Notorious strumpets and dangerous girls

Having survived a shipwreck and three months at sea, Ann Livingstone arrived in Hobart Town in February 1825 on the good ship Henry ably commanded by Captain Ferrier. Along with newspapers, she carried 79 female prisoners with ten children, and 25 free women with 23 children. Free women were sent out at the expense of Government to join their husbands and relatives in the young colony of Van Dieman’s Land. The Surgeon Superintendent was Dr Carlisle of the Royal Navy.
On her arrival, Ann’s gaol report records ‘A prostitute and thief. Connexions of the worst kind.’ She was fifteen years old.
Ann was taken to the Cascade Female Factory up in the hills on the outskirts of Hobart Town. The official name is apt. From raw ingredients, it produced a saleable commodity: indentured labour for the cost of board and lodgings: a commodity eagerly sought by gentrified free settlers on generous grants of land from the Crown, and well-to-do citizens of the town in need of good domestic servants.
If they transgressed the expectations of their masters and the requirements of the law, they’d be returned to a spell of solitary confinement at the Female Factory, to be held in chains and subsisting on bread and water for up to a month. With spirits quelled and ways mended, the women were assigned to service once again. Her rebellious nature and fiery temper ensured that Ann was in and out of the Female Factory many times over the next twelve years.