She was replaced by Anne Gordon in 1827 and Sarah Bell in 1836. In 1824 Elizabeth Fullon was appointed the first Matron of the Female Factory. Children with mothers in the Factory were sent to the Orphan School at 3 or 4 years of age. The Factory hospital was used by free and convict women lying in. The Female Factory was also a 'workhouse, and labour bureau, marriage bureau, and regulator of morality, gaol and hospital and at the same time, (was) to relieve the financial burden on the administration of female convicts and their many children'. Clothing appeared adequate on paper but was not always available and footwear was 'particularly deficient'. The Third class wore 'a dress by which they could be clearly distinguished' and were further singled out by 'having their hair closely cropped'. Following the division of women prisoners into three classes, distinctions in dress was introduced with the First class receiving special clothes for Sunday wear. M129 in 4/990, 16 August 1826 Clothing for Convictsįrom 1821-1824 women in the Female Factory wore 'blue or brown serge, or stuff-fawn, and white apron, and straw bonnet for Sunday, a jacket and coarse apron for week days, with a common straw bonnet of a strong texture'. The 3rd or Penitentiary Class is to be strictly Penal, and composed enclusively of Women sentences to be confined there, for any offence against the Laws, or transgression of the Regulations established for the Government of Female Prisoners. The 2nd Class to be Probationary, and will be composed of Women who after they have been assigned are from the impropriety of their conduct, returned to Government - also of Women degraded from the 1st or advanced from the 3rd Class. The 1st Class to be considered as the asylum of Women received into the Factory on their first arrival from England, or subsequently under circumstances which they could not control, and for which no blame could be attached to them. ".the Women in the Female Factory at Parramatta, will be divided into Three distinct Classes as follows Viz. The women convicts moved in during February 1821. It was designed by Francis Greenway and enclosed by a high wall. The new Female Factory was built on a site chosen at Parramatta in 1818. Macquarie's program of public works made provision for a new female factory to relieve the situation in which 'accommodation was so short that an average of 200 women vied for sixty positions'. ![]() ![]() Over a twenty year period the Reverend Samuel Marsden lobbied the government to do something for 'these objects of vice and woe' - the convict women. The alternatives were to pay for accommodation or allow cohabitation/prostitution with men. Here the women were to work and sleep in two small rooms with limited bedding and cooking facilities. In 1804 Governor King had additions made above the Parramatta Gaol to serve as a female factory to house women prisoners awaiting assignment and those who had been returned as unsatisfactory by employers. A smaller number were employed as hospital nurses and midwives, as servants to officers, and in caring for orphans. The majority of women convicts were engaged in the manufacture of wool and linen at the Female Factory.
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