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

by Deborah J. Swiss

  The Hindostan looked serenely elegant as she slumbered, safe and calm in the river, quietly masking her identity as a transport vessel. Once on board, Arabella in tow, Ludlow was ushered by a Navy officer to the smith. As the rivets were removed from her irons, the wily widow wasted no time in assessing the ship’s true personality. Tangled ropes, pungent pine tar, open hatches, and confusing passages harkened chaos and unpredictable danger. She would not let her daughter out of sight, not even for a minute. Arabella, on the other hand, studied with fascination the new surroundings, which were causing her mother’s brow to crinkle.

  This day, a motley crew had blown in from Newgate. On the upper deck, the newest arrivals for transport formed a line in front of Surgeon Superintendent Thomas McDonald. Ann Price, #177 from Limerick, was first, and she didn’t look well at all. Her jet-black eyebrows accentuated her sallow complexion and made her appear angry and gaunt.3 By her knees, her four-year-old daughter, Jane, clung to her mother’s shift as a detached McDonald recorded that the twenty-five-year-old had left behind a husband and two older children.4 Mary Grady, #221, checked in behind her friend and co-conspirator, with whom she’d stolen two sets of stays. She was the smallest of this Newgate contingent at four feet, ten inches tall.5

  Mary Sullivan, #374, was measured next—four feet, eleven inches tall and forty-six years old, about the same age as Ludlow.6 She looked much older, however, with her greying hair and protruding front teeth. Thirty-four-year-old #339, Hannah Herbert, appeared aged beyond her years, having lost her front teeth.7 Decayed or missing teeth were common throughout the general population, but even more so for the poor. Careful not to smear the ink, Surgeon Superintendent McDonald recorded one more perfunctory notation in his oversized black ledger. Yet when forty-eight-year-old Amy Wilson stepped forward, the normally unflappable officer must have caught himself staring. Amy was missing her left eye and had a pink fleshy mole on her left cheek. Poverty had taken its toll on the mother of two, who was being transported for stealing a plate after her husband deserted the family.8

  With impeccable posture, no disfiguring marks, and a calm demeanor, Ludlow Tedder stood out from her ragged cell mates. Arabella’s mother was no fool, already attentive to who made decisions about food, water, and protection aboard the Hindostan. Being able to read and write surely accorded her special notice, so Ludlow seized the limelight when it was her turn to be processed by Surgeon Superintendent McDonald. During his examination, he scrutinized the tidy-appearing #151 as she signed her name in a refined cursive hand, unlike the crude X most of the other women entered in the register. He needed a literate and stable matron for his nurse, someone who wouldn’t make a deadly mistake when she administered medicine. After all, a surgeon’s reputation depended on how many women he delivered alive.

  Captain Lamb paced the deck as the women and their children boarded and queued up for the surgeon’s examination. Lips pursed in disapproval, he stayed aft, hands clasped behind the small of his back, keeping a sharp lookout for potential troublemakers. Even one woman was considered bad luck on a voyage, and here he was stuck with a full boatload of them, along with their crying children.

  Once they passed inspection, Ludlow and Arabella were escorted by an officer across the deck and into an open hatch. Mother and daughter climbed gingerly down the wooden ladder leading to the orlop deck just above the bilge. Once they entered the lowest level, dimly lit by gently swinging candle lamps, they were assigned an open berth. Arabella instinctively hunkered down, tucked her chin close, and pulled her shoulders forward, making it easier to squeeze into the narrow passageway at the bottom of the ship. Ludlow recognized many of the faces on the orlop because most had spent months at Newgate before transfer to the Hindostan.

  After a meal of salt pork and biscuits topped off with a dose of lime juice, the new prisoners were divided into messes of twelve. Already comfortable with the sensation of movement beneath her boots when the ship swayed, Arabella found joy with her new playmates. Sarah Smith was just a year younger, and the two became fast friends within hours. By suppertime, the nine-year-old knew the names of all the other girls and boys. She’d already spent nearly five months inside Newgate playing with Ann Price’s four-year-old daughter, Jane, and now assumed the role of big sister.

  When the bells rang for bed call, Arabella was again the little girl ready for comfort from her mother. Ludlow rubbed her back and enfolded her in the woolen cloak she’d brought from London. Arabella was dressed in the hand-sewn flannel clothing and warm hat that Mrs. Fry and her volunteers had delivered for the children on board.

  At first, the nine-year-old child couldn’t figure out how to position herself comfortably on the narrow bunk, but she managed to squeeze herself into the space between her mother and the scratchy shipboards. Caught between bouts of restless sleep and anxious waking, Ludlow observed hazy figures in the fetal position, each staking claim to her only private space. Along with captain, surgeon, and crew, the ship now carried 178 women and 18 children.

  Some fell ill immediately, right in port, even before the Hindostan cast off. Confinement in the ship’s bowels, unable to focus on the horizon, proved the worst place for nausea and dizziness. With sheep and chickens on the upper deck and crew one level below, prisoners were housed in an area normally reserved for nonliving cargo. They bunked in near darkness except for slim ribbons of light that filtered through the hatches when they weren’t locked tight for bed call.

  The urgency in a clanging of bells rousted Ludlow to her feet in a flash. Unaccustomed to the routine Hindostan clamor, she instinctively readied to run for safety with Arabella. Blankets in hand for airing on deck, she first helped Arabella into a reeking water closet. With nearly two hundred passengers sharing the two privies, a septic stench soon saturated the air belowdecks. The mother-daughter pair couldn’t scurry fast enough to the top deck for morning muster.

  Shortly after a breakfast of oatmeal and a dash of sugar, an officer summoned Ludlow to the Hindostan infirmary. Surgeon Superintendent McDonald desired an interview with the widow about serving as his nurse. This was the opportunity Ludlow was waiting for, and she embraced it without a breath of hesitation. She and Arabella would benefit from additional rations, extra medicine, and safety from the crew. Without a word, she curtsied deferentially, being careful not to overdo it as the surgeon evaluated her every move.

  If the London widow were to pass this test, she needed to convey respect, composure, and, above all, dutiful behavior. Before making Ludlow his assistant, the surgeon would examine the depth of her intelligence, perhaps asking, “What would you bring me for a case of dysentery?” One can only imagine what Ludlow was thinking at this pivotal juncture. Certainly, she was wise enough not to utter the first response that flew into her head: “For you, me Lord? Why, arsenic, of course.”

  Widow Tedder knew well enough to recognize the potential for elevated status in the ship’s hierarchy. A chief nurse commanded a position of power and protection. She would be the one everyone else bribed for medicine and an extra blanket. Payoffs would provide money to purchase provisions and dried meat from the cooks. She and Arabella would have easy access to fresh air on the main deck for the entire journey. Most important, she’d have the comfort of knowing where to find medicine should Arabella fall ill during the long voyage. The picture of obedient politeness, Ludlow opened the cabinet quickly and efficiently, careful not to upset its contents. She examined the glass bottles and dispensers, each with a label penned in black ink.

  Employing humor to pull through the worst of times, Ludlow must have lovingly fingered the arsenic bottle, weaving wicked fantasies about the authorities on board. Holding at bay the fomenting anger she felt toward her situation and her captors, she pulled a bright blue bottle from the cabinet and presented it to Mr. McDonald: “Bromide, it says, sir, swallowed with a sip of water, cures the dysentery.” Common sense and restraint sealed the deal for Nurse Tedder. Ludlow’s literacy was the fortunate break ensuring her saf
ety and, most important, Arabella’s. With their homeland casting them adrift, the surgeon superintendent unknowingly offered mother and child a lifeline that ensured survival for this voyage and their future.

  Ludlow was savvy enough to know that if she fell from the crew’s grace, Arabella was certain to suffer. Every ship left port with barrels of rum stored for the mariners’ daily ration, and drunkenness ran rampant among the crew. Like any protective mother, Ludlow grew disgustedly uneasy with the sly glances sailors cast at her young daughter. She knew what was at stake.

  Small victories like this, many dependent on sheer luck, often determined who lived and who died. The fabric of her future woven by chance, Ludlow held tight to a very satisfying win in being chosen as the Hindostan’s nurse. The benefits offered both mother and daughter a bright ray of hope on the uncertain landscape stretching before them.

  Ludlow’s Cure

  It was May 9, 1839, a day Widow Tedder would never forget. As light broke over the horizon, sailors turned the windlass, and in a few heaves, the anchor broke ground. The Hindostan and her cargo sailed steadily east toward the North Sea. Slowly making their way down the Thames, the transports watched passing towns disappear one by one. The sun fell behind them and the moon began to rise before they reached the river’s mouth and headed into choppy open waters. Answering the sea’s mighty force, the coastal lights disappeared behind the rising waves, and the tenuous cord that connected Ludlow to England finally snapped. Nostalgia gave way to her stern resolve: Survive at any cost.

  The Hindostan approached good weather as she traveled through the North Atlantic. By the time they reached the Portuguese coast, Nurse Tedder and Arabella fell into a comfortable routine, gaining their sea legs and eating regular meals in the hospital quarters. Because of Ludlow’s position, Arabella enjoyed the freedom of playing on deck when the weather permitted. Perhaps a few homesick fathers among the crew found some comfort in her wide-eyed innocence because they would not be seeing their own daughters for another eight or nine months at least.

  With her arms resting on the rails, Ludlow watched the endless blue horizon, inhaled a deep breath of fresh sea air, and, for a moment, felt at peace. They were only two weeks into the journey and heading steadily southwest. On board, mother and daughter were better fed than in Newgate. As a result, Arabella gained a little weight. On some voyages, the prisoners’ health actually improved if they were given full rations from a relatively honest crew. For transports from the poorest neighborhoods, being fed twice a day more than doubled their previous calorie intake. Surgeon Superintendent John Love, responsible for a large group of children aboard the convict ship Mellish, observed: “The general improvement in flesh and appearance was very evident in the whole of them, especially the children amounting to 61 in number, many of whom were puny, delicate and mostly affected with worms.”9

  As Ludlow cast a glance back at her playful, sun-kissed Arabella, a little chuckle escaped from her lips. This was the best job she’d ever had. As a housekeeper, she had barely a moment to herself. Aboard the Hindostan , there was hardly anything to do except take care of a few seasick patients and tend to a bit of syphilis. Her shipmates were put to work scouring the decks clean and helping in the galley. When the weather turned stormy and the hatches closed over the orlop deck, the women opened the burlap bags Mrs. Fry left with them and began piecing together hundreds of colored scraps of all shapes and sizes, stitching quilts by candlelight as the waves crashed against the beams.

  By the fourth week, the Hindostan crossed the Tropic of Cancer into the seas off the west coast of Africa. Nurse Tedder no longer found her job so easy. As the filth belowdecks percolated in the rising heat and humidity, dysentery and a host of tropical diseases ran rampant. As Ludlow was pressed into round-the-clock nursing duty, not a single bed lay empty in the floating infirmary. Earlier in the voyage, prisoners sometimes hid their illness and distress, fearing painful nineteenth-century treatments more than anything else. Symptoms had now grown acute, and Ludlow treated ulcerated tongues, high fevers, dislocated limbs, delirium, diarrhea, and pneumonia. Though primitive, the medical care was more than the transports ever received on the streets of London, Glasgow, and Dublin. Some of the children boarded the ship suffering oozing eye sores from untreated infections. Surgeon Superintendent McDonald and Nurse Tedder gave them the first medical attention of their lives.

  Through trial and error, Ludlow soon learned how medicine of her era was an inexact science. The remedies were often worse than the afflictions, causing pain, blisters, and bleeding. Calomel (six parts mercury to one part chloride), laudanum (tincture of opium), and unguent mercuriale (mercury used as a salve for treatment of syphilis and other venereal diseases) killed as many patients as they cured.

  Ludlow, opportunely, knew how to temper her nerves as she administered medical treatments that seemed cruelly absurd. Surgeon Superintendent McDonald taught her to apply acid to a patient’s skin, burning it to provoke a blister. It was common belief that draining the blister forced out disease, like an unwelcome lodger to be evicted as quickly as possible. Bleeding, purging, and blistering were thought to relieve the body of “morbid” elements. Head shaving was one of the treatments used to reduce fever.10

  On both land and sea, bloodletting was a widely practiced “cure.” Ludlow learned to use lancets to bleed women suffering from fever, indigestion, convulsions, pneumonia, tuberculosis, or insanity. Because nineteenth-century medicine dictated that a patient’s blood be removed to affect a cure, some prisoners and crew were weakened toward death in the floating infirmaries. Despite these rather frightening treatments, only one woman died under Mr. McDonald’s care.

  Forty days into the voyage, on July 28, Ludlow turned forty-six. She still looked much younger than one would expect of a woman who had already lived well beyond the life expectancy for most of Britain’s poor. In spite of everything, she’d survived, although she certainly hadn’t expected to be off the coast of Africa on her birthday.

  By the time the Hindostan crossed the equator, Ludlow had witnessed most every form of physical and mental malady. At the onset of the voyage, women battling alcohol withdrawal suffered tremors and delirium. In desperation, some offered their bodies to the crew in exchange for liquor and a return to hazy comfort. Others defaulted into abstinence, slowly and painfully unmasking both sobriety and the frightening reality of transport.

  Captain Lamb would tolerate no troublemakers at sea. Two tiny cells, squeezed under the ship’s bow, were reserved for solitary confinement and contained those deemed unruly, regardless of the cause. As their destination drew closer, incidents of panic and hysteria escalated throughout the women’s claustrophobic quarters. Sometimes the penetrating pressure of the unknown was too much and drove women over the edge and into madness. Victorian medicine ignored the possibility of treating mental illness, deeming it fake or incurable. Physical restraint by ropes or straitjacket was generally the only remedy prescribed.

  Cabin fever, depression, rape by sailors, and outbursts from the mentally ill were conditions for which Surgeon Superintendent McDonald had not been trained. Even if Nurse Tedder wanted to intervene, she had first to consider Arabella and her safety. Heading through the Indian Ocean, the criminally insane were sometimes seen banging their heads against the ship’s rail, mimicking the rhythmic pattern of crashing waves.

  During the final push eastward through the Indian Ocean, Ludlow witnessed another type of high seas drama when an emigrant ship named the Cornwall raised a flag of distress. It had departed from Graves-end, England, on May 12, three days after the Hindostan, and had followed the same route around the Cape of Good Hope on its approach to Sydney. Responding to the Cornwall’s signal, Captain Lamb dispatched a whaleboat with several officers, including Surgeon Superintendent McDonald and perhaps Ludlow, because she was now his competent and trusted nurse.

  The Cornwall’s Captain John Cow asked Mr. McDonald to examine Surgeon Superintendent King, who had fallen ill
amid a very rough trip. Under his watch, eighteen passengers had died, most from scarlet fever and rubella. Returning to the Hindostan, McDonald “declared Dr. King to be in no serious condition. . . . [He] was very apprehensive however and refused to take the powerful sedative prescribed. He nervously walked the deck all night in the company of the captain and mate. By the next day his ‘nervousness’ had abated.”11

  Surgeon McDonald also examined the Cornwall’s emigrants, “whom he pronounced to be in much better state of health than the convicts on board the Hindostan.”12 Although he and Nurse Tedder had lost only one patient, many were barely standing. Both women and children were weakened by an array of ailments made worse by poor nutrition and miserably overcrowded conditions, not to mention the “cures.”

  On Wednesday, September 11, 1839, the Hindostan glided into Sullivans Cove and set anchor at the far southeast coast along Van Diemen’s Land. With the seasons occurring in reverse from the Northern Hemisphere, the autumnal equinox signaled the beginning of spring, and the air smelled of new blossoms and fresh leaves. This was the same day Agnes McMillan turned nineteen, stuck in Oatlands, more than fifty miles away from Hobart Town at the island’s interior. A full year would pass before Agnes would meet Ludlow inside Cascades.