TAG: prison colony

Digs & Discoveries January/February 2012

Convict Mothers

In the first half of the nineteenth century, 12,000 British female convicts were sent to the prison colony in Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania. Convicts, held in work camps called "factories," were forbidden to have contact with their babies except for breastfeeding. But a recent find at the Ross Female Factory shows that they skirted that rule, and may have actively resisted separation from their children.