Report on Female Factory

Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
16 June 1832

FACTORY

AT PARRAMATTA.

To the Editor of THE SYDNEY MONITOR.

Parramatta, 13th June, 1832.

SIR,

Observing in your journal of this morning a letter signed Justitiacomplaining of the medical treatment of the female Factory, I beg to relate the incidents attending another inquest.

Died at the female Factory on Sunday evening, the 10th instant, JAMES CONNELL, a male infant, aged four months and three weeks.

A Coroner’s Inquest was held at that establishment on Tuesday the 12th, before Mr. HAYWARD, the Coroner. After the Jury had been sworn, they proceeded to the Hospital-ward to view the body, which was lying on a table, in the same room where numbers of sick females were lying.

The Jury proceeded to examine a witness, when it was stated, that the mother of the deceased infant, had an infectious disorder (the itch) and that the child had had it also, and had been ill with it and with convulsions at the same time, upwards of three weeks.

‘Twas also adduced in evidence, that numbers of the women and children were ill with the same disagreeable disorder; and that in the same ward where this disorder was prevalent, there were females who at present were free from it, but confined on account of other complaints.

The Jury returned a verdict, that the child had died by the visitation of God.

Previously to the retiring of the Jurors, they recommended that the Coroner should place in the visiting book, their strong objections as Citizens and Jurors, at the females confined with other complaints, being confined in the same ward, recommending that all females labouring under the disorder above-named, should be kept apart from the others; and further, that dead bodies should be removed to the proper place (the dead house) which at present it appeared was otherwise occupied.

I am afraid Mr. Editor the disorder above-named, will soon be as general in this Colony, as the Cholera Morbus is in Sunderland, seeing that it is now raging in the Factory.

I remain, Sir,

your obedient servant,

A JUROR OF PARRAMATTA.


CITATION

Female Factory Online (femalefactoryonline.org), “Letter to the Editor: Coronial Inquest of JAMES CONNELL,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/female-factory-reports/r18320616/, accessed [insert current date].

RELATED CONTENT
See Original
Burial Register: JAMES CONNELL

© Copyright Michaela Ann Cameron 2016