Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
DATE: 7 June 1845
POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
SATURDAY.
ELLEN DONALDSON (bond) was introduced to the notice of the Bench under the following circumstances: some few days since, her mistress, having occasion to remark that, while a portion of the family washing was too little done, by the linen appearing as if it had been washed in a bason [sic] and dried on the grid-iron, several articles were too much so by their having holes burnt in them—DONALDSON informed her that the road to the Factory was exactly the same as from it, and gave intimation that as soon as her mistress cashed up her score she would walk her chalks. This mandate not being complied with, the prisoner, seeing that the best way of “throwing anything up,” was to be “sick,” immediately became affected with a fit of the bile, and betook herself to bed. It was, however, subsequently discovered that the illness was merely a day disease as, after the family had retired to rest, she become that well, that she was enabled to repair to the hut of a bullock driver, on a neighbouring farm, where, solaced and solacing, the midnight hours were passed in that madness of joy which true lovers alone know.—DONALDSON, whose personal appearance was such that it was decidedly dangerous for her to go too near a boiling down establishment, on entering the Court, appeared as it she had just recovered from one faint and was going to have another; and her answers to some interrogations were given in such a private and confidential whisper that they had to reach the Bench through the medium of the Clerk of Petty Sessions, but in the course of her defence she entirely forgot her grevious [sic] maladies, and while expatiating on her weakness, did so in a tone of voice that might have been an object of envy to her sweet-heart the bullock-river. On being sentenced to two months in the 3rd class, her illness returned, and she left the court with a very passable imitation of hysterics.
CITATION
Female Factory Online (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of ELLEN DONALDSON,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18450607, accessed [insert current date].
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