The Female Factory – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

Hobart from Old Wharf by John Skinner Prout, (1844). Allport Library and Museum, State Library of Tasmania

May 27, 2024

Thieves, needlewomen, Aboriginal warriors and a ten-year-old boy: the free people transported as convicts to Van Diemen’s Land

Kristyn Harman, University of Tasmania and Victoria Nagy, University of Tasmania

Along with British and Irish convicts, 627 free men, women and children were transported to the 19th-century penal colonies of Van Diemen’s Land. Their stories, mostly forgotten, are moving.

April 11, 2022

Hidden women of history: ‘the Buzzwinker’ Ellen Miles, child convict, goldfields pickpocket and vagrant

Janet McCalman AC, The University of Melbourne

Transported to Van Diemen’s Land aged 11, Ellen Miles went on to riot in Launceston’s Female Factory, seek fortune in gold-rush Victoria and live to nearly 90.

John Skinner Prout’s 1849 painting of the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart, Van Dieman’s Land, where Alexandrina bore an illegitimate child. Wikimedia Commons

October 21, 2021

Hidden women of history: how ‘lady swindler’ Alexandrina Askew triumphed over the convict stain

Janet McCalman AC, The University of Melbourne

Deported to Australia as a convict at the age of 18, Alexandrina Askew reinvented herself as a woman of means, with a mysterious habit of misplacing her purse.

Articles on The Female Factory

Displaying all articles

Thieves, needlewomen, Aboriginal warriors and a ten-year-old boy: the free people transported as convicts to Van Diemen’s Land

Hidden women of history: ‘the Buzzwinker’ Ellen Miles, child convict, goldfields pickpocket and vagrant

Hidden women of history: how ‘lady swindler’ Alexandrina Askew triumphed over the convict stain

Top contributors

Articles on The Female Factory

Displaying all articles

Related Topics

Top contributors

Links