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Words: Tom GillingProducer: Bianca Farmakis
Grim reality of life as a convict woman
Life was no picnic for the convict women incarcerated in Tasmania's female factories. They entered through heavy double gates and waited beneath high sandstone walls to be inspected by the surgeon.
Ellen Bercary, a country servant and dairy maid from Tipperary in Ireland, was one. 
Video: Instagram | Cascades Female Factory
Transported for life for being an accessory to the murder of her husband, Ellen arrived at the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart on February 25, 1847. She was among 7000 female convicts — some as young as 11 — known to have been incarcerated at the Tasmanian facility.
The factory's supposedly grim and sunless location is said to have earned it the nickname "the valley of the shadow of death", and is one of 11 Australian convict sites inscribed on the World Heritage list.
THE FACTORY
At the factory, the women spun wool, knitted and sewed in preparation for being hired as domestic servants. It was also a place of punishment where offenders laboured in the laundry while incorrigibles were locked in solitary cells.
DAILY LIFE
THE RANKS
"Intermediate class": Minor offenders
"Crime class": hardened offenders put to work and subject to close confinement 
"Hiring class": Women suitable for assignment
Between 1828 and 1856, women were to put into three classes that were "on no account" to mix:
Picture: Instagram | Cascades Female Factory
Brutal as the system was, not all women were cowed by solitary punishment. Archaeologists discovered tobacco pipes, grog bottles and illicit extra rations. The greatest concentration of "forbidden luxuries" was found in floors of the silent solitary cells.
FORBIDDEN FRUITS
Picture: Instagram | Cascades Female Factory
After transportation to Tasmania ended, the female factory was used variously as an invalid depot, a boys' reformatory, a contagious diseases infirmary and a hospital for the "insane" before the site was eventually sold off in the early 1900s.
POST PRISON
Image: Instagram | Cascades Female Factory
For visitors, a path across the railway takes you to a hill overlooking the female factory, where wind and rain have worn away the structures. It's a haunting and, some might say, haunted place.
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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/web-stories/free/the-australian/the-grim-reality-of-life-as-a-convict-woman