Convict Guide - published 2006 - Manual / Resource - Page 73
Guide to New South Wales State archives relating to convicts and convict administration
Other barracks
A further 250 convicts were in a smaller barracks while there were also
150 at Parramatta. A building was by then being constructed at Windsor
and there was another at Sydney for 150 juveniles. (Shaw, Convicts and
the Colonies, p.81).
Government farms, establishments and stockades
Under Governor Phillip public agriculture predominated but it declined
after his departure as more and more free settlers appeared on the
scene. (Fletcher, Landed Enterprise, pp.26ff).
Emu Plains
agricultural
establishment
Macquarie would have liked to abandon government farming which he
described as 'totally inadequate to its object and very expensive to
government'. Local needs, however, obliged him to keep some land in
production and in 1819 he was obliged to open the Emu Plains
agricultural establishment in order to cater for surplus convicts. By
1820, 500 acres had been sown with a variety of crops and Macquarie
could write of the farm as having succeeded 'even beyond my most
sanguine hopes'. (Fletcher, Landed Enterprise, pp.117-20).
Governor Brisbane kept the farm going and sent a group of women
volunteers from the Female Factory to work there. Although housed
separately from the men there were instances of misconduct and the
experiment was ended. (Salt, Outcast Women, pp.66-7) Brisbane also
made clearing gangs available to settlers.
Bathurst
government
establishment
A road across the Blue Mountains was built by William Cox in 1815.
Macquarie was opposed to the idea of settlement becoming too
dispersed and made no attempt to encourage pastoralists to go beyond
the mountains. Few had any desire to do so, but a handful did move
there.
When Rowland Hassall was appointed Superintendent of Government
Stock at Bathurst in 1815 he became the first government official
resident in the area. Acting on Bigge's recommendations Governor
Brisbane sent educated convicts first to Bathurst, and later to
Wellington Valley, where they were 'out of temptation'. (Shaw, Convicts
and the Colonies, p.192).
Iron’d gangs and
stockades
In 1832 paid superintendents replaced convict overseers in charge of
the iron'd gangs and it was decided to surround 'the men's huts, a
hospital hut and sometimes a mess shed' with a high stockade. (Kerr,
Design for convicts, p.62). The superintendent's hut and store were
located outside the fence. A military guard had been placed at each
stockade by 1834. Stockades remained in existence until work in the
neighbourhood was finished and the gang moved to the next site. By
1835 moveable caravans on block wheels were introduced as mobile
convict huts. (Kerr, Design for convicts, pp.62-3).
Female Factory
Housing for female
convicts
In 1804 Governor King had additions made above the Parramatta Gaol
to serve as a female factory to house women prisoners awaiting
assignment and those who had been returned as unsatisfactory by
employers. Here the women were to work and sleep in two small rooms
with limited bedding and cooking facilities. The alternatives were to pay
for accommodation or allow cohabitation/prostitution with men. (Salt,
Outcast Women, p.46). Over a twenty year period the Reverend Samuel
Marsden lobbied the government to do something for 'these objects of
vice and woe' - the convict women. (Kass et al, Parramatta, p.85).
New Female Factory
built in 1818
Macquarie's program of public works made provision for a new female
factory to relieve the situation in which 'accommodation was so short
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State Records Authority of New South Wales