Background Information on How the Book Began

Two women, one a native Tasmanian and the other an American, met by chance in a Launceston postal shop in February 2004. As I was standing in line, without knowing that I am a writer, Christina turned and said to me, a perfect stranger, "I have a story to tell you." This chance meeting sent me on a five-year search to uncover the true history of 25,000 women who had been shipped to Australia 150 years ago.

Christina had driven nearly three hours from Sandy Bay south to Launceston, Tasmania, to mail a bonnet pattern. Instead, she opened the envelope and handed the pattern to me. This bonnet pattern, one of 900, was on its way to a volunteer helping Christina create a temporary traveling memorial. The memorial, long overdue and the first of its kind, honors the 900 children who died at the Cascades Female Factory from 1829-1877. Each cream-colored christening bonnet in the display is hand-sewn and represents a voice that has been silenced far too long. They were created by women from every region in Tasmania, then all assembled to form a cross.

Cascades was the infamous Tasmanian prison in which 12,000 women and children were incarcerated, most from England, Ireland, and Scotland. The majority of female convicts served sentences of seven to fourteen-year sentences for the crime of petty theft. Cascades has often been referred to as "the valley of the shadow of death" where conditions were deplorable and prisoners had little recourse to justice. When a women suffered the abuse of being raped by a colonist for whom she worked as a domestic servant, she was assumed to be a prostitute and sentenced to hard labor for six months. The harsh sentence significantly increased the rate of miscarriage and infant mortality which approached seventy-five percent.

I welcome your help in creating a written testimonial to the strength and resilience of these women. If you are a descendent of convict women from Tasmania, I would love to hear from you. If you know of resources, including diaries and letters, that describe the daily lives of convict women, please contact me. I would also like to hear from descendents of doctors or nurses who may have treated the factory women and their children.

During my five years of research, I have learned about the conditions on the ships by which these women were transported, the nature of the crimes that brought them to this distant island, their lives of labor and exploitation, and the fate of their children. Their journey of transformation and triumph has inspired me and opened my eyes to the deep resiliency of the human spirit. By telling the previously untold story of these convict women and their children, I hope to honor them and their pivotal role in founding a new nation.

If you have information that might answer these and many other questions I have, please email me at tassiestory@yahoo.com.

View Christina's art at http://christinahenri.com.au/main.html.

Listen to "All for Love," a song about the convict women by singer/songwriter Digney Fignus http://cdbaby.com/cd/digneyfignus2.

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--Deborah Swiss
Copyright 2004 Deborah Swiss. All rights reserved.