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To Watch or Restrain: Female Convict Prisons in 19th-Century Tasmania

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Abstract

As institutions established to manage exiled British felons, the Tasmanian female factories consisted of four women's prisons located throughout the island colony. The material world of these institutions mediated internal power relations. Superintendents, Convict Department Officials, and the female prisoners themselves manipulated site landscapes. Today, one of these institutions remains as a managed historic site. Tourists experience a tidy and unthreatening landscape of Australia's heroic convict heritage. By juxtaposing excavated archaeological remains with public presentations of convict sites, I explore the position of female convicts from the original penal landscape to the shadows of Australian history.

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  1. School at Art History and Archaeology, The University of Manchester, Oxford Rd., Manchester, M13 9PL, U.K

    Eleanor Conlin Casella

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  1. Eleanor Conlin Casella
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Casella, E.C. To Watch or Restrain: Female Convict Prisons in 19th-Century Tasmania. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5, 45–72 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009545209653

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