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 7: Third Class Yard (Location: Yard 1)
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Third Class was also known as Crime Class – this was the Yard for the worst behaved convicts, where punishments and conditions were harsh.
If at Cascades Female Factory, we recommend you listen to this chapter in the Third Class Yard (stop 7).
Welcome to Third Class, also known as Criminal Class.
In third class, women wore uniforms which were marked in four places with a large yellow C – on the front of their jacket, back of their jacket, right sleeve, and on the petticoat. In some cases, their hair was cut short. In many ways they were branded and unable to hide from the disgrace of crime class.
The women in this class were set to work. This meant hard labour at the washtubs or hours picking oakum – a task which involved picking tar and dried salt from the old ropes of ships to create a fibre. Both of these tasks would have been very harsh on the women’s hands.
Third class was also where women were sent for the most dreaded of all punishments. Solitary confinement. Up to 23 and a half hours alone in a small, dark cell. Two buckets. One with drinking water. One for toileting. No light in order to see which bucket is which. Days at a time on only bread and water. Half an hour of exercise – which was time outdoors to empty their waste bucket and move, but barely enough for their eyes to adjust to the sunlight.
The corner of Yard One housed the solitary cells. They have been reconstructed to give you a sense of the size. Can you imagine spending up to 23 hours alone, in the dark, in silence, in one of those cells?
With little or no ventilation the smell would have been gut wrenching.
A jury who inspected the cells during an inquest reported on ‘the extremely offensive condition of the dark cells’. The Coroner admitted that the cells were ‘wholly unfit and unsuited for the punishment of females.’ But the Superintendent of Convicts argued that they were needed to maintain discipline, and they stayed.