The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience
The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience provides an overview of the history of the site as well as the stories of the women and children that spent time here. Most of the structures and buildings that made up the Cascades Female Factory have been removed or lost with time. Today, you can take your time as you wander through the space and listen to true tales of the courage, resourcefulness and resilience of the women lived, worked and aspired to a better life outside these same walls. The audio experience fills in the space between then and now.
The Cascades Female Factory Audio Experience
Chapter 3: Yard One (Location: Yard 1)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Discover the labyrinth of buildings, walls and structures that once filled Yard One - the first yard of the Cascades Female Factory.
If at Cascades Female Factory, we recommend you listen to this chapter in Yard One (stop 3).
You are standing in what is known as Yard One.
See those high walls?
They were originally part of a rum distillery. The distillery failed and the site was put up for sale. Lieutenant Governor George Arthur on behalf of the Colonial Government purchased the site as a solution to a growing problem at the establishment in Hobart Town …
The Hobart Town establishment was facing harsh criticism in the press for its overcrowding, poor conditions and treatment of women convicts. The Colonial Government pressured Arthur to do something as quickly and cost effectively as possible.
The pre-existing high walls and location of the distillery made it a very appealing site to Arthur. He ignored the damp and dark conditions and warnings from others about the less than desirable environment – building such an establishment in the shade of the mountain, by a rivulet known for flooding, didn’t seem like the best plan.
But Arthur needed a solution. And so, this site was bought for the new Cascades Female Factory.
This Yard was split into several smaller yards. Creating a very confined space. It can be difficult to imagine the walls within walls and labyrinth of buildings that once filled Yard One.
Take a look at the grounds and you will notice steel strips. These lines represent a wall or structure that once existed in the yard. It helps gives a sense of just how confined this space would have been back in 1828 when it was converted and opened as the Cascades Female Factory.
The Yard was designed to reflect advice given by English prison reformer Elizabeth Fry who advocated for a more humane treatment of female convicts. Her suggestion of the class system is evident in this first Yard. This system saw the separation of the convicts into three distinct classes so the worst behaved would not influence the better-behaved women.
Yard One was divided into the following sections:
• Third class or criminal class yard for severe punishment of the worst behaved convicts
• Second class yard for women undergoing milder punishment
• First class or assignable class yard for the best behaved women, and where they waited to be assigned as servants
• A Nursery yard
• Kitchen; and
• Hospital
There was also a Chapel and the Superintendent’s residence in this Yard, as well solitary cells and storerooms.
Elizabeth Fry had also recommended that female convicts have their own, separate, sleeping areas. A lack of space and money did not allow this and, instead, women were locked into large dormitory rooms. The dormitory was a two-storey building in the middle of the yard, four rooms on each floor, no windows and poor ventilation. The women were locked into these rooms at night, according to their class.
Let’s take a closer look at who these women were, the convicts who soon overcrowded this Yard …