224 HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, ETC., 



which are well ventilated. The prisoners sleep in hammocks, swung 

 from parallel bars a few feet above the floor. A whipping-post was 

 shown in an adjoining yard. The older prisoners are kept at work 

 making brooms. 



The female convicts who do not conduct themselves well, are sent 

 back to the factory at Paramatta, where they are engaged in prison 

 labour. The practice of keeping them in great numbers there, after 

 they have been sent back, is liable to many objections, and is not 

 calculated to produce reformation. It is very questionable whether 

 their employment in small parties would not have a greater tendency 

 to produce the desired reform. 



The factory at Paramatta is situated on the river, about half a mile 

 from the centre of the town, near the place where the steamboats 

 stop. It is a large stone building, enclosed with high walls, and 

 usually contains one thousand inmates. A part of these are those 

 female convicts who have not yet been assigned ; and the rest, those 

 who have been remanded for their refractory conduct. Many of the 

 settlers have, from necessity, taken these females into their service, 

 and have been quite glad to get rid of them ; for their corrupting 

 influence had often resulted in the total ruin of the male servants who 

 had been assigned in the same family. 



It is only lately that good order has been introduced into this 

 establishment, and this is owing to the supervision and care of Sir 

 George Gipps. The accounts of the disorder in it in former times 

 are truly disgusting. 



These females are now divided into three classes, according to their 

 ability and behaviour, of which the latter is more especially attended 

 to. The first class is employed in making linen clothing, such as 

 shirts, children's clothes, &c, and do much work for the shop-keepers 

 in Sydney. The second, in making up coarse articles of apparel for 

 government, and shop-keepers ; the third, in picking oakum, washing 

 for the establishment, and plaiting straw. 



It would be difficult to imagine a more hideous community ; and 

 those who visited this establishment could scarcely realize the possi- 

 bility that Great Britain could have produced such an assemblage of 

 ugly creatures. It is hardly conceivable, that the feminine character 

 could ever have existed under faces, in which all traces of gentle 

 expression have long since been annihilated, and where the counte- 

 nance now indicates only the prevalence of the baser passions. 



Some of the rooms were crowded, the inmates sitting on two rows 



