Abandoned Women: Scottish convicts exiled beyond the seas

Description 'Her superb research and sympathetic reconstructions of ninet From the crowded tenements of Edinburgh to the Female Factory nestling in the shadow of Mt Wellington, dozens of Scottish women convicts were exiled to Van Diemen's Land with their young children. Description 'Her superb research and sympathetic reconstructions of nineteenth-century Scotland and Australia bring to life a long-forgotten but fascinating group of women.

Orphan girls, single mothers and women on their own all struggled to feed and clothe themselves. For some, petty theft became a part of life. Lucy Frost memorably paints the portrait of a boatload of women and their children who arrived in Hobart in Instead of serving time in prison, the women were sent to work as unpaid servants in the houses of settlers.

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Feisty Scottish convicts, unaccustomed to bowing and scraping, often irritated their middle-class employers, who charged them with insolence, or refusing to work, or getting drunk. A stint in the female factory became their punishment. Many women survived the convict system and shaped their own lives once they were free.

They married, had children and found a place in the community. Others, though, continued to be plagued by errors and disasters until death. She is the author of No Place for a Nervous Lady and other books on women's experience. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Abandoned Women , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Nov 19, Carolyn rated it really liked it Shelves: And the worst of the worst were shipped to the island of Van Diemen's Land They made up over half the female convicts on board when the Atwick sailed down the Thames in September Many of them were lea "Abandoned women, the Scottish convicts were called by an eminent twentieth-century Australian historian - worse than the English, even worse than the Irish.

Many of them were leaving behind the abject poverty and life on the streets that had led them into prostitution and petty theft. Many of them were also leaving behind families and children they would never see again, although some 14 children were allowed to be transported with their convict Scottish mothers. The author, Lucy Frost has done some excellent research to delve into the lives of some of these women, looking at what drove them to a life of crime in the first place and detailing how they fared in Van Diemen's land.

While many worked hard to get their ticket of leave and eventually a pardon, many struggled to change their behaviour and spent more time in the women convict's prison, the Female Factory, than out. Frost describes what life was like for these women in the Female Factory and their children taken from the Factory nursery after weaning and sent to Orphan Schools.

Lucy Frost, Abandoned Women: Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas

Many women and children died from the poor hygiene and rampant disease in the colony and many children never saw their mothers again. Others were luckier and were reclaimed by their mothers once they had their ticket of leave. Many women went on to marry and start new families and bring up a new, healthier better educated generation of pioneers in farming and in the goldfields. This is an engaging account of what it was like to be a female convict and there are some fascinating stories.

The book does ramble a little bit and it was often difficult to remember who each of the women were but this didn't detract from the overall sense of the time and place and the struggles these women had, some going on to lead better lives than they ever could have imagined in Scotland. Of the women transported on this ship, 78 were Scottish. Where did those women come from?

What were their crimes? Many people from rural areas moved to Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow in search of work. But work was difficult to find, especially for the unskilled. Life in cities is particularly difficult for the poor. Many of the women who appear within the pages of this book were transported for stealing. Single or married, with or without children, the women sought food and shelter by whatever means available to them.

While some of the women disappeared completely from public records, the lives of others are well documented.

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Some of the women served their time and then became part of the free community. Others resisted authority, or refused to conform to colonial ideas of femininity, and spent years moving between assignment and being sent back to the Female Factory as punishment.

Some of the women turned to alcohol, which caused other problems for them. This enabled her to work for wages.

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By contrast, Ann Martin from Edinburgh was brought before the authorities ten times within fifteen months of her arrival. For me, one of the saddest aspects of this account concerns the children of these women. Some were left behind in Scotland and were unlikely to ever see their mothers again. I found the accounts of these women very interesting, especially the accounts of those such as Margaret Alexander Boothman who had made the transition from convict in to be a respected member of the community when she died in , aged Jan 16, Lauren K rated it really liked it Shelves: What were their lives like in Scotland?

And what happened to them in Australia? In Abandoned Women, Frost has brought to life the woman who arrived in Hobart aboard the Atwick in What I found particularly interesting, are the journeys of individual women who Frost had tracked from their sentencing in Scotland, to their sentence in the Female Factory, to their babes in the nursery, to their husbands, lovers and more crimes committed over the many decades they lived in Australia. The intergenerational turmoil of these young women who had come from broken down homes, lived on the streets and then thrown into a new country, new culture, new lifestyle with nearly no life skills other than how to survive on the streets.

They would birth to children who were starved of emotional connections while living in the nursery, many would die. Frost tracks the women from the Atwick as well as some of their children and their grandchildren. I recommend this title if you are interested in Australian history and the stories of our ancestors. Oct 14, Mel rated it it was ok. While virtually every one of the transportees whose crimes she chronicles who are English and Scottish respectively has some intersection between her crimes and alcohol, when one of them remarries an Irish man following the death of her English husband, alcoholism is suddenly recast as an "the quintessentially Irish theme of hard drinking" Seriously-- it's page and I was so shocked I had to read it again.

Other than lazy stereotyping, which will keep me from ever picking up another of this authors books, the organization is weak and the research not as thorough as other work that covers the same period in history. The author herself points out that the bureaucratic nature of the British Empire generated no lack of primary sources, it is just a shame she doesn't find more of these rather than relying on knee jerk cultural chauvinism. Sep 12, Beth Camp rated it it was amazing. If you are drawn to understanding the 19th Century, Frost's work to clarify class and gender distinctions affecting women transported to Van Diemen's Land now Tasmania , make an excellent read.

Women -- Tasmania -- History -- 19th century. Women pioneers -- Tasmania -- History -- 19th century. Scots -- Tasmania -- History -- Convict labor -- Australia -- Tasmania. Women -- Social conditions.

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Women prisoners -- Australia -- Tasmania -- History. Reformatories for women -- Australia -- Tasmania. Women -- Australia -- Tasmania -- History -- Women -- Australia -- Tasmania -- Social conditions -- Women pioneers -- Australia -- Tasmania -- History -- This is a rich and evocative account of the lives of women at the bottom of society two hundred years ago. Deaths in the Female Factory 4. Finding a bearable place 5. Taking the children away 7. Orphans of the Atwick 8. Motherhood under sentence 9. The vagaries of freedom Notes Includes bibliographical references p. View online Borrow Buy Freely available Show 0 more links Set up My libraries How do I set up "My libraries"?

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