{"id":114531,"date":"2018-07-16T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=114531"},"modified":"2018-07-14T11:27:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-14T10:27:35","slug":"australia-the-hidden-history-of-the-women-who-rose-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/07\/australia-the-hidden-history-of-the-women-who-rose-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia: The Hidden History of the Women Who Rose Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Pilger gave this address on the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Parramatta Female Factory, a prison where women convicts from mostly Ireland and England were sent in the early 19th century. <\/em><\/p>\n

Like all colonial societies, Australia has secrets. The way we treat Indigenous people is still mostly a secret. For a long time, the fact that many Australians came from what was called \u2018bad stock\u2019 was a secret.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

10 Jul 2018 – <\/em>\u2018Bad stock\u2019 meant convict forebears: those like my great-great grandmother, Mary Palmer, who was incarcerated at the Female Factory in Parramatta in 1823.<\/p>\n

According to nonsense spun by numerous aunts \u2013 who had irresistible bourgeois ambitions \u2013 Mary Palmer and the man she married, Francis McCarthy, were a lady and a gentleman of Victorian property and propriety.<\/p>\n

In fact, Mary was the youngest member of a gang of wild young women, mostly Irish, who operated in the East End of London. Known as \u2018The Ruffians\u2019, they kept poverty at bay with the proceeds of prostitution and petty theft.<\/p>\n

The Ruffians were eventually arrested and tried, and hanged \u2013 except Mary, who was spared because she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

She was just 16 years old when she was manacled in the hold of a ship under sail, the\u00a0Lord Sidmouth<\/em>, bound for New South Wales \u201cfor the term of her natural life\u201d, said the judge.<\/p>\n

The voyage took five months, a purgatory of sickness and despair. I know what she looked like because, some years ago, I discovered an extraordinary ritual in St Mary\u2019s Cathedral in Sydney.<\/p>\n

Every Thursday, in a vestry, a nun would turn the pages of a register of Irish Catholic convicts \u2013 and there was Mary, described as \u201cnot more than 4ft in height, emaciated and pitted with the ravages of small pox\u201d.<\/p>\n

When Mary\u2019s ship docked at Sydney Cove, no-one claimed her as a servant or a skivvy. She was a \u201cthird class\u201d convict and one of \u201cthe inflammable matter of Ireland\u201d. Did her newly born survive the voyage? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

They sent her up the Parramatta River to the Female Factory, which had distinguished itself as one of the places where Victorian penal experts were testing their exciting new theories. The treadwheel was introduced in the year Mary arrived, 1823. It was an implement of punishment and torture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Female Factory in Parramatta, pained by Augustus Earle.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Cumberland Pilgrim <\/em>described the Female Factory as \u201cappallingly hideous\u2026 the recreation ground reminds one of the Valley of the Shadow of Death\u201d.<\/p>\n

Arriving at night, Mary had nothing to sleep on, only boards and stone and straw, and filthy wool full of ticks and spiders. All the women underwent solitary confinement. Their heads were shaved and they were locked in total darkness with the whine of mosquitoes.<\/p>\n

There was no division by age or crime. Mary and the other women were called \u201cthe intractables\u201d. With a mixture of horror and admiration, the Attorney General at the time, Roger Terry, described how the women had \u201cdriven back with a volley of stones and staves\u201d soldiers sent to put down their rebellion. More than once, they breached the sandstone walls and stormed the community of Parramatta.<\/p>\n

Missionaries sent from England to repair the souls of the women were given similar short shrift.<\/p>\n

I am so proud of her.<\/p>\n

Then there was \u201ccourting day\u201d. Once a week, \u201cbereft gentlemen\u201d (whomever they might be) were given first pick, followed by soldiers, then male convicts.<\/p>\n

Some of the women found \u201cfinery\u201d and primped urgently, as if an inspecting male might provide a way out of their predicament. Others turned their backs should an aspiring mate be an \u201cold stringybark fella\u201d down from the bush.<\/p>\n

During all this, the matron would shout out what she called \u201cthe good points\u201d of each woman, which was a revelation to all.<\/p>\n

In this way, my great-great grandparents met each other. I believe they were well matched.<\/p>\n

Francis McCarthy had been transported from Ireland for the crime of \u201cuttering unlawful oaths\u201d against his English landlord. That was the charge leveled at the Tolpuddle Martyrs.<\/p>\n

I am so proud of him.<\/p>\n

Mary and Francis were married at St Mary\u2019s Church, later St Mary\u2019s Cathedral, on November 9th, 1823, with four other convict couples. Eight years later, they were granted their \u201cticket of leave\u201d and Mary her \u201cconditional pardon\u201d by one Colonel Snodgrass, the Captain General of New South Wales \u2013 the condition being she could never leave the colony.<\/p>\n

Mary bore 10 children and they lived out hard lives, loved and respected by all accounts, to their ninetieth year.<\/p>\n

My mother knew the secret about Mary and Francis. On her wedding day in 1922, and in defiance of her own family, she and my father came to these walls to pay tribute to Mary and the intractables. She was proud of her \u201cbad stock\u201d.<\/p>\n

I sometimes wonder: where is this spirit today? Where is the spirit of the intractables among those who claim to represent us and those of us who accept, in supine silence, the corporate conformity that is characteristic of much of modern Australia?<\/p>\n

Where are those of us prepared to \u201cutter unlawful oaths\u201d and stand up to the authoritarians and charlatans in government, who glorify war and, in collusion with an imperial master, invent foreign enemies and criminalise dissent and who abuse and mistreat vulnerable refugees to these shores and disgracefully call them \u201cillegals\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mary Palmer was \u201cillegal\u201d. Francis McCarthy was \u201cillegal\u201d. All the women who survived the Female Factory and fought off authority, were \u201cillegal\u201d.<\/p>\n

The memory of their courage and resilience and resistance should be honoured, not traduced, in the way we are today. For only when we recognise the uniqueness of our past \u2013 our Indigenous past and our proud convict past \u2013 will this nation achieve true independence.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>John Pilger has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Mail & Guardian (South Africa), Aftonbladet (Sweden), Il Manifesto (Italy). He writes a regular column for the New Statesman, London. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Sophie Prize for \u201930 years of exposing injustice and promoting human rights.\u2019 In 2009 he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. His earlier film is The War You Don\u2019t See<\/a> (2010). His new film,<\/em> The Coming War on China, is available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com<\/a>. He can be reached through his website www.johnpilger.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 johnpilger.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Jul 2018 – John Pilger gave this address on the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Parramatta Female Factory, a prison where women convicts from mostly Ireland and England were sent in the early 19th century. Like all colonial societies, Australia has secrets. For a long time, the fact that many Australians came from what was called \u2018bad stock\u2019 was a secret. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":51198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}