The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women (12 page)

While Her Majesty reviewed the guests, Elizabeth sat serenely amid the silk and lace. Queen Charlotte shocked the hall when she stopped before the properly plain Quaker wearing a simple white cap and practical shoes. Her daughter, Katherine Fry, recounted to her aunt, Hannah Buxton, how she saw her mother in this moment: “her light flaxen hair, a little flush on her face from the bustle and noise she had passed through, and her sweet, lovely, placid smile.”
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When Mrs. Fry rose with the row of bishops, Queen Charlotte extended an arm, her elbow-length gloves adorned by her beloved pearl bracelets, etched with a miniature portrait of King George from his healthy days.

The two women looked an odd pair. Elizabeth was almost a foot taller than the queen. Despite this inelegance, she began the rote ritual etiquette demanded in the presence of royalty. Barely recognizing the unexpected honor of the queen rising to meet her and careful not to speak before being spoken to, Elizabeth leaned forward to greet the elderly monarch. Onlookers strained to listen as the queen asked: “How large is your family?” “Where is your home?” “Are you not afraid when you visit those terrible prisons?”
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“Why, the queen is talking to Mrs. Fry,” whispered astonished guests across the room.
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Being on the queen’s guest list was in itself quite a social coup for even a well-connected commoner like Elizabeth. Being addressed by royalty was an honor of stunning proportions. A mounting murmur erupted into a thunderous clapping, acknowledging Her Majesty’s salute to the plain-clothed Mrs. Fry. Like any devout Quaker, Elizabeth bowed only to the King of Kings. Her faith prevented her from following expected protocol of genuflection before the queen. To worship a mere mortal would have been, in her eyes, heresy. Elizabeth’s young daughter observed this first meeting as a study in contrasts: “The Queen, who is so short, courtesying [
sic
], and our mother, who is so tall, not courtesying, was very awkward.”
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As the pageantry unfolded, Elizabeth could think of nothing but the plight of Harriet Skelton, executed at Newgate prison that very day. She had begged Lord Sidmouth to seek a pardon for the poor girl, whose husband had persuaded her to pass a forged banknote. Elizabeth’s urgency to express outrage grew louder each time a life was extinguished for a minor crime. Searching for answers about how she might have saved Harriet Skelton, Elizabeth surmised that perhaps she had annoyed Lord Sidmouth by calling upon influential friends to lobby her cause. The Duke of Gloucester, a former dance partner now married to the daughter of King George III, had spoken to Lord Sidmouth personally on her behalf. The paranoid Sidmouth refused to budge, fearing that the end of capital punishment would lead to the sort of uprisings that had sparked the French Revolution. Elizabeth berated herself for exerting too much political pressure, writing in her diary: “In the efforts made to save her life, I too incautiously spoke of some in power.”
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A realist, Mrs. Fry quickly recognized that philanthropic work came at a price. As her list of charities grew, Elizabeth became increasingly dependent on other people’s money and power for support, especially with the collapse of the Fry bank. In moments of uneasy self-reflection, she focused on her own contradictions, worrying how her popularity might impede her hands-on social work. When newspapers began to write about her, she blamed the conflict on herself: “I have felt of late, fears, whether my being made so much of, so much respect paid me by the people in power in the city, and also being so publicly brought forward, may not prove a temptation, and lead to something of self-exaltation, or worldly pride.”
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Pulled from her musings back to her regal surroundings in Mansion House, Mrs. Fry heard the heralds as Queen Charlotte bid her leave. Later that night, reflecting on her introduction to the queen, Elizabeth felt unimpressed. In her diary, she wrote: “I think I may say, this hardly raised me at all, I was so very low from what had occurred before, and indeed in so remarkably flat a state, even nervous.”
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On this day in 1818, Elizabeth Gurney Fry could not know that her good work had thrown her unwittingly into the gears of the empire’s grand plan for social engineering. It was a scheme birthed by greed and nurtured on corruption. Because so many of the Newgate women were bound for transport, Mrs. Fry and her Quaker friends began to regularly visit the convict ships that anchored on the docks along Woolwich by Bony off the Butt for weeks at a time.
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A simple act of kindness became Elizabeth’s legacy. She made it her mission to save the souls of the female cargo bound for Van Diemen’s Land. As fate would have it, in giving them hope, Mrs. Fry freed them.

4

Sweet Sixteen

Enterprising Women

In about AD 47, the Romans settled the town Londinium and surrounded it with a defensive wall. Built on one of the six original gates of this wall in 1188, Newgate Prison protected Londoners from a different type of invader. In the nineteenth century, nearly half of the 162,000 men, women, and children transported to Van Diemen’s Land and mainland Australia passed through the prison.

On Saturday, May 7, 1836, the names Agnes McMillan and Janet Houston were added to the Newgate roster. They’d danced with the devil before. This time, however, they were about to enter Satan’s private ballroom. They’d endured the mills, been in and out of gaol, but Newgate was the end of the line in Great Britain. Women did not return from Van Diemen’s Land.

Scotland’s weary transports toppled from the stagecoach, and two pairs of small feet searched for steadiness on solid ground. Their legs buckled beneath them and refused to work after the long, jostling ride. Leaning against each other, they caught their balance as their chains clanked against the cobblestones. This familiar rattling of irons announced the duo’s arrival to a gathering crowd of onlookers. London’s everyday seekers of the macabre were thrilled to see the latest unfortunates delivered to Newgate. Tonight’s bill of fare included two bonnie birds from the courthouse in Ayr. As they made their way from the coach, the gaggle of misery mongers closed in on the two young waifs in dirty shifts and muddy boots. Leers, jeers, and whistles announced the newest spectacle in nighttime street entertainment.

There was nothing to sing about. Discouraged footsteps followed the sheriff into Newgate as Agnes and Janet filed through the first of many bolted doorways. The gaoler slammed it shut and locked it behind them with a clang. Agnes’s boots fell ploddingly on the stone stairs as she made her way through the dimly lit maze. Two flights up, a winding passage led to the matron’s quarters, secured behind another heavy door. After a quick rap on the wood, the turnkey thrust first one key, and then another, into the oversized locks. Hammer in hand, another gaoler stood ready to remove manacles and fetters that the comely lasses were more than happy to shed.

A matron wearing a gathered white nightcap looked over the two newcomers and jotted down a few notes about eye and hair color. Names didn’t always ensure accurate records, as evidenced by the number of “Smiths” listed in the prison roster, so wardens recorded facial characteristics and bodily marks, such as moles or scars. Agnes and Janet were unusual in that neither had pockmarks on her face.

The matron was in a foul mood. It was well past her bedtime and she was anxious to hurry back to her room, situated next to the female quadrangle. These girls had no personal property to surrender, so her only duty was to search them for contraband. Instinctively, Agnes pulled away from the unwelcome touch of rough hands patting her down, but it wouldn’t pay to be sassy at this hour. There was little the warden could do to make her stay worse. However, there were many favors she could extend to make it slightly less miserable. Some fresh straw for the floor, a taste of beer, or extra time in the courtyard sometimes rewarded an inmate’s good behavior. At least it wasn’t a man examining her. Elizabeth Fry had successfully lobbied Parliament to replace male wardens with female matrons, whose salary her volunteer association paid. In the past, guards had treated the women’s ward like a private brothel, a sin Elizabeth would not tolerate.

The sleepy matron issued her new charges a tin, a wooden spoon, and two pieces of sturdy brown sackcloth, one to lie on and one to use as a cover. The “rugs,” as they were called, reflected improvements in the women’s ward since Mrs. Fry’s first visit in 1813, when she found women sleeping on straw atop the squalid stone floor. Candlestick in hand, the matron motioned Agnes and Janet back into the hall. Her lecture about rules and regulations would wait until morning. A flickering candle cleared a hazy path to a giant oak door reinforced with 117 iron rivets. The disinterested turnkey released two deadbolts and inserted the key into the first lock, then the other. As the heavy portal groaned open, it unleashed waves of stirring across the large, communal group locked inside. The girls blinked their eyes, adjusting to the smoky darkness, and squinted to make out the shadowy figures lodged in the low-ceilinged cell.

The instant the door swung open, Agnes and her redheaded friend could feel eyes from all corners of the room peering at them. Faces shone in the candlelight, looking like startled creatures in the forest—some ready to pounce, others merely frightened. Shoved into darkness thick with sighs and swearing, the two tried to hold their breath against a stench far worse than the River Clyde on a steamy summer day. Although they benefited from Mrs. Fry’s work at Newgate, the sounds and smells that assaulted the girls had changed little since the Quaker’s first visit twenty-three years earlier.

Bodily functions were still taken care of in the cell, although chamber pots replaced the bare floor as the primary receptacle. The dreadful marinade had been there for so long that it seeped into the stones and became part of Newgate’s surroundings—a mix of human waste and decay that never washed away no matter how many times it was disinfected. Without delay, the matron ordered the girls to drop their rugs by the door and settle in for the night. The Glasgow pair had arrived too late to be fed, but neither felt much like eating.

The gaoler secured the double locks and slid the bolts across the door. Agnes held fast to Janet as they listened to the sounds of their new mates in the darkness: snoring, muffled weeping, the cry of a baby struggling in her mother’s arms, the tapping of wooden spoons from those descended into madness. The two friends barely closed their eyes that first night in Newgate. Both the gaoler and the gaoled preyed on newcomers. On guard until the first sign of daylight, Janet and Agnes each felt grateful they had arrived as a pair. A county gaol was small and predictable, with some drunks and many pickpockets, but a city prison housed highway robbers, murderers, and other violent felons. This was unfamiliar and dangerous territory.

Shaken into full consciousness at the sound of the matron’s bell at seven A.M., the girls watched as a huge pot of gruel was shoved into the cell. With no hesitation whatsoever, they joined the mad dash for a scoop in their tin cups. Toughened from the wynds of Glasgow near the Green, Agnes and Janet were fully attuned to the unwritten rules for how things worked. They used the closest chamber pot and, without being asked, helped empty it into Newgate’s sewer. First impressions counted.

The ward’s only source of light filtered through one small barred window. Even on sunny days, its milky darkness never brightened beyond twilight. By nine o’clock, cheerful members of Fry’s Association for the Improvement of Female Prisoners arrived armed with Bibles and a supply of soft green cotton dresses. The new inmates were not yet wearing the women’s uniform. With their customary gentle greeting, Fry’s volunteers introduced themselves and unwrapped two dresses. The Glasgow girls turned their backs, pulled their mud-encrusted clothes over their heads, and straightened the neatly pressed uniform in place. The Quaker-inspired design wasn’t exactly their style, but it felt good to put on clothes that smelled fresh.

Following Mrs. Fry’s recommendations, the prisoners were divided into groups of twelve, with a monitor elected from each group. This was part of her plan for order amid chaos. At the morning Bible reading, prisoners dutifully agreed to renounce swearing, drinking, gambling, and card playing, although these half hearted promises were generally broken as soon as the Quakers left. The mission for the association was clear and practical: “To provide for the clothing, instruction and employment of the women; to introduce them to knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable while in prison, and respectable when they leave it.”
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Volunteers never spoke to the women about their crimes, choosing instead to help them prepare for a future. Agnes and Janet didn’t know what to make of the pious do-gooders, but at least they weren’t picking oakum in a workhouse or pulling wool in the mill.

Defying contemporary beliefs, Mrs. Fry perceived shades of grey in trying to understand the plight of the convict women. The popular view cast by the upper class considered girls like Agnes either “good” or “bad.” For the bad, there was no turning back from a destiny of damnation. Yet a male criminal, they believed, held the capacity for reform and redemption. Typical of the Victorian era, one code of morality applied to men and another to women. Members of a Committee Inquiring into Female Convict Discipline explained the duality this way: “Society . . . fixed the standard of the average moral excellence required of women much higher than that which it had erected for men, and that crime was regarded with less allowance when committed by a woman . . . because the offender was deemed to have receded further from the average proprieties of her sex.”
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Just one year before Agnes and Janet entered Newgate, the stately Quaker had testified before the House of Lords on the condition of British prisons and admitted: “We are doing the best we can with a very bad system.”
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A prison inspector for the government also testified and criticized her mission as meddling and naïve. Undaunted, she continued to blatantly defy the City Corporation, which had concluded it was “useless to attempt to reform such untamed and turbulent spirits except by punishment.”
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Mrs. Fry held high hopes that girls like Agnes and Janet could become enterprising women if guided by example and training. Her volunteers assigned them to groups gathered around tables, where they were taught to sew clothing, knit socks, and make patchwork quilts. Elizabeth persuaded local merchants to donate materials and negotiated agreements to market the finished products in both England and Australia. Prisoners produced more than one hundred thousand articles over a five-year period,
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shared the profits, and purchased “small extra indulgences,” like fresh food, soap, and beer.
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The girls put down their needles and thread at three o’clock to consume their main meal of bread and soup. Boiled beef from the lower part of the quarters, known as “mouse buttock,” was served several times a week unless the gaolers stole it. With good intentions, Fry advocated serving the Newgate girls white bread rather than the cheaper brown loaves, which were actually more nutritious. Believing their diet too meager, Fry’s association hired a woman to run a prison shop that sold tea, coffee, butter, and sugar, although the prison inspector looked askance at what he considered the sale of luxuries.
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At six o’clock, the Quaker ladies bid farewell with another scripture reading in the prison chapel. The number of names carved into the pews recorded a high degree of boredom among prisoners. Still skeptical about the do-gooders, the two friends rolled their eyes as the well-dressed women exited. At the very least, the Quakers provided diversion from their caged routine. Once Mrs. Fry and her volunteers were out of sight, it was business as usual. Drinking resumed, hidden card decks magically appeared, and fights ensued until the Quakers returned the next day.

While their cell mates sized up the petite lasses with thick Scottish brogues, Agnes and Janet were busy figuring out whom they might trust. Their search for allies commenced without delay. The sooner they discovered who was dangerous, the better their chances of leaving Newgate unharmed. Having had some experience in gangs and in gaol, the girls had an easier time adapting than most. They quickly found out who played the roles of “fixer” and “scrounger.” At the top of the convict hierarchy, these were the inmates who knew how to get special treatment and what it might cost. Under Fry’s system, the prisoners elected monitors who essentially managed the ward, distributing food rations and reporting unruly inmates. They, too, extorted favors and payoffs from the women in their charge.

Entering this motley pack as a team afforded influence, particularly in a fluctuating prison society like Newgate. A duo could cover two places at once. Agnes ran for the food while Janet guarded the spot staked out for bedding. Two sets of eyes were more attentive to scams, schemes, and allegiances, which often incited unpleasant initiations. Bullies and troublemakers targeted the weak. Appearances mattered. In such close confinement, emotions escalated and mutated when the intoxicated or the deranged lashed out with pent-up fury and frustration, pulling hair or indiscriminately attacking with teeth and dirty fingernails. Insanity and the unpredictability of madness proved intimidating to even the most street-hardened. One careless move might provoke a deadly attack from someone possessed with what seemed like superhuman strength.

Elizabeth Fry spent thirty-five years devoted to prison reform, but even divine prayer and activism couldn’t purify this den of disease and corruption. Newgate seemed beyond God’s reach. Outbreaks of typhus, or “gaol fever,” spread by fleas and lice, killed countless women and children awaiting transport in the filthy, overcrowded cells. Seemingly contrary to common sense, prisoners were allowed to drink as much liquor as they could afford. Two taprooms conveniently adjoined the prison. Gaol keepers earned a hefty bonus keeping their charges drunk, docile, and “quite free from rioting.”
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The guards were often drunk themselves. Like hungry wolves in charge of sheep, some gaolers also turned a profit by smuggling prostitutes into the male ward.