Lyn Horton
Repression, Reform and Resilience: a history of the Cascades Female Factory
Edited by Alison Alexander
Published by Convict Women’s Press Inc.
WHEN: SUNDAY 23 October 2016, at 10.00am
WHERE: Female Convicts Research Centre seminar, Town Hall, Hobart, Tasmania
Launched by Professor the Honourable Kate Warner, Governor of Tasmania
The latest publication from Convict Women’s Press Inc. will be launched on October 23rd, 2016 by the Governor of Tasmania, Professor the Honourable Kate Warner at the Female Convicts Research Centre seminar, Town Hall, Hobart.
Repression, Reform and Resilience: a history of the Cascades Female Factory tells the story of the Cascades site: its beginnings as a whiskey distillery, through its grim time as a prison for female convicts, then as an institution for poor and unfortunate people ranging from orphans to lunatics and the elderly. From 1905 it was used for activities such as tennis and making aloe boxes and wine, but from 1977 the crumbling ruins were protected and restored. Today the Female Factory is a World Heritage site, popular with tourists and greatly prized for its historic importance.
Repression, Reform and Resilience: a history of the Cascades Female Factory is compiled by Female Convicts Research Centre members and edited by Alison Alexander.
There will be photo opportunities with the editors and some of the authors.
For more information: http://www.convictwomenspress.com.au/
Extract …
“When Mary Ann Goodson arrived on the Tasmania, she wasn’t the first of the Goodson clan to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land. Her husband got fourteen years for stealing oats. Her son got ten years for stealing eight loaves of bread. Hiding 9½ yards of stolen cotton under their floor earned Mary Ann ten years, while her daughter was spared.
Mary Ann and the children’s crime spree happened just as her husband’s sentence was ending. Was it a plan to reunite? When Mary Anne arrived at the Cascades she probably wondered whether the plan was sound. Her husband was free but mother and son were just beginning ten-year sentences and two children were left behind, all alone.
In 1846, ten-month-old John Goodson died in the Dynnyrne nursery, where pregnant Cascades convicts were sent to give birth and where those babies spent their early lives. With Mary Ann the only Goodson convict in Cascades at the time and James a free man but living near Launceston, it seems likely that Mary Ann gave birth to another man’s child.
The entire family eventually reunited in Launceston, probably 25 years since they had last been together.”
