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 6: The Superintendent and the Matron (Location: Yard 1)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A husband and wife team, the Superintendent and Matron were in charge of the day-to-day running of the Factory and lived on-site with their large family.
Content warning: This chapter discusses infant mortality.
If at Cascades Female Factory, we recommend you listen to this chapter upstairs in the Superintendent’s Apartment (stop 6).
A Superintendent and Matron were appointed to oversee the strict rules and regulations of the factory.
Until 1851, these roles were filled by a married couple. A husband and wife team. And they lived here. In a series of rooms above the entrance to the Female Factory. With their family.
The ground floor housed the Superintendent’s office, a visiting room, a receiving room, storeroom and lodging for the Gatekeeper. On the upper floor was the Superintendent’s apartment. It consisted of two bedrooms, a kitchen and a parlour.
It must have been a strange and challenging environment in which to raise a family – domestic rooms built into the Factory’s high walls. Two windows would have looked directly into the Factory’s Nursery Yard.
The Factory’s first Matron and Superintendent, Ann and Esh Lovell, lived here with their six children. The next couple appointed to the roles were Mary and John Hutchinson who also had many children at home. The Hutchinsons were the longest serving Superintendent and Matron – spending 19 years managing the women at the Female Factory.
Those almost two decades were not without their controversy. A surprise visit from Lieutenant Governor Arthur found the Factory to be in unfit state– and John Hutchinson was routinely criticised by his superiors for poor management. There were also personal financial issues, with John declared ‘insolvent’ and losing property and part of his wages to authorities. This may have been what led Mary to, allegedly, borrow money from a female convict. Quite the improper thing to do. However widely this accusation was reported it was never proven and the Hutchinsons held onto their positions.
And they continued to do so. Even after the harrowing and widely reported Inquest into the death of a baby in the Nursery. Mary, in particular, became a target in the press for her seeming lack of action and care for the infants in her charge.
Mary Hutchinson herself bore eight children while working at Cascades Female Factory. She and John had twelve children, six of those died before adulthood. It could be said that the grim, gruelling conditions of the Factory affected everyone within these walls.