NO PLACE FOR A NERVOUS LADY - Voices from the Australian Bush

Frost, Lucy

Literature & Fiction

McPhee Gribble / Penguin Books

From the crowded tenements of Edinburgh to the Female Factory nestling in the shadow of Mt Wellington, dozens of Scottish women convicts were exiled to Van Diemen's Land with their young children. This is a rich and evocative account of the lives of women at the bottom of society two hundred years ago. In the early nineteenth century, crofters and villagers streamed into the burgeoning cities of Scotland, and families splintered. Orphan girls, single mothers and women on their own all struggled to feed and clothe themselves. For some, petty theft became a part of life. Any woman deemed "habite & repute a thief" might find herself before the High Court of Justiciary, tried for yet another minor theft and sentenced to transportation "beyond Seas." Lucy Frost memorably paints the portrait of a boatload of women and their children who arrived in Hobart in 1838. Instead of serving time in prison, the women were sent to work as unpaid servants in the houses of settlers. Feisty Scottish convicts, unaccustomed to bowing and scraping, often irritated their middle-class employers, who charged them with insolence, or refusing to work, or getting drunk. A stint in the female factory became their punishment. Many women survived the convict system and shaped their own lives once they were free. They married, had children and found a place in the community. Others, though, continued to be plagued by errors and disasters until death.

Abandoned Women: Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Allen& Unwin

<p>In the early 19th century, crofters and villagers streamed into the burgeoning cities of Scotland, and families splintered. Orphan girls, single mothers, and women on their own all struggled to feed and clothe themselves. For some, petty theft became a part of life. Any woman deemed "habite &amp; repute a thief" might find herself before the High Court of Justiciary, tried for yet another minor theft and sentenced to transportation "beyond Seas." Lucy Frost memorably paints the portrait of a boatload of women and their children who arrived in Hobart in 1838. Instead of serving time in prison, the women were sent to work as unpaid servants in the houses of settlers. Feisty Scottish convicts, unaccustomed to bowing and scraping, often irritated their middle-class employers, who charged them with insolence, or refusing to work, or getting drunk. A stint in the female factory became their punishment. Many women survived the convict system and shaped their own lives once they were free. They married, had children, and found a place in the community. Others, though, continued to be plagued by errors and disasters until death.</p>

<p>Many thousands of abandoned children were treated as free labour in late 19th century Australia, yet their stories have been hidden until now, even to their descendants. Lucy Frost's painstaking research has uncovered what really happened to the convict orphans.</p>

Convict Orphans: The heartbreaking stories of the colony's forgotten children, and those who succeeded against all odds

History

Australia & Oceania

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