Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
8 August 1827
THE HUMADRYADS
“Are not those woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we, but the penalty of Adam,
The season’s difference;”
When will novelties cease. Three women turned bushrangers, and seeking each other her mate in vernal bowers.
Breaking prison, and “bolting” from the Parramatta Factory some time during the stilly night of Saturday, and taking to the bush, as if there, they could indeed,
“Find tongues in trees, books in the running stream,
Sermon in stones, and good in everything.”
This precious piece of news became known to the Matron having charge of the Parramatta Factory, on Sunday morning, and a strict but ineffectual quest was shortly after instituted throughout the town and suburbs. One of the women who is supposed to be the ringleader, is said to be the notorious white “SALLY BROWN,” otherwise “SAL WEBB,”* alias “JACK THE LAGGER,” alias some ruffian else, and this makes about the fourth time since her pilgrimage to Botany of liberating herself from factory bonds, and of taking to the woods.
The three were, we are informed, fallen in with on Sunday by a person who was travelling towards Sydney—the ladies appeared to have every disposition for an interview, but the latter viewing their movements in a most suspicious light, struck off hastily into a different path, without coming into a more perilous contact.
* SALLY WEBB
CITATION
Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of SALLY BROWN alias SALLY WEBB and UNIDENTIFIED WOMEN,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18270808/, accessed [insert current date].
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