Female Factory: Female Convicts Exiled From Britain To Van Diemen's Land
Australian History Social History Convict History Young Adult Non-Fiction Biography & Memoir Tasmanian History Women's History Colonial Studies
Female Factory: Female Convicts Exiled From Britain To Van Diemen’s Land is the only illustrated, single-volume chronicle that tracks the 12,500 women Britain shipped to Tasmania’s Female Factories between 1803 and 1853. In 199 tightly-packed pages author Tony Rayner reconstructs their voyage, incarceration and eventual release through newly-digitised ship logs, factory ledgers, surgeon-superintendent diaries and the women’s own later testimony, making the book both a gripping narrative and an invaluable quick-reference source for family historians.
Rayner’s trademark is to match each official record with the lived experience behind it: readers watch pregnant convict Sarah Pearson barter for extra rations on the ship’s deck, see the colour-coded uniforms that marked a woman’s “moral class” inside the Cascades Factory, and follow the entrepreneurial “assigned servants” who became colonial dressmakers, publicans and farmers. Archival sketches, floor plans and rare 1840s daguerreotypes are reproduced on the page so the visual evidence sits beside the text—perfect for students who need primary sources or teachers building lesson plans on Australia’s convict past.
Collectors value the 2012 first edition for its comprehensive index of every female transport listed by vessel, plus cross-referenced married names and places of death; the very-good paperback offered here has clean, unmarked pages and a tight spine, so it is ready for immediate use as a research tool or gift for anyone tracing Tasmanian ancestry. With global interest in women’s history and dark-tourism sites like the Cascades Female Factory soaring, this accessible yet scholarly chronicle remains the go-to title that turns names on a passenger list into real women whose resilience shaped modern Tasmania.
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