‘There not being any place to keep her’: Incarcerating Women in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia

Abstract

With the rate of women’s imprisonment still increasing in Australia, an understanding of the history of women’s incarceration is significant. This article explores the anomalous status of female prisoners in nineteenth-century Western Australia, whose very existence posed a problem for authorities. An examination of gaol returns and Colonial Secretary’s Office correspondence reveals a tension between the authorities’ desire to maintain order in the new colony and the perceived inadequacies of the colony’s carceral spaces for women. From almost the beginning of colonisation, authorities were concerned by the inadequacies of the gaols for women but it was not until 1888 that a dedicated prison was created to house female prisoners. A picture emerges of a colony which was often at a loss to know how to deal with its female prisoners. This article examines the manner in which authorities dealt with women sentenced to imprisonment, and transportation, in nineteenth-century Western Australia.

In 1862 George Frederick Stone, Attorney General of Western Australia, wrote ‘the object of the Law is not to punish the individual, but the crime, and example is more desired than the physical suffering of the delinquent’.¹ Stone was commenting on a petition asking for the release from prison of Louisa Garrett who, thirteen months earlier, had been sentenced to penal servitude for life for attempting to poison her husband. In this case, Stone considered that thirteen months’ imprisonment did not provide a sufficient example and recommended that Garrett was not released. Governor John Hampton dutifully agreed with Stone’s recommendation but nonetheless wrote, ‘At the same time I must say that I deeply regret that there is no suitable place in which the woman can be confined’.²

In this article I explore the anomalous status of female prisoners, whose very existence posed a problem for authorities, in seven of Western Australia’s carceral spaces during the nineteenth century. To do so I use prisoner returns, Colonial Secretary’s Office correspondence and indictment files to determine the carceral spaces in which women were confined and to gauge authorities’ attitudes to female imprisonment. The need to deter crime by making an example of those who committed it, and the perceived unsuitability of the colony’s carceral spaces for female prisoners, was a constant source of tension in the Swan River colony. How did the authorities try to resolve these tensions? And how did this perception affect women’s sentences in Western Australia? I argue that, in many cases, women served less time than their male counterparts because these spaces were deemed ‘not suitable’ for women.

Existing scholarship

In 2001, John McGuire commented on a ‘glaring absence of historical work, feminist or otherwise, that focuses on women’s imprisonment in the Australian jurisdictions’.³ This situation is changing but, while the literature on women’s imprisonment in the modern penal system is extensive, much of the existing research into women’s imprisonment during the nineteenth century is still concerned with convict women.⁴ Research which examines the incarceration of free women at this time, such as Alana Piper’s examination of female prisoners at Toowoomba Gaol during the late nineteenth century, is less common and is based mainly in the eastern colonies, during the latter half of the century.⁵ Some scholarly works, such as Mark Finnane’s history of punishment in Australia, and McGuire’s history of penality in Queensland, although concerned primarily with punishment of male offenders, do discuss imprisonment of women, and the introduction of separate female prisons in the eastern states, but research which examines the place of women in the carceral spaces of Western Australia is scarce.⁶ The unique social conditions existing in Western Australia at this time give significance to the study of women’s incarceration in the west. The colony never accepted convict women, and its low population, and low ratio of women to men, meant that correspondingly low numbers of women were imprisoned at any one time.

The law’s beginnings in Western Australia

Shortly after Captain James Stirling arrived on the western shores of Australia in the winter of 1829, he declared that British law would henceforth prevail in the Swan River colony and would be used to try offenders.⁷ In December, he appointed eight Justices of the Peace who would not only hear cases of petty crime, but also preside over jury trials for the more serious crimes. This system of law required a place of incarceration. The ship the Marquis of Anglesea had run aground in September 1829 near Fremantle. The wreck was turned into a prison hulk, as was common in Britain, and served as the colony’s first prison.⁸ Up until January 1831, it housed twenty-seven men, but no women.⁹ However, it had many drawbacks as a place of imprisonment and a more permanent place of incarceration was needed.

The colonisers had arrived in Western Australia during a time when the penal system in Britain had been subject to several decades of reform designed to transform prisons from places of suffering and example to places where prisoners were ‘reformed’ and ‘civilised’. These reforms included increased cleanliness and ventilation of carceral spaces, categorisation and separation of prisoners to prevent ‘moral contagion’ between ‘hardened criminals’ and younger offenders, separation of the sexes, and the discontinuation of fees paid by prisoners to gaolers. Prisoners were supposed to be closely controlled and observed.¹⁰ These measures demanded a different architecture for prisons and a particularly influential ideal was Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, which utilised a round design to allow guards constant observation of the prisoners.¹¹

The colony’s carceral spaces

Fremantle Gaol

Fremantle’s first purpose-built gaol, although small, aspired to be modern, up-to-date, and in line with the latest concepts of prison reform. Inspired by Bentham’s Panopticon, Henry Willey Reveley, the colony’s civil engineer, designed the gaol as a twelve-sided limestone building, allowing the gaoler an uninterrupted view of all eight cells.¹² It was situated on the steep cliff of a headland where it physically dominated the port of Fremantle from both the land and sea (Figure 1). Today this building, known as the Roundhouse, is a popular tourist destination.

Figure 1. The Fremantle Gaol, known as the Roundhouse overlooked the small settlement of Fremantle in 1832. Panorama of the Swan River Settlement, Jane Eliza Currie, 1830-1832, ML 827, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

The rules for the Fremantle Gaol, drawn up in 1831, were also based on modern ideas of penality advocated by British reformers such as John Howard, William Blackburn and Elizabeth Fry.¹³ The rules specified that the different categories of male, female, juvenile and remanded prisoners should be kept separate, that prisoners were to be provided with soap to keep themselves and their surroundings clean, that no fees should be paid by prisoners to the gaoler, and that drinking and gambling were not allowed. All prisoners, except those on remand, must work during their imprisonment.¹⁴ They specified that male and female prisoners should be kept apart and that children should be separated from adults. They also decreed that,

No felon, or person committed on a charge of felony, is to be shut up in the same cell with a prisoner confined for a misdemeanor; and, so far as practicable, the two classes are to be kept separate while taking exercise, or engaged in labor [sic].¹⁵

In 1836 the Perth Gazette included a description of conditions at the gaol, writing that ‘The sexes are kept strictly apart, the female prisoners having, of course, separate cells at night, and being kept, during the day, at work in the kitchen, under the superintendence of the Jailor’s wife’.¹⁶

In practice, however, the internal exercise yard made separating male and female prisoners challenging, the Perth Gazette continuing, ‘it is impossible to prevent, altogether, promiscuous intercourse’.¹⁷ In 1837, fifteen-year-old Eliza Cook was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for larceny. Next to her name, on the quarterly gaol returns, Henry Vincent, the gaoler, wrote that her conduct in gaol was ‘bad, not abel to kep her from mal prisoners [sic]’.¹⁸ This was still a problem in 1864, when the superintendent of police was ‘very much displeased’ on a visit to Fremantle Gaol to discover two male prisoners in their windowless cells without the doors being padlocked, and three female prisoners, in different cells, with the doors standing open.¹⁹ It is clear that the size and architecture of the prison made separation between prisoners almost impossible (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Plan of the Fremantle Gaol (Roundhouse) showing the eight cells and internal courtyard. Adapted from Hillton Beasley, Plan of Old prison, Arthur's Point, Fremantle, 1914, 336C, State Library of Western Australia.

When Stirling declared in 1829 that British law would prevail in the colony, he intended this to include Aboriginal people. In a proclamation that denied a system of law stretching back tens of thousands of years, he declared that Aboriginal people would become legal subjects of the Crown and be given the same protection under law as any other British subject.²⁰ Indigenous women were imprisoned in Fremantle Gaol alongside colonial prisoners. In 1866 correspondence sent from the Colonial Secretary, Frederick Barlee, to Alfred Durlacher, the Resident Magistrate at Champion Bay, made it clear that the government’s preferred practice, at that time, was to avoid committing Indigenous women where possible, but nonetheless Indigenous women continued to be tried, and most, when found guilty, were imprisoned in Fremantle Gaol.²¹

With their low tolerance to diseases brought into Australia by non-Indigenous colonists, gaol could be a dangerous place for Indigenous people.²² In July 1878, an Aboriginal woman, Sarah, was charged with manslaughter for her part in an inter se killing in Dongara and sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. Although, in general, Aboriginal people in Western Australia were prosecuted for homicide offences at a much greater rate than others, Sarah was one of only three Aboriginal women prosecuted for such offences in the nineteenth century.²³ Mark Finnane and Andy Kaladelfos note that Aboriginal defendants indicted for manslaughter were much more likely to be convicted than non-Aboriginal defendants.²⁴ After serving just over half her sentence in Fremantle Gaol, the Sheriff, James Roe, wrote to Roger Goldsworthy, the Colonial Secretary, asking for her early release due to ill health. He enclosed a certificate from Dr Henry Barnett, the Colonial Surgeon, stating that Sarah was suffering from a cough at night and pulmonary weakness. However, before Goldsworthy would recommend her release to the Governor, he wanted to know whether Sarah’s life would be endangered by continuing her sentence. Barnett dutifully replied that, in his opinion, ‘the further confinement of this native in Fremantle Prison will greatly tend to shorten her life’, and Sarah was then released.²⁵ Sickness or ill health was sometimes considered sufficient grounds for mercy, but it was not granted in all cases.

Perth Lockup

However, the first imprisonment of an Indigenous woman occurred much earlier than this. According to the Perth Gazette, in July 1836 an unnamed Nyungar woman was incarcerated in Perth Gaol, also known as the Perth Lockup, for theft. The floors of the cells were cold and damp and the Gazette reported that the woman was found in the morning unconscious in the cell. She was carried away by her husband and several Nyungar women, to provide medical assistance, and was reported the next week to have recovered.²⁶ This gaol was situated on St George’s Terrace, opposite the courthouse. It had been in existence since at least 1833 and official records show that it was being used mainly as a military and commissariat store, but with one cell always available as a temporary lockup.²⁷ Examination of early newspaper articles also indicates that it was used to house other Aboriginal prisoners.²⁸ Aboriginal women continued to be imprisoned throughout the nineteenth century when they came into conflict with colonists but, unlike the very high numbers of Aboriginal men incarcerated at this time, the number of Aboriginal women in the colony’s carceral spaces remained relatively low.²⁹

Albany Gaol

Although the regulations for Fremantle Gaol specified that different categories of prisoners should be kept separated, there was no mention of separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners. Over time, as Aboriginal people began to appear before the colony’s courts in greater numbers, colonial unease with the mingling of Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners began to manifest itself. By 1848, the people of Albany were voicing their concern that Aboriginal prisoners and colonial prisoners should be kept separated in their gaol. This was a small two-room building on Brunsfield Road near Point Wakefield consisting of two cells, approximately 9 ft by 11 ft, and the outer courtyard, 17 ft by 11 ft.³⁰ Entwined with this concern was the colonists’ requirement to separate prisoners of different sexes, as the following two cases illustrate.

On occasion, quite young children were incarcerated in Albany Gaol. On 5 September 1848, Elim, an eleven-year-old Menang girl, was committed for theft, having taken two blankets belonging to William Cooper. She was remanded for six weeks in the gaol pending her trial, but her presence there presented a problem for Magistrate John Randall Phillips, Chairman of the Albany General Sessions, who wrote:

it is very desirable she should be removed from the Gaol at Albany as early as possible as for want of room in the Gaol she is locked up in one of the Cells during the day time, at night turned out into the open Court Yard to enable the other prisoners being locked up in their cells.³¹

The Reverend John Wollaston was also concerned after a visit to the gaol where he found an Aboriginal man and woman in the same cell as prisoner James Martin, who had been remanded on a charge of shooting a Menang man, Cootang. Wollaston complained to Henry Camfield, Government Resident of Albany, in October, about the ‘great evil’ of mixing Aboriginal and white prisoners.³² Elim appeared at the next Quarter Session in Albany on 8 November. This was her eighth court appearance, although her first before a jury in the Quarter Sessions. The grand jury returned a true bill for her case but also requested to inspect the gaol.³³ In their report the jury were concerned about the mixing of Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners, but were also scathing about the conditions at the gaol, reporting on the:

improper state and inadequate accommodation for the mixed prisoners confined in it. Also strongly recommend a Privy to be erected and that the prisoners have some proper means of exercise either by the jailor taking them out or otherwise  – and that the white prisoners be kept separate from the natives.³⁴

This report echoed a petition signed four years earlier by sixty-three Albany residents complaining that Albany Gaol was ‘a small, dank, ill ventilated building’ with dark cells. The residents complained that five prisoners were being kept in the gaol’s two cells and that prisoners were being remanded in the gaol for periods of up to four months while awaiting trial for what were described as ‘petty’ crimes.³⁵ Elim was convicted of theft and in February 1849 was sent to Fremantle with three other prisoners, where the Government Resident, Richard Broun, suggested she be sent to a ‘native institution’.³⁶ The sending of Indigenous children to so-called ‘native’ schools, where they were often indentured, represents another method of institutionalisation of Indigenous people. However, Elim was sent to Fremantle Gaol, and on 22 February she was sent on to the Perth Lockup, where she disappears from the records.³⁷

Albany Gaol was not enlarged and conditions there continued to be a source of tension. In 1856, when twenty-year-old Fanny Harris was remanded in Albany Gaol awaiting trial, her gender and Indigeneity were also cause for concern. The daughter of an Indigenous woman from the Port Phillip Bay area and a non-Indigenous sealer, Fanny was charged with stealing and killing a lamb. Magistrate Alexander Cockburn-Campbell complained at the time that the size of Albany Gaol needed to be increased so that ‘males and females and black and white may be kept separate without subjecting the Jailer or Magistrate to charges of illegal and oppressive conduct towards one class or another’.³⁸ Tensions over the gaol continued until the convict depot at Albany was proclaimed a public gaol in 1873 and cells were built for female prisoners.³⁹

Garden Island and transportation

By 1851, authorities were considering separating Aboriginal women from other prisoners in Perth and Fremantle. On 22 October, Charles Symmons, Guardian of Aborigines, wrote to the Colonial Secretary stating that James Reid, a farmer on Garden Island, had agreed to take ‘such female native prisoners as may from time to time be sentenced to short terms of imprisonment’. Meeandip, known to the colonists as Garden Island, is a narrow island, sitting about 5 km off the coast just south of Fremantle. Reid, who farmed with his family at Sulphur Town on the island, had agreed to ‘receive and kindly treat’ prisoners under his charge and was to be paid nine pence per day for their board.⁴⁰ Had this plan become an established practice it would have meant that Garden Island became a separate carceral space for Aboriginal women, just as Rottnest Island had become a carceral space for Aboriginal men.

My research has not uncovered any Aboriginal women imprisoned on Garden Island but the island did become the solution for one sentence of transportation ‘beyond the seas’, in 1852, when a young mother, Mary Trubee, was convicted of arson.⁴¹ Men sentenced to transportation in Western Australia were sent to New South Wales or Van Diemen’s Land, but this did not appear to be a solution for women who received a similar sentence.⁴² Trubee had been convicted of setting fire to a cottage in Northam after being evicted from it by her employer, Frederick Morrell, but she claimed later that the family had been allowed to live in the house rent-free on the understanding that her husband Thomas would repair it. She said that Thomas had spent the equivalent of three years’ rent rebuilding it, only to be evicted at the end of the year.⁴³ William Henry Mackie, Chairman of the Court of Quarter Sessions sentenced her to fifteen years’ transportation, stating that ‘the case was considered too flagrant to admit of a more lenient sentence’.⁴⁴ Trubee was sent to Garden Island, the Perth Gazette writing ‘we understand the woman who was convicted at the last Quarter Sessions at Perth, has been placed under the charge of Mr Reid on Garden Island, there not being any place to keep her in either Perth or Fremantle’.⁴⁵ Women sentenced to transportation caused a problem for colonial authorities in Western Australia. Where could they be transported to?

By May 1853, Mary was back in Perth where she was reported to have been imprisoned in the Perth Lockup for ‘a considerable time’.⁴⁶ The lockup had been enlarged five years earlier, with the addition of an extra building (Figure 3).⁴⁷ Unlike Fremantle Gaol, the Perth Lockup used association wards, where several prisoners shared a large cell, to confine prisoners. A description of the Perth Lockup in 1850 stated that it consisted of ‘One large strong room capable of containing 12 white prisoners, 2 rooms capable of containing 40 natives or Black prisoners, a solitary cell for black, and a solitary cell for refractory white prisoners’.⁴⁸ This configuration made it impossible to separate categories of prisoners, as was required in the rules for Fremantle Gaol.

Figure 3. Plan showing Perth Lockup on the corner of Pier Street and St George's Terrace, 1851. Perth 18/6, AU WA S235 cons3868 item 322, SROWA.

In this gaol, Mary’s gender was a cause of tension for authorities, who were already contending with overcrowding in the gaol.⁴⁹ Charles Elderton, Deputy Superintendent of Police, wrote to the Colonial Secretary in May 1853 asking that Mary be removed from the lockup, saying:

The cells are unfit for her constantly to remain in them and she occupies daily the room of the constable in charge who is a married man, with a family of children and her being constantly in his room with his family is most uncomfortable for him and his family.⁵⁰

Mary also petitioned the Colonial Secretary to ‘grant me my liberty’ and, in December, the Sisters of Mercy requested that Mary be pardoned and released.⁵¹ However, Mackie was adamant that the sentence should stand.⁵² Two years later, the Inquirer reported that Mary Trubee was to be released from prison as she was ‘in such a delicate state of health from long confinement in the Perth Lock-up’.⁵³ Mary had completed just three years of her fifteen-year sentence. That same year the lockup became so overcrowded that the government was forced to rent a house to accommodate prisoners.⁵⁴ In Mary’s case, it seems the only solution available to the authorities to counter the inadequacies of the gaol’s accommodation was to release her back into the community.

Mary was not the only woman in the colony sentenced to transportation. In 1839, Keziah Lockyer stood trial in the Court of Quarter Sessions in Western Australia, charged with perjury.⁵⁵ Keziah was an outspoken woman who had come to the colony in 1830 with her husband Paul and six children, but by the time of the trial the couple had separated. Keziah had taken a position as housekeeper with solicitor William Graham, although it seems that the couple were also intimate partners. Her eldest daughter had married solicitor William Clark.⁵⁶ By the time of the trial, Keziah’s daughter had left her husband and was cohabiting with Graham.⁵⁷

In 1838, Keziah appeared as a defence witness when Clark sued Graham in a civil case to recover damages for ‘criminal conversation’ between Graham and Clark’s wife.⁵⁸ Clark’s uncle, Henry Rice Bond, had sworn at the trial that he heard Keziah say to Graham, ‘You old villain, you have had enough of me, and now you want to make a whore of my daughter’. Graham then sued Bond for perjury, and Bond, who was acquitted, accused Graham and Keziah of perjury in turn. Although Graham was acquitted, Keziah was found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.⁵⁹ The problem of where to transport Keziah was solved nine days later when Governor Hutt issued a warrant granting her a pardon on the condition that she leave the colony, ‘voluntarily transporting herself beyond the seas for the term of her natural life’.⁶⁰ Seven days after the warrant was issued, Keziah embarked for Launceston on board the barque Socrates.⁶¹ From there she disappears from view, her name unable to be found in the archival records. The problems caused by sentences of transportation were alleviated to a certain extent in 1856 when the colony passed a law abolishing transportation for all prisoners, substituting sentences of penal servitude.⁶²

Rottnest Island Prison

By 1851, Indigenous women were being incarcerated on Wadjemup, known as Rottnest Island to the colonisers. Rottnest Island Prison, which received its first Indigenous male prisoners in 1838, has been described by historians as a place of imprisonment for Aboriginal men, yet at least six women were sent there.⁶³ The 1851 gaol returns for Fremantle Gaol include a prisoner named Mary with a notation reading ‘Native school girl on her way to Rottnest’.⁶⁴ Mary was almost certainly a pupil at the Reverend George King’s Fremantle native school. At the time she was sent to the island, the prison had been closed for over a year and most of the inmates sent to the mainland. It remained closed until 1855 but a handful of men remained on the island, under the charge of William Foster, to provide labour for James Dempster’s farm.⁶⁵ In 1855, two more Indigenous women were sent to the island: Couray, who was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for manslaughter, and Betty, sentenced to six months for sheep stealing in Port Gregory.⁶⁶ Walganda, an Aboriginal woman from Wiluna, spent time in the prison in 1901.⁶⁷ Although these records show that Indigenous women were sent to Rottnest Island Prison, I have found no references to their time served on the island; further research is required into women’s experience of imprisonment at Rottnest.

However, not all women sent to Rottnest Island Prison were Indigenous. In 1840, seventeen-year-old Jane Green was sent there to serve out a two-year sentence for concealment of birth.⁶⁸ It seems unlikely that she was housed in the prison with the male prisoners, and she may have served her sentence in domestic service for the gaoler, Henry Vincent, and his wife, Louisa. Vincent was a man with a reputation for cruelty, both to the prisoners, and to his family.⁶⁹ A similar situation occurred in 1845 when another seventeen-year-old, domestic servant Susan Hitchcock, was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for stealing a number of items of clothing from her employer, Sibella Taylor, in Caversham Rise.⁷⁰ Susan was pregnant at the time she took the clothes, and her baby was born while she was in Fremantle Gaol. The birth records indicate that her daughter was stillborn.⁷¹ In May, Susan was sent on to Rottnest.⁷²

Waterside Lockup

On 26 March 1858, all male prisoners were removed from the Perth Lockup and sent to the Convict Establishment, also known as Fremantle Prison. There was no accommodation for women at the Convict Establishment, so female prisoners, juveniles and men awaiting trial were sent to a new lockup, often referred to as the Waterside Lockup.⁷³ Only metres from the old lockup, it was built on the banks of the Derbal Yerrigan, known to the colonists as the Swan River. The Perth Gazette described the Waterside Lockup as having ‘eight cells for Prisoners with a yard for them to take exercise in, and apartments for a Gaoler and his wife’.⁷⁴

It was to the Waterside Lockup that eighteen-year-old Louisa Garrett was sent in 1861 after being found guilty of conspiring to murder her husband. This was only a couple of years before the West Australian published a scathing report on the conditions at the gaol, likening the small exercise yard to ‘the bottom of a well’, where prisoners ‘huddled like sheep in a pen’. They complained that the rest of the prison consisted of dark cells and narrow passages. All together the newspaper considered the gaol to be ‘unhealthy and therefor unfit for the abode for human beings’.⁷⁵

The case of Louisa Garrett illustrates the constant tension felt by authorities when assessing petitions for release, between the length of time served by the prisoner and the unsuitability of the colony’s carceral spaces for women. Following the example set in Britain, time already served was considered an important criterion in these cases.⁷⁶ Gaol sentences were thought to provide an example for others considering wrongdoing and to have a ‘beneficial deterring influence’ on society, which would be weakened if prisoners were released too early.⁷⁷ A year after her imprisonment, Louisa’s husband, surprisingly, petitioned to have her released and ‘receive her to his home and treat her as his wife’.⁷⁸ Although this petition was rejected at the time, as I discussed at the beginning of this article, the Executive Council considered the petition again in 1863. Under English law, a wife had no separate legal existence from her husband, although in most cases she could be held criminally responsible for her actions. ‘Moderate’ chastisement by a husband was considered acceptable by many magistrates and judges.⁷⁹ Thus, releasing a woman into the custody of her husband could provide authorities with a solution to the problem of incarcerated women. The minutes of the Council meeting state the petition ‘was now brought forward because there exists no proper place of confinement for women and Louisa Garrett has been imprisoned for two years in the lockup, a place quite unfit for such a purpose’. The Council determined that Louisa should be granted a ticket of leave, ‘providing her husband is still willing to receive her’.⁸⁰

Being capable of accommodating only six women, it is not surprising that overcrowding became a problem in the Waterside Lockup (Figure 4).⁸¹ By 1866, conditions at the lockup had become so crowded that the Sheriff, Alfred Hillman, was forced to request that the female prisoners be sent to the Poor House.⁸² The situation had not improved by 1873. After pointing out that the lockup was the only place of confinement for women and juveniles sentenced at the Supreme Court, or the Perth Police Court, the Sheriff, William Knight, complained that the gaol was frequently overcrowded, making it impossible to separate the juveniles from the adults and the ‘refractory or bad characters’ from the other prisoners. He also complained that there was no way of giving exercise to those serving long sentences or to assign ‘hard labour’.⁸³ However, Knight needed to wait only two more years, for in 1875 prisoners were moved to another Perth gaol.

Figure 4. Plan for Waterside Lockup and gaoler's quarters, 22 March 1858, AU WA S399 cons1647 00132, SROWA.

Perth Gaol

In 1856, a new Perth gaol had been built on a slight rise on the northern outskirts of Perth. Constructed of limestone blocks, quarried by the convicts, and roofed with she-oak shingles, it did not initially house colonial prisoners, but instead became a convict depot, housing ninety Imperial convicts.⁸⁴ In 1875, the gaol ceased to be a convict depot and colonial prisoners were transferred from Fremantle Prison and from the Waterside Lockup, although men under sentence of penal servitude continued to be incarcerated at Fremantle Prison. There was no accommodation at Fremantle Prison for women, so women sentenced to penal servitude were incarcerated in Perth Gaol.⁸⁵ This was again a cause for concern, the Inquirer on a visit to the gaol in 1884 writing:

we saw the woman who had recently received five years’ penal servitude, and we understand that the authorities are doubtful what to do with her. On the one hand, long-sentenced prisoners have to be sent to the Fremantle Convict Depot, and on the other hand, she, if sent, would be the only female prisoner there.⁸⁶

The Inquirer was referring to Jane Dyson, who was convicted of larceny from her employer James Liddelow. However, two years later Dyson was released, the Inquirer commenting that:

The Governor’s action in this matter is to be commended, as owing to the woman being the only female prisoner under long sentence she had to be confined in the Perth prison, in which she was practically condemned to pass five years of her life between a cell and a very small yard.⁸⁷

The Inquirer was mistaken when it said that Dyson was the only woman ‘under long sentence’. In 1885, Mary Jane Hayes was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for stealing, but she was released after only two years as part of the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.⁸⁸ Again, it seems, authorities turned to early release to solve the problem of inadequate accommodation for female prisoners.

Separation of the sexes continued to be a problem for authorities in Perth Gaol. Although housed in the same building, women prisoners were supposed to be kept separated from the male prisoners, but this wasn’t always achievable. In both the Waterside Lockup and Perth Gaol, male and female prisoners were able surreptitiously to pass messages to one another.⁸⁹ In 1887, Sarah Jane Clarke was cautioned for corresponding clandestinely with Chinese prisoner Ah Oh, who was found with fruit and letters in his cell. Ah Oh, however, received a more severe sentence, being punished by six days on a diet of bread and water.⁹⁰

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, women’s offending became increasingly pathologised and women began to be diverted from the criminal justice system to the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum.⁹¹ Women who were riotous, violent or who created a disturbance in public could be diagnosed with moral insanity and dispatched from the colony’s gaols to the Asylum.⁹² The average number of women institutionalised in the Asylum in 1870 was twenty-five. By 1900 this had risen to eighty-five.⁹³

Once women had been moved to the new Perth Gaol, there appears to have been less concern around the unsuitability of the space for women, although a report in 1878 found that the female division was too small for the average number of inmates and should be enlarged.⁹⁴ Petitions for remission of women’s sentences continued to cite prison as an unsuitable place for women who were due to give birth, or who were ill, but these were rarely considered by authorities as adequate reasons for remission.⁹⁵ In 1888, the laundry and cookhouse at Fremantle Prison were converted to accommodation for female prisoners and a wall was built to divide the building from the rest of the prison. Perth Gaol was closed and all inmates, including women, were removed from the Perth site and housed in Fremantle Prison. The building continued to be the only women’s prison in the state until the opening of Bandyup Women’s Prison in 1970.⁹⁶

Conclusion

The lack of separate carceral spaces for women during the nineteenth century was undoubtedly a direct result of the low numbers of women incarcerated at this time. Despite the overcrowding which occurred in the small gaols and lockups, the average daily number of women incarcerated in Western Australia during the 1880s was just twelve, compared to 327 in Victoria.⁹⁷ The numbers of women incarcerated in the early years of settlement were much lower. In 1840, for example, only five women were incarcerated over the course of the year.⁹⁸ Unquestionably, the cost of building and staffing an institution, which at times might stand empty and at other times house only a handful of prisoners, would have been considered a serious impediment to construction.⁹⁹

For nearly sixty years, women imprisoned in Western Australia constituted a problem for authorities. The requirement to keep women separated from men combined with a lack of separate carceral spaces for women meant that there was no place for women sentenced to anything other than short periods. This lack of suitable prison accommodation for women indicates a certain dismissive attitude to women’s crime and a possible perception by the authorities that women’s crime, in general, was less serious, and less ‘dangerous’, than that of men. However, in practice it meant that authorities struggled to find solutions for individual cases as they occurred. Female prisoners were often released early to avoid having to find somewhere to keep them and to avoid overcrowding, and they were also released into the ‘custody’ of their husbands or incarcerated in other institutions. It was equally difficult to find a solution for women sentenced to transportation.

Women prisoners were also anxious to shorten their periods of incarceration and to this end many petitioned the Governor to grant them their freedom. These petitions were often gendered – citing childbirth, or family, as reasons for release. Although each petition was considered, early release was not always granted and depended on factors such as time already served. It wasn’t until a separate women’s prison was built in the grounds of Fremantle Prison that complaints about the unsuitability of prison accommodation for female prisoners subsided.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their helpful comments. This research was carried out while the author was in receipt of a Jean Rogerson Postgraduate Scholarship and an Australian Government Research Training Program Fees offset Scholarship at the University of Western Australia.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 George Frederick Stone to Colonial Secretary, 19 May 1862, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 493 294, State Records Office of Western Australia (hereafter SROWA), Perth.

2 John Hampton to Colonial Secretary, 26 May 1862, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 493 294, SROWA.

3 John McGuire, ‘Punishment and Colonial Society: A History of Penal Change in Queensland, 1859–1930s’ (PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 2001), 34.

4 For example, Portia Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay: A Reinterpretation of the Role of Women in the Origins of Australian Society (Sydney: Macquarie Library, 1988); Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Deborah Oxley, Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

5 Alana Piper, ‘“I Go Out Worse Every Time”: Connections and Corruption in a Female Prison’, History Australia 9, no. 3 (2012): 132–53.

6 McGuire; Mark Finnane, Punishment in Australian Society (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), 40.

7 Geoffrey Bolton and Geraldine Byrne, May It Please Your Honour: A History of the Supreme Court of Western Australia 1861–2005 (Perth: Supreme Court of Western Australia, 2005), 5.

8 Katherine Ann Roscoe, ‘Island Chains: Carceral Islands and the Colonisation of Australia, 1824–1903’ (PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 2018), 40.

9 J.E. Thomas and Alex Stewart, Imprisonment in WA: Evolution, Theory and Practice (Perth: University of Western Australia, 1978), 3–4.

10 Randall McGowan, ‘The Well-Ordered Prison’, in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, eds Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 71–98.

11 Louise J. Bavin, ‘Punishment, Prisons and Reform: Incarceration in Western Australia in the Nineteenth Century’, Studies in Western Australian History 14 (1993): 126.

12 Emily Lanman, ‘Prisoners, Power and Panopticon: Investigating Fremantle Gaol, 1831–1841’ (Master’s thesis, University of Notre Dame Australia, 2021), 36.

13 McGowan.

14 Peter Broun, 8 April 1831, Correspondence Outwards, AU WA S2755 cons49 04 36-39, SROWA.

15 ‘Government Notice’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 7 March 1835, 453, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article641039 (accessed 11 April 2023).

16 ‘State of Crime in Western Australia’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 18 June 1836, 713, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article640412 (accessed 11 April 2023).

17 ‘State of Crime in Western Australia’.

18 Quarterly Return of Prisoners, April 1837, Criminal Indictment Files, AU WA S122 cons3472 29, SROWA.

19 Occurrence Book, 20 August 1864, Fremantle Police Station Occurrence Books, AU WA S4836 cons419 01, SROWA.

20 Ann Hunter, A Different Kind of ‘Subject’: Colonial Law in Aboriginal-European Relations in Nineteenth Century Western Australia 1829–61 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012), xiii.

21 Colonial Secretary to Resident Magistrate Champion Bay, 17 August 1866, Letterbooks Correspondence Outwards, AU WA S2755 cons49 46 905, SROWA.

22 Judy Campbell, Invisible Diseases: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780–1880 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), 15–16.

23 Mark Finnane and Andy Kaladelfos, ‘Race and Justice in an Australian Court: Prosecuting Homicide in Western Australia, 1830–1954’, Australian Historical Studies 47, no. 3 (2016): 450; Mark Finnane, ‘Western Australia Criminal Trials 1830–1861’ (ADA Dataverse, 2019), https://doi.org/10.26193/OW6SR6 (accessed 11 April 2023); Mark Finnane, ‘Western Australia Supreme Court 1862–1899’ (ADA Dataverse, 2020), https://doi.org/10.26193/ESI64N (accessed 11 April 2023); ‘Search Trials’, The Prosecution Project, https://app.prosecutionproject.griffith.edu.au/web/public-search (accessed 11 April 2023).

24 Finnane and Kaladelfos, 455.

25 James Roe to Colonial Secretary, 4 January 1880, Correspondence Files, AU WA S675 cons527 1880 1224 6-7, SROWA.

26 ‘The Western Australian Journal’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 30 July 1836, 736, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article640360 (accessed 11 April 2023); ‘Government Scribes’, Swan River Guardian, 22 June 1837, 190, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article214041866 (accessed 11 April 2023).

27 ‘Depositions’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 25 May 1833, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article642063 (accessed 11 April 2023); Blue Books of Statistics Western Australia, 1834, PRO series, Records of the Colonial Office, file 10, Australian Joint Copying Project reel 1123, 173, National Archives of the UK; Plan of Public Buildings in Perth 18/5, undated, AU WA S235 cons3868 321, SROWA.

28 For example, see ‘Depositions’, 83; ‘The Western Australian Journal’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 29 March 1834, 258, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article641579 (accessed 11 April 2023); ‘The Western Australian Journal’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 4 July 1835, 522, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article640858 (accessed 11 April 2023); ‘Classified Advertising’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 9 April 1836, 681, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article640479 (accessed 11 April 2023).

29 Neville Green and Susan Moon, Far from Home: Aboriginal Prisoners of Rottnest Island, 1838–1931 (Perth: UWA Publishing, 1997).

30 Petition, 9 August 1844, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 130 122, SROWA, Perth.

31 Phillips to Colonial Secretary, 26 September 1848, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 173 131-132, SROWA.

32 John Ramsden Wollaston to Henry Camfield, 14 October 1848, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 179 116, SROWA; John Randall Phillips to Colonial Secretary, 18 August 1848, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 177 66-76, SROWA.

33 Albany 30D. Site of Albany surveyed and drawn by A.H. Hillman, June–July 1836, Original plans – townsites, AU WA S235 cons3868 004, SROWA.

34 Arthur Trimmer, 8 November 1848, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 177 158, SROWA.

35 Petition, 9 August 1844, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 130 122, SROWA.

36 Richard Broun to Colonial Secretary, 21 February 1849, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 190 36, SROWA.

37 Quarterly Returns of Prisoners, 1849, AU WA S270 cons3676 15, SROWA.

38 Resident Magistrate Albany to Colonial Secretary, 2 January 1866, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2528 cons346 087, SROWA.

39 Comptroller General to Colonial Secretary, 2 February 1872, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 708 104, SROWA; ‘Albany, June 29’, The Inquirer and Commercial News, 10 July 1872, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65934361 (accessed 11 April 2023).

40 Charles Symmons to Acting Colonial Secretary, 22 October 1851, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 212 475, SROWA; D.C. Cowan and K. Caldwell, Garden Island Western Australia (unpublished, 1937), State Library of Western Australia (hereafter SLWA), Perth.

41 Fremantle Gaol return, April 1852, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 241 174, SROWA; ‘Domestic Sayings and Doings’, The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 23 April 1852, 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3173365 (accessed 11 April 2023); R v Trubee, 7 April 1852, Criminal Indictment Files, AU WA S122 cons3472 93 638, SROWA.

42 ‘State of Crime in Western Australia’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 18 June 1836, 712, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article640412 (accessed 11 April 2023).

43 Mary Trubee to the Governor, 22 August 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 271 62, SROWA.

44 W.H. Mackie to Colonial Secretary, 22 August 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 271 64, SROWA.

45 ‘Domestic Sayings and Doings', The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 23 April 1852, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3173365 (accessed 15 July 2023).

46 Deputy Superintendent of Police to Colonial Secretary, 18 May 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 1853 274 151, SROWA.

47 ‘Government Tenders’, The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 7 October 1848, 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3170177 (accessed 11 April 2023); Blue Book 1848, Blue Books (statistical returns for the Swan River colony), AU WA S4148 cons1855 12 190, SROWA.

48 Blue Book 1850, Blue Books (statistical returns for the Swan River colony), AU WA S4148 cons1855 15 80, SROWA.

49 ‘Gaol Accommodation’, Inquirer, 4 September 1850, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65740581 (accessed 11 April 2023); Blue Book 1853, Blue Books (statistical returns for the Swan River colony), AU WA S4148 cons1855 18 168–9, SROWA.

50 Deputy Superintendent of Police to Colonial Secretary, 18 May 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 vol 274 151, SROWA.

51 Mary Trubee to Governor, 22 August 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 271 62, SROWA; Sisters of Mercy to Governor, 30 December 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 269 139, SROWA.

52 Mary Trubee to Governor, 22 August 1853, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 271 62, SROWA; Colonial Secretary to Superioress of the Convent of the Holy Cross, 31 December 1853, Letterbooks Correspondence Outwards, AU WA S2755 cons49 33 1183, SROWA.

53 ‘Local and Domestic Intelligence’, Inquirer, 14 February 1855, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65741985 (accessed 11 April 2023).

54 ‘Local and Domestic Intelligence’, Inquirer, 23 May 1855, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65741088 (accessed 11 April 2023).

55 R v Keziah Lockyer, Criminal Indictment Files, January 1839, AU WA S122 cons3472 case 187, SROWA.

56 Ian Berryman, A Colony Detailed (Perth: Creative Research, 1979), 143.

57 ‘Classified Advertising’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 15 December 1838, 197, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article639287 (accessed 11 April 2023).

58 Clark v Graham, Civil Court Records of Plaints, AU WA S129 cons3546 5 1400, SROWA.

59 Keziah Lockyer to Governor, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 66 112–114, 5 April 1839, SROWA; R v William Temple Graham, Criminal Indictment Files, 1 January 1839, AU WA S122 cons3472, SROWA; R v Keziah Lockyer, Criminal Indictment Files, April 1839, AU WA S122 cons3742 37 case 187, SROWA; Fremantle Gaol return, April 1839, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 71 93, SROWA.

60 John Hutt, 12 April 1839, Letterbooks Correspondence Outwards, AU WA S2755 cons49 10, SROWA.

61 ‘Shipping Intelligence’, Colonial Times, 14 May 1839, 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8749691 (accessed 11 April 2023); ‘Shipping Intelligence’, The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, 20 April 1839, 62, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article639137 (accessed 11 April 2023).

62 An ordinance to substitute other punishment in lieu of transportation, 1856 (WA).

63 Katherine Roscoe, ‘A Natural Hulk: Australia’s Carceral Islands in the Colonial Period, 1788–1901’, International Review of Social History 63, S26 (2018): 62; Green and Moon; Ann Curthoys, ‘The Beginnings of Transportation in Western Australia: Banishment, Forced Labour, and Punishment at the Aboriginal Prison on Rottnest Island before 1850’, Studies in Western Australian History 34 (2020).

64 Fremantle Gaol return, April 1851, Quarterly Returns of Prisoners, AU WA S270 cons3676 017, SROWA.

65 Diary of James MacLean Dempster, 21 April 1850–2 April 1853, Acc 1197A/1, SLWA.

66 Fremantle Gaol return, Correspondence Inwards, 7 May 1854, AU WA S2941 cons36 293 23, SROWA; Sherriff to Colonial Secretary, Letterbooks Correspondence Outwards, 29 May 1855, AU WA S2755 cons49 38 1527, SROWA; Rottnest Island Commitment Book, 21 May 1855, cons130 3, SROWA.

67 Register Female Prisoners, 1897–1906, AU WA S678 cons4186 1 119, SROWA; Wadjemup – The Land Beyond the Shore, Aboriginal History Research Services, https://www.dlgsc.wa.gov.au/aboriginal-history/reconciliation-and-history-projects/wadjemup-the-land-beyond-the-shore (accessed 28 July 2022).

68 List of prisoners Fremantle Gaol, October 1840, AU WA S2941 cons36 83 15, SROWA.

69 Ann Curthoys, Shino Konishi and Alexandra Ludewig, The Lives and Legacies of a Carceral Island: A Biographical History of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), 39, 51–2.

70 R v Susan Hitchcock, 1 January 1845, Criminal Indictment Files, S122 cons3472 65 case 372, SROWA.

71 Birth record, Hitchcock, stillborn female, Fremantle, 1845, no. 561, Department of Justice, https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-justice/online-index-search-tool (accessed 29 July 2022).

72 Return of prisoners, August 1845, AU WA S2941 cons36 143 102, SROWA.

73 Blue Book 1858, Blue Books (statistical returns for the Swan River Colony), AU WA S4148 cons1855 23, SROWA.

74 ‘Domestic Sayings and Doings’, The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 10 September 1852, 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3173789 (accessed 11 April 2023).

75 ‘The Jail at Perth’, The West Australian Times, 10 December 1863, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3366750 (accessed 11 April 2023).

76 Dierdre Palk, Gender, Crime and Judicial Discretion (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 117.

77 George Frederick Stone to Colonial Secretary, 19 May 1862, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 493 294, SROWA.

78 Charles Garrett to the Governor, May 1862, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 493 294, SROWA.

79 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1 (1765), 442–5.

80 Executive Council Minutes, 13 April 1863, AU WA S1620 cons1058 6, SROWA.

81 Sheriff to Colonial Secretary, 13 September 1866, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 576 70, SROWA; Perth Police Station, 22 March 1858, Plans Architectural and Engineering, AU WA S399 cons1647 00132, SROWA.

82 Sheriff to Colonial Secretary, 13 September 1866, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 576 70, SROWA.

83 Sheriff to Colonial Secretary, 4 July 1873, Correspondence Inwards, AU WA S2941 cons36 742 147, SROWA.

84 Louise Bavin-Steding, Crime and Confinement: Origins of Prisons in Western Australia (Perth: Stone’s Publishing, 2007), 81: ‘Domestic Sayings and Doings’, The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News, 4 June 1858, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2930820 (accessed 11 April 2023).

85 ‘The Inquirer’, The Inquirer and Commercial News, 4 October 1876, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66304293 (accessed 11 April 2023); Taruia Tangaroa Nicholls, ‘Perth Gaol and Colonial Penalty 1875–1888’ (PhD thesis, University of Western Australia, 2020), 26; ‘Legislative Council’, The Inquirer and Commercial News, 22 December 1875, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65963413 (accessed 11 April 2023).

86 ‘Good Friday in the Perth Gaol’, The Inquirer and Commercial News, 16 April 1884, 5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71997921 (accessed 11 April 2023).

87 ‘General News’, The Inquirer and Commercial News, 22 December 1886, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66081675 (accessed 11 April 2023).

88 Police Gazette Western Australia, no. 22, June 1887, 118, SLWA; ‘The Jubilee Celebrations’, The West Australian, 21 June 1887, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3765874 (accessed 11 April 2023).

89 For example, see R v Louisa Garrett, Criminal Indictment Files, AU WA S122 cons3472 136 case 880, SROWA.

90 Nicholls, 79.

91 Lucia Zedner, Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 296; Lucy Williams and Barry Godfrey, ‘“Find the Lady”: Tracing and Describing the Incarcerated Female Population of London in 1881’, Women’s Criminality in Europe: 1600–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 132.

92 Alexandra Wallis, ‘Hysterical Women: Moral Treatment of Female Patients in the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, 1858–1908’ (PhD thesis, University of Notre Dame, 2020), 88, 249; Alexandra Wallis, ‘The Disorderly Female: Alcohol, Prostitution and Moral Insanity in 19th-Century Fremantle’, Journal of Australian Studies 43, no. 3 (2019): 333–48; for example, see ‘Supreme Court – Criminal Side’, The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times, 6 October 1865, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3751016 (accessed 11 April 2023); ‘City Police Court’, Daily News, 9 August 1889, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article84576750 (accessed 11 April 2023).

93 Wallis, ‘Hysterical Women’, 76.

94 ‘Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into Departmental Administration’, The Western Australian Times, 6 August 1878, 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2979623 (accessed 11 April 2023).

95 For example, see Elizabeth Smith to the Governor, 21 June 1886, Correspondence Files, AU WA S675 cons527 1886 2595, SROWA; Mary Woods to the Governor, 22 September 1884, Correspondence Files, AU WA S675 cons527 1884 5630, SROWA.

96 Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services, Report of an Announced Inspection of Bandyup Women’s Prison (2014), xi, http://www.oics.wa.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/93-Bandyup.pdf (accessed 5 September 2022).

97 Satyanshu K. Mukherjee et al., Source Book of Australian Criminal and Social Statistics, 1804–1988 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, Bicentennial edn, 1989), 605, 619.

98 Blue Book 1840, Blue Books (statistical returns for the Swan River Colony), AU WA S4148 cons1855 04, SROWA.

99 Blue Books of Statistics Western Australia, 1835, PRO series, Records of the Colonial Office, file 12, Australian Joint Copying Project reel 1123, 172, National Archives of the UK.