Cascades Female Factory Historic Site Hobart Tasmania

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    Behind the back wall on the green grassly slope is where all the infants were buried - there was a very high infant mortality rate at the Female Factory. Out of approximately 1200 babies born here roughly two thirds of them or more died

    1. blakelylaw580 9 months ago | reply

      Um, what exactly is a "female factory?" I strongly suspect they did not manufacture females there nor that it was a commercial place for producing babies. It looks like a fascinating place to explore, especially with the sad story you've told. I shiver when I think of the stories those walls could tell, even without knowing exactly what it was.

    2. adrienne_bartl 9 months ago | reply

      The Cascades Female Factory was in operation during the time when Australia was a Penal Settlement of England. Female convicts were interred there and sent out into households to work in service. More often then not the women got 'into trouble' ie pregnant through no real fault of their own by their male employers. When the female convicts fell pregnant they were always the ones in the wrong and were sent back to the Female factory have their babies. The saddest thing of all is that the mothers were not allowed to bond with their own babies - every three months they were given another woman's baby to breast feed and their own passed onto another woman. It was really a very depressing place but the women were, believe or not, safer behind the walls of the Female Factory than they were outside of them as Hobart was a pretty unsafe place back in those days.

    3. blakelylaw580 9 months ago | reply

      Thank-you for the explanation. It is fascinating and very, very sad. I'd never heard of any place where women were forced to change babies as you've described.

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