Snapshot of Tasmania #2 - The Female Factory

One of the places we visited in Tasmania that was not so pleasant was called the – I kid you not – Female Factory. But unlike the Cadbury Factory where they made chocolate, this was not a place where they made women. You could argue that here they attempted to destroy them.

Much of the convict history of Tasmania is fairly grim and this place was no exception. The female factory housed the first female convicts brought to Van Diemen’s land and here they were employed in washing, sewing, carding and spinning. You can read more about the history here.

Today there is very little left of the original site, just the outside wall, an excavation of some of the cells where “turbulent inmates were dosed with ipecacuanha, put on half-rations and locked into darkened cells”. We looked at the wall, surrounded by modern-day suburbia, exclaimed “is this it?” and then went inside the odd little visitor centre. I started to flick through an A4 plastic display folder but soon felt a little too overcome to keep going. In it was a 29 page list of the babies who died there and why.

Below is a photo of a plaque out in the ruin that says “more sinned against than sinning”. Obviously I wouldn’t endorse that as a general theological statement, and such a pronouncement could only ever be for God to give, but many of these women certainly received judicial punishment disproportionate to their crime.

Me by the sign (and interestingly they have tried to paint over some sections relating to the a subsequent fudge factory at the site)

What remains of the wall - once again with snow covered Mt Wellington in the background

An excavation of one of the (very small) cellsThe plaque mentioned above