
In the early 19th century crofters & villagers streamed into the burgeoning cities of Scotland settling in the crowded & damp tenements of Glasgow & Edinburgh. Orphan girls single mothers women with feckless husbands & widows all struggled to feed & clothe themselves & were left with few options other than theft & prostitution. Anxious to quell the rising tide of petty crime the Scottish authorities imposed harsh sentences consigning these women
- & often their children too
- for transportation to the Australian colonies. Lucy Frost tells the stories of the lives of a boatload of women & their children who arrived in Hobart in 1838. While convict men of that period worked in road gangs the women were assigned as domestic servants seamstresses or to work in dairies & were often ill-treated by their employers. Considered useless when pregnant they spent months in the Female Factory locked up in the stench of a convict nursery amidst sick & dying children. Some managed to snare a good husband once theyd earned their tickets of leave & became solid citizens. For others errors & disasters continued to plague their lives in the colony.