynds. Flower hawkers brightened the morning fog, their wagons bursting through the muddy lanes. The sun peeked playfully in and out through the dispersing afternoon clouds as the Gulf Stream warmed the Atlantic winds.

  Coal-dust-covered streets surrendered to dazzling yellow and red banners hung across the fairgrounds. “Tumblers performed miraculous feats of gymnastics, bears danced, jugglers juggled and clowns wandered about with fixed smiles painted on tired faces, among pressing crowds of eager urchins, grown-ups and the young men and women-about [sic] town.”6 Before the annual celebration began, the wealthy left town and headed “doun the watter” to summer resorts along the Clyde, deftly avoiding this lower-class festival.

  Agnes, Janet, and Helen had been around long enough to know how to sneak into one of the tented shows or beg coins from the older gents leisurely smoking clay pipes. A crowd of thousands from both the city and the countryside pushed and shoved to gain a closer look at conjurers, Punch and Judy puppets, sword swallowers, and fire eaters. The boisterous festivities offered prime pickings for thieves and pickpockets, with hundreds of stalls to be stalked, watches to be stolen, and handkerchiefs to be snatched.

  For a ballad singer of any age, it was peak musical season. Agnes had been born with the talent and desire to perform, and her singing often kept her out of trouble. Listening to the competition, she’d be able to pick up a few new songs and expand her repertoire. At the festival, she could get away with wearing a floppy felt hat that covered her convict hair. Laborers came to the fair ready to spend a bit on entertainment and cheerfully pressed a coin into the hand of a pretty grey-eyed girl who belted out favorite tunes like “Rob Roy,” “The Maid Freed from the Gallows,” “Glasgow Peggie,” and “My ’Art’s in the ’ighlands.” There was also a popular ballad about the fair:

  Glasgow fair on the banks of the Clyde,

  That pure winding stream of the City,

  Where all sorts of fun doth preside.

  Which help to arouse up my ditty;

  Large Booths are arrang’d to the eye.

  There’s Horsemanship, Theatres, and Tumbling;

  With all sorts of games to rely.

  Where losers are always a Grumbling.7

  A ten-year-old boy whose family owned a grocery store next to the fairgrounds described what he saw in a book he later published: “the Savages from Africa, the Armless Lady from Newfoundland who could sew and cut watch-papers using her toes, the Fire-Proof Lady who pranced about on a hot iron, the Hercules who could bear tons of weight on his body and toss immense weights around like balls of wool, the Smallest Married Man in the World and sundry pairings of giants and dwarves.”8

  All was not as exotic as it appeared. The street-savvy Goosedubbs girls soon figured out that the native African tribesmen were actually Irish laborers paid to dance in rabbit skins and feathers, but it didn’t matter. Children of the street grew comfortable with illusions that allowed them to view the world through rose-colored glasses every now and again. During this week of fantasy, they collected enough tall tales and adventures to last through the wintry weather, when laughter alone soothed the chill in their bones and the pangs in their stomachs.

  Agnes, Janet, and Helen each managed to avoid arrest through the remainder of the year and into the winter, but it was getting harder and harder to get by in Glasgow. Agnes’s voice was beginning to change, too, and she hadn’t quite figured out how to stay in tune. She and her two mates decided on a fresh start. Shortly after Hogmanay, the trio would head south toward Kilmarnock.

  The Castles of Kilmarnock

  Before sunrise on Monday, January 25, 1836, Agnes cinched her boots tight, tucked the laces inside her droopy socks, and walked purposefully through the neighborhood where she was born. The days were short and the sun set early, but today it wasn’t snowing or spitting sleet, and it was high time she got out of town. She had become too well known on these sinful streets, more for her nimble fingers than her lilting ballads. With each passing hour, her means for survival were diminishing.

  As a wean, Agnes remembered her mother reminiscing about a charming little village called Kilmarnock, where her cousins lived. She couldn’t recall their names or addresses, but the promise of finding family members gave her the kick she needed to start walking south. Trudging down Goosedubbs Street for what would be the last time, she touched the few pennies and the stale bread she had squirreled away in a handkerchief and fixed her gaze on the low hills that circled the River Clyde.

  Kilmarnock lies about twenty-two miles southwest of Glasgow. If she kept up a brisk pace, Agnes could make it in a day. It was much too dangerous for a lass so young to walk the sparsely populated glens and moors alone. Fortunately, Janet and Helen had eagerly agreed to make the journey. The motley troupe looked forward to a great adventure and made haste past the gritty tenement slums in the Gorbals village, home to Irish immigrants and Glasgow’s growing Jewish population.

  The ragged damsels hugged the south banks of the River Clyde and followed Pollokshaws Road toward Kilmarnock Road. Out of the city proper, one hour and three miles later, the view turned magical. Barely visible under grey camouflaging shingles, a pointed turret poked through the morning mist, heralding the first castle along their route. It was Haggs Castle, the fortress named for the bogs, or “haggs,” on which it was built in 1585. Upon closer inspection, the castle, one of Scotland’s oldest secular buildings, didn’t look as grand as it had appeared from a distance. Nearly deserted since 1752, the fortress’s rubble walls, once five feet thick, had fallen to ruin. Elaborate carvings around the doors and windows, uniquely squared gun loops, and round shot holes for explosives belied its current use. Agnes saw a castle occupied once again and converted to a blacksmith’s shop that serviced a nearby coal pit.

  Ancient remnants of history lay prostrate across the Scottish hillsides, where feudal lords had built fortunes by subjugating peasants. For generation after generation, the poor worked the land they could not own. Never far from reminders of Scotland’s past, Agnes understood her dictated fate. No matter where she lived or what she did, the rich reminded her of opportunities that lay completely beyond her reach. There were the lords; there were the lowly. Scottish society had never allowed for social mobility. For Scotland’s bottom rung, the promising economic freedom of the Industrial Revolution offered few differences from the old feudal system. Throughout the centuries since Scotland’s founding, little had changed for its poor.

  Over the farm-studded hills into miles and miles of wide-open country, the girl from Goosedubbs walked the fields where peasants had long toiled. But out here, Agnes was no peon repressed by a greedy baron. Step by step, she made her way across the timeless landscape, experiencing what it meant to feel free, if only for a day.

  A toll road constructed in 1820 eased travel in and out of Glasgow and was built according to the broken-stone “macadam” method developed by Scotsman John Loudon McAdam. Perhaps Agnes and her ragtag team hitched a ride on the back of a farmer’s cart or with a benevolent mail-coach driver. Though advantageous to wagon wheels, the crushed rocks were not so kind to tired feet and skinny ankles.

  Seven miles into the journey, it was time for a rest. Crossing into Newton Mearns, Agnes spotted a “halfway house,” as roadside taverns were called. Here horses were fed and watered or changed if the travel was long, creating an ideal spot to catch a ride. Vag
abonds, locals, and travelers stopped for a smoke and a drink. In the city, women were generally not seen in saloons, but in the country, all paying customers were welcome. A few pennies would buy Agnes, Janet, and Helen a steaming bowl of soup and a soft piece of bread. Weary foot travelers, they huddled near the warm fire, removed their boots, and rubbed the bottoms of their feet. The three lasses dared not dawdle because nightfall approached by half past four and they had fourteen miles yet to go.

  Over the braes and past sheep that grazed the gentle grasslands, the city girls arrived in real farm country. Unlike drab January in Glasgow, this landscape was bursting with winter wildlife. Geese, ducks, black-bird-sized woodpeckers, and bright blue-and-orange kingfishers kept the wooded lochs alive with activity. Giant whooper swans migrating from Iceland were everywhere. Their silly honking, echoing through the hollows, would have cracked a grin on the face of even the gloomiest adolescent.

  As the city disappeared, it was like walking through a looking glass and emerging into an enchanted countryside of glistening lakes, streams gurgling pristine water, and cozy thatched-roof cottages. The determined damsels tramped down the track toward Kilmarnock, lapsing into silence. The only sound was from the footfalls of their rough-worn boots. The lonely road dragged on and on. Four hours of majestic beauty had become tedious and exhausting.

  Five miles outside Kilmarnock, Agnes, Janet, and Helen happened upon another inviting halfway house, its pristine whitewashed stucco and shiny black shutters unlike anything they’d seen in Glasgow. Amid the merriment inside of gin drinkers and tobacco puffers, the girls made a beeline for the coal-burning stove. Toasting her feet before the fire, Agnes rubbed her aching toes. Janet, knowing that daylight was in short supply, soon pulled her younger charges onto their feet and back into the January cold. Lengthening shadows signaled the final leg of their trek. The sun’s quick descent had begun to dull the soft green palette cast across rolling farmland.

  In the thick of gnarled sycamores tinged pink, turrets rose from the horizon. This late in the day, nearly twenty miles on the road, Agnes, Janet, and Helen probably didn’t care much about abandoned castles, but the Rowallan estate commanded attention from the most road-weary traveler. Located in a sheltered hollow, it is “environed with trees, many of which have braved the blast for centuries, and still wave their branches as majestically as they did in days of yore, when knights and ladies gay walked beneath their shadows.”9

  Rowallan was, in fact, the birthplace of scandalous Scottish royalty. Countess Elizabeth Mure was born on its marshy grounds in 1315. Longtime mistress to Robert II, High Steward of Scotland, she married him after giving birth to nine children. Because they had violated forbidden degrees of kinship, approval to marry required a papal dispensation. Had she not died before Robert ascended the throne, Elizabeth would have been crowned Scotland’s queen.

  The three untamed princesses carried less regal concerns. As shadows fell, questions arose. Where would they sleep this night? Would they be able to locate Agnes’s cousins? Could they prosper as thieves in a new town?

  One mile from Kilmarnock, the girls turned onto Glasgow Road and walked straight toward Dean Castle, built by Lord Boyd in 1457 and situated in a wooded glen, or “dean,” for which the palace was named. Two square towers, unequal in height, loomed over the enclosed courtyards and three-story palace. Barren orchards, weedy gardens, and overgrown rhododendron bushes blanketed the deserted estate.

  Nineteenth-century Kilmarnock historian Archibald M’Kay offers this view of the castle: “Though grey and rent with years, it looks as if conscious of its strength, and as if frowning defiance down the valley that stretches before it. From the same eminences we have a glimpse of the town, with its towers and spires, which give it an air of importance; and the eye, ranging still farther, rests delighted on the beautiful green hills of Craigie.”10 A fairy-tale panorama welcomed three hungry, grumbling lasses. Kilmarnock’s grand entrance was nothing like Glasgow’s.

  The Best-Laid Plans

  The turn toward Kilmarnock revealed handsome villas adorned by wooded grounds and well-groomed shrubbery. Spires from eight churches poked their silhouettes through the waning afternoon light. Situated in a valley through which the rivers Kilmarnock and Irvine flow, the village was just two miles long and a half mile wide. It would be easy to find the heart of what the girls hoped was their new home. Glasgow Road merged with Wellington, then Portland, bringing the girls directly to the town’s center. Seven streets branched off Kilmarnock’s spacious and open town square, known as the Cross. Chimes rang from the Laigh Kirk (low church) tower clock that anchored the commercial center.

  Agnes, Janet, and Helen had been on the road for more than ten hours. By chance they arrived in Kilmarnock on Robert Burns’s birthday, a celebration that had become a national holiday. Born two miles south of Kilmarnock on January 25, 1759, Scotland’s favorite bard had frequented the Cross on market days. Like Agnes, Burns had been born to the labor class, but he was fortunate to have lived in the country and received an education. A schoolmaster who visited farms in return for room and board taught Burns to read and write and introduced him to Shakespeare.

  In July 1786, Burns, the impoverished farmer who wrote in his free time, shuffled into John Wilson’s print shop in Kilmarnock. After negotiating a good price for six hundred copies of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, Burns published his first edition. The village had offered a struggling writer the break he needed. Perhaps Agnes would find good luck here as well.

  On this holiday night, traditional Burns suppers all across Scotland featured haggis, “tatties” (potatoes), and “neeps” (turnips), each course garnished with humorous toasts to the poet. A dessert course of sherry trifle or Caledonian cream was washed down with uisge beatha, Gaelic for “water of life,” or whiskey. After dinner, inebriated men in kilts roamed the alleyways and belted out Burns’s “Auld Lang Syne.” The Glasgow girls must have felt right at home and thought: Lord, we’ve gone to heaven. The town is crawling with rich drunks making for easy targets.

  More pressing matters, however, consumed their attention. Sleeping in alleyways was not so easy in a small town. The charming red stone buildings on King Street, the main thoroughfare, offered no alcoves or doorways where they wouldn’t be noticed. On the lookout for a neighborhood not so posh, the girls followed King Street to a somewhat shabby lane called Croft. A sign outside Mr. Cairns’s lodging-house advertised rooms for rent.11 For a good night’s rest, it was worth spending the few coins they had left.

  Shortly after daybreak on Tuesday, January 26, Agnes hauled herself out of bed and set out to find her cousins. The trio needed to survey Kilmarnock and figure out if they could afford to stay, ideally with Agnes’s relatives. The girls began by exploring the confusing maze of streets and intersections. Winemakers, hairdressers, coffee rooms, and candy shops lined its elegant center, casting an air of refinement. 12

  Agnes’s mother, Mary, must have loved living here as a young girl. How different Agnes’s story could have been had Mary wed a chap from Kilmarnock. Most residents enjoyed a prosperous, peaceful life. Bankers sported double-breasted wool suits and white shirts with starched high collars. Ladies strolled the freshly swept shopping district, casting demure glances from under bonnets tied with lavish loops of satin ribbon.

  In startling contrast, three city girls with unruly hair and dirty frocks clomped heavy-footed over the cobblestones. The harsh sound of Glasgow street dialect screamed trouble times three and drew vigilant, if discreet, stares. Agnes, Janet, and Helen were probably unaware of how out of place they appeared. Every newcomer to Kilmarnock was noticed.

  While Agnes searched for her cousins, whom no one seemed to know, she discovered rows and rows of shops fully stocked and brimming over with capes, calico, and richly toned plaid woolens. Hatters and hosiers advertised their specialties on neatly painted signs wrapped across the front of each building. The town was filled with beautiful things. More than thirty bootmakers an
d shoemakers displayed hand-stitched footwear, much of it for export but with samples available for retail sale. 13

  The twenty-two-mile trek seemed worth it. This fashion paradise was enough to make a little thief ’s head spin. Where to begin? What to choose? Tuesday was market day, and the Cross bustled with vendors and shoppers. It was an opportunity that seemed too good to be true.

  Among the well-dressed shoppers, the girls noticed someone who looked familiar. His belongings were tied in a red napkin, a style that was typical for a vagabond. Agnes recognized him to be Daniel Campbell, an acquaintance from the back streets of Glasgow.14 Daniel boasted about his fencing connections in Kilmarnock, professing to know who would pay quick cash for stolen merchandise without asking questions. He convinced the three that he was exactly the fence they needed, a trusted accomplice who would generate a stack of shillings to pay the boardinghouse, buy food, and purchase finery from the shops. Everything was falling into place.

  Each member of the quartet signed on for a specific role. The dance of the robbers was about to begin, a well-choreographed ballet that depended on a flawless performance by every member of the ensemble. One misstep, the curtain dropped, and the matinee turned to melodrama.

  Agnes, Janet, and Helen had already targeted several merchants for the sting. The first hit was a clothing shop run by Hugh Young. The girls memorized their parts. In the lead role, one girl walked in with a group of customers. The supporting cast assumed a post on the opposite side of the street, poised to whistle at the first sight of a constable. A second lookout positioned herself just outside the shop’s entrance. Her job was to trip the shopkeeper should he spot the thief and attempt her capture.15

  Once inside the busy store, a member of the Glasgow gang slipped two men’s cotton shirts off their hangers, opened a drawer to remove two women’s cotton shifts, and on the way out lifted a cloak from the counter. 16 Mission accomplished. It had been fast and easy. They handed over the goods to Daniel Campbell so that he would have their cash by nightfall.