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

by Deborah J. Swiss

  Both prison constables and their unpaid convict policemen took advantage of profiteering. For a fee, the supervisor turned his back when the convict on his force committed an offense that jeopardized his Ticket of Leave, the probationary period at the end of his sentence. Though the government relied heavily on the police to maintain order in the penal colony, “they used their brief of keeping close surveillance over convicts to cloak dubious and illegal practices that offended the rule of law.”33

  Some constables accepted hush money from sly-grog shops, took convicts off duty to chop their wood and clean their stables, and struck back at those who exposed their breach of public trust. During the year Agnes arrived, Colonial Times editors Henry Melville and Gilbert Robertson reported on the Political Association, an organization that addressed police abuse at its first meeting. In retaliation, a police informant lured two of Melville’s convict printers to a pub, got them drunk on illegal rum, and then turned them in. The two yokels were sentenced to four months on a chain gang. As expected, without his printers, Melville’s ability to produce his newspaper was seriously undermined.34

  So widespread was this corruption, it sank to the ridiculous in a dog-nabbing racket, in which one dog was used to entrap another. Under the guise of enforcing leash laws, constables seeking a few extra coins found ready targets for extortion and immediate payment:

  In Hobart Town constables allegedly walked down the street, each with a bitch on a lead and a number of ropes with nooses, which they threw around the neck of any dogs that stopped to make acquaintance with the bitches. After thirty minutes, the constables had caught thirteen dogs. Their owners preferred to pay the constables £1 or £2 rather than appear in court, where they could not prove their dogs had been “seduced” by the policemen’s bitches.35

  Back at the Female Factory, few risked such blatant graft, but at nightfall the yards came alive with secret bargaining and trade. During daylight hours, boxes made of wood and tin lay safely stashed behind a loose brick or buried next to a washtub. Shortly after evening muster, the goods went up for auction. Tea, sugar, tobacco, pipes, spirits, and fried meat from the kitchen exchanged hands and were quickly consumed or hidden in the unseen corners of Cascades.

  Bribing a convict turnkey was an easy transaction. More often than not, she ran an underground business of her own. She’d happily look the other way or leave a door unlatched in exchange for the currency of the day: tobacco, liquor, coins, and even buttons taken from the laundry and prized because prison uniforms had none.36

  Ludlow’s new assignment placed her inside “the nerve centre for illicit commerce.”37 A glimpse into this subculture comes from Eliza Churchill, transported two years after Ludlow for stealing a cloak and a silk umbrella. She spent three weeks in the infirmary at the Launceston Female Factory and offered this testimony before the government’s Inquiry into Female Convict Prison Discipline in 1841: “I have seen tobacco constantly brought in and given to the nurse who used to supply the crime class with it. The nurse Mrs. Benson gets money from the prisoners and gives it to Mrs. Littler the sub-matron who gets tobacco & tea & sugar in the town and gives it to the nurse.”38 The thriving smuggling operation that Eliza observed from her hospital bed included creative techniques for transporting the illicit goods, like watching the submatron stuff tobacco inside her corset. Capitalizing on high illiteracy among her patients, the enterprising nurse also charged them for penning letters and even for the paper they used.39

  For an older convict with few options ahead, Ludlow took a gamble. Just as she never intended to steal silverware from Barrister Skinner, Widow Tedder now swam in a cesspool of corruption, making her choices as a matter of survival. Like the Catos’ message-delivery-for-a-chicken scheme, the offer from patient Eliza Morgan seemed too good to resist. Because Mr. Hutchinson trusted Ludlow to procure hospital supplies in town, Eliza innocently asked her to pick up a few goods from a Mr. Smith on Elizabeth Street and smuggle them back into Cascades. In return, Ludlow would pocket a few pennies she could spend on soap for Arabella or save for their future.

  If only she had known it was a trap. On June 21, 1842, Ludlow’s fate took an abrupt turn for the worse. Constable Goodwin caught her “obtaining goods under false pretenses.”40 She had violated Article 9 of the Female Factory “Rules and Regulations,” which stated: “No Officer or Servant of the Establishment shall supply any Female Convict with other provisions or comforts of any kind than those allowed by the Regulations. Neither is any clothing, nor other articles whatever, to be delivered to any Convict in the House of Correction.”41

  Though the timing may have been coincidental, Eliza Morgan knew Ann McCarty well from spending nearly four months together aboard the Westmoreland. Eliza likely set up Ludlow as payback for testifying against her friend. The court had sentenced the pockmarked Ann to nine months’ hard labor, extending the separation from her child. Surely, the two blamed Ludlow. Developing loyalty during their journey across the sea, women who huddled together belowdecks grew protective of their mates, and when push came to shove, they often relied on them for reinforcement inside the harsh Cascades prison.

  Loyalty was important to Superintendent Hutchinson as well. He had assigned the sympathetic widow to her second position of great responsibility. By 1842 he had little tolerance for anything that might further tarnish his record, particularly after the recent avalanche of well-publicized scandals involving infant deaths, the Catos’ dismissal, and the nefarious Flash Mob. As revealed by testimony under the Inquiry into Female Convict Prison Discipline, the aging Hutchinson actively tried to avoid any contact with the prisoners, preferring his managerial distance.

  Sentencing Ludlow to twelve months’ hard labor in the solitary working cells, he imposed a punishment quite harsh for a first infraction. Seeing her misconduct as another black mark on his record, he decided to make an example of Ludlow and thereby protect his reputation. Recording his indignation in #151’s conduct record, he “confirmed this female was placed in a situation of great trust under promised indulgence of the Principal Superintendent considering her to be a fit subject.”42

  The last person Agnes and Janet expected to see in Crime Class was the crestfallen Ludlow, who walked through the crime yard that morning sporting an unfashionable prison shift emblazoned with large yellow Cs. The remnants of newly shorn hair peeked from under her mob cap. After all she’d been through over forty-nine years, this minor indignity was the least of her worries.

  The formerly impeccably behaved nurse had been thrown to the wolves. Certainly Ann McCarty indulged in spiteful satisfaction watching the widow trudge toward her cell. Like all prison women, Nurse Tedder surely had enemies, but she had also made friends during her time at Liverpool Street. Agnes and Janet knew Ann McCarty from the Westmoreland . They may have collaborated to protect Ludlow from further reprisals, but at Cascades they were all in it together, and it was going to be a long chilly winter.

  Ludlow had just begun her year of labor inside a solitary working cell. She sat in twilight on her little stool, day after day, pulling apart old rope fibers, with temperatures dipping into the forties. Winter brought long bouts of chilling rain, but the grey days gradually faded away into the lengthening sunlight of early spring.

  By the end of August, the two Glasgow maids bid the Female Factory good riddance. Placed back on assignment, they held high aspirations for staying out of trouble. In less than a year, they’d be eligible for Certificates of Freedom. Ludlow received no such reprieve, and her callus-ridden hands continued to work on piles of rope. Summer dragged along like a lazy lizard sunning on a stone. A parade of unfamiliar faces watched the widow wearing large yellow Cs report without fail to morning muster. Nearly nine months into her punishment, Ludlow heard the sound of a familiar Scottish brogue. As she turned around, her eyes met those of another convict with an impish grin, looking back from across the yard and wearing the same drab shift emblazoned with the familiar C. February 22, 1843, the dauntless #253 was b
ack at the washtubs for another three months’ hard labor. So close to the end of her term, if Agnes could avoid a major offense, she’d soon be free.

  Ludlow’s future was less certain, but at least she’d soon see Arabella. Over the course of her dark-hued isolation, reduced rations of bread and water caused Ludlow’s grey uniform to fall farther from her frame. At last, the turnkey unbolted the locks on her cage. Ludlow strode proudly from the half-light of the two-story ward and was summoned to the reception room, where paperwork was already completed for her next assignment. A still-perturbed Mr. Hutchinson would allow just one visit to the Queen’s Orphanage, where Arabella, now fourteen, knew nothing of what had happened to her mother and why the Sunday visits stopped so abruptly. Auspiciously, her girlhood chum Catherine Mullins also remained at the orphanage and kept Arabella in good company.

  After an all-too-brief visit to the orphanage, Ludlow was transferred by open cart one hundred twenty miles north to the Launceston Female Factory, a new facility constructed in 1834. Although the unusual octagonal configuration looked quite distinct from Cascades’ rectangular shapes, little was different inside the prison.

  Beginning in 1840, New South Wales would accept no more female convicts. Now all were transported to Van Diemen’s Land by order of the Crown. As a result, both Cascades and the Launceston Female Factory were packed beyond capacity. Following the riots and disturbances that plagued 1842, superintendents tried to use the two locations to separate known collaborators, especially Flash Mob members, all to no avail.

  Two months after Ludlow’s admission, the Crime Class women in Launceston locked out the constables and barricaded themselves inside the prison for more than twenty-four hours. “Only after about 30 prisoners from the men’s gaol next door were fetched to assist the constables, was the siege broken.”43 Five months later, simultaneous riots occurred at both female factories, attributable to either remarkable coincidence or crafty planning by the Flash Mob.44

  Ludlow, however, returned to model conduct. Quietly biding her time, she picked oakum and sometimes scrubbed laundry at the washtubs. Under the Ticket of Leave policy, well-behaved prisoners were released on probation after completing at least four years of their sentence. Under watchful surveillance by local constables, convicts were allowed to work and to marry while serving the rest of their time.

  Her excellent behavior yielded a harvest of good news for Widow Tedder in autumn 1844. Launceston Superintendent James Fraser submitted the paperwork for her Ticket of Leave, and Ludlow immediately sent for her daughter. Wasting not a moment, Ludlow must have passed Mr. Fraser every coin she had tucked away from underground trade, first on the Hindostan and later in the female factories. Her carefully managed stash paid stagecoach fare from the Queen’s Orphanage.45

  On a crisp April evening in Launceston’s center, a dusty stagecoach door flew open, and fifteen-year-old Arabella ran into her mother’s open arms. Overhead, black cockatoos squawked a greeting of their own. The reunited pair spoke barely a word as they walked arm in arm along the banks of the Tamar, dotted with wharves, gardens, and lush farmland.

  Within weeks of the joyful reunion, Ludlow held her Ticket of Leave. She read aloud the words that justified her early release: “Nearly two thirds of her term of transportation having expired and there being only one offence on record against her.”46 She’d served five years. Though the official document recorded her ten-year conviction delivered at the Old Bailey, the reference to “two thirds” applied more accurately to the seven-year sentence imposed on most transports.

  On May 15, 1844, the fresh scent of freedom wafted over a relieved mother and daughter, who began to chart a course for their future. The ever-practical Ludlow Tedder began her search for a new mate. To survive in the colony, she’d need a partner. Taking full advantage of the nine-to-one ratio of men to women in Van Diemen’s Land, she set out to find a healthy younger man. In the end, she had Ann McCarty to thank for this turn of fate. Had she not been punished for helping Eliza Morgan and sent to Launceston, Ludlow wouldn’t have met the free settler who captured her heart.

  Widower William Manley Chambers managed a farm just outside town and made a good living raising potatoes and sheep. Like Ludlow, he was literate, and seemed not to mind their difference in years. Though well beyond the bloom of maidenhood, Ludlow looked quite young for her age, and surely her wit and wisdom only made her more attractive. Besides, a woman with experience in cooking, housekeeping, and nursing was highly prized in a remote colony. With Ludlow’s blessing, William applied for permission to marry Widow Tedder. Astute woman that she was, Ludlow lied about her age on their marriage application, declaring herself forty years old. She was, in fact, fifty-one when she married the thirty-four-year-old farmer on July 29, 1844.

  Eight weeks after she walked out of prison, Ludlow donned a simple cotton frock and held William’s arm before the altar in Launceston’s Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Arabella stood by her mother’s side, wearing winter-white magnolias in her hair and holding back tears of happiness and relief.

  9

  Flames of Love

  Sleeping Beauty

  The year 1844 began like a fairy tale for the trio of convict maids. Their lives were woven together by the Fates, as they passed through Liverpool Street and slaved behind the cold stone walls at Cascades. Now they were free and ready to express themselves on a new canvas prepared for hope and promise. The future was surely about to call them in different directions. Though they might never meet again, the women who walked away from Cascades were to be steadfast mates for the rest of their lives.

  Ludlow Tedder Chambers, the oldest and still vibrant at fifty-one, contentedly adapted to life around a rustic farm cottage outside Launceston and introduced Arabella to the country roots she’d known as a young lass in Southminster, England. Now freed from her sentence at the Female Factory, Janet Houston escaped her recent painful past in the company of a tall, handsome emancipist. And the spirited Agnes McMillan, the youngest of the three, had fallen madly in love with a mysteriously scarred renegade who caught her attention charging through Oatlands on a runaway horse.

  Agnes, twenty-three at the time of her release, had certainly scoffed at rules before. She had no trouble dismissing what the Colonial Times considered the “Rules and Regulations for Young Ladies” contemplating matrimony:

  At twenty.—Consider yourself in some danger of remaining single, and suit your conduct to your circumstances.

  At twenty-one.—Be less particular than heretofore, for time begins to wane.

  At twenty-two.—Think seriously of paying a visit to some friend at Madras or Calcutta.

  At twenty-three.—Marry any body that is not downright intolerable.1

  At the end of 1839, when Superintendent Hutchinson banished the grey-eyed rebel to the most remote outpost accepting convicts, he inadvertently arranged her introduction to William Watson Roberts. William was a scrappy lad from Manchester, with dark brown eyes and a bit of larceny in his soul. As a young man, he tried his hand at pickpocketing, but had little skill. In 1827, he was arrested for stealing one shilling and sixpence, and three halfpence. Because this was the twenty-two-year-old’s second offense, the judge imposed a sentence of fourteen years’ transportation to parts beyond the seas. While awaiting exile, William spent eight months aboard the Dolphin, a decommissioned warship turned floating prison hulk.

  Stripped bare and scrubbed with a stiff brush, the male prisoners were outfitted in coarse grey shirts and breeches and shackled by heavy rings secured by a steel rivet around both ankles. The rings were joined together by heavy chains, making it virtually impossible for a man to run, flee, or swim. Four hundred men ploddingly marched ashore under the watch of guards armed with whips. Now called by their number at five A.M. muster, the convicts, dragging iron balls at their feet, cleaned sewers, dug ditches, and dredged the River Thames. Returned to the ship at dusk, they were fed gruel and meat, then ordered by their task-masters to clean the old decayin
g battleship that was their home. The ship slept four men to a bunk in a space seven feet square, and epidemics ravaged the hulks constantly and caused many a man’s bones to be dumped in the swampy marshland following a death during the night.

  William Roberts managed to survive his stay on the Dolphin, but he wouldn’t escape unscathed. One of many rampant outbreaks of tuberculosis left a permanent mark. Bearing a bluish-purple mass under his chin, he suffered from scrofula, or “king’s evil,” a name tied to the medieval belief that a royal’s touch offered the cure. His clear complexion was further transformed by another plague common to life on the hulks. Hundreds of angry men in chains, packed together like animals, bred gang warfare, especially terrorizing the youngest boys, some barely twelve. Five feet, five inches tall and never one to back down from a fight, William was quickly rewarded with several deep scars across his forehead “protecting himself from the murderous intentions of low-life troublemakers on board.”2

  The rough-and-ready son of a Manchester coach maker was transferred on March 11, 1828, from the hulk to the transport ship William Miles. En route to Van Diemen’s Land, seven prisoners died among the 492 on board. Finally, on July 29, 1828, the ship dropped anchor in Sullivans Cove and deposited the brown-eyed Roberts and the rest of the rowdy rabble on the colony’s distant shore.

  Less than a month after his arrival, William walked off a convict labor crew. He was punished with two days on the tread wheel, a device dubbed “the everlasting staircase” and the “cock-chafer” because “the stiff prison clothes scraped one’s groin raw after a few hours on it.”3 Steadying himself against the handrail, he lifted his leg and placed his feet on the rotating steps of the large wheel used to grind wheat. Left, right, left, right, the weight of his footfall caused the creaking mill to slowly revolve while his ankle irons clinked the cadence of his steady, rhythmic pace. Step by heavy step, he worked off his punishment, ten minutes on and five minutes off for up to ten hours each day.