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 12: Probation System (Location: Yard 3)
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The Probation System replaced the Assignment System in the 1840s. This was a new way to manage, punish and reform convicts.
If at Cascades Female Factory, we recommend you listen to this chapter as you walk through the exercise yard (stop 12).
This was Yard Three – it is a large Yard which now includes the History and Interpretation Centre. This paved area represents the exercise yards where women spent just an hour, walking in silence, under constant surveillance. This was all part of the new Probation System.
Let me tell you a little more about this system, as you make your way through the sliding doors, past the Welcome Desk and through to the other side of the infamous Yard Three.
The Probation System was meant to reform and train convicts before they were sent to work in the homes of free settlers. Humanitarian and prison reformers in Britain believed women convicts were in need of reformation. They should be rescued from their moral depravity. This reformation would take place in stages. Stage one, in the gaols of Britain. Stage Two, on the ship during the voyage to Van Diemen’s Land. The final stage would occur in probation stations, usually for six months. While there, women were put through a regime of moral and religious instruction, intensive discipline, education, and training in the practical skills required for domestic service.
A new probation station was set up on board HMS Anson - an old warship which was renovated and refitted as a prison. She was moored upriver from Hobart, a floating probation station.
The first Matron of the Anson, Philippa Bowden, believed the best could be brought out in women through kindness, encouragement and religious instruction. Philippa’s husband, Dr Edmund Bowden, was the Superintendent and together they created an establishment that aimed to teach women self-control through self-discipline.
After six months, the women’s behaviour was assessed. Well-behaved women would be available for hire, contracted to families for 12 months at a time. For this work they would be paid a small wage. If they worked hard and continued to behave well, the percentage of the wage they kept would increase. The rest would be paid into a government account which they could draw after they had served their sentence.
In the Probation System convict women would be integrated into civil society –stage by stage, step by step.
Yard Three at Cascades Female Factory was a part of this system.
Women who did not reform, who did not behave, who refused to work, who wouldn’t learn – they would serve time at Cascades Female Factory until they became hireable.
Anson’s Superintendent Bowden died in 1847, just three years after the establishment opened. Philippa, now a widow, returned to England the following year. In 1850, the British government ordered the Anson be broken up.
The Probation System continued as women were sent to hiring depots – New Town Farm and Brickfields – until 1852 when female convict activity was concentrated, once again, to Cascades Female Factory.