Anotador 12 Banquillo

51 _{TLC, 15, 1869, Paper 5}

52 _{TLC, 17, 1871, Paper 47, page 48, question 66. The map of Tasmania on page 36 indicates this area.} 53 _{TLC, 17, 1871, Paper 5}

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In both Brickfields and the IDL, discipline, order, and regimentation were emphasised, and control overshadowed comfort. The men had to hand over any ‘private clothing or other property they may possess’ to the overseer55, and were given a uniform to wear on the premises. This is part of the process that Goffman calls the ‘mortification of the self’, whereby the person is dispossessed of the trappings of their former life role and becomes an ‘inmate’ of the total institution, with personal belongings replaced with clearly

identifiable institutional items.56 The Mercury reported disapprovingly that the

Brickfields uniform had a ‘penal aspect57, made from grey tweed and serge (‘in this colony the prevailing garb of convictism’) and marked with the letters ‘B.I.D.’ and the ‘broad arrow’58, also a familiar symbol of the convict system. The similarity of the institutional uniform to that worn by prisoners was indicative of the parallels drawn by the authorities between the two states of convict and pauper. IDL inmates were later allowed to keep their own clothes, providing they were clean and tidy, but this was for reasons of economy rather than the inmates’ choice.59

The depersonalization process involved other stages: inmates had their hair cut, and were washed and disinfected, although Brickfields had no running water and the IDL did not even have a bath—the superintendent begged for one to be installed, as the ‘dirty state’ of the inmates on admission made it almost impossible to keep the premises vermin-free.60 They were examined by a doctor, not just to judge their health status but also to ascertain their ability to work; those who were deemed capable but refused were denied admission. They were also subjected to the routine of the institution around the clock, leaving them with no choice of when to get up, wash, dress, eat, work or rest, and they did all these things together. Goffman states that the ‘key fact’ of total institutions is ‘batching’—the handling of whole blocks of people as single entities without needs or desires—and this was certainly the case in the invalid depots.61 The men followed a strict routine,

regulated by the sound of the bell. They rose at 6am (7am in winter); ate breakfast at 8am and dinner at 1pm, tea at 5.30pm (4.30pm in winter), and went to bed, in complete

55 _{Rules and regulations for the Male Invalid Depot, Launceston, in}

The Hobart Town Gazette, Tuesday,

25th _{August 1874, page 882, rule 36; again, this rule appears in the regulations for all invalid institutions.} 56 _{Goffman, ‘On the characteristics of total institutions’, page 28}

57 _The

Mercury, Thursday, 4th August 1859, page 3

58 _The

Mercury, Saturday, 20th May 1874, page 2

59 _Piper,

Beyond the Convict System, page 409

60 _{TLC, 18, 1872, Paper 8}

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silence, at 9pm (8pm in winter), when the lights were extinguished and the gates were locked.62 The gatekeepers had strict orders that they were not to ‘on any account allow any Inmate to leave the institution without an order from the Superintendent’.63

Prior to the establishment of the IDL, those pauper men who could not make the journey south had been accommodated in the dormitories of the debtors’ prison at the Launceston Penal Establishment. Within two years of opening, demand for beds outstripped supply and the male wards in the Launceston gaol were re-opened, to be used by the inmates for sleeping purposes only; they re-joined their fellows during the day for meals, work and recreation.64 For many theses sleeping arrangements would have been a return to familiar surroundings, and some may have wondered at the difference between being an ‘invalid’ and a ‘disorderly person’ imprisoned for vagrancy.

The pauper women of Launceston were also housed in the gaol, in the infirmary ward. They had been there since 1860 and would remain in those quarters until the closure of the IDL in 1912.65 Whilst these arrangements might be acceptable for ex-convicts, the idea that a woman of good character or gentle birth who had fallen on hard times should be forced inside the gaol was abhorrent to the citizens of the city. In 1879, the

Launceston Benevolent Society launched the Launceston Alms Houses Trust, to build two houses to provide shelter for

…the relief of those infirm and aged women, whose respectable antecedents make them shrink from the Invalid Depot, and who through circumstances over which perhaps they have no control, have been reduced to the lowest depths of poverty and distress...66

The houses were to be erected on land donated by a wealthy merchant and devout

churchman, Mr Henry Reed, who also provided a large sum of money to the fund for their erection.67 But despite the fact that the almshouses were intended for respectable old

62 _The

Mercury, Saturday, 20th May 1874, page 2

63 _The

Hobart Town Gazette, Tuesday, 25th August 1874, page 879, regulation 17 (Brickfields),and page

882, regulation 28 (IDL)

64 _{TLC, 17, 1871, Paper 5. The gaol cells continued to be used until the IDL closed in 1912.}

65 _{TLC, 5, 1860, Paper 45. There were ten women in residence there in 1871; one was ‘an old servant of}

Mr Theodore Bartley’, who contributed 4s a week to her upkeep in the gaol (TLC, 17, 1871, Paper 47, question 77). This ignominious end after faithful service was not uncommon; Davidoff et al state that ‘elderly servants without kin or friends were disproportionately represented in the workhouse’ in England:

The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830-1960, (London, 1999), page 166

66 _The

Examiner, Tuesday, 18th February 1879, page 2

67 _{From the obituary of Henry Reed in the}

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ladies who had fallen on hard times, in a society that saw pauperism as a ‘contagion’, their presence aroused some public consternation. Fears were raised that the alms houses would ‘disgrace the neighbourhood and depreciate … properties’, and the owner of the adjoining land requested that the Benevolent Society pay for half of the expense of a substantial boundary fence.68

In the south, pauper women were also accommodated in a penal establishment. They had occupied the Infirmary at the Hobart General Hospital until 1867, when they were moved to a section of the Cascades Female Factory, separate from the female prisoners and their children.69 They were joined by male paupers from the Hospital and Port Arthur in the same year70, and by the overflow from Brickfields in 1869. The Cascades Invalid Depot (Cascades) became the third dedicated institution for paupers in the colony.

TheCascadesInvalidDepot,Hobart

A misplaced, gloomy old prison…71

Cascades was situated just outside Hobart Town at the foot of Mount Wellington, in a dank basin with little sunlight known locally as ‘shadow of death valley’.72 It was a cheerless place, cold and damp, surrounded by high walls made necessary by its close proximity to the city. Whilst the women occupied dormitories, the men slept in the old gaol cells of the old gaol at first, until larger wards were built for them. The cells continued to be pressed into service at times when overcrowding made it necessary. There was no rest from labour here, either; although frailty and an inability to work were actually prerequisites for admission, inmates were still expected earn their keep. The men, with an average age of sixty-nine, were engaged in ‘cultivating the land, carpentry, shoemaking, broom-making, coopering, picking oakum, stone-breaking’, whilst the women made and repaired the clothing and bedding and did the washing for the

institution.73 If they refused, they were faced with solitary confinement, imprisonment

68 _The

Examiner, Thursday, 22nd August 1878, page 3

69 _{TLC, 14, 1868, Paper 2, page 3} 70 _Piper,

Beyond the Convict System, page 110

71 _{TLC, 17, 1871, Paper 47, pages 83-84: evidence of Dr ES Hall} 72 _{Pearce, Historical Study: North Hobart}

73 _{TLC, 16, 1870, Paper 6. This was no different, of course, to the lot of many old men and women in the}

community; without state pensions, those without means had no choice but to work until they could do so no longer.

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‘with or without hard labour’, or dismissal from the depot.74 This was still seen as a fitting punishment for pauperism; in 1871 the Tasmanian Parliament placed on record that indigence was entirely due to personal character defects such as ‘idleness, intemperance, immorality, extravagance, and a determination … not to work’.75

Plate 5: The Cascades Invalid Depot, c1900. The imposing bulk of Mt Wellington and the high walls