By Michaela Ann Cameron

Part of “Life and Death at the Parramatta Female Factory: The St. John’s Dataset,” a dual publication on St. John’s Online’s sister-site The Female Factory Online.

Reverend Samuel Marsden’s letter to Reverend Josiah Pratt, the evangelical cleric of the Church of England, dated 12 July 1823, was wholly devoted to what he called the ‘new difficulty’ of what to do about baptising ‘the Children of Female Convicts who are confined in the Factory.’[1] Marsden admitted to being ‘perplexed’ over this ‘difficulty,’ ‘and how to remove it I know not, without Reference to those in Authority at Home’—it was a step he was hesitant to take, noting, ‘I am always unwilling to complain to higher Powers, if this can be avoided.’[2] At length, he wrote:

“As I know of no Ecclesiastical Authority which has Jurisdiction over these Settlements, I have often been greatly at a Loss to know how to act in many things that have occurred in this Colony for the last 30 years relative to the established Church.…

I have had several Conversations with His Excellency Sir Th[oma]s Brisbane on this Subject [of baptising the Factory children]—have written officially, and privately to him—His Excellency accords with me in opinion; but at the same time he does not remedy the evil—… His Excellency, in his private note observes to me that as Dr Douglass has the Charge of the women in the Factory, the Responsibility rests with him—I say no—The Governor cannot delegate his Power to a magistrate to prevent the Clergy from doing their duty. However such is the opinion of the Governor—…

I do not see what the civil magistrate has to do with the duty of the Clergy— This is merely done to annoy, and distress— Dr Douglass has behaved very ill—I did expect much assistance from him when he arrived in the Colony, as I considered him at that time a moral man at least—I never have been so much disappointed in any man as I have been in him—…

I have now written to the Bishop of London …If you should think it imprudent to lay these documents before the Bishop of London for his opinion upon them, I will thank you to act as you may deem best—Some thing must be done—I have mentioned the Subject to both the Judges—and nothing can be done here, unless the Governor would interfere—I know a very great public Sensation will be excited, should a Child die unbaptized [sic], and Christian Burial refused to it on that Account…“[3]

With the Church thus prevented from attending to the baptismal needs of the Factory children as late as 1823, small wonder, then, that there is no sign of a Female Factory baptism in the St. John’s parish register in the early 1820s.

In fact, as the graph below visibly demonstrates, the earliest explicit reference to a Factory baptism does not appear in the St. John’s baptism register until late November 1829, although there are some earlier ‘Convict’s Child’ baptisms in 1828, which, following extensive research beyond the parish register, will likely more often than not prove to be Factory baptisms.[4]

There is also one confirmed Factory-related baptism the year earlier; namely, that of Phoebe Hague, who was born to her convict mother Elizabeth Hague at sea on board Harmony (1827) on 27 July 1827.[5] Following the ship’s arrival at Warrane (Sydney Cove) on 27 September, the infant Phoebe must have been forwarded directly to the Female Factory, because she was baptised in the parish of St. John’s, Parramatta on 18 November 1827.[6] Meanwhile, her convict mother, Elizabeth, who was undoubtedly still experiencing major postnatal hormonal changes and had just had her child ripped from her, was assigned to work for a stranger in a strange new land and, rather understandably, must have proven uncooperative, because on 13 October 1827 she was admitted to Sydney Gaol, having been ‘given up by her master,’ and transferred to the Factory’s first class on 18 October.[7]

It seems, then, that both mother and child found themselves in custody at the Factory in time for the first riot that took place there on 27 October 1827, when ‘a numerous party’ of the Factory’s ‘Amazonian banditti’ ‘assailed the gates’ and ‘poured forth, thick as bees from a hive, over Parramatta and the adjoining neighbourhood.’[8]

Once Factory baptisms became the norm, Marsden, his successor H. H. Bobart, and a number of other visiting chaplains regularly performed baptisms at the Factory in ‘batches’ of as many as five or more in a single visit. These visiting chaplains would record information in a variable way and occasionally would fail to provide a consistent level of detail, such as leaving out surnames altogether (see the entries under the letter ‘X’), or they would include ‘Convict’s Child’ or ‘Spinster’s Child’ but forget to include the tell tale ‘Factory’ remark on one or two entries even in the middle of what otherwise appears to be a ‘Factory batch’—just to make life difficult for a certain future historian seeking to compile a comprehensive set of reliable statistics of Factory baptisms registered in the parish of St. John’s! Those ‘ambiguous’ baptisms have been marked with an asterisk (*) in the list of Baptisms, and are excluded from the current statistics until further research, such as that carried out on the formerly ambiguous entry of Phoebe Hague, can be completed for each one.

On the basis of currently confirmed baptisms alone, then, we are still left with the high statistic of 451 Factory baptisms registered in the parish of St. John’s, Parramatta between 1827 and 1847. The last baptism recorded was that of Samuel Murphy, born to Mary Murphy on 21 November and baptised on 5 December 1847.[9] By then, the Factory era was winding to a close, so in 1847, in amongst the last few Factory baptisms, we also begin to find a number of children being born to female prisoners at the new Parramatta Gaol and baptised there instead, not far from the Female Factory site at North Parramatta.[10]

By acting on his fears that an innocent child might be denied a Christian burial if they were to perish without receiving the baptism, Marsden had taken steps to ensure the Factory women’s children, however lowly their beginnings by the standards of their day, were at least not spiritually disadvantaged as well.[11] Consequently, the baptism register reveals that not even a couple of ‘foundlings’ were suffered to leave this world without being christened in the parish. For example, ‘Ann Bush,’ so named because she had been ‘found in the bush’ after being abandoned there by her undoubtedly frightened mother who likely gave birth to her alone and in secret ‘On or about the 1^st of August 1836’, was baptised on 18 August 1836 before passing away at the Factory, the only home she would ever know, in late October.[12] And on 21 March 1847, another foundling was born in Parramatta and admitted to the Factory shortly thereafter.[13] At her Factory baptism registered in the parish of St. John’s on 29 March, the little foundling would be given the name of a high-born lady of the European town’s earlier days, the wife of a former Governor: ‘Elizabeth Macquarie.’ The infant died the next day and was buried in the parish of St. John’s.[14]

The parish register gifts us with many more unexpected stories of Factory children, for they were not all alike. Among the baptisms of ‘spinster’ convicts’ children born in the Factory’s lying-in hospital, there are also baptisms of children whose parents were high-ranking Factory personnel. For example, we find baptisms for Lucy Tuckwell, the daughter of Factory Superintendent and Secretary William Tuckwell and wife Elizabeth, and Clarissa Kingaby, the daughter of another Factory Superintendent, James Kingaby, and Matron Isabella Kingaby who arrived per Orpheus (1826).[15] One is also surprised to find hidden deep in the parish register, in the name of one Factory child, Mary Mumford Ogden, a touching and—against all odds—enduring tribute made by one grateful Female Factory mother, Esther Ogden per Louisa (1827), to Mary Mumford per Harmony (1) (1827): the convict, skilled nurse and midwife who reassured Esther, held her hand, and safely delivered her of her daughter at the Factory’s lying-in ward on 19 June 1831, as she had for so many other convict women in the same position—upwards of 900 by Mumford’s own estimation (and the baptism register for St. John’s alone leaves us little reason to doubt her).[16]

Digging deeper into the names on St. John’s long list of Factory baptisms also yields more complex narratives than the expected story of a ‘spinster’ convict woman being transported and giving birth to a child out of wedlock at the Factory, which do, of course, account for the majority of baptisms.[17] I have extracted mothers’ names from the baptism records to compile my list of ‘Female Factory Mothers,’ as those women are just as much a part of the St. John’s dataset as the actual individuals who were baptised and buried in the parish; this process has also illuminated a number of unusual stories.

There was little in the early story of Hannah Steele to suggest that her name would ever appear on the list of Factory Mothers, as she actually arrived in the colony as a free immigrant with her family per Eliza (1833); moreover, her father was the gaoler at Bulyayorang (Windsor) and, as such, was responsible for locking up many a Windsonian woman bound for the Factory.[18] Yet, a series of unfortunate events, seemingly beginning with a financial scandal involving her mother (who then deserted the family) and led to Hannah’s father’s suicide, saw Hannah being placed in service to the barrister Richard Windeyer and his wife. At the Windeyer residence, the young, undoubtedly traumatised adolescent Hannah could not resist ‘deranging’ her mistress’s drawers and helping herself to some stockings; a crime for which she did time in Sydney Gaol, because the Court could not assure her safety once the Factory women realised who her late father had been.[19] Eight months after her release from gaol, Hannah gave birth to Elizabeth Steele, on 2 December 1840, most likely at the Female Factory’s lying-in hospital, as her daughter’s Factory baptism was registered in the parish of St. John’s on 20 December 1840. Hannah would go on to lead a more respectable life to all appearances, but we know nothing of what became of her Factory babe.[20]

The record of an ‘Adelaide de Moresa [sic],’ a Factory convict and mother of a baby boy named Alfred who was baptised at St. John’s on 7 August 1831, also jumps out from the Factory Mothers list as being thoroughly incongruous with the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh surnames that dominate the pages of the parish register.[21] As it turns out, the parish recording of the name ‘Moresa’ was misleading, because if it had been recorded accurately, as ‘Adelaide de la Thoreza,’ it would have provided a more direct trail to the rather interesting late-nineteenth-century publication entitled Adelaide de la Thoreza: A Chequered Career (1878) by Reverend James Cameron.[22] The so-called biography, which was more of a ‘Gothic Fantasy,’ makes many outlandish claims about Thoreza’s life, but as historians Sue Ballyn and Lucy Frost learned after decades of seeking the truth amongst the considerable fiction regarding Thoreza, the Old Bailey convict’s claim that she actually hailed from Spain rather than London was at least one thing that could be placed on the ‘true’ pile.[23] As small a genealogical detail as this might seem, the confirmation of Thoreza’s Spanish origin tells us that the Parramatta Female Factory was a more ethnically and linguistically diverse place than we might automatically assume.[24] Adelaide de la Thoreza is also one of only a small number of the Female Factory’s ex-inmates with a surviving portrait.

Another outstanding case in the Factory Mothers list is that of Esther Slater also known as Esther Adcock.[25] Esther was no convict, but a currency lass, born free in the colony in 1824 to convict Thomas Slater alias Thomas Adcock per Earl Spencer (1813) and his wife Elizabeth Griffiths.[26] By the time the census was recorded in November 1828, things had started to go horribly wrong for the family. Thomas was still under sentence of fourteen years’ transportation and was assigned as a carpenter in Liverpool, but his elder daughter, Sophia Slater / Adcock, was a patient in the Lunatic Asylum at Liverpool, aged only twelve, while four-year-old Esther and elder sister Margaret were ‘lodgers’ with Patrick Moore (alternatively recorded as Robt Moore) of Cumberland Street, Sydney.[27] These lodgings were evidently temporary, because on 16 April 1829, both Esther and Margaret were admitted to the Female Orphan School at Parramatta.[28]

At a glance it is unclear whether they were removed, but they appear to have been readmitted to the Orphan School in 1832—their second admission record bearing the accompanying note that their father was now ‘dead’ and their mother was ‘in service.’[29] Ten years later, on 27 June 1842, Esther, by then an unmarried eighteen-year-old, gave birth to her son James Slater, presumably at the Parramatta Female Factory’s lying-in hospital, as he was baptised at the Factory just days later on 3 July 1842.[30] The baby boy would be buried in the parish of St. John’s on 27 November 1842, having died at the General Hospital aka ‘Colonial Hospital,’ Parramatta the previous day.[31]

Unfortunately, the story of James Slater specifically and the St. John’s parish register more broadly reveals what Marsden had known all along: the likelihood of the Factory children needing a ‘Christian Burial’ sooner rather than later was all too real.

<< INTRO     ♦       PART II >>

Citation

Michaela Ann Cameron, “Life and Death at the Parramatta Female Factory: The St. John’s Dataset Part I: Births and Baptisms in Custody,” (Version 1.0), St. John’s Online, (2018), https://stjohnsonline.org/female-factory/part-i-births-and-baptisms-in-custody/, accessed [insert current date].

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NOTES

[1] Reverend Marsden to Reverend Josiah Pratt, 12 July 1823, Marsden Online Archive, http://www.marsdenarchive.otago.ac.nz/MS_0057_095, accessed 22 March 2018.

[2] Reverend Marsden to Reverend Josiah Pratt, 12 July 1823, Marsden Online Archive, http://www.marsdenarchive.otago.ac.nz/MS_0057_095, accessed 22 March 2018.

[3] Reverend Marsden to Reverend Josiah Pratt, 12 July 1823, Marsden Online Archive, http://www.marsdenarchive.otago.ac.nz/MS_0057_095, accessed 22 March 2018.

[4] See Michaela Ann Cameron, “Female Factory Baptisms Registered in the Parish of St. John’s, Parramatta for the Year 1828,” and “Female Factory Baptisms Registered in the Parish of St. John’s, Parramatta for the Year 1829,” Female Factory Online (2016), accessed 22 March 2018.

[5] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of PHOEBE HAGUE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1827/bap18271118/, accessed 22 March 2018. The dates the convict ship Harmony (1) (1827) was at sea are confirmed in the ship’s Medical Journal, which makes no mention of any women giving birth on board as the surgeon selected only certain ailments to highlight: see William McDowell, Surgeon, “Journal of His Majesty’s Convict Ship Harmony, Between the 16^th of April 1827 and the 13^th of October 1827,” Admiralty and predecessors: Office of the Director General of the Medical Department of the Navy and predecessors: Medical Journals (ADM 101, 804 bundles and volumes). Records of Medical and Prisoner of War Departments. Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies, (The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey).

[6] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of PHOEBE HAGUE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1827/bap18271118/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[7] New South Wales Government, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818–1930, Series: 2514; Item: 4/6430; Roll: 851, (State Archives New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[8] “Riot at the Female Factory,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Wednesday 31 October 1827, p. 2.

[9] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of SAMUEL MURPHY,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1847/bap18471205/, accessed 5 April 2018.

[10] St. John’s Online, (stjohnsonline.org), “Baptisms registered in the Parish of St. John’s, Parramatta for the Year 1847,” (2016).

[11] Reverend Marsden to Reverend Josiah Pratt, 12 July 1823, Marsden Online Archive, http://www.marsdenarchive.otago.ac.nz/MS_0057_095, accessed 22 March 2018.

[12] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of ANNE BUSH,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1836/bap18360818/, accessed 22 March 2018; Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Burial of ANN BUSH,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/burials/year-1826/bur18261025/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[13] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of ELIZABETH MACQUARIE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1847/bap18470329/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[14] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Burial of ELIZABETH MACQUARIE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/burials/year-1847/bur18470331/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[15] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of LUCY TUCKWELL,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1834/bap18341130-3/, accessed 22 March 2018; Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of CLARISSA KINGABY,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1834/bap18340810/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[16] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of MARY MUMFORD HOGDEN [sic],” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1831/bap18310807/, accessed 22 March 2018; “Classified Advertising: Midwifery,” The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 – 1893), Saturday 16 December 1843, p. 3. For more on Mary Mumford see Lesley Potter, Mistress of her Profession: Colonial Midwives of Sydney 1788–1901, (Spit Junction, NSW: Anchor Books Australia, 2017).

[17] As Michael Belcher asserts: “A major proportion of the “unrespectable,” single convict women, bore their children in the Factory where their babies were baptised by the visiting chaplain.” See Michael Belcher, [PhD Diss.], “The Child in New South Wales Society: 1820 to 1837,” (Armidale: University of New England, 1982), p. 336. 

[18] New South Wales Government, Inward passenger lists, Series: 13278, Reels 399–560, 2001–2122, 2751, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). George Steele replaced George Walpole as the gaoler of Windsor Gaol. New South Wales Government, Returns of the Colony (‘BlueBooks’), 1822-1857,  Series: 1286, Publication Year: 1835, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia). George Steele had previously been employed as sub-sheriff in Dublin, see “CORONER’S INQUESTS, WINDSOR,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Saturday 12 January 1839, p. 2; “NEWS OF THE DAY: SUICIDE,” The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser (NSW : 1838 – 1841), Monday 14 January 1839, p. 1. See also Michaela Ann Cameron, “Hannah Steele: The Gaoler’s Daughter,” Female Factory Online, (2018), https://femalefactoryonline.org/bio/hannah-steele/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[19] “WINDSOR QUARTER SESSIONS,” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842), Tuesday 22 May 1838, p. 2; “Quarter Sessions, “Windsor. Friday, May 18.,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Wednesday 23 May 1838, p. 2. For George Steele’s suicide see “CORONER’S INQUESTS, WINDSOR,” Commercial Journal and Advertiser (Sydney, NSW : 1835 – 1840), Saturday 12 January 1839, p. 2. For more on the Steele saga, see Michaela Ann Cameron, “Hannah Steele: The Gaoler’s Daughter,” Female Factory Online, (2018), https://femalefactoryonline.org/bio/hannah-steele/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[20] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of ELIZABETH STILL [sic],” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1840/bap18401220/, accessed 22 March 2018. For more on the Steele saga, see Michaela Ann Cameron, “Hannah Steele: The Gaoler’s Daughter,” Female Factory Online, (2018), https://femalefactoryonline.org/bio/hannah-steele/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[21] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of ALFRED DE MORESA,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1831/bap18310807-2/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[22] Reverend James Cameron, Adelaide de la Thoreza: A Chequered Career, (Sydney: Foster & Fairfax, 1878).

[23] Susan Ballyn, “The Biography of Adelaide de la Thoreza: Fact or Fiction?” COOLABAH, No. 20, (2016): 38–47; Susan Ballyn and Lucy Frost, “A Spanish Convict, Her Clergyman Biographer, and the Amanuensis of her Bastard Son,” in Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Lucy Frost (eds.), Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), pp. 91–104; Lucy Frost, “Adelaide de Thoreza (1806?–1877),” in Lucy Frost and Colette McAlpine (eds.), Edges of Empire Biographical Dictionary of Convict Women from beyond the British Isles, (2016), https://www.eoe.convictwomenspress.com.au/index.php/biographical-dictionary/13-d/56-de-thoreza-adelaide, accessed 10 June 2018; Lucy Frost, “Una Convicta Espanola: Adelaide de Thoreza in Botany Bay,” in Lucy Frost and Colette McAlpine (eds.), From the Edges of Empire: Convict Women From Beyond the British Isles, (South Hobart, Tasmania: Convict Women’s Press Inc., 2015), pp. 220–34.

[24] For a slightly longer discussion of Adelaide de la Thoreza, Reverend Cameron’s book, and Ballyn and Frost’s research, see Michaela Ann Cameron, “Adelaide de la Thoreza: A Factory Señorita?” Female Factory Online, (2018), https://femalefactoryonline.org/2018/09/14/a-factory-senorita/, accessed 16 September 2018.

[25] Michaela Ann Cameron, “Mothers of the Female Factory” (Version 1.0), Female Factory Online (2018), https://femalefactoryonline.org/factory-mothers/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[26] New South Wales Government, Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages (https://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/), Baptism of ESTHER SLATER, Liverpool, New South Wales, 1824, Registration Number: 6732/1824 V18246732 1B, (Chippendale NSW: NSW BDM, 2018), https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search?2, accessed 22 March 2018.

[27] See “Thomas Slater per Earl Spencer,” “Sophia Adcock, Native, Liverpool Lunatic Asylum,” Esther Adcock and Margaret Adcock, Lodgers at Patrick Moore’s, Cumberland St, Sydney,” in New South Wales Government, 1828 Census: Householders’ Returns [Population and Statistics, Musters and Census Records, Census, Colonial Secretary], Series: 1273; Reels: 2551–2552, 2506–2507, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia).

[28] “Margt Adcock and Esther Adcock, [daughters of] Thos Adcock of Slater [&] Elizth Griffiths, Admitted 16 April 1829,” New South Wales Government, Applications for Admission into the Orphan Schools, Series: NRS 793; Item: [4/351]; Roll: 2777; Page: 1, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales).

[29] “Margt Slater and Esther Slater,” in New South Wales Government, Applications for Admission into the Orphan Schools, Series: NRS 793; Item: [4/350]; Roll: 2777; Page: 25, (State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales).

[30] Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Baptism of JAMES SLATER,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/baptisms/year-1842/bap18420703/, accessed 22 March 2018.

[31] St. John’s Online, (stjohnsonline.org), “Burial of JAMES SLATER,” https://stjohnsonline.org/burials/year-1842/bur18421127-4/, accessed 22 March 2018.

© Copyright Michaela Ann Cameron 2018

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