Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
28 August 1829
The proposed object of yesterday’s third “Bill” is novel, as its title sounds whimsical.
The title is that of “a Bill to compel married men to send for their wives, or to maintain them after the expiration of their sentence to the female factory.”
Husbands of women sentenced to the female factory at Parramatta, are to send or apply for their wives within three days after the expiration of their sentences, or pay a certain sum per diem, for every day they may remain after that time.
Upon this we shall be brief. The proposed compulsion is perhaps equitable enough. If a Bill were proposed to encourage matrimony, and to regulate the distribution of females, so that the factory should not shut up a tenth of the numbers of deluded women which that abode of penance does now, and has done for years past, (and which diffuses so moral an influence as to cause every nine out of ten to come out more case-hardened in vicious profligacy than before) however shocked, the morbid sentimentalities of our Mrs. FRY-going folk might feel at the base idea of so naughty a project, —- we question much how it could be proved inconsonant to sound morality after all, any more than contrary good, calculating, deep-thoughted policy. To this factory sepulchering—short commons, and petty tyranny, may be ascribed the present hopeful state of our distant penal settlements.
Taking the above Bill as it stands, we consider it may pass.
See Original: “No title,” The Australian (Sydney, NSW: 1824 – 1848), Friday 28 August 1829, pp.2-3
The Female Factory Online 