Women and in ’s Nineteenth Century

Patricia Burrowes Hanlon

Masters of Design (Research) 2019 University of Technology Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building Certificate of Original Authorship

I, Patricia Burrowes Hanlon, declare that this thesis is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of a Master of Design (Research), in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney.

The thesis is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in this thesis.

This document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. This research is supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program.

Signature: PBH

Signature on file in Faculty and Graduate Research School Offices

Date: 1 February 2019

Dissertation word length: c. 78,000 words and notes.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my patient Supervisors who encouraged, advised and enlightened: the talented historian Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History at UTS and formerly of ‘ methodologies’ at Aalto University Helsinki who encouraged my approach, and Dr. Vicki Karaminas who from the very beginning kept me rigorously focussed on the primary documents and well away from second-hand theory. And a special thank you to my Research Managers, Ann Hobson, for her editorial expertise and technical advice who tolerated all my enthusiasm and encouraged my determination to complete it despite the technical difficulties, and Robyne Anderson for her help in its final submission. Hazel Baker (Member, Editors NSW) provided professional editorial support in 2019.

I must thank in particular Margot Riley, archivist at the State Library for finding early prints; the costume historian, Norma Miller-Grub of the Benalla Museum; Bruce Swann for sharing his research concerning M. Hayes; Thomas Cole for articulating so clearly his concepts surrounding memory and national heritage; curators Chris Murphy and Wayne Johnson from the Rocks Discovery Museum, and Megan Martin of the Historic Houses Trust for helping me track down the first known to be made and worn in Australia’s eighteenth century.

I must also include my own immediate family who dealt with the mundane mechanics of getting this unwieldy document into print despite the constant upgrades, and for rescuing much of the database of information that informed and influenced this work. Thank you to Marc, and Tim in spirit, and Tristan for her info-graphics and her photography and I particularly wish to thank sculptor Donna Page for permission to quote from her Honours submission.

I particularly thank Margaret Hanlon Dunn for her assistance with the Bibliography and access to her library of Australian histories; Sandra Hanlon for her insights into the advertising industry, marketing and consumption psychology; and my thanks and gratitude go to Robin Pink for her knowledge on advanced Microsoft Word and Styles Panes, etc.

Prior to that I must acknowledge all the librarians from my earliest years who permitted me to delve deep into the stacks to look for fashion info, lost books, and back copies of old journals, a skill that in time would benefit my fashion students and ultimately arriving at UTS, finding there the fellow travellers who maintain the ongoing enthusiasm for our shared topic.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Illustrations pp. vi-vii Abstract pp. viii Preface pp. ix Introduction pp. x-xiii Chapter 1. The : 1788. The Presence of Female Laundry Workers, Makers and other Workers pp. 1-27 Chapter 2. The : 1789-90. ‘Patching out Decency’ pp. 28-50 Chapter 3. The : 1791. Proud Wives and Lady’s -Makers pp. 51-77 Chapter 4. The Mantua Makers … ‘this ghastly waste of a creation’ pp. 78- 127 Chapter 5. Inferences from and within history. Towards a new history of Australian colonial dress, 1788-1793 pp.128-199 Conclusion. Stitching Together Two Cultures pp. 200-203 Endnotes pp. 204-286 Appendix 1. The Women of the First Fleet pp. 287-290 Appendix 2. The Women of the Second Fleet pp. 291-295 Appendix 3. The Women of the Third Fleet pp. 296-297 Selected Bibliography pp. 298-319

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Europeans and the First People dancing together

Figure 2: From left to right : The botanists Dr Daniel Solander and Sir Joseph Banks and a gesticulating Captain . On the right, Dr. John Hawksworth and Lord Sandwich. Figure 3: “, , 1788.” Capt. William Bradley.

Figure 4: Black-eyed Sue, and Sweet Poll of Plymouth

Figure 5: The Mantua of 1693.

Figure 6: “Distributed about the Room at a Masquerade.”

Figure 7: The Melancholy Loss of HMS Sirius off , 1790

Figure 8 The African Djellaba and the Australian shift.

Figure 9: Elizabeth Macarthur, 1790.

Figure 10: Founding of the settlement of Port Jackson at in NSW

Figure 11: Cutting out a gown.

Figure 12: Antoine Raspal (1738-1811), Un atelier de couturiers en Arles, vers 1785. Huile sur bois. Figure 13: The Ladies Dress Maker

Figure 14: ‘If a ship appeared here, we knew she must be bound to us …’

Figure 15: Sydney Gazette and Advertiser.

Figure 16: “A Government Jail Gang, Sydney N. S. Wales,” Augustus Earle.

Figure 17: A Work upon Ancient

Figure 18: The ‘unsatisfactory abandoned wretches.’

Figure 19: Photo-montage Tristan Hanlon and Author. Copyright the Author

Figure 20: Photo-montage: Author. Copyright the Author

Figure 21: Convictos enla Nueva Olanda Ingeles enla Nueva Olanda

Figure 22: Juan Ravenet, attributed. vi

Figure 23: Juan Ravenet, attributed

Figure 24: The Mackerel Woman

Figure 25: “Sydney in 1794.”

Figure 26: Leaden Hearts - Front - NMA collection.

Figure 27: Leaden Hearts - Reverse - NMA collection

Figure 28: Anna Josepha’s Gown

Figure 29: The Watling Collection.

Figure 30: Ceremony drawing by William Barak.

Figure 31: Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, South Kensington London, UK.

Figure 32: The Oldest , Smithsonian Institute, USA.

Figure 33: Governor ’s memorial in Westminster Abbey.

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ABSTRACT

This thesis casts new light on the clothing culture of the first Europeans who engaged with the land now called Australia in New South Wales, at Botany Bay and the area around Sydney Cove. Many people assume that life for the ‘First Fleeters’ must have been crude and rough, devoid of any sartorial fashion element. Yet the naval officers would have been well dressed, albeit somewhat dusty, and the First, Second and Third Fleets carried numerous people who had worked in Britain in the appearance industries. But what of the women? A large number of the convicts to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land has been convicted for felonies connected with clothing theft. Clothing including accessories such as ribbons and handkerchiefs were valuable at the time but also demotic: they were not the preserve of the middling sorts and elites. Many of the transported convicts were women who had worked in the burgeoning fashion culture of late-eighteenth century Europe. Yet little work has been conducted on their clothing lives. In this thesis, I speculate as to the appearance of the convict women. I do not disparage them as the discarded, unwanted and unattractive ones as some historians as well as popular images, movies and television series have done in the past. Instead I use traces – in the written record such as diaries, transcripts and transportation lists – mapping this information onto the history of early advertising and the press in the colony, as well as analysing the visual sources that survive from this period. I work within the frameworks that recognise the value of material culture, object analysis and also the new fashion studies and fashion histories that demand that the poor and everyday be considered as worthy of study as the dress and habits of the elite. I adopt at times a poetic speaking position, as most of these women were illiterate and they certainly can no longer ‘speak’. Yet traces of their material culture, their backgrounds and their narratives suggest that a more robust and vibrant fashion culture probably existed from the very beginning of the European settlement/invasion that most historians have credited. It is my aim that my understanding of the materiality of cloth and clothing will map onto surviving traces, gestures and hints to enable a new story to be told of the first years of western fashion in the Antipodes.

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PREFACE

I was born in Adelaide when there were few fashion design schools in Australia, all in Sydney or Melbourne, thus I had to ‘self-educate,’ by taking evening courses in Adelaide in anything which might be relevant to “fashion design.”

I learnt to draft clothing patterns, and began to design, cut, fit and assemble custom garments for female clients of all ages and sizes. When I began to get orders for making- to-measure for males, mostly theatre and dance ensembles, I had to acquaint myself with classical tailoring techniques and so became aware of significant technical differences between the two practices.

Trained as a teacher, I was approached by the TAFE college to develop a one-year programme on Fashion Careers for the unemployed. It prepared versatile students ready for the industry, plus prepared those students of both sexes intending to move on to further study. The course proved successful and popular, and I was asked to take on the Certificate and Diploma subject, Fashion and Costume History.

I found there were very few books on Australian fashion, but books on the earliest period were non-existent, so eventually I relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and its convicts, to begin where it all began.

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INTRODUCTION

Let us begin, innocently enough, with suppositions. It was the Age of Discovery and in 1768, when Captain James Cook set sail from on the HMS Endeavor, he was instructed to hunt for a fancy, a miasma, a figment of the Classic imagination. For a millenia, European thinkers, writers and mathematicians had postulated that a Great South Land of some indeterminate form and nature lay somewhere below the Equator in the southern hemisphere. Hence, England’s most celebrated cartographer and navigator received private instructions to seek out the fabled Terra Australis Incognita of myth and legend and claim it for the nation. 1

Exploring in the deep south of the Pacific Ocean, Cook circumnavigated and surveyed New Zealand, so named by the Dutch explorers, and was returning north to more familiar waters and home, when he found a large land mass which, he speculated, might be the unmapped eastern coast of . So charting its length, he struck a flag, and in 1770, claimed the whole east coast for Mother England.

And eight years later, Botany Bay was chosen as the site for a penal colony. Thus in 1788, to Arthur Phillip, his Excellency the Governor, the indigenous residents of New Holland were the most recent additions to His Majesty’s loyal subjects, needing only familiarity with the great comforts and privileges of European civilisation to realise their ultimate happiness and contentment as British citizens.2 His close colleague, Captain David Collins, the Judge-Advocate observed: It is not, perhaps, once in a century that colonies are established in the most remote parts of the habitable globe; and it is seldom that men are

found existing perfectly in a state of nature.3 In a series of letters written soon after the first ships had arrived, George Worgan described for his younger brother, the early meetings with the natives; “As to the Article of Dress …. these “Children of Nature” are “naked and not ashamed" and remarking the “primitive Simplicity of the Adamites and the Evites,” he noted particularly, the “shyness and timidity” of the women. Like their men, they had “Scars in different parts of their Body,” which he supposed, “have been cut in particular Lines by way of ornament.”4

His compatriot, young Captain-Lieutenant Watkin Tench of the Marines, was a philosopher and an exemplar of his times: Whether plodding in London, reeking with human blood in Paris or wandering amidst the solitary wilds of New South Wales – Man is ever an object of interest, curiosity and reflection.5 Displaying his ethnographic bent, he undertook extensive ‘fieldwork’ among the ‘Indians,’ initially employing this colonial all-purpose term in his journal. “Of the use or benefit of cloathing, these people appear to have no comprehension,” he recorded. “Both sexes and those of all ages are invariably found naked.”6 x

First contact – always important – had been illuminating. Captain John Hunter of the Sirius wrote: they examined with the greatest attention, and expressed the utmost astonishment, at the different covering we had on; for they certainly considered our cloaths as so many different skins, and the hat as a part of the head. 7 So the hat was removed, shirts were opened, white English chests were openly displayed to the Antipodean sun. Naturally the gender of these strangers came immediately to the fore. Suspecting that “they took us for women, not having our beards grown,” Lieutenant Philip Gidely King recorded that they made “very plain Signs they wanted to know of what sex we were, which they explained by pointing where it was distinguishable.” Never at a loss, the young Lieutenant “ordered one of the people to undecieve [sic] them in this particular when they made a great shout of Admiration.”8

But when a party of ‘Indians’ met with a group of convict women collecting shells from the middens in a nearby cove, the natives did not recognise them as such, and First Lieutenant William Bradley was all astonishment that they “did not appear to notice the difference of dress.”9

It was one of those seminal moments in Australia’s colonial history. The naked were confronting not just the “cloathed” but the dressed body. They had to negotiate not just gender, but all the protocols of dress between upper and lower folk (‘sorts’ as the expression was used at the time) and the differing ranks and orders of the common people, as well as a hierarchy of uniforms military and nautical, all signs and symbols of a sophisticated sartorial language. From the beginning, the newcomers had been compiling vocabulary lists. Tench, Collins and Hunter and Lieutenant William Dawes, the Fleet’s astronomer were possibly the first to discern that the natives’ enthusiastic waving and shouting of “warra warra” was not – as was supposed at the time, a welcome – “warra-warra” translated as “Go Away!’ A dubious David Blackburn, Master of the Supply, wrote to his sister: As to the natives, we are almost as ignorant of their particular manners and customs (if they have any) as we were at first. They will not come among us though every method has been used to invite them.10

However, to the perceptive Governor Phillip: Their dislike to the Europeans is probably increased by discovering that they intend to remain among them, and that they interfere with them in some of their best fishing places, which doubtless are, in their circumstances, objects of very great importance. 11

In a letter addressing his “Honoured Father,”a nineteen year old Midshipman, young Newton Digby Fowell, proudly displayed in scrupulous detail to his father, the knowledge he was acquiring as an officer-apprentice aboard the Sirius. He describes an early overture that was made on the occasion when: xi

the Party took a fife on Shore, played several tunes to the Natives who were highly delighted with it espetially at seeing some of the Seamen dance.12

At length stilted conversations were possible and a friendlier communication was established, and here Chief Surgeon John White reported them “mimicking us, and indulging in their own merriment.”13 Noticing “the natives have the advantage, comprehending with much greater aptness than we can pretend to, every thing they hear us say,”14 Collins remarked, “By slow degrees we began mutually to be pleased with, and to understand each other.”15 He recalled in retrospect: They had also discovered that we thought it shameful to be seen naked; and I have observed many of them extremely reserved and delicate in this respect when before us; but when in the presence of only their own people, perfectly indifferent about their appearance.16

In time, selected favourites would sometimes join the exploring parties, and Tench described them “laughing to excess when any of us either tripped or stumbled” in avoiding the bushy “hindrances” which “entangled us so much,” while the natives “wound through them with ease:” Our perplexities afforded them an inexhaustible fund of merriment and derision: Did the sufferer, stung at once with nettles and ridicule, and shaken nigh to death by his fall, use any angry expression to them, they retorted in a moment by calling

him by every opprobrious name which their language affords.17 Appearances were noted carefully, using European physical and aesthetic terms and criteria. Observations were made early in 1788 that many of the men were lacking a front tooth: Governor Phillip having remarked this, pointed out to them that he had himself lost one of his front teeth, which occasioned a general clamour; and it was thought he derived some merit in their opinion from this circumstance.18

Perhaps never before had a dental deficiency been so fortuitous. Arthur Phillip immediately breeched the cultural divide, and was endowed with all the cultural status of a senior law-man. Captain Collins however would summarise: They perceived the authority with which Governor Phillip commanded, and the obedience which he exacted, they bestowed on him the distinguishing appellation of (Be-anna) or Father.19 For males, the excision of a front tooth was part of the long process of initiation into traditional Law. No one had witnessed these secret initiation-into-manhood ceremonies until 1791, and Hunter describes this as “the first opportunity that had offered for us to see any thing of the kind, since we had been in the country.”20 Observing the preparations for the singing and dancing, he was driven to remark:

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much attention was paid to the decorating themselves; they were all Adams and Eves, without even a fig-leaf … no fop preparing for an assembly was ever more desirous of making his person irresistibly beautiful.21 At last the elusive women came to the fore, and Chief Surgeon John White recorded that unmarried girls wore no more than a hair-belt around the waist with a tassel of kangaroo skin twisted and knotted in front, and even that was relinquished on adulthood. He recorded the remarkable instance of one young female who wore “a complete ”, interpreting this as “an instance of female decency, [such] as we had not at any other time observed among the natives.”22 Rather charmed by one young woman’s “coquettish airs,” the Chief Surgeon White responded by: decorating her head, neck, and arms with my pocket and neck handkerchief… Having nothing left, except the buttons of my coat, on her admiring them, I cut them away, and with a piece of string tied them round her waist. Thus ornamented, and thus delighted with her new acquirements, she turned from me with a look of inexpressible archness.23 These “Children of Nature” were dressed in their nakedness. They were the First People and living on their own ‘country,’ and in their own traditional hunting grounds, the painted “daubs” and “ornamental” cicatrisations of their own rich traditions were steeped in significance. They spoke of an ancient lineage, aeons- long and a unique complex culture to which the eighteenth century men of the Fleet, locked into their elevated notions and civilised suppositions, were to remain blithely oblivious.

Figure 1: Europeans and the First People dancing together View in Broken Bay New South Wales. March 1788 (detail) Captain William Bradley, from his journal “A Voyage to New South Wales.24. xiii

CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST FLEET 1788

The Presence of Female Laundry Workers, Mantua Makers and other Clothing Workers

Section 1

1.1: – THE JOURNALS

Australian histories of the foundation years are generally built on a firm footing of official documents and reports passing between the colony and the Home Office, and the chronicles kept by the naval, military and civil service, published and private.1 The nation’s beginnings were therefore scrupulously documented as they mattered a great deal, and our foundation documents have inspired a plethora of secondary historical accounts where references concerning the women present in the penal colony are almost striking in their absence.

Not so all the journals from this unique collection. Ralph Clark, a Second Lieutenant aboard the Friendship convict transport kept a private journal for his wife, his belov’d Alicia, for the four years he remained in the colony, and he mentions the women more frequently than any other recorder of these early years. It becomes obvious that the convict women aboard ship were required to do the laundering, and when articles become lost or are artfully ‘misplaced’:

– if the[y] wair to loose any thing of mine that I gave them to wash I would cut them to pices – ther wair never a greater number of D–––d 2 B–––s in one place as ther is in this ship.

It is in missives such as this – the informal personal journals and the occasional diary kept by a common seaman – which give most insight into the ways of the eighteenth century folk, and by extension, into the life-world of the women who are the focus of this thesis.

In this short sentence we find information about power relationships, about gender and labour, about the management of and washing, and frustration when the washing does not go the way the man wished it would.

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The Surgeon aboard the Sirius, George Worgan was an urbane young man who kept a patchy loose-leaved journal for the entertainment of his brother “Master Dick” in England. In a series of letters, he details with erratic humour the settling and trials of the new colony, and delights to inform his young brother:

The Women Convicts are a shocking abandoned set … they are a vile pack of Baggages continually violating all Laws, and disobedient to all Orders.3

One letter Worgan sent home on the returning ships begins, “I think I hear You saying, ‘Where the Deuce is Sydney Cove Port Jackson’?”4 The thief colony of “Botany Bay” was never located at Botany Bay at all, but began on Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. The harbour would become renowned in time as Sydney Harbour.

Botany Bay had been named for the two paying passengers on the Endeavour who had accompanied explorer, navigator and cartographer Captain James Cook on its British “voyage of discovery” in 1770. Having circumnavigated and charted New Zealand, Cook was returning to more familiar latitudes, but forced northwards by storms, he had followed what he presumed to be the uncharted eastern coast of New Holland. Needing to make land to replenish wood-and-water, he had made towards a narrow opening in the coast and entered a large bay. Aboard the Endeavor were the erudite naturalist and gentleman-botanist Joseph Banks, and the eminent Swedish botanist Daniel Solander, both renowned in the eighteenth century world of the sciences, Solander somewhat subservient to the wealth and glamour of Banks. Here the two botanists collected and prepared many plants that were strange and ‘non-descript’ (that is, they were undescribed anywhere in the scientific world) and Cook named the site Botany Bay.

People today have forgotten that Banks was an urbane figure of fashion, known as a finely dressed ‘Macaroni’ at the time – a symbol of fashion – who tried to bring his own orchestra on a later voyage, later disparaged for his scientific credentials as being too much the dilletante in the 1790s.

The capes guarding the entrance to Botany Bay, were called Cape Banks and Solander Point in order to honour the esteemed botanists.

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Figure 2: From left to right : The botanists Dr Daniel Solander and Sir Joseph Banks and a gesticulating Captain James Cook. On the right, Dr. John Hawksworth and Lord Sandwich. Unsigned and with its original title missing, it was probably painted by John Hamilton Mortimer (1714-1779) in England on Cook’s return from the Pacific in 1771.

Once back in England, there was tremendous public interest generated by the flora, fauna and the inhabitants of the new country. It was an era of , charting and map-making, sorting and classifying, and the discovery of new lands and new peoples. It was an optimistic time.

But there is a darker story, another narrative. The long eighteenth century was drawing towards its conclusion in more than a numerical sense. Britain’s swelling population growth threatened to outstrip agricultural production, and while land clearances and developing technologies might feed the masses, for some was at an end. Looking for work, displaced farm workers and their families drifted to the cities and provincial centres increasing the number of poor and destitute in urban areas. There was a consequent increase in crime, despite the laws becoming increasingly repressive. Since the secession of the American colonies from England in 1783, transportation had stopped, and England’s hulks and gaols were filled to overflowing. In 1786, when the problem arose in the Parliament, it was Joseph Banks who suggested Botany Bay in New Holland as a possible solution. Set at a discouraging distance, it was an ideal site for a penal settlement. 3

The choice of the right leader for this unique enterprise would occupy the Government for another year, and Lord Palmerston would advise, “Whenever I want a thing well done in a distant part of the world ... I always send for a captain of the navy.” Navy tradition trained men for service and leadership, not only as competent navigators but in the government of men, managing all facets of shipboard life – men capable of independent thinking, decisive, versatile, resourceful, and to quote Lord Palmerston’s check list, “a man with a good head, a good heart, lots of pluck, and plenty of common-sense.”6

Accordingly, the mature and experienced Captain Arthur Phillip was selected to lead this extraordinary expedition. The Admiralty appointed him both Commander of the Fleet, and on its arrival in Botany Bay, the Governor of the penal outpost. Yet a further year would pass before the flotilla could sail on what was the first and most ambitious voyage of its kind in history.

The flagship HMS Sirius and the six convict transports – the , the Charlotte, the Alexander, the Prince of Wales, the Scarborough, and the Friendship – were accompanied by the HMS Supply armed tender and the storeships, Borrowdale, Fishburn and Golden Grove, carrying the stores and supplies that were to support the settlement for two years.7 It would be hard to over-estimate the success of Cook’s longitude project aboard the Endeavour, for almost miraculously the whole fleet together had crossed unknown seas to an unknown land, “a voyage which, before it was undertaken, the mind hardly dared venture to contemplate,” writes

Captain David Collins in 1788.8 Cook, the visionary navigator, astronomer and map-maker made it possible for the eleven ships of the fleet to rendezvous without incident in Botany Bay.

But Botany Bay itself was a disappointment. Worgan had an immediate response: “the Description given by the Gentlemen who first visited this Port was truly luxuriant, and wore the air of Exaggeration ...”9

Governor Phillip reported diplomatically to the Home Office:

Smaller numbers might indeed in several spots have found a comfortable residence, but no place was found in the whole circuit of Botany Bay which seemed at all calculated for the reception of so large a settlement.10

It was his first colonial crisis. 4

The very next morning, Governor Phillip set off to explore the new country of New Holland, accompanied by Captain John Hunter, Captain David Collins, and a small party of marines and seamen. In three rigged open boats, they followed the coast northwards and the chart drawn up by Cook aboard the Endeavour eighteen years previously. As he sailed past at a distance, Cook the intrepid navigator had recorded a rather unimportant ‘opening’ with high rugged headlands (which he named Port Jackson) and then continued on northwards.

Early in the afternoon, Captain Hunter reported:

[we] proceeded along the coast to the northward ... a large opening, or bay, about three leagues and a half to the north-ward of Cape Banks, was the first place we looked into: it had rather an unpromising appearance.11 But once the party passed between the Heads, vistas opened. Port Jackson opened up into an ancient drowned valley, stretching back between the golden sandstone escarpments deep into the land, with inlets and capes lush with greenery and abundant timber of enormous size, the sheltered waters dotted with picturesque small islands.

Exploring next morning, the Governor and his party would discover numerous sandy beaches and at last, seven miles inside the Heads, a stream of clear pure water which stole silently along through a very thick wood, before emptying into a small cove with large trees and deep mooring close to the shore for all the Fleet’s ships. Arthur Phillip recorded in his journal:

Here all regret arising from the former disappointments was at once obliterated; and ... the satisfaction to find one of the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line might ride in perfect security.12

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Figure 3: “Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, 1788.” Capt. William Bradley. Bradley’s watercolour looks south to the little stream which would supply water to the community. Much of the forest of tall trees and underbrush has been cleared, and to the right are the soldiers’ barracks and convict huts have been built on and between the high rocky outcrops overlooking the Cove The British flag flies near the centre to the left, and the rising land is sprinkled with storehouses, huts for the officers and the Governor’s house.

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Phillip with his excited crew returned to give the news to those who had remained at Botany Bay. He gave orders to break camp, to leave the newly dug saw pits and the newly cleared ground, and sail northwards to Port Jackson on the morrow.

The Governor had solved his first crisis.

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1.2: – BOTANY BAY & PORT JACKSON

The gradual lightening of the horizon on the summery 21st of January, 1788 promised a bright clear day and curious Watkin Tench who had not been part of the exploring party, was so excited that he could not sleep: “Thoughts of removal banished sleep, so that I rose at the first dawn of the morning.”13

Equally enthusiastic too, would have been the travel-weary convict women in their crossing in tired wooden ships. Although not even disembarked at Botany Bay, they too had woken each morning to the smell of the strange new air pungent with eucalypt, and heard the hysterical laughing of the families of kookaburras and the screeching of the communities of parrots and cockatoos as they rustled into awakening. They had braved the doldrums, and on the last lonely leg from their last point of call, the violent sea-storms running before the fierce trade winds across the uncharted Southern Ocean that circled the south pole untrammeled by any land mass.

They had weathered the sea sickness, the home sickness, and the boredom of weeks of inactivity and routine, where the only sound had been the creaking of wooden beams, the slap of sails, and such sounds as they made themselves, singing, fighting, laughing, crying.

Then – just as the fleet was about to leave – two large ships appeared, standing in at the mouth of the Bay, battling the winds and swell to enter. Tench describes being “confounded by a thousand ideas which arose in my mind in an instant.” Baffled, he elaborates:

By this time the alarm had become general, and every one appeared lost in conjecture. Now they were Dutchmen sent to dispossess us, and the moment after, storeships from England, with supplies for the settlement. The improbabilities which attended both these conclusions, were sunk in the agitation of the moment.14

Ralph Clark also records this astounding moment: “We as Soon Expected to See St. Paul coming in to the Bay as two Strange Ship.”15 As indeed they might. A miraculous apparition of that holy personage was just as likely – the Fleet was 247 days from their home port, and ten weeks out from the Table Bay and the sight of another European, and they had travelled uncharted waters since leaving the Cape of Good Hope. The appearance just then of two ships flying the French flag was unexpected, unwelcome, puzzling and decidedly ominous. Traditional tensions existing between England and her near European neighbours across the

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channel were even more disturbing on other side of the globe. Had a war been declared? Who with? What had happened since they left?

It was left to Captain Phillip himself to unravel the mystery. By the brotherhood of mariners in strange ports – the informal networks for essential information that connected the seas – other wayfarers had heard of the proposed British penal colony on the shores of New Holland. The two French ships, the La Boussole and the L’Astrolabe were on their own “voyage of discovery” in the southern hemisphere, under the captaincy of Comte M. La Perouse. They would remain in Botany Bay for five weeks to take on wood and water, collect specimens and repair their ships before heading off again on their own Enlightenment enterprise.

“Some of will sail for England in 6 Weeks, so a-scribbling we will go,” continues Worgan to his brother in his letter giving his usual lively version of events. In closing he states, “This will just serve to Prepare You & Your Friends for any of the Publications that may come out,” and of the many narratives about to be published, he recommends David Collins account “for a Fire-side Chit-Chat with your Friends,” in preference to any other because “from his Genius I am certain it will be the most Entertaining, Animating, Correct and satisfactory of any that may appear.”16

And indeed the Judge Advocate, Captain David Collins kept the conscientious official account of the colony’s development which forms the historical backbone of this narrative. Appointed in England as the Judge-Advocate, he presided over the court system in the colony from 1788 to 1796, and had more personal contact with the male convicts and experience of the women convicts than most.

Another who had extensive experience with female convicts was Surgeon Arthur Bowes of the all-women transport the Lady Penrhyn, and he states a proviso at the beginning of his account of the voyage with his cargo of 102 women convicts:

As this Journal is intended solely for the Eye of my Relations & most intimate Friends I am to take notice of many things which wd be thought impertinant to the Subject of a Journal intended for the perusal of the publick.”17

Surgeon Bowes makes reference to women both directly and generally. He documented the trip in the high winds across the Southern Ocean from Cape Town when the women were washed out of their berths by the enormous seas, when nights were spent with little

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sleep, when the disturbed bilge water sloshing about in the hold below became so offensive, it ruined the mezzo-tinted prints in his cabin.

During the Storm the Convict Women in our Ship were so terrified that most of them were down on their knees at prayers, & in less than one hour after it had abated, they were uttering the most horrid Oaths & imprecations that cd. proceed out of the mouths of such abandon'd Prostitutes as they are!18 Dramatic cultural differences between the recorders and England’s lower classes were brought to light in the tensions of their long watery trek. Perhaps the most dramatic and least understood and unacceptable was the language commonly used by some of the convict women. Their ordinary conversations and disputes was freely laced with curses and obscenities, and when punished, the women resorted to oaths and profanities which “far exceeds anything of the kind to be met wt. amongst the most profligate wretches in London,” writes Bowes.19 (Presciently, the very respectable chaplain’s wife, Mrs. Mary Johnson, and her husband the kindly Reverend Richard Johnson were not aboard; they had been assigned to the victualling ship, the Golden Grove.)

The women, most of whom had been sentenced to transportation for 7 years had already spent one to four years in various over-crowded gaols and some of the women's garments needed to be issued before departure, as some had been hustled aboard without even a change of clothing. Bowes records that, “a great part of the women's clothing was not come up from London when we sailed,”20 and from Santa Cruz, Governor Phillip had sent off another dispatch requesting for the missing clothing for the women “to be sent out by the first ship.”21

Forced to distribute more clothing at Rio, Phillip sent off another reminder, even more specific, to Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary of the day: “with respect to the women's cloathing, it was made of very slight material, most too small, and in general came to pieces in a few weeks.”22

It becomes obvious that the convict women aboard the ships were required to do the laundering and Clark, suspicious as ever, broods:

The doctor mett with a great lost this afternoon ... one of the convict women whome he gave some thing to wash for him said that she lost seven pair of stocking over board, but I am apt to think that the[y] are not over board, but that some of the other Women have stole them ... which is my oppinion ...23

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This seems to suggest that clothing functioned as a type of bartering system on a ship without currency, just as convict tokens and buttons functioned as trade and currency in the dormitories and asylums the women later found themselves in.

Surgeon Bowes also aboard throws light on the novel nautical washing methods adopted while on the high seas: “This day a Shark, not less than 15 feet in length seiz'd a pr. of white Trowzers of mine wh. were towing astern.”24 The laundering of “trowzers” in the wash of the ship appears to have been normal; what was novel was the size of the shark.

Bowes grumbles about many of the women, and particularly about “their base Ingratitude” to the sailors. He contrives a picture of a hive of industry below- decks, “many of them plundering the Sailors ... of their necessary cloaths & cutting them up for purposes of their own.”25 Furthermore, these gullible seamen, led astray by these thankless females:

at every Port they arrived at spent almost the whole of the wages due to them in purchasing different Articles of wearing apparel & other things for their accommodation.26. Surgeon Bowes gives an intriguing account of an accident that befell one convict woman aboard the Lady Penrhyn: Mary Davis fell through a hatchway and landed on her head. However she sustained “no matereal injury,” the servant-woman “being well defended by false hair, rolls, &ca.,&ca.“27 False hair? Bumrolls? Cutting up the sailors’ clothes for some purpose of their own? One might be forgiven thinking that much of their time on board was spent renovating, stitching, sewing, mending, making up clothing for themselves. Had the mantua makers aboard the Lady Penrhyn – the craftswomen who contrived women’s garments – been busy at work on the high seas?

The day prior to their landing, Surgeon Bowes on the Lady Penrhyn now at anchor in Sydney Cove reports:

This day Mr Miller, the Comissary ... came on board & issued out Slops of every kind to all the women & Childn on board previous to their landing tomorrow.28 It appears probable that the slop clothing distributed was that which should have been held over for use in the second year into settlement, and some of the poorest were no doubt grateful for whatever clothing they could get. Not so one singularly ungrateful woman aboard the Lady Penrhyn; resisting all attempts at wearing convict issue at all, Ann Smith, a nurse, a woman with a ‘calling’, and at 30, certainly old enough to know better, threw the Commissary’s slops to the deck, insolently informing Surgeon Bowes that she intended to

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escape. Just over a week later Bowes reports:

Ann Smith the woman who refused taking the Slops on board from Mr Miller ... eloped from the camp as she often when on board declared she wd.29 Last seen with two other women on the tidal mud flats gathering cockles, she was never seen again. It was unanimously decided that she had got lost and been killed by natives. This story put about the settlement was enough to make any convict hesitate before “straggling” or wandering away from the camp.

The final transfer of responsibility for such a troublesome cargo from the Navy into the hands of the land-based civil and military personnel must have been a pleasure, and Surgeon Bowes makes clear his relief in relinquishing the convict females of the Lady Penrhyn from his care:

At 5 o'clock this morning, all things were got in order for the landing the whole of the women..... & abt 6 O'Clock pm ... we had the long wished for pleasure of seeing the last of them leave the ship.30

When every person belonging to the whole fleet was landed, the numbers amounted to 1030 persons. There were 990 men – 778 convict men, and to maintain order, 210 Marines under 19 Officers. And only 142 female convicts.

1.3: – THE LANDING OF THE WOMEN

It seems that even the sailors of the Lady Penrhyn were celebrating: Bowes duly remarks:

The Sailors in our Ship requested to have some Grog to make merry wt. upon the Women quitting the Ship indeed the Capt. himself had no small reason to rejoice upon their being all safely landed & given into the Care of the Governor.31

There under the trees in the milk-warm air of a sultry summer’s evening there would have been bonfires and singing and laughing and maybe, even some a little tipsy. This was not only a young colony, but a colony of the young.

Of the 142 convict women, most were aged between 18 and 30,32 the age at which fashion experiments have taken place across time and place and in which the genders both aim to make themselves presentable to attract others. They would have been well aware that clothing exceeded its protective role, to carry symbolic, erotic, fashionable, charming, delightful,

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playful or mysterious associations depending on how creative one was with the materials at hand. Ribbons had throughout the eighteenth century been used by women of all classes to transform their looks.

Now clean and dressed for the occasion in the best of their clothing, they were working class women used to looking out for themselves and familiar with the verbal thrust and parry on the streets of London and the East End, and the jesting of provincial markets and fairs. Others more shy, more intimidated, would have immersed themselves in the collectivity of the groups built up during the months at sea.

And then it rained. A warm monsoonal drenching that sheeted down, cascading over the rocky outcrops, rushing across the newly cleared ground turning it to mud. The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled across the heavens, and the campfires sputtered and died. In the pitch darkness punctuated with the strobe of lightning, people tried to find cover in the tents, under trees, slipping and sliding in the mud, women shrieked and clung to each other, men found an opportunity for some impromptu gallantry.

The run-off carried everything before it – leaves, twigs, tent-pegs – as it gurgled down towards the jolly little stream now breaking its banks, and swept through underneath the tents, saturating everything on its way down to the Cove. It was to become familiar as the normal summer storm in the new country.

There is nothing like a disaster to make friends of strangers. By the time the cloudburst had eased, everyone was soaked to the skin. Then someone lit the fires again, the terror passed and the chuckling began at their own carefully contrived appearances now reduced to the comic, the women with muddy hems and bedraggled locks, the rum was passed around, the dancing and singing started up again, and the conviviality continued on into the night despite the intermittent rain.

The supposition by some modern historians that the allegedly riotous night of the landing was a scene of “debauchery and riot” or worse, of rape and pillage echoes the common eighteenth century class notions of the “vicious appetites” of the lower orders, Surgeon Bowes describing it thus:

The scene wh. presented itself at this time & during the greater part of the night beggars every description some swearing, others quarrelling others singing, not in the least regarding the Tempest.33

13

Prior to departure from England in 1787, Phillip himself had speculated on the nature of the females who were to accompany his pioneering penal experiment, and provide the wives and mistresses for the men in the colony: “There may be some for thefts who still retain some degree of virtue,” but he presumed that generally the bulk of the convict women would

“possess neither virtue nor honesty.”34

Figure 4: Black-eyed Sue, and Sweet Poll of Plymouth35

The dress and behaviour of England’s lower classes was well known; , jackets, , the ubiquitous , and black eyes, seen here farewelling their men who are leaving for Botany Bay; the women wear good quality buckled cloth or leather shoes: ”In the same objects of misery, are too often found combined, snuff, gin, rags, vermin, insolence, and abusive language.”36

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Sarah Jordan writes, ”The brutality that this image displays … points to a more complex and perhaps less benign aspect of much eighteenth-century writing about the poor.“37 Jordan, an English professor, in her journal article “From Grotesque Bodies to Useful Hands,” undertakes a literary analysis of British sources, examining “the rhetorical brutality present in so much eighteenth-century writing about, or addressed to, the laboring class,” a strident refrain which would “grow more urgent and shrill in tone as class friction increased near the end of the century.”38 The recorders of the colony’s foundation documents would respond in similar ways to the ‘disorderly’ women of the transports, and their upper-order suppositions and presumptions would frame the new world ashore.

Over the next eight months, the transports and storeships of the First Fleet would all leave Sydney Cove for their return to England, carrying Governor Phillip’s dispatches, native artefacts, drawings and samples of the exotic flora and fauna, and Worgan’s letters, among other reports, would go with them. Only the Sirius and the little Supply remained.

The French, busy about their own research did not visit Port Jackson. The ‘discovery’ ships with their “people of the first talents for navigation, astronomy, natural history, and every other science,” according to Collins, were found to have gone on March 10, 1788. No one was there to see them go.

It would be almost three years before another ship would arrive in the colony.

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1.4: – THE INDENTS

There is no single official list of the convicts arriving on the First Fleet transports. The original indents compiled in England, “by some unaccountable oversight” were left behind, and Collins speculates on the difficulties that would ensue later as the convicts’ times expired and they were forced to wait for their freedom until notice would arrive from distant England.39 However the Governor, needing to know the skills of his convict body, ordered lists to be drawn up by the responsible officers prior to landing. Skilled men and men’s skills were what was needed in the frontier setting of a new colony – farmers, artificers, mechanicks, overseers, to make the roads, build the storehouses, lay the bricks, build the mills, craft the boats, etc.

It is noticeable that the women’s indents have mostly filled in a fairly cavalier fashion, and most of the women were variously identified as ‘no trade’, ‘none’ or ‘unknown,’ most surely masking the large proportion of women who had been ‘in service,’ the major occupational category for women during the eighteenth century.

The largest proportion of the 192 women of First Fleet had been servants. (See Appendix 1) The position was frequently live-in with both accommodation and keep provided. But ‘going into service’ could also mean coming in by the day as cooks or laundresses, and finding your own accommodation and food. For the low-waged ‘casual poor’, ‘in service’ could entail a very meagre hand-to-mouth existence. Other trades and ‘callings’ followed by the women are also masked and can only be guessed at. However, the indent compiled by Surgeon Bowes manages to ascribe an occupation to every one of the women on board the Lady Penrhyn.

Portia Robinson who has done much to reconstitute the convict woman in her comprehensive study, The Women of Botany Bay, challenges the legacy of histories based too closely on the available contemporary sources, but so singular is Bowes’s account, even she has queried its veracity:

It was probable that some of the accused women claimed an occupation to evade any possible stigma attached to a woman of no trade, the inference being that an unemployed woman lived by thieving or by prostitution.40.

Governor Arthur Phillip however seems to have accepted these occupational self- representations as authentic or irrelevant, and exercising his rank and seniority, he co- 16

opted to his own household the one single convict woman specifically listed as a “laundry maid” to attend to the vice-regal linen, personal and domestic. Londoner Jane Dundas, the 30-year-old laundry maid arrived on the Prince of Wales and became a valued and respected servant in the Governor’s household.41.

This indicates the importance of managing the self in a French post-structural manner (Vigarello on washing the body and managing the self in a Foucauldian term) and the significance of gleaming white laundry and as the basis of a successful eighteenth-century outfit. Some French well-to-do people sent their laundry to be done in the East Indies. Laundry was a serious business.41.

Most of the women had been in court for theft, but like modern women, they possibly enhanced their resumé, drawing on the more respectable aspects of their past lives, knowing that this could influence the sentence delivered by the courts. Although servants were in the majority, eleven occupations aboard the Lady Penrhyn included hawkers and barrow women, a nurse (the determined escapee Ann Smith), a watch chain maker, a book stitcher, a fishwoman, a shoe binder, an apprentice clog maker and a prostitute.

A disproportionate number of the 102 female convicts in Bowes’ indent41 were involved in the dress trades – six mantua makers, two milliners, plus a number of seamstresses, embroiderers, tambour workers, lace workers, a furrier, a glovemaker, a maker of childbed linen and an artificial flower maker.

Not all of these women would expect to follow their original ’calling’ in the frontier territory of the new colony. But all of their skills that were transferrable and even without lady’s pocket books or periodicals, they could remember and imagine what the street looked like the day they left the port.

One of Bowes’ tradeswomen from the Lady Penrhyn was the mantua maker, Isabella Rosson, a Londoner. On her arrival in the colony, she ignored the steady demand for laundering, and the making and mending of men’s shirts and underwear, and noticing there were young children roaming free and unsupervised among the sawpits and cooking fires and the dangerous surrounds of the camp, she proposed to the community’s parson, the Reverend

Richard Johnson, to open up a ‘dame’ school.43

Reverend Johnson believed reading was essential to enable the illiterate and their children to 17

read the Bible, and he supplied the tracts provided by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to be used in their schooling. Under the aegis of the Reverend, Isabella Rosson, mantua maker, collected the children into one of the female communal huts, and instructed them in reading, spelling with perhaps a little writing and rudimentary arithmetic.

The school provided Isabella with a small source of income as “the children of convicts were taught free of charge, while the children of military personnel were taught for a small payment.”44 It is tempting to extrapolate Bowes informative list of occupations onto the women aboard the other ships, but it is unlikely that there was one as versatile or inventive as the mantua-maker-turned-teacher from the Lady Penrhyn who established the first school in Australia.45

What is significant is that by the end of the eighteenth century, the clothing industries employed large numbers of needlewomen, second only in numerical importance to domestic service.

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TABLE 1: Tradeswomen on the First Fleet

Lady Penrhyn, plus Friendship, Prince of Wales and Charlotte.

Mantua makers 7

Staymaker 1

Milliners 3

Hoop-maker/needlewoman 1

Needleworkers/seamstresses 5

Lacemakers 2

Embroiderers 1 + 1 apprentice

Artificial flower maker 1

Silk winders 2

Glove maker 1

Furrier 1

Clog maker (apprentice) 1

TOTAL Women in the Dress Trades 26

If the suspiciously large numbers of ‘no trades’ or ‘unknowns’ from the other female transports and future fleets had been determined by Bowes’ self- defining criteria,46 the number involved in the dress trades would be much higher, their specialties possibly even more faceted.

1.5: –THE MANTUA MAKERS

Traditionally the textile and clothing industries in Britain had been under the control of the Guilds, and the powerful Master Tailors’ Guild monopolised the manufacture and distribution of garments to both sexes. Particular attention was paid to restricting the entry of women as apprentices into the noble trade, and historian S.D. Smith scrupulously explores in detail the antagonistic relationship of the Tailors’ Guilds to female membership.47 Little threatened the exclusivity of these male bastions of privilege until the introduction of the innovative mantua near the end of the seventeenth century.

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Women of fashion were coming to their tailors to have the new style made, and as much of the production of bespoke tailoring for women clients required the extended intimacies of ‘on- the-body’ fittings, changing standards of propriety and decorum decreed that female tailoring would increasingly fall to the women of the workshops.48 The term “mantua maker” was adopted to signify that a craftswoman specialising in the secret arts of women’s clothing was operating within, and was bruited about with signs and advertisements.

A mantua was a one-piece formal gown donned over the head and with large . It has, in the seventeenth century, very formal and aristocratic connotations as something women wore at court, but by the eighteenth had become a general term for a looser gown that could be made up in different qualities of cloth. Many of the women would have had some basic skills in making and repairing clothes.

Trade with , the British Raj and the East India Company introduced the Indian into England where it was taken up by both men and women as informal dress.49 Women wore these loose non-fitting with wide comfortable over their stays and , finding this easy-going “undress” ideal for socialising with their ‘intimates,’ prior to dressing for the afternoon’s more formal activities. The banyan formed the basis of the new one-piece gown, and made up in wide variety of India-silks and light , the loose gradually became formalised for more public occasions.

The style was known as the mantua.

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Figure 5: The Mantua of 1693.50

In its earliest form, the banyan was pinned to close in front, and was fitted snugly to the waist with pleating and stitching. The notion was to pull the long robe back to show its contrasting lining, and it was folded and looped up to behind, and adorned with ribbons and finessed with hidden tapes to display the elegant ornate petticoat.

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Separate stays had originated alongside the flowing lines of the mantua. Pushing up the breasts and sculpting the long torso to well below the natural waist, the conical stiff stays created a firm flat front reinforced with a removable separate busk made of wood or whalebone. As the seventeenth century turned, the neckline widened and a decorative was added to cover the stays.

To the dismay of the Master Tailors with their established prerogatives, illicit mantua making of the new dress was flourishing outside the Guild system. The simplified dresses evolving from the banyan did not demand the secret systems of measurement which were divulged – for a premium – only to initiates, and Tailors Guilds from York and elsewhere united and presented to Parliament a petition ‘for Suppressing the women Mantoe Makers and other grievances’.51

The petition failed, and the ‘mantoe makers’ remained unsuppressed. The Master Tailors failed completely to bar non-Guild members from manufacturing women’s dress and the weakened Guilds in their last collective action against the intrusion of females into their territory sought to marginalise and denigrate the skills of the growing number of mantua makers working outside the Guilds, representing them as incompetent, ‘disorderly’ and ‘clandestine’ – a ‘dishonourable’ part of the noble trade.

The Guild tailors however retained their rights to fashion the garments developed in the masculine style such as great coats and riding habits, and catering to their aristocratic clientele, they retained the right to the lucrative grand dresses still worn formally at Court which remained in the old style, with separate heavily-boned , vast skirts and complex underpinnings.

And although the Guild tailors were eager to retain their rights to the manufacture of the stays, they had to train and retain women as stay-makers because of the demand from some of their female clients.

But it was not the tailor-trained mantua makers within the embrace of the Guilds, or even those persistent unsuppressed mantua makers who operated outside Guild regulation who were stirring up trouble. Ambitious tailors were also beginning to move into ready-made clothing, and some York tailors turned merchant-tailors, and were routinely charged with "keeping a Sale's Shop to Sell New Cloaths ready made ... & hanging Such Cloaths out of ...

Windows."52

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The easy availability of these window-hung offerings tempted the busy artisans’ wives and the bustling working women, and the relaxed lines of the mantua in ever new and attractive fabrics eased in the concept of ready-made as appropriate for ‘middling’ people for whom ‘ready-to-wear’ had always meant ill-fitting clothing, the dress of the poor.

Meanwhile, ignoring the Master Tailors and their Guilds and their royal edicts, the irrepressible mantua makers quietly set themselves up as Mistresses and – plagiarising the guild-template – they took on their own girl apprentices and trained up their own journey- women. Mantua making was a skilled trade. Mantua makers were able to cut and fit the new gown, and by the end of the century, young women could undertake formal training under a Mistress for periods of varying length. Then she, like her journey-man male counterparts would need to move between establishments, to travel to build her skills, acquire experience and develop her fashion knowledge, her cultural collateral.

London between the months of November and May acted like a magnet. These months marked the “Season” when Parliament was sitting, and all the ton would be in town.53 For the British aristocrats and social elite, the fashionable life oscillated around the ‘London Season,’ a demanding round of balls, assemblies and court events which were almost obligatory to attend. Guild tailors might produce the aberrantly masculine and chic ‘habits’ to parade on horseback or drive a phaeton in Rotten Row, but the gorgeous court gowns with their tight, heavily boned bodices and the hooped skirts were still essential for the formalities of Court presentation. But at the apogee of the dress trades in this period were the fashionable mantua makers who catered for an elegant clientele, providing the latest styles and actively mustering up new delights for the Season.

Surrounding and servicing the world of fashion were all the fashion-driven auxiliary trades, the cloth-drapers and silk merchants, the shoe makers, the jewellers, the embroiderers, the glovers, the stockingers, the hatters and makers, the lacemakers, the feather-workers, all pushing to produce, to innovate and to tempt in the heightened demand of the Season. In England, the busy workrooms buzzed eighteen to twenty hours a day ‘in Season’ to cut, fit, and advise their high-ranking clients who required both to conform and to differentiate.

When the social elite and their households closed down their townhouses and retired back to their estates in the provinces, luckless mantua makers joined the unemployed, took in seamstressing, went into service or sought out a wealthy ‘patron.’

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As S.D. Smith reports, the simple mantua of the 1680s had pioneered a revolution. The manufacture of female clothing by non-Guild women continued on into the century, opening up in England a conduit which offered unprecedented opportunities to mantua makers and others of their ilk. Despite their lack of privileges and rights, mantua makers through the demands of their fashion driven clientele, subsequently gained control over the production of almost all female garments, and even of fashion itself.

This catalysing spirit arrived on the ships of 1788 in the cultural collateral of the “disorderly” women of Botany Bay who may have been “clandestine” or “dishonourable” at one time or another, and some had even been both.

1.6: –TAKING POSSESSION

On the 7th of February 1788, the day after the landing of the women, was the day chosen to claim formal possession of the new territory for England. For this spectacular proclamation, the whole community was gathered together in the little Cove. Letter-writer George Worgan records this historical event for his brother recounting Governor Phillip’s lengthy address to all the assembled convicts:

… that there were a Number of good Men among them, who, unfortunately, from falling into bad Company, from the influence of bad Women, and in a rash moment of Intoxication, had been led to violate the Laws of their Country, by committing Crimes which in a serious Moment of Reflection, they thought of with Honor and Shame, and of which now, they sincerely repented ...54

Is it any wonder if the women’s minds wandered. They would have been distracted by the men, convicts and sailors out of their working slops and in their ‘best’ garments, and so be assessing them by their dress. But it would not have taken long for the women to establish just who were the Alpha males in the little community.

The naval officers were in their ‘dress’ uniform of navy blue jackets with white facings and , gold buttons and glittering braid and lacings. But even more dashing were the military officers in their scarlet uniforms and white breeches, their diagonal sashes and ceremonial swords hanging from the left hip which in fashionable circles, were occasionally still used for duels.

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A dinner for all the officers was held at the Governor’s expense to celebrate this momentous event, as would become the practice for future festive occasions, and Newton Fowell, a nineteen-year-old midshipman from the Sirius, writes to his father:

On the 4 being the Kings birth day we fired 3 Royal Salutes & a Dinner was given by the Govonor to all the officers, he then Named the intended Town Albion.55 Phillip’s address to the assembly had merely reflected the orthodox views held by his peers and contemporaries, Portia Robinson citing the official English mindset which informs the times, and quoting as evidence The Malefactors' Register or New Newgate and Tyburn Calendar which was popular reading for the literate of all classes in the eighteenth century:

It is to the low and abandoned women that hundreds of young fellows owe their destruction. They rob, they plunder, to support these wretches. ... The execution of ten women would do more public service than that of an hundred men.56 After a stay of nine months, having disembarked their human cargo, the First Fleet ships began to leave Sydney Cove, most to return home to England. All carried letters from the men and women, willing and unwilling who were to make up the first colony. There is one lone example of a letter written by an anonymous convict woman sent home on the returning ships:

I take the first opportunity that has been given us to acquaint you with our disconsolate situation in this solitary waste of the creation. … the inconveniences since suffered for want of shelter, bedding, etc. are not to be imagined by any stranger.

As for the distresses of the women, they are past description, as they are deprived of tea and other things they were indulged in the voyage by the seamen …57 Nine months after her arrival on the wild shore, this woman gives a description of the little settlement. Possibly born, bred and convicted in London, the affected notions of plein air living may have stimulated and sustained the imagination of some, but she was not party to the plans and smoke dreams of the ruling men and she writes:

We have now two streets, if four rows of the most miserable huts you can possibly conceive of deserve that name. Windows they have none, as from the Governor’s house, etc, now nearly finished, no glass could be spared; so that lattices of twigs are made by our people to supply their places.58. And sent on the last ships returning to England, is Worgan’s touching request of his brother; he reveals that he was already feeling out-of-touch and was hungry for news of home: 25

Pray Mr. Dick have You had an Opportunity yet of Sending Me a Packet of News? who is the King? the Queen? the Ministers? whats the Whim?59 . 1.7: – NORFOLK ISLAND

Instructions from the King George III himself charged Captain Arthur Phillip to occupy

Norfolk Island immediately to “prevent its being occupied by the subjects of any other European Power.”60 Five days after arrival in the cove, P.G. King had recorded in his private journal:

This day His Excellency Governor Phillip signified his intention of sending me to Norfolk Island with a few people & stock to settle it .... I was appointed Superintendant & Commandant.61 In less than a fortnight after arrival in Sydney Cove, Phillip had put into effect the wishes of his Monarch, and under the command of the young Lieutenant, , a handful of convicts, a small detachment of soldiers and a ship’s-carpenter were dispatched to the Island to establish a small settlement and set up a cloth industry.

Included in the settling party were five convict women from the Lady Penryhn selected by Surgeon Bowes from among those “whose behaviour had been the least exceptionable.” Three were from London – a needleworker, a servant and a servant-cook; two of the women – Olive Gascoigne who had been “in service” and the mantua maker Ann Inett – were convicted in Worcester, a large provincial city which Daniel Defoe had described as “being full of business, occasion'd chiefly by the cloathing trade.”62

A sixth woman recommended by Bowes as “a very fit person to go” was Ann Yates, a Yorkshire milliner. She was very forward in her pregnancy to one of the seamen, which gives the lie that she had behaved “uniformly well” during the voyage, and highlights the ambiguity of Bowes’ selection criteria. Ann (Nancy) Yates became the consort of the colony’s Judge-Advocate, the journal keeper David Collins. He adopted Ann Yates’ child, and the duo would have two more children.63

Included among the party were “two persons who pretended to some knowledge of flax- dressing.” Both were ex-seamen from the Sirius: Robert Morley who claimed to have been a master Weaver, and so was believed to be familiar with the processing of flax to linen, and a competent master carpenter to build the spinning wheels to work the fibre into yarn. Significantly a loom and flax dressing tools were sent out on these first ships.

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King was ebullient, for the green little island held immediate promise and he reported enthusiastically to Phillip by the returning Supply:

Nothing can exceed the fertility of its soil. Wherever it has been since examined, a rich black mould has been found to the depth of five or six feet: and the grain and garden seeds which have been sown, such only excepted as were damaged in the carriage, or by the weevil, have vegetated with the utmost luxuriance.64

Governor Phillip’s direct “Instructions” issued to his protégé P. G. King concerning the production which he anticipated would bring the greatest significance to Norfolk Island and the motherland:

After having taken the necessary measures for securing yourself and people, and for the preservation of the stores and provisions, you are immediately to proceed to the cultivation of the Flax Plant, which you will find growing spontaneously on the island.65

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CHAPTER 2: THE SECOND FLEET 1789-90 ‘Patching out decency’

2.1: INTRODUCTION

The years 1789-1790 were a most challenging period for the colony when a series of supply vessels failed to appear as designed together, or did not appear at all. It provides one of the ‘founding myths’ of the harshness of Australian life. Many descriptions were penned of the extreme hardship of life generally, extending to clothing practices. The dress of naval officers was damaged and tattered from the Australian bush. There was no to repair it.

The fact that the skills were available was expressly mentioned. The Second Fleet brought a new group of women who has seen fashion afresh. It included several fashion criminals who had been accomplished thieves of high class fashion goods in London. Although most of the comment comes from the male educated officers, who had access to writing, they made a large amount of comments about the women. They described their rough dress, but also praised their ingenuity in patching, sewing and managing their appearances.

2.2: – REDUCED RATIONS

The first year had passed, and the new year came and went. Rations had been reduced, and Collins describes the lack-lustre paucity of the new year ‘celebrations’:

The first day of the new year of 1789 was marked as a holiday by a suspension of all kinds of labour, and by hoisting the colours at the fort.1

Collins notes that the populace was beginning to succumb to the dreaded scurvy:

A large number were incapable, through age or infirmities, of being called out to labour in the public grounds; and the civil establishment, the military, females, and children, filled up the catalogue of those unassisting in cultivation.2.

There was still no news, no communication from the motherland, and with no known reasons for the delay, the community was becoming agitated.

Although the ground had been well turned in the gardens, the plantings shrivelled in the ground however carefully tended. Unfamiliarity with seasonal patterns ensued the loss of the valuable seed-stock sown in Farm Cove, and yields had been scanty and topical farm practices

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were yet to be resolved. Most alarming had been the depredations of rats and other vermin, and the dawning realisation that what remained of the stores brought out from England, were inadequate to feed the numbers of people however carefully husbanded.

Disturbingly, there was no sign of the expected storeships with supplies. The need for a further cut in the flour ration finally precipitated action and Governor Phillip had ordered Captain John Hunter of the Sirius to prepare for an ocean voyage. He was to proceed with all expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, there to purchase fresh seed-stock, flour for the people, and other essential foodstuffs. Collins records:

On the departure of the Sirius, there was a deduction in the amount of flour issued and the settlement was to continue at this ration until the return of the Sirius, which was expected not to exceed six months.3

However, exploration inland had found better land and ever the optimist, Watkin Tench comments:

The nature of the soil is various. That immediately round Sydney Cove is sandy, with here and there a stratum of clay. From the sand we have yet been able to draw very little; but there seems no reason to doubt, that many large tracts of land around us will bring to perfection whatever shall be sown in them.4

Worgan colourfully describes the resourceful Governor’s personal exploration inland the previous year. Taking with him a party of military officers and Marines, and a select number of convict men “who understood the business of cultivation,” Phillip and this heterogeneous crew had set off upriver with provisions for eight days. Travelling westwards towards the deep blue mountain range that stretched away north and south, they were several miles inland when the party came upon:

a vast Extent of fine Meadow Ground, where, the Trees were at a greater Distance from each other, than they are in the Country round about the Settlement The Soil, they found was far superior in Quality.5

As a consequence, Governor Phillip decided to establish a second township upstream from the Cove near the head of the river. He chose the site for a small residence for vice-regal use overlooking the “fine Meadow Ground,” and marked out where to build communal huts for the convict men labouring on the government farms nearby. He named his new establishment

Rose Hill.6

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The Sirius was still on the high seas, and with the departure of the Supply with provisions for Norfolk Island, the Cove was suddenly left without a ship, “which forcibly drew our attention to the peculiarity of our situation” and until the sturdy little vessel’s safe return, Collins contemplates its absence: “Reflection on the bare possibility of its miscarriage made every mind anxious during her absence from the settlement.”7

The Sirius returned in May 1789. Travelling south towards New Zealand and riding the Roaring Forties of the icy Southern Ocean, it had made its way to the Dutch Cape of Good Hope via Cape Horn, and in doing so, the intrepid Captain John Hunter had circumnavigated the globe in the high latitudes.8 Although the flour she brought would only sustain the colony for another four months, the return and success of the Sirius “gladdened every heart.”9

Throughout the previous year, the transports of the First Fleet had gradually left. The storeships Borrowdale, Golden Grove and Fishburn were the last to depart as their off-loading took longer and secure storehouses needed to be built for the reception of the precious victuals and drink, for tools and marine supplies, and to store paraphernalia brought out from England to establish the colony such as spinning wheels, looms, and even an old printing press.

But by 1789, most of the venturesome seafaring ‘boys’ from Botany Bay were once more back in England, and were ever-ready to regale all and sundry with their wild tales, the officers advertising their arrival back in society by handing out risqué flyers at a masquerade.

Such ephemera indicates the topical nature of the Botany Bay experiment, and a type of male larrikinism which likely contributed to the development of that aspect of Australian homosocial culture. The expression ‘neat as imported’ as a different reference to both clothing being ‘neat’ and the significance of textile imports for the fashion industry. ‘Shirtless Sam’ and the comment about the nakedness of the convict women underscore the clothing references.

Claiming to be a “foraging party” dispatched from Botany Bay by Governor Phillip, the ‘boys’ display all the wit and cunning of eighteenth century word- play of Latin/English which – like puns themselves – are especially knowing or canny. And declaring “We are the natty Boys & born to consume the fruits of the earth,” these natty dressers resort to the cant of London thieves where natty lads were young pickpockets. 10

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Figure 6: “Distributed about the Room at a Masquerade.”

“Nos fumus Boys natty & fruges confumeré nati.”

The ten “boys” hail from the Three Kingdoms of Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

2.3: – ‘FAMINE APPROACHES’

For the hungry little community on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the months of waiting had lengthened into another year. It was 1790, and there was still no news, no explanation and no known reasons for the delay in the supply ships, and the colonists were becoming agitated. The two years of provisions which had been sent out on the storeships of the First Fleet had been distributed and were nearly at an end, and despite the supplies brought by the Sirius from Cape Town, rations needed to be cut again to eke out the remainder. But still the supplies from England did not come.

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Tench captures the mood of the populace:

Famine …. was approaching with gigantic strides, and gloom and dejection overspread every countenance. Men abandoned themselves to the most desponding reflections and adopted the most extravagant conjectures.11 Worse, something had been broken, new feelings of abandonment, isolation, despair. And the convict rumours ran like wildfire, that the disgruntled civil officers and the military population would take off in the Sirius and the Supply, leaving them all to perish.12

By March, when people were beginning to die from starvation, Governor Phillip loaded the Supply and the Sirius with half of the convicts remaining in the Sydney Cove, and with two companies of marines and their officers under the command of -Governor, Major Ross, dispatched them to Norfolk Island. 13 Phillip also ordered the Island’s Commandant, the trusty Philip Gidley King, to return to the main colony immediately. The settlement was in crisis again.14

After its brief mission to Norfolk Island to deliver its human cargo, the Sirius was to continue north to China to procure the food supplies essential to save the starving colony. Not surprisingly, Phillip’s dispatches to the Home Office concerning the dire situation of the colony had been mounting, and Lieutenant King was to travel north with the Sirius and make his way to London from Batavia in order to present them personally to the Secretary of State.

2.4: – LOST UPON THE REEF Collins observes that when everyone had left:

Much room was made every where by the numbers who had embarked (in all 281 persons); the military quarters had a deserted aspect; and the whole settlement appeared as if famine had already thinned it of half its numbers. The little society that was in the place was broken up, and every man seemed left to brood in solitary silence over the dreary prospect before him. 15

In late April the little Supply returned, and Collins records the alarming news:

… with an account that was of itself almost sufficient to have deranged the strongest intellect among us ... the Sirius, which was to have gone in quest of relief to our distresses, was lost upon the reef.16

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Norfolk Island, surrounded by treacherous reefs, rocks and oceanic swells had no safe port. and the critical dash for supplies from China had been aborted by bad luck and a sudden wind shift

… The rocks had claimed the noble Sirius. 17

33

Figure 7: The Melancholy Loss of HMS Sirius off Norfolk Island, 1790 George Raper, (Midshipman, Sirius) National Library of Australia Collection.

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Captain Hunter and the crew of the Sirius were now marooned on Norfolk Island now under the control of the controversial Major Ross, senior officer by rank and Lieutenant-Governor by appointment. Back in Sydney, the normally circumspect David Collins, the Judge- Advocate expressed his mixed feelings in a personal letter to his father:

Since Major Ross went from here, tranquillity may be said to have been our guest. Oh! that the Sirius when she was lost, had proved his – but no more of that. While here he made me the object of his persecution – if a day will come – a day of retribution.18

Immediately on arrival, the Major had put the Island under martial law and full rations for the common soldiers were restored. Military policy held that “Botany Bay” was a penal station, nothing more, and as the keepers of law and order, the officers and their men should not suffer the convict ration. And the convicts’ allocation was adjusted accordingly.

On its return to Cove, the little Supply was quickly refurbished for a major ocean voyage, and was urgently dispatched to the nearest supply port – disease-ridden Dutch-held Batavia – with instructions to order all necessary supplies and to commission a large Dutch ship (the Waaksamheyd) to carry them back to the starving colony.

She also carried letters sent to friends. One by Captain William Hill, an officer in the colony, was published in England in the Oracle of April 25, 1791:

By the time this reaches you, the fate of this settlement, and all it contains, will be decided. It is now more than two years since we landed here, and within less than a month of three since we left England. ... the dread of perishing by famine stares us in the face; .... all chance of reinforcement under seven months is cut off, unless ships from England should yet, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, come in upon us. The hope of this is, however, very feeble, for, without the most shameful and cruel inattention on your part, ships must have left England by the first of August last, to come here; and if so, have undoubtedly perished on route.19 So the Supply left and the serene autumn weather persisted, almost an affront to the cruel realities and anxieties of the colony for the Cove was now empty of all ships. The harbour which so proudly “would protect all the armies of Europe” lay deserted, a visual marker of administrative neglect, and the population of Sydney Cove watched the horizon with increasing desperation.

Another letter written by the Chief Surgeon, John White, was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine. “In the name of Heaven, what has the Ministry been about?” he thunders, “Surely

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they have quite forgotten or neglected us, otherwise they would have sent to see what become of us, and to know how we were likely to succeed.” He conveys the sad news of the Sirius and the likelihood that food supplies would only last for another seven months, and if food did not arrive in time:

... the game will be up with us, for all the grain of every kind which we have been able to raise in two years and three months would not support us three weeks ... the people ... have not had one ounce of fresh animal food since first in the country. The Supply tender sails to- morrow for Batavia, in hopes the Dutch may be able to send in time to save us.

Should any accident happen to her, Lord have mercy upon us!20

2.5: – ENGLISH FLAG

The sun shone in one of those hard glittery days of autumn onto the empty harbour, silent except for the wheeling gulls and the mournful slap of the wind-waves on those deceptive green coves and headlands which had looked so promising and had proven to be as arid and unforgiving to English ways of agriculture as Farm Cove had been. The isolation had been deafening: “no communication whatever having passed with our native country since .... the day of our departure from Portsmouth,”21 writes Tench. All were hungry, most were starving, and some had starved to death.

The rising ground of the western arm of Sydney Cove where the convicts first pitched their tents was familiarly dubbed ‘The Rocks’. With its sandstone shelves and rocky over-hangs, it overlooked the deserted waters below. Its rough terrain and scrubby brush had become the haunt of the idle, and here those avoiding work spent their time, well out of sight of the soldiers. At its highest point, the view stretched far up and down the harbour – even to the heads of Port Jackson.

When the watchers at the South Head, ran the signal up the flagpole that a ship had been sighted out to sea, the idlers would have been the first to see it. But any faint hope for change was quickly dampened by experience – probably the little Supply returning from Batavia with its small cargo of provisions, and cheered, they turned back to their cards or their yarning – rations would increase for a time.

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Then about half past three, more signalling flags, more information. Tench was in his hut when he heard the commotion:

I opened my door and saw several women with children in their arms running to and fro with distracted looks, congratulating each other and kissing their infants with the most passionate and extravagant marks of fondness. ... a large ship, with English colours flying, working in

between the heads.22

Tench, rushing out from his hut and meeting with a brother-officer attracted by the same explosion of noise: “We could not speak. We wrung each other by the hand with eyes and hearts overflowing ...“23

The news was shouted back from those idlers, and echoing shore to shore, was picked up by those at work and a hundred excited tongues sent the news rippling down the High-street to the labourers at the Brickfields who downed tools and ran to join the crowd around the harbour. People were collecting on the high points and headlands to cheer the English ship, and small boats were launched to welcome it and to tow it up the harbour if necessary, to tether it as soon as possible to the safety and security of the little Cove.

The lone ship was the , a female transport, and Tench welcomed: "225 of our countrywomen whom crime or misfortune had condemned to exile."24 She carried letters, parcels, and brought to the settlement the first news of events in the home land since the First Fleet had left England in May 1787:

News burst upon us like meridian splendor on a blind man. We were overwhelmed with it: public, private, general, and particular. Nor was it until some days had elapsed that we were able to methodise it, or

reduce it into form.25

However, the vessel carried only a small stock of provisions intended for those on board, which the Governor immediately distributed to all in the starving colony. Most welcome had been the news of the impending arrival of a large supply ship, the Justinian. The imminent arrival of three more transports carrying more convicts for the colony was digested more slowly.

The Lady Juliana carried only women, and their landing would have been as exciting as the first, with each newly arrived woman attired in the best of her dress. To the women settlers,

the newcomers must have looked as bright as lorikeets. Fashion had changed in the three 37

years since leaving the shores of England. English historian Beverly Lemire, author of Dress, Culture and Commerce, describes the latest fashion, much of which was made possible by imported Indian : ‘The reds, purples, yellows, greens, blues, dots, diamonds, flowers, sprigs, spots, and checks startle the eye and invite the attention.’26. The tight stays worn for stability and support were thankfully no longer of the old fashioned boned variety as the staymakers, like Mary Dykes from the Lady Penrhyn would have noticed, they were made of linen, lightly boned or quilted and they were worn looser.

But the Lady Juliana women were spared the shock of “the solitary waste of a creation” as it was experienced by the female scribe on the First Fleet in 1788. The Sydney they found in 1790 was described in his journal by the returning Philip Gidley King after his two year absence from the main colony as Norfolk Island’s Commander: ”When I left Port Jackson in February, 1788,” he recalls, “the ground about Sydney-Cove was covered with a thick forest,” and he depicts the camp as he found it in 1790: “it [was] cleared to a considerable distance,” and the streets were lined with houses for the common people “built with logs and plastered white with roofs of wooden shingle or thatched reeds,” while further down the main road towards Brickfield Hill “there are brick kilns and a pottery.”27

However, as the convict labourers grew too weak to work, Government work on buildings and gardens had stalled, and upkeep had deteriorated. The settlement on Sydney Cove in 1790 may have looked bleak and run-down to many new arrivals, but the response of the women of the Lady Juliana can only be imagined. Like most women in the eighteenth century, their attention was focussed not on the townscape but on the people-scape, the social terrain in which they must function and make their way, and searching for visual cues, they saw only the bleak, run-down women of Botany Bay.

Their “best” or holiday dresses worn at their own first landing had long been pressed into everyday service, and were now patched and ragged, and the children were running about almost naked. The dainty prints that had been all the mode in 1787 had changed imperceptibly over time, the delicate reds, greens and blues fading away with harsh washing, the original patterns morphing one into another as the fairly robust Indian dyes gave up their colour to the unforgiving Australian sun.

Hats were crushed and out of shape, while ribbons and ruffles and artificial flowers were limp, and feathers were irretrievably bedraggled. Lacking both soap and bleach, their caps and kerchiefs were now stained to a nondescript tired yellow by the tannin-soaked water, and against the sandy and dusty brown of the soils around the Cove, the ragamuffin women

of Botany Bay must have looked as if they had risen out of the ancient earth itself. 38

Every article of clothing, every shred of cloth that had ever been in the colony had arrived long ago, and when garments had disintegrated from wear, moth, and mildew, there was little to replace them, and despite the careful husbanding of the precious stock of textile in the colony, there was little left even to patch with. Eventually their clothing was put together with an eye only to the most basic of needs – protection from the elements and, in the last gasp of respectability, the layering of one garment over another to hide the holes, rents, tears that awaited the thread, a needle, a scrap of fabric for the patch.

The management of linen, dress and personal hygiene must have been an enormous challenge in the early years of the colony before professional laundries were established. The officers of course had servants to manage this task for them.

One anonymous convict man wrote home in 1790:

'I hope you will venture to send some needles and blue thread; for, as the cloaths are all wore out that we brought from home, we are mostly in our Woolwich dresses, and the women look like gypsies.28 Even before the first ships had left in 1788, Worgan had half-joked in a letter to his brother:

I shall be obliged soon to make a Virtue of Necessity for I have torn almost all my Cloaths to pieces by going into the Woods; and tho' we do not want for Taylors, We do, Woolen Drapers.29 This is an interesting comment as it underscores that the colony did not lack clothing skills but lacked material provision.

Embracing the general spirit of discovery, the officers – as befitted English country ‘gentlemen’ everywhere – had left off their simple hunting-shooting- fishing excursions, and parties of the most adventurous were getting together to explore inland, some mapping the harbour upstream, while the naval personnel spent their time charting the nearby coastlines, its inlets and harbours. All had returned with their clothing in shreds, their shoes tied together with yarn.30. Now even the military were shabby, their sturdy jackets of red wool faded and threadbare but still serviceable although patched at the elbows and other areas of wear, prompting the humorous Tench to remonstrate:

After having suffered as we do, I shall be greviously hurt, on landing in England, to meet the sneers of a set of holiday troops, whos only employ has been to powder their hair, polish their shoes, and go through the routine of a field day, though I must own that our air, gait and raggedness will give them some title to be merry at our expense.31

Mended garments were more ‘respectable’ than ragged clothing but the women were patching with whatever was available -- pattern upon pattern, colour upon colour, and patches upon patches.

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Tench would applaud the women for their “ingenuity” and “superior dexterity” in their “substituting, shifting and patching ... to eke out wretchedness and preserve the remains of decency,” thus eliciting from the primary sources, the first favourable observation of the disreputable women and harlots in all the foundation documents: “The superior dexterity of the women was particularly conspicuous,”32 writes Tench respectfully.

A shop had been opened up ashore immediately by the master of the Lady Juliana “for the sale of some articles of grocery, glass, millinery, perfumery, and stationary,” prompting Collins to observe:

The risk of bringing them out having been most injudiciously estimated too highly, as was evident from the increase on the first cost, which could not be disguised, they did not go off so quickly as the owners supposed they would.33

The officers of the Lady Juliana had also brought an account of a large English storeship, the fast sailing Guardian, which had been dispatched for the relief of the colony over half a year before. Setting out from Cape Town on the last leg of its voyage across the cold treacherous Southern Ocean, the Guardian had struck an iceberg. Only by jettisoning most of her cargo to lighten her load had the vessel been prevented from sinking instantly at sea, and she was able to wallow back to Cape Town where she now lay half-submerged at anchor.

This was particularly bad news for the civil and military men. Flush with funds and with little to spend it on in the colony, the officers had sent requests home by the returning ships to their agents, friends, brothers, families, fellow- officers for extra shirts and stockings, more shoes, some comforts, some ‘investments’. But when the Guardian foundered, “the private articles” had been among “the first things that were thrown overboard.”34

While the common people may have been mollified to find they had not been entirely forgotten or abandoned by the mother land, Collins calculates that if the storeship had arrived as projected near the end of January, then the colony would not have been driven to the edge of famine and most of the breeding stock slaughtered for food. Nor would the little community itself be broken up and half of its people shipped off to Norfolk Island, a dramatic response which ultimately precipitated the loss of the Sirius. And the pensive Judge-Advocate reflects:

it was as painful then to learn, as it will ever be to recollect ... had the Guardian arrived, perhaps we should never again have been in want.35

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2.6: – IMPROPER SUBJECTS

The remainder of the transports of the Second Fleet began to arrive – the Neptune, the Surprize and on its second voyage to the colony, the Scarborough – disembarking over the next three weeks a thousand male and female convicts into the colony. One of the women from the Lady Juliana, barely a month in the colony herself, was a shocked witness to the offloading of each new arrival and left her impressions in a letter, from which extracts were published anonymously in London’s Morning Chronicle.

Oh! if you had but seen the shocking sight of the poor creatures that came out in the three ships, it would make your heart bleed; they were almost dead; very few could stand, and they were obliged to sling them as you would goods, and hoist them out of the ship they were so feeble; and they died ten or twelve a day when they first landed; but some of them are getting better ... they were confined and had bad victuals and stinking water.

The Governor was very angry, and scolded the Captains a great deal, and I heard intended to write to London about it; for I heard him say it was murdering them ... it to be sure was a melancholy sight – what a difference between us and them.”36

Initial shock turned to outrage, and the source journals note it all, names are named, court cases would follow and this newer – sinister – commercial strand of profit-making at the expense of English lives became appallingly obvious. Collins with barely concealed disgust reveals that “no interest for their preservation was created in the [ships’] owners, and the dead were more profitable …. than the living.”37

To judge from the response in all the primary accounts, the colony was deeply scandalised; the long awaited “relief” from England had effectively doubled the population of the struggling colony, not with the thousand able-bodied working men, but with invalids. Even the best of the survivors were weak and emaciated, and the long-term residents, themselves debilitated from near starvation, were now faced with the care of the sick and dying.

The women of the Lady Juliana, deemed by Collins only a few weeks previously to be “loaded with the infirmities of old age, and to be very improper subjects for any of the purposes of an infant colony,”38 joined in with the settlers and set about the care of the sick and dying, collecting anti-scorbutic berries and baking loaves “to be distributed daily

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among the sick, as it was not in their power to prepare it themselves.”39

On the first ship to return to England, Phillip dispatched a firm even caustic letter to the penny-pinching Home Office:

The sending out the disordered and helpless clears the gaols and may even ease the parishes from which they are sent; but, sir, it is obvious that this settlement, instead of being a colony which is to support itself, will, if the practice is continued, remain for years a burden to the mother country.40 And the shrinking rations had not been the only problem, as the anonymous woman correspondent from the Lady Juliana elaborates in her letter:

This place was in a very starving condition before we arrived ... we are now much in want of almost everything; we have hardly any cloaths; ... and we hope to have some cloaths, as the Justinian, a ship that came from London with provisons, bringing some cloth and linen, and we are to make cloaths.”41 The dispatches accompanying the storeship Justinian had advised Governor Phillip that:

... the Justinian, which has been taken up as a store ship, and now in the river under orders to follow, contain a large supply of clothing, provisions, tools etc, the particulars of which are specified in the inclosed estimates. All of these articles will be found to be of the first quality, and will, I hope, be applied to the best possible advantage.42 Instead, bales of cloth and bundles of unmade slops had been sent to the near-naked colony, and the ragged female convicts – fishwives, milliners, house-servants, hawkers – had to turn seamstress. Collins records:

They were employed in making the slops for the men, which had been now sent out unmade. Each woman who could work at her needle had materials for two shirts given her at a time, and while so employed was not to be taken for any other labour.43. The Lady Juliana had been the first to arrive, followed in quick succession by the Surprize, the Scarborough and the Neptune, (the only other ship to carry women) and dropped anchor in Sydney Cove in 1790. From the Australian perspective, if not the English, these four transports arriving together with the storeship Justinian are logically accepted as Australia’s Second Fleet.44

Among the Second Fleet women were Elisabeth Barnsley and Ann Wheeler of the Lady Juliana.

Barely a fortnight after the First Fleet women had stepped onto Sydney Cove, these women had appeared at the Old Bailey back in London, and were sentenced for 7 years to transportation for shoplifting from a drapers’ shop.

These fashionably dressed women working as a team were professional thieves and were well-

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known to the law in England as members of the notorious “Family.” Dressed in the height of fashion – muffs, tippets, hats – they had visited on several occasions, a fashionable store which catered to the ton, and this time had asked to see the fine muslins: “… the counter was littered all over ...” testified the unfortunate shopman. They leisurely made their selections and tendered a £10 note.

Giving evidence under oath at their trial, the shopman reported that while he was attending to this transaction, he saw one of the “ladies” slip a whole bolt of expensive muslin under her elegant cape: “she had a very large white silk cloak on, trimmed with furr, and a very large .” Accosted, Ann Wheeler had haughtily informed him that not only was she “a friend of Lady ,” but she had often been “seen in the shop with her servants.”

These elegant, practised women were ‘flash mollishers’ as fashionable women of The Family were nominated in London, and although they freely employed the cant “kiddy” language amongst their own,45 they were obviously able to pass as well spoken gentlefolk. Nevertheless, these ‘well-connected’ women were held over in Newgate until England would get around to sending off to Botany Bay another sorry fleet of the riff-raff of London, and they arrived on the Lady Juliana.

The sensational arrivals of both the women’s transports – the Lady Juliana and the Neptune – were each dramatic in their own way, yet both were so different in their effect. Collins reports on the unloading of the Neptune:

Instead of being capable of labour, they seemed to require attendance themselves, and were never likely to be any other than a burden to the settlement, which must sensibly feel the hardship of having to support by the labour of those who could toil, and who at the best were but few, a description of people utterly incapable of using any exertion toward 46 their own maintenance. In the confusion, occupational details for both ships were ignored, but the impression gained from the slapdash indents perpetuates the myth that these cookie-cutter convict women were all low-skill, no skill slatterns.

2.7: – COUNTRY WOMEN

Like the women of the First Fleet, the new arrivals of the Lady Juliana were drawn mostly from urban areas. But the women of the Neptune were drawn from a wider catchment area of provincial centres and county gaols. (see Appendix 2) Over half would have been servants, and

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sturdy country girls were much in demand for domestic service both in town and country. But those raised in rural areas or with a genuine farming background were in particular demand, particularly as wives. Those familiar with planting seed, harvesting and tending the soil were probably the first to adapt and work their gardens, but ex-milkmaids, experienced with butter- and even cheese-making were also valued. Baking and the preservation of foodstuffs, and the care of cows, goats and poultry were all basic domestic skills, and in the virgin terrain of a new colony where so much was lacking, must inevitably – even among the city-born – have prompted the re-evaluation and revival of old, half-forgotten skills as the supplies ran out.

The washerwomen among them must have been among the first to ponder with dismay the brackish water collecting in pools, stained with leaves and bark fallen from overhanging trees. Not so the country ‘house-wives.’ With their domestic skills of spinning, knitting, even weaving, they were also familiar with domestic dyeing, often growing fustic or woad in their own gardens or collecting leaves, roots, bark, lichens from English fields and copses.47

Ever open to the happy accident, these capable trial-and-error amateurs would have been pleasantly surprised with the wide colour range able to be coaxed from the local acacias and eucalypts, colours ranging from browns through green and bright gold to a rich red depending on preparation variables.48 They would find them invaluable to colour over the irretrievable ‘tawny-ness’ of their or to brighten a faded colour on an old gown, requiring no extra chemicals to effect a change. These skills were needed in the colony along with the more common domestic variety always in particular demand – those undertaking the maintenance, the mending and the making of clothing, the mantua makers.

A German artist, costume collector and ethnographer, Max Tilke (1869-1942) author of an extensive range of titles, was researching, compiling and illustrating his last book, Costume Patterns and Designs when he died. In its “Introduction” he proclaims that his purpose was to provide “a comprehensive survey of the relationship and development of costume designs of all people and all epochs.”49 He maintains the Indian banyan, the African djellaba, the Egyptian , the Japanese were all based on a similar cut. Made by women for themselves and their families, the cut and construction of these garments have been handed down from time immemorial, and through generations and across nationalities.

In eighteenth century Europe, a whole category of dress was – like these traditional – contrived of squares and rectangles. Common everyday apparel such as men's shirts and banyans, women's shifts and petticoats, capes and robes and other similar items were based on what can only be referred to as the basic square draft. Demanding little beyond common sense

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and the most basic of mathematical equations, the square draft did not require the science of a tailor or a mantua maker. These essential garments could be cut out and assembled even by the inexpert seamstress. Ideally, they minimised the need for cutting into the cloth and, with very few seams, saved time, labour and precious fabric.

Measured against the body, comfortable jackets and skirts, men’s shirts and banyans, ideally used the full woven width of the fabric. Draped on the body from the front hem length, the cloth passes over the shoulder and falls to the desired length at the back, where it is cut off. If lacking scissors, the fabric could be torn straight safely both along and across the grain, a practice observable in any modern drapery store. The sides are seamed up from hem to arm- pit, and extra squares or rectangles can be added to construct the sleeves. Triangular gores could be inserted to provide greater width at the hem if needed.50 Naturally, the firmly woven selvedges were deployed at all times and the final fit was achieved simply by drawstrings, gatherings and pleating.

Tilke traces “the gradual development of simple wraps to more complicated combinations” including the creation of “new forms of dress.”51 One western form was the mantua; (See Figure 5) originating in the 1690s from the square cut Indian banyan, it was worn over the petticoat, and form-fitting cone-shaped stays, and during its stylistic evolution, this influential one-piece gown gradually acquired a more complex pattern for its construction.

In Sydney, found among the collections of fossils and artefacts in The Rocks Discovery Museum is a tattered shift or . It was discovered in the cottage at 174 Cumberland Street in the Rocks in a lost and forgotten servant- woman’s room secreted away under the eaves. The narrow stairs were dismantled long ago, the small room was sealed away and its very existence was forgotten.52

Made without any pattern beyond the traditional square draft, this humble shift is timeless. Constructed from the full width of the fabric, it has no shoulder seams; a mere slash creates the neckline, and gathering and gores were added for ease and comfort. Though the old newspapers found in the room date the Australian shift to 1907, theoretically, this mildewed ‘fossil,’ this threadbare, worn-out shift could have been made even earlier, by any one of the seamstresses arriving in the colony in the decades after 1788.

If this were an early shift rather than one from the first years of the twentieth century, then it is a remarkable document of managing the body through a dress practice, suggesting modesty, decency with little modicum of style.

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Figure 8 The African Djellaba and the Australian shift.53

Photo-montage: Tristan Hanlon. The traditional white djellaba is made from a series of squares, as were many early English and European garments, particularly women’s clothing. The djellaba is commonly worn in African, Arabic and Asian countries, and in India where, when open down the front, it is known as the banyan, the basis of the early mantuas. Similarities between the cut of the timeless djellaba and the simple shift become visually apparent in this photo-montage.

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2.8: – STRAW HATS

Although the Europeans were bent on reconstructing a “little England” in the

Antipodes, the suffocating heat would demand a spontaneous adaptation to climate. The officers and troops who were familiar with the tropics adopted the India verandahs, tacking them onto their huts to keep the hut walls cool and give shade from the glare.54 But outdoors, shade from the blistering sun had to be found, and the women of the First Fleet may have adopted the traditional face-shading sunbonnet worn while working in English fields. But as cloth available for sunbonnets dwindled away during the years, the sunburnt women may have been ready to engage with any alternative. The wood from the cabbage-tree was used for hut building from the first, and the refuse from the cabbage-tree had been part of everyday life in the early settlement; it seems highly possible that the surplus fronds laying about the camp would suggest their manufacture into serviceable ‘straw hats.’55

Cabbage tree was woven by wives of the officers at the Paddington Barracks outside its gates. It was also used to make the first public wastepaper bins in the colony.

Across the wide rural arc surrounding London and Middlesex, straw hats were fabricated from a wide range of materials – corn husks, wheat straw, river reeds

– employing mainly women and children. The Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, Mr. Arthur Young,56 in his review of England’s rural industries, wrote that “after six weeks’ learning” even “clever little girls” in Hertfordshire could earn as much as a male farm labourer. He also warned that:

The farmers complain of it, as doing mischief, for it makes the poor saucy57, and no servants can be procured, or any field- work done, where the manufacture established itself.58 Around the year 1697, a venturesome English gentlewoman, Celia Fiennes, single and 35, set off like Arthur Young on her own curious ‘Grand Tour’ of Britain.59 Travelling mostly alone but for her servants, she undertook a series of journeys visiting provincial towns and rural villages throughout Britain. Fiennes believed her journals “not likely to fall into the hands of any but my near relations,” but at the end of the nineteenth century they were recovered and transcribed by a descendant kinswoman, and her journals were published in 1888 as Through England on a Side Saddle.60

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Fiennes is particularly attentive to the processes by which things were developed and made by the common people – the identification and preparation of dye plants and the necessary mordants, their preparation of lye from ferns for bleaching, the handlooms and the weaving of complex coloured designs with the “use of a boy” (in a period long before Monsieur Jacquard ‘computerised’ the process by using a series of punchcards).

She even experiments with glass-blowing. The bemused village artisans demonstrated their skills and allowed the Lady to encounter at first hand the crafting process. To the well-born Fiennes these were new experiences, but to the cottage children who participated in the family economy, skills were absorbed by osmosis from the earliest age and learned by practice. These were the innate knowledges which like bike-riding, were unlikely to ever be forgotten, surviving transposition even to the Antipodes.

Recording in her journal the specialities of each community she passes through, Fiennes relates the specific productions of its cottage industries – “Here they make a great deale of bonelace” and the lace-makers “sit and worke all along ye streete as thick as Can be.” Elsewhere she notices, “Here they mak great quantetys of gloves.“ Everywhere, she finds “spinning and knitting amongst ye ordinary people,” and in Norwich and its surrounding villages, “you meete ye ordinary people knitting 4 or 5 in a Company under the hedges.”61

Travelling through Worcestershire, Celia Fiennes finds the common people “much Employ'd about ye worstead trade, spinning and weaving.” In 1787, a convict woman, was sentenced in provincial Worcester and, transported on Bowes’ Lady Penrhyn, her occupation is clearly stated as “in service” but occasionally it is also given as “weaver.” And travelling through Gloucestershire, Fiennes observes, “Here they follow knitting stockings, gloves, wauscoates, and peticoates, and sleeves all of Cotten, and others spinn the Cottens.” Six First Fleet women transported on the Charlotte and the Friendship were indicted in Gloucester, and the ships of the Second Fleet, the Lady Juliana and the Neptune, brought eight more. Yet the incomplete indents give no indication of the useful life-skills which these eighteen Gloucester women could possibly have contributed to the new colony.

Fiennes describes market days in the towns through which she passes, frequently observing “the Little stands for selling things ... in all the streetes,” and praises the

48

fine knitted stockings, embroidery, laces of various widths, ribbon weaving, straw hats, hemmed handkerchiefs. The addition of a bit of lace to a plain cap or silk embellishments to a common shift added to its appeal, and might tempt the less skilled woman or the elite passer-by like Fiennes herself.

It is the fact of trimming or accessorising an article of clothing that John Styles and Beverly Lemire have emphasised in their re-assessments of the dress of the plebian, the sailor and the poor.63

Even as early as 1698 there were indications presaging the changes which were to come. Fiennes records in Exeter, “the whole town and Country is Employ'd for at Least 20 mile round in spinning, weaveing, dressing and scouring, fulling and Drying.” Observing that the finished cloth is shipped off “all for London,” she comments: “It turns the most money in a weeke of any thing in England.”62

Although employment was high, it was not the common folk who were ‘turning the money,’ but a whole new range of agents and factors, ‘middle people’ who sourced and directed goods back to London, the hub of British trade. ‘Putting- out’ and ‘making-up’ contributed to the rise of the middle folk – men and women who acted as brokers or factors to the industrious cottage workshops flourishing in country and rural areas.

Needlewomen, mantua makers and seamstresses flocked to London. Some took in piece-work, others were employed in small establishments, there to cut and to sew, or perhaps working in one of the large supervised workshops which developed over the course of the eighteenth century.

Beverly Lemire examining wholesale distributors in England’s northern provinces finds in faraway Manchester, numbers “rose from 50 in 1773 to 60 in 1788” and by 1794, they had mushroomed to 141.63 But Lemire also draws our attention to the harsh economic reality of London and the ready-made slop shops which “propelled many women into the less attractive and less remunerative parts of the trade.”64

Lemire makes use of the trade directories devised to facilitate the trade of “ready-made clothiers throughout the land” and specifically The Universal British Directory which lists these enterprises, and introduces the advertisements for “Wholesale Cloathes Warehouses' [which] appeared as another component of the clothes trade in the

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1790s.”65 But in the shadow of these great emporiums, there were still the ‘speciality’ stores, and she cites one gown maker whose fashionable stock included:

Banyans for men and women in silks and satins of European and Indian manufacture, plus women's waistcoats, mantles and quilted petticoats.66

In addition to the demands of the civilian market, throughout Britain’s expansionist war-driven eighteenth century, “Military requirements represented a unique stimulus to the clothing trade.”67 Newcomers and widows, the poor and the desperate were engaged in the production of “naval slops and army breeches.”

Distressed women were a source of cheap labour and were hired in preference to male tailors at a fraction of the price. Military contractors and naval suppliers expanded and consolidated, and in “large towns and small, ports and land- locked cities,”68 an army of seamstresses were employed as outworkers whom contractors often ‘sweated,’ a commercial practice which sustains to this day.

“In the crowded rookeries of London, behind the High Street shops and in the congested dock-sides and industrial districts of England,”69 Lemire contends:

These commonplace articles were not the stock of new or picturesque rural cottage industries or of skilled workshop labour. The hands which made bales of shirts, drawers, caps, gowns, bodices and petticoats were equally obscured.70 As Lemire has it, seamstresses in their thousands were absorbed in what was perhaps the “most anonymous of industries,” echoing the sheer anonymity of the Second Fleet female indents and the 349 women of the Lady Juliana and the Neptune, who in 1790 were added to the 192 women already present in the colony:

Both gender and urban anonymity contrived to make this workforce and its products at once commonplace and concealed.71

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CHAPTER 3: THE THIRD FLEET: 1791 Proud Wives and Lady’s Dress-Makers

Section 3 3.1: – DROUGHT The heat of summer had been felt in the colony from the first, but the year 1791 began with the hottest summer yet experienced. Inland, the woods were on fire, and the imperative to clear the land to protect the settlement removed any potential coolness from trees and undergrowth. Collins records that “In several parts of the harbour the ground was covered with different sorts of small birds, some dead, and others gasping

72 for water.”

Runs of water around the harbour, presumed to be permanent, had dried up, and the stream at Sydney Cove, although judged sufficient for immediate need, was running very low. The gangs were employed in clearing and deepening the bed of the stream, and before next summer, the stonemasons’ gang would cut several deep ‘tanks’ into the sandstone, and the stream would gradually become known as the . But still the rains did not come. The armchair theorists at the Home Office had presumed that the land was fertile and the rains were reliable for the traditional grain crops, but the drought would hold throughout most of 1791.

Philip Gidely King, Norfolk Island’s Commander, had left on his mission the previous year to personally present to the Admiralty the Governor’s dispatches and make known the multiple difficulties experienced by the nascent colony.

He acquitted himself well. Returning to the Island at the end of 1791, the promising young Lieutenant was commissioned as the colony’s Lieutenant-Governor, replacing the difficult Major Ross whose tour of duty was complete.

Mid-January the Supply had sailed with provisions for the folk on the Island,73 leaving just the Waaksamheyd alone in Sydney Cove. The Dutch ship was unloading its cargo of food and supplies for the colony, and was fitting up to receive Captain John Hunter, and the officers and crew of the ill-fated Sirius. It would convey them to England to answer to the Admiralty for the loss of one of His Majesty’s ships.

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On Norfolk Island the stranded officers and seamen from the wrecked vessel and the Marines, ‘imprisoned’ together as they were, had not got on well in the enforced propinquity of the little island. Nor did the Second Fleet replacements – the officers and men of the new NSW Corps – improve matters according to Ralph Clark:

the Marines Refused to take there provisions from the Store Keeper alledgin that the Convicts were better off than they were ... I wish that we were fairly away from this Island for I am affraid if we Stay much longer, we will not get away without a great dele of Bloodshed for our men here are the Most Mutinous Set I ever was amongst, and are 74 ripe for rising against any Authority. 3.2: –THE RAINS COME Not until June did the rains come. For a while the rivulets were flowing once more, the quiescent native shrubs and grasses bursting into life again. Watkin Tench evinces a little of the boredom felt by those who by their role as keepers of law and order, were as compelled as any felon to remain “sequestered and cut off” from civilisation. Officer society was time-consuming with hunting, shooting, fishing, and exploring, and with the squabbles of the brother officers, there was always the latest scandal to talk about. Yet as Tench writes “on the shores of this vast ocean (the largest in the world) ... [we] languished for intercourse with civilized society.”75

There is something particularly wistful behind the words of this philosophical young officer – the thrust and parry of Society, the intellectual ferment of the coffee houses, the paved streets, Assembly rooms, the soirées, and the company of gentle-women.

Very few women of the upper levels of British society were present in the early years of the Colony.

The officers of the First Fleet had not been permitted to bring their wives to the colony much to the chagrin of Lieutenant Ralph Clark, but the officers of the could be accompanied by their spouses if desired. Yet in 1790 only one had come. Her name was Elizabeth Macarthur. She was the first gentle-woman to arrive, and by 1791, she had already spent nearly a year in the colony.

She was the lady-wife of Lieutenant John Macarthur of the NSW Corps and together they would become the famous sheep-farming land-holding family who pioneered the Australian wool industry.

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In 1790, the couple together with their young son had been assigned a cabin on the transport Neptune of the Second Fleet. However, the irascible Macarthur was not happy and had quarrelled with the Captain, not only about the size of their cabin but also its location next to the quarters of the convict women. Before the ship had even sailed Macarthur had challenged the Captain over the matter, and the two men had fought a duel on the wharf. The Captain was summarily dismissed, and was replaced by the monstrous Captain Traill who would be taken to court in England for his ill-treatment and scandalous exploitation of the unfortunate convicts aboard the Neptune.76

But Elizabeth Macarthur had little sympathy for the convict women. Pregnant and with an ailing two-year old, she was traumatised by the smell, the noise, the licentious songs, the oaths and imprecations, the fighting and quarrelling, and would not leave her own cramped cabin even to go on deck. Mid-Atlantic Macarthur shifted his distressed family to the Scarborough, and this is the ship which had brought Elizabeth Macarthur into the starving colony in the famine year of 1790.

Elizabeth Macarthur had been born into the “comfortable class.”77 Her Devon family were of good yeoman stock, provincial land holders and farmers. But when she was six, her father died, the household was dismantled and she was brought up by her grandfather, then taken into the genteel home of a reverend vicar to be raised and educated with his own young daughter. Here she underwent a sedate moral upbringing and learned Latin and Greek, natural history and geography. It is possible that she had read Hannah More’s Cheap Tracts at the vicarage; Elizabeth seems to have absorbed More’s simplified equation of dirt, rags, and immorality: “Dirt and rags are signs, not of an extreme poverty that warrants relief, but of a shameful idleness that affords proof of undeservingness.”78 When Elizabeth arrived in 1790, she too had seen the excited bedraggled women of Botany Bay waiting a-shore and saw little to change her mind.

In the miniature of Elizabeth depicted below we see her engagement with up to date English fashions: high hair, lightly powdered but arranged in a relatively natural manner, a muslin or light silk gown, and the general air of neo-classical limpidity that characterised fashion of that period.

One of her letters home in which she noted that ‘mere articles of show are ridiculous’ in a challenging colony in which clothes wore out quickly has sometimes been taken to mean that people in the colonies were not that interested in pursuing fashion.

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Until the recent research of Melissa Bellanta (ACU), in progress at the time of writing this thesis, it was assumed that colonial men wore shapeless and were uninterested in their appearances, but the evidence of the Holtermann commission of the Hill End and Gulgong townships in 1871-72 disputes these generalisations

Figure 9: Elizabeth Macarthur, 1790. Miniature, watercolour on ivory. National Library of Australia.79

Well-read and eager to learn, Elizabeth Macarthur would provide the magnetic centre of the “civilised society” for which Tench yearned and they visited each other every day, and he probably loaned her his books. Her social circle in the colony also included Lieutenant William Dawes, and she attempted to master astronomy at his Observatory built on the high point of the Rocks but the advanced mathematics were beyond her. Instead, under his direction, she undertook botanical studies and “put into practice that theory I had before gained by reading.”80

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The threesome were all busy, Tench, writing his journal (commissioned by Debretts, his publishers) and also working with Dawes who was compiling of a dictionary of the Eora language.81 All three enjoyed the musical George Worgan, tinkling away at his piano which he had brought out on a First Fleet ship. These men appear to have enjoyed each other as companions, and seem somewhat detached from the rifts and squabbles of their brother officers. When Worgan returned to England in 1791 on the Waaksamheyd, he left his piano with Elizabeth – the first piano in the colony.

Meanwhile, on distant Norfolk Island, Lieutenant Ralph Clark had written in his journal, “Captain Hunter and his Ships Companie are gone home in the Dutchman that came from Batavia.” Poor Clark was sadly watching and waiting for the wind which would bring a ship, and perhaps a letter from his wife: “I shall look out with longing Eyes for the Gorgon Untill She comes to take me a way to every thing that is dear to me

82 on earth.

3.3: – THE SHIPS ARRIVE The first of the Third Fleet ships to appear was the all-women transport, the Mary Ann in June with 142 female convicts and a limited amount of provisions. She had completed the voyage from England in four months and sixteen days – a quick passage – telescoping the sense of distance and strengthening the bonds of communication, comforting to those so far from home. Normal rations were restored and bellies were filled again, generating a feeling of general optimism. What is more, the Mary Ann brought the news she would be followed by further arrivals; a flotilla of nine transports carrying 1,868 male convict labourers was already afloat, and Collins reports on the “happy plans” for sending “two embarkations in every year, at which time provisions were also to be sent.”83

As a further two months would pass before the transports could be expected to arrive, Governor Phillip went up-river to Rose Hill to make all necessary preparations and accommodations to receive a large disembarkation of male convicts, and to survey and mark out the new land where, as government servants, they would work felling trees and digging up and burning the stumps. Collins reports:

The town which had been marked out at Rose Hill, and which now wore something of a regular appearance, on this occasion received

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its name. The governor called it Par-ra-matta, being the name by which the natives distinguished the part of the country on which 84.. the town stood.

At last, the promised ships began to arrive.85 Four ships sailed through the Heads in August, carrying male labourers who were distributed among the three settlements, and across the next two months, the full complement of nine transports would eventuate. Now, with a little over two thousand new mouths to feed, Captain John Hunter writes: “Governor Phillip therefore, took the Atlantic, [one of the transport ships] into the service as a naval transport,” and dispatched her to Calcutta to procure essential provisions for the expanded colony.86

Most of the newly arrived of the 1791 transports were immediately sent upriver to to join the convict work gangs, clearing land and opening up the ground around Toongabbie for the new Government farms. That such a large number of convicts required to be conducted from the port of Sydney to Parramatta and its farms, prompted the clearing of a bush track between the two settlements. This alternative to the waterway wound through the bush, across creeks and over hills, a fourteen-mile track from Sydney Cove to the new centre of Parramatta, where the first vice-regal country residence suitable for a Governor had been built in 1790.

It was a simple Georgian residence akin to a country parsonage with the addition of an Indian style veranda, that nonetheless spoke to the neo-classical and social imperatives of the time. Taste becomes important here in the context of this thesis, as taste in all things was an important precept of eighteenth-century aesthetic discrimination, which has been popularised through periodicals, early forms of advertising such as trade-cards, and the first custom built glass-fronted city and town shops. A trade-card for a man’s and taking his measure was published in the colony by a Jewish Taylor, I.G. Maelzer, who arrived via India in 1835 (two copies are known: National Gallery of Australia, and the collection of Peter McNeil).87

3.4: – THE LADY-WIVES

Philip Gidley King had returned on the Active to Sydney. Promoted now to Captain, he had married in England, and he and his bride, Anna Josepha, had taken up residence in

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the Governor’s house prior to his return back to Norfolk Island. There he would resume the mantle of Commander of the Island community and at the departure of Major Ross, he would assume the vacated role of Lieutenant-Governor of the colony.

In September, his Majesty's ship Gorgon commanded by Captain John Parker dropped anchor in the Cove, and accompanying him on board his ship was his nautically-minded wife, Mary-Ann Parker, who had determined to encircle the world. She supplies one of the few female perspectives of England’s ‘Botany Bay’ in Australia’s eighteenth century, writing an account of her anticipations and impressions in A Voyage round The World, in the Gorgon Man-of-War:

… owing to the loss of his majesty’s ship The Guardian, the governor and officers were reduced to such a scanty allowance, that, in addition to the fatigues and hardships which they had experienced when the colony was in its infant state, they were obliged, from a scarcity of provisions, to toil through the wearisome day with anxious and melancholy expectations of increasing difficulties.

What then could afford us more heartfelt pleasure than the near event of relieving them.? For it is surely happiness to succour 87 the distressed…

On their reception she writes, “I may safely say that the arrival of our ship diffused universal joy throughout the whole settlement...”88 and Collins proudly records that on the anniversary of his Majesty's accession to the throne:

A salute of twenty-one guns was fired by the Gorgon, and the public dinner given on the occasion at the government-house was served to upwards of fifty officers, (naval and military) a greater number than the colony had ever before seen assembled 89 together.

These vice-regal festivities included for the first time, an elite coterie, the ladies of the colony – Mary-Ann Parker from the Gorgon, Anna Josepha King, Elizabeth Macarthur and newly arrived Elizabeth Paterson, wife of Captain William Paterson of the NSW Corps. Sensibly Mary-Ann Parker would avoid the Byzantine politics fragmenting the colony and focus instead on the weather and the food. Having breakfasted at the Governor’s House with Anna Josepha, the lady-wives would then confer with

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Elizabeth Paterson and Elizabeth Macarthur,90 and with the other “ladies who reside at the colony,” the friends setting off together to enjoy themselves with what the little colony had to offer:

Our amusements here, although neither numerous or expensive, were to me perfectly novel and agreeable … I have often ate part of a Kingaroo, with as much glee as if I had been a partaker of some of the greatest delicacies of this metropolis.91

The early temporary huts for the convict work gangs were slowly being replaced by solid buildings, joining those of the few settlers, and she visited Parramatta and which John Macarthur had built and named for his wife Elizabeth. “After spending the day very agreeably at the Governor’s, we repaired to the lodging which had been provided for us,” and here Mary-Ann Parker found she “enjoyed the night’s repose” … “everything perfectly quiet, although surrounded by more than one thousand convicts.”92

It is important to note that the convicts were not ‘locked up’ unless they misbehaved, but were on open view and moving around. Their appearance would therefore have been on everyday display. And in turn they saw the officers and the gentry easily, too.92

During the days that followed the departure of Anna Josepha King and Elizabeth Paterson for Norfolk Island, Mary Ann enjoyed exploring:

In this cove there are some cool recesses, where with Captain Parker and the officers I have been many times revived after the intense heat of the day, taking with us what was necessary to quench our thirst. Here we have feasted upon Oisters just taken out of the sea … the attention of our sailors, and their care in opening and placing them round their hats, in lieu of plates.93

At last at the beginning of December the Gorgon was ready for sea.94 Sailing with her was Ralph Clark returning to all that he held near and dear, bringing to an end his gossipy record of life in the colony. Tracing the charts from Captain Hunter’s pioneering voyage in the Sirius in 1789, the Gorgon and Mary Ann Parker were returning to England via New Zealand, and braving the “beautiful and picturesque” ice-islands around the Horn, the Gorgon arrived safely in Table Bay on the Cape of Good Hope. Thus the British man-of-War had circled the world as Mary Ann Parker had promised.

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These women, the lady-wives of the colony, whose high profiles rose above those of lesser mortals, were the pioneer wives who followed their men into the harsh realities of colonial living. Proud descendants would tell their stories and save their letters, and it was their fashionable eighteenth century garments, selected in England and dispatched to the colony in trunks, which might have found their way into today’s museum collections.

Without clear provenance, and with missing records and uncertain cataloguing processes in nearly all early collections apart from the major institutional ones such as the Australian Museum, it becomes very challenging to advance claims about the large amounts of colonial clothing found in the Australian distributed collections. The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences Dress Register, an online portal established in the 1990s, was an attempt to address this issue, particularly for local and community museums. The project is not currently active.95

3.5: – THE OTHER PIONEERS

By 1791 some convicts already in the colony had completed their English sentences, or had been awarded conditional pardons for good behaviour or perhaps had received a ticket-of-leave in anticipation, and Governor Phillip’s ‘Albion’ was beginning to acquire a disposition unusual for a penal colony.

Most ships had brought out articles for sale and the common folk if working for themselves were able to purchase the goods that arrived on shore, and the departure of Major Ross and the Marine Corps had released an assortment of household items onto the market to be snatched up eagerly by the newly-free colonists, eager to display their new status.

However, between the two great Orders, a new ‘order’ was beginning to emerge and wedge its way between the elite administrators of the colony and the convicts and ex- convict settlers. Having done their time as common convicts, this dynamic group were the whose commercial enterprise and grasp of opportunity would eventually

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see them rise to prosperity, even wealth and social esteem.

This was unexpected, unanticipated and even unwelcome in England’s “Botany Bay.”

Figure 10: Founding of the settlement of Port Jackson at Botany Bay in NSW

Thomas Gosse, 1799.95

The English artist, Thomas Grosse, never came to the colony. Nevertheless, he painted “Botany Bay” from reading the same accounts which form our primary source documents.

The Blue coat of a naval officer identifies Governor Arthur Phillip (centre) with his epaulets and tricorne while the Red Coats of the military are distantly in the background on the left, drilling in the parade ground near the flagpole with its Union Jack. The Governor is accompanied by four -hatted gentlemen in the normal male dress of the elite, coat and breeches or . One is shooting a parrot, the other is perhaps prohibiting entry to the tent to a cowering negroid native. Bare-headed and in waistcoats are two working men, too well dressed for convicts, so perhaps they are now settlers, one turning over a turtle under direction, the other is attending to the bullocks, perhaps his own private business enterprise. In the centre, and easily over-looked, is a young woman convict.

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The girl with her ragged work apron and her drab clothing is wearing her government issue. However her bonnet and the trimming of her , which has the shiny appearance of high quality wool or silk, suggest a fashion imperative. This may be artistic licence, as it creates a stronger contrast with her labour. With a log of wood in her hands she is possibly setting the fire or perhaps she is whittling the log into wooden pegs for shingles, a female convict’s job in the colony

The latter half of 1791 had been the most promising year of the young colony’s history to that date, with the signal flags running up all the time, and the wharves around the Cove bustling with the loading and unloading of cargoes and convicts. For the first time, there was an emerging sense of certitude in the colony, and in December before boarding the Gorgon and departing from the colony, that visionary gentleman, Watkin Tench was moved to write:

In a colony which contains only a few hundred hovels built of twigs and mud, we feel consequential enough already to talk of a treasury, an admiralty, a public library and many other 96 similar edifices which are to form part of a magnificent square.

By the end of the year 1791, when the excitement generated by hoisted flags and arriving ships had abated and the recently arrived convicts were out-of- sight and out-of-mind on the government farms further up the harbour, the Judge-advocate David Collins, who had been four years in the colony, reports listlessly that Sydney Cove and its settlement had once again resumed “that dull uniformity of

97 uninteresting circumstances which had generally prevailed.”

3.6: – THE ARRIVAL OF THE “IRISH” The Third Fleet would change the texture of the colonial population forever. Later in the year, in September, 1791, the Queen, the first of the Irish ships arrived, carrying convicts directly from Ireland.

For generations, low-paid Irish labourers had crossed the Irish Sea in search of work alone or often with their families.”98 These Irish workers gradually assimilated, and there were the Irish from Liverpool, Irish from London, Irish from Bristol. Even though they were Irish-born, they were “technically 'English' convicts and tried in British courts, and were treated as such by the colonial authorities."99

However, the Queen, departing from Cork Cove, came directly from Ireland and in 1791, when 134 convict men and 22 women disembarked, all of them bore the “stigma of rebellion.” Portia Robinson explains:

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There was little, if any, recognition of the significance for colonial society, or of any possible dangers to the settlement, from the numbers of transported Irish-born men and women who were tried in English courts and transported from England.

That Irish convicts and 'English' convicts sailed to New South 100 Wales on different transports stressed the national differences.

That some did not even speak English furthered the divide. Most of the Irish were bilingual, but some from rural districts spoke only Gaelic, the old language. Like many migrants who were to follow, they were unable to speak English immediately on arrival. Isolated to some extent by their nationality, the Irish patronised different drinking houses, sang their own Gaelic songs and kept to their own cultural practices. But when they conversed together 'in their own tongue,' the Gaelic joined the Flash cant of professional thieves, and was interpreted as the plotting of mischief and rebellion, contributing to the paranoia of the elite,101 and in Botany Bay, “there was widespread fear of the Irish convicts.102”

Hell-bent on insurrection, republicanism and secession, the Irish bore the “stigma of rebellion and treason against King George combined with loyalty to the 'foreign' Church of Rome.”103 Schismatically riven through generations over complex secular political issues (which embraced both sides), it was simplified neatly in the colony into an historical religious divide into Papist and Protestant.

England’s ‘Irish Problem’ had been transported to the new colony. Collins records an occasion of a “tumultuous assembly” of convicts, and he blames “the spirit of resistance and villany lately imported by the new comers from England and

Ireland.”104 As Portia Robinson dryly observes:

Riotous and rebellious behaviour was certainly expected from the Irish women transported on 'Irish' ships as much as from their men.105

From this time on:

every transport which came to the colony directly from Ireland carried men and women identifiable as 'Irish', and who could therefore be expected to cause civil disobedience and dissension in the colony.106

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While the Irish women from the Queen might generally be expected to have found employment across all the customary urban and rural occupations, and like the transported women on the English ships across three fleets, over half gave their occupation as domestic service in the indents. Statistically, the second most consistent employer of women was in the cloth, clothing and dress trades and inevitably, there were those whose “calling” drew them into mantua making.

Historian and curator, John Styles, found conclusive evidence in a rare 1787 census which listed female occupations, for there are seamstresses and a surprising number of mantua makers, enough to suggest that even in the remote northern provinces of England, mantua makers were able to produce fashionable bespoke outer clothing for working class women.107 Styles has them “self identifying for the census as one or the other,” suggesting as

women of both occupational titles produced women’s clothing, perhaps for census, they indicated and distinguished the conceptual 108 . and manual skill level they knew to be required. (my emphasis)

Styles’ argument in his important revisionist work is that the conventional fashion history’s view from ‘above’ that is of aristocratic dress and some merchant dress looking from a distance at the dress of artisans, the respectable laboring poor as well as the destitute, completely distorts a reading of the dress landscape of eighteenth- century Britain. He argues very persuasively that both women and men of modest means enjoyed very much engaging with fashion and also knew what it looked like. They often made small but fashionable gestures in their dress; ribbons and hats for women; pocket watches and handkerchives or bandanas, many of imported patterned cottons, for the men. They wore cheaper mixes of woolens and linen (fustian) but their colour palette was also not drab as they had access to the cheap and mass-produced cottons newly imported from India (men never wore shirts, preferring linen, but women wore many garments made of cotton, which was fairly colourfast when printed in India and also washable). How much cotton reached the early years of the Australian colonies? Some must have come aboard en route as Beverly Lemire has argued that sailors were notorious for enjoying buying trifles of clothing and accessories during their travels.

Eighteenth century Dublin was a self-aware, sophisticated city with all the services and facilities necessary to create the ambience for a fashionable life: pleasure gardens,

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assembly halls, theatres. While a disaffected and rebellious poor rural peasantry scratched out a meagre living well away from the east coast, the Dublin Directories for the period advertised linen, woollen and silk drapers, milliners and haberdashers, lace- women and fan-makers, hatters and hosiers, stay-makers, clothiers and tailors.109 All catered to the fashionable, and women in Dublin and the larger provincial towns near the eastern coast of Ireland were able to dress in a similar fashion to their English counterparts.

So it would be wrong to suggest that the Irish convicts were so uncouth as to not have been exposed to fashion.109

3.7: – WOMEN’S SKILLED WORK AND MAKING

American costume historian Marla Miller observes that “comparatively little is known about women’s skilled work in the making of eighteenth-century clothing.“110 In folklore, spinning and seamstressing generally figured as attributes of pious womanhood rather than occupations, and she demarcates between the domain of the domestic seamstress competent to make petticoats, shifts and the simple garments, and the more complex skills required by the trained mantua maker, who had “mastered special skills related to the construction of fashionable women's garments.”111 Mantua making for women was a challenging craft, and at its heart, lay the mastery of the pattern.

In France men had been mantua makers until challenged by female guilds who tended to do the trimmings and soft work in the mid to late eighteenth century. Men also made the stays or as well as riding dress for women as it was akin to men’s suiting.

One of Miller’s key insights is defining “the science of the shears” as “the complex physical and mental operations of cutting fabric,“ and she determines only mantua makers could measure and manufacture a pattern to fit, and could lay out and cut with confidence into costly cloth to show the fabric’s design to its best advantage.112

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Figure 11: Cutting out a gown.

As with the one-piece square draft, the fabric is doubled with the fold on the right. The front pattern is laid along the fold, thus when it is opened out, the print of the fabric design is centred. The skirt will be sewn together along the long vertical lines (see the pocket slits) and gathered to fit. The sleeves and pieces are cut double and attached to the skirt with gathers and pleatings. The unboned one-piece dress is worn over conical stays, the fit of the stay-maker.

The practices suitable for the production of male clothing did not translate easily into clothing for women and Miller quotes Winifred Aldrich, lecturer in clothing technology and professional patternmaker who elaborates on the evolution of these complexities during the eighteenth century:

The mathematical drafting methods employed by bespoke tailors, and their trained mantua makers, used direct measurement and divisional systems, and required an 113 enhanced mathematical knowledge and calculating ability.

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Ultimately, tailors’ arcane systems foundered on the lumps and bumps of a woman’s body, and much of the tailor-trained outfitter’s patternmaking skill was taken up with time-consuming manual fittings. By the eighteenth century, mantua makers – possibly informed by the simple square-draft of domestic garments – had devised a far less complex system. They took fewer measurements and, working with a ribbon conveniently marked, devised the first measuring-tapes. These were not used by tailors who continued with their traditional methods of proportional fractions and individually marked strips of paper until well into the nineteenth century.114 The simplified method of the mantua makers allowed for a more intuitive and less rigid approach, requiring only a heightened ability to envisage in three-dimensions the appearance of the garment on the body.

The patterns for men’s suiting continued to be based on a combination of mathematical measurements as well as intuition well into the nineteenth century in the famous Wampen system, for example. The development of the sewing machine in the 1860s further made it easier to craft volumes of cloth into women’s clothes, leading to further gender distinctions between men’s and women’s clothing that the French couture still calls the tailoring and the flou.115

These practical matters of manufacturing and also home sewing have major implications for gendered distinctions that developed around the making and meanings of men’s and women’s dress. Men did not want to wear a home-made suit as people could tell it was not made by a professional tailor.116

Possibly arriving on the women’s transports were women who had been working for themselves, mantua makers who had their own clients. Others capable of constructing the whole garment were perhaps still journey-women, working during the Season in one of the larger or smaller establishments, looking to gain experience.

Most women knew how to make clothing and accessories for themselves, their children and their husbands, for whom they often made waistcoats at the time of marriage. Children continued to be dressed by their mothers well into the 1960s. The relationship of gender, class and age to dress practices is therefore an important topic of investigation that I subject here to an early colonial analysis.

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Beverly Lemire reports that clothing production became increasingly important throughout the eighteenth century “as a source for growing commercial wealth.”117 Ready-made gowns saw “the translation of fashion into a common vernacular.”118 and “the lure of fashionability infected British society,” accelerated change, stimulating consumer demand as “modes for the middle ranks and even more humble labouring classes became eminently possible.”119

It is not the case then, that mass production of clothing only began in the nineteenth century; this is a myth that must be put to rest. Novelty, variety and stylishness determined success, close control over the design process was desirable, and large on- site workshops employing mantua makers and needle-workers lay behind the open- to-the-public clothing ‘warehouses’ for ready-made gowns (warehouses were simply large stores and the expression continued well into 1870s and 1880s colonial Australia).

But not all eighteenth-century mantua makers were created equal. With the refinement of the production process, this eventually might require only the cheaper skills of the seamstress, sewing up gowns cut ready for the needle, but others may have undertaken training in one singular aspect such as embroidering waistcoats (often purchased or gifted at marriage) or the warm, quilted petticoats which were then fashionable in Britain. Some received ‘on the job’ training as mantua makers and trimmers specifically for the ready-mades market, although the wage may have been only a little better than slop-work.

Lemire cites the combined stimuli of the flourishing textile trades, the exciting imports of designs from the East and the specialists with the morning gown and petticoat warehouses “[who] constantly augmented the variety of products in conjunction with shifts in fashion and demand.”120

Although working under observation with the dainty textiles and innovative patterns, even fashionable ready-mades had a higher status than slop-work. However, as Marla Miller points out, the enterprising collectivity of a high-end mantua maker’s workroom was the ultimate aspiration:

gown making could provide relief from days of isolation, a sense of productivity, a source of self-esteem, and an outlet for creative sensibilities.121

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1785 in Arles, France:

The working women are in their customary fashionable dress worn with the traditional headwear of the region. They are likely working printed cottons as there was a large regional production here partly generated by an expatriate Armenian community. Their gowns are cut from a pattern similar to the mantua illustrated above. Eight gowns hang on pegs on the wall; there is a well-lit table for the seamstresses and a young apprentice is learning her stitches. Thread spools and fabric off-cuts are on the floor, and the whole presents a picture of enthusiastic mutual endeavor. The successful Mistress is in command, directing her workforce.

Meanwhile in England, the ‘Season’ attracting sewing women who hazarded the journey to London, some travelling on foot from Dublin, Edinburgh, Leeds, ambitious needlewomen joining Robinson’s “comers and goers” on the highways of Britain. The women arriving in the Third Fleet transports may have included provincial mantua makers and journey-women who had gone to London to further their experience, to update their skills, or to inform themselves of the newest trims and the latest whims in women’s accessories.

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If encountering bad luck, there was little choice between thieving, prostitution or starvation. The profession of milliner which required little to no capital and therefore was suitable for poor girls, continued well into the mid-nineteenth century to make an explicit connection between a fashion industry and part-time prostitution. It is the reason it was painted so much by artists such as Degas.

3.8: – VERBATIMS The oral histories from the Old Bailey give direct word-of-mouth insight into the eighteenth century world that the English of the lower orders left behind, and would replicate by default in the colony.122 From them emerges a picture of London – the centre of the British fashion world – not from the perspective of those who lived the “fashionable life” but from independent young women frequently travelling in pairs, drawn to the fashion centre to earn their living by the needle, and provide the skilled hands that manned the workrooms.

In the eighteenth century world of London, it appears that mantua makers were everywhere. Their very ubiquity gave credence to those suspicious characters found wandering illicitly on others’ premises, on the pretext of looking for a Miss X or a Mrs. Y, “the mantua maker.”123 These transcripts have particular relevance for fashion researchers; details of the cases depict a world of women hurrying on the way to their mantua makers, on their way back from the mantua maker’s, indicating an extensive use of mantua makers by the lower classes of London as gowns were taken to be mended, turned, altered, fitted or remade.124 Stolen clothing was tracked down or recovered from pawnbrokers, and stolen garments were consistently identified by dressmakers themselves: “I am a mantua maker and I know my work.“125

Their evidence was accepted in court, a sure sign of their credibility as respected working women.

What surprises is the appearance of mantua makers so frequently within the court system, not as prisoners, but as prosecutors and witnesses. Mantua makers engaged with their clients in all matters of dress, and they are asked for advice, or were taken along to the draper’s or milliner’s to assist in choosing fabrics, ribbons, colours, advising on the amount of material required, suggesting linings. Their professional expertise was sought for yardage, choice of trim, etc.126

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There is evidence of journey-women and apprentices living on the premises of mantua makers,127 yet some clearly lived away, taking their work back to their own lodgings to stitch.128

There are accounts of mantua makers and apprentices – some little girls – delivering orders, or hurrying home late at night with bundles of work, only to be mugged of goods that were not their own, snatched from under their arms or taken from them by force.129 The hazard of the loss of the bundle’s contents was not only would they be charged for the loss by the client, but they might also be accused of collaboration in the theft.130 The capacious gowns were stolen from where they were kept – in baskets and boxes, in trunks and ‘hanging on a line behind the door’. Carried in the streets, these bulky items were wrapped in an apron, a , an old sheet.

We can also see the kindness exhibited to those strangers in need who were given a bed, the kindness of the poor giving coins to those begging on the streets, of help given to track down belongings, to chase after a thief and hold him until the Watch arrived. And some thankless recipients appeared in court after making off with the host’s wardrobe, or the furniture and linen, or were found to have stolen the silver spoons.

Mantua makers needed to dress well; gowns and stylish accessories might be lent out of kindness to a stranger to help her “improve her position” or to assist in her “hustling” to get a place,131 and could be reported as ‘stolen.’.

Like most workers in the eighteenth-century ‘appearance industries’ – Daniel Roche’s term – a good appearance was a type of walking advertisement.

This defence was thought credible enough for the case to be dropped, as there had been a mere misunderstanding. Yet mantua makers also appeared in court to give suspect character references to clearly guilty people, usually of their own sex, and frequently of their own calling, indicating some level of complicity on the borderline between the illicit and the legitimate.

Young women, frequently far from home and family, lived together. Socialising in pairs (for protection, or for fun) was the norm and “going out into company” was an accepted part of the pattern of male-female interaction. Not for them the assemblies of the upper classes where young persons of the opposite sex might meet under the watchful eyes of the chaperones, but socialising together, or dressing up to visit to one of the pleasure

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gardens where the well-dressed of all classes mingled, and meeting someone who might buy them a drink, a meal or even a trinket for the pleasure of their company.

This reflected the economic inequality of women -- there was little enough left once food was bought and rent was paid. Two young single women were in court for having stolen goods in their possession:

We are both of the same trade, mantua-makers and stay-makers, what we cannot get by that we go into company. ...

I was at the Apollo Gardens one Sunday evening, and got acquainted with him there...... We did not give him any thing; he 132 gave them to us as unfortunate women.

It is possible too, to see the hierarchy of the trades. A captured shop-lifter “taken up” in the street was reluctant to be searched in the nearest drinking house because it was the haunt of “basket people,” those unfortunates who hawked perishables such as flowers, oranges, or matches on the streets; she preferred to upgrade to another public house more in keeping with her own sense of station.133

From the transcripts it is also possible to plot the decline in living standards through sickness and age, those living in outhouses and sleeping on filthy straw or in crowded garret rooms, sharing living space and beds with strangers who would steal from people as poor and as desperate as themselves. The underbelly of this deep and generational poverty did not truly surface in the English consciousness until the journalistic exposés of the Rev. Henry Mayhew in the Morning Chronicle in 1849–50.

Mantua makers also put together the simple garments sold by milliners – as skilled artisans, they were under-employed but work was work.134 Others flitted between positions and also occupations, parlaying their well-dressed mannerly appearance and knowledge of the ways of the upper-classes into positions as parlour maids and housekeepers.135

Nevertheless, mantua making was recognised as one of the few female employments whereby a young woman might aspire to financial independence and enter into a "settled way of living." Although in England, female mantua makers had been permitted by the Tailors’ Guilds since the end of the seventeenth century, a hundred years later, the strict rigour of the early entry and seven-year apprenticeship no longer held, and by the end of the eighteenth century, there is evidence of a young woman in

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her early twenties entering into an apprenticeship to learn “millinery and mantua making,” initially for three years but revised down to one year only for a premium of

30 pounds.136

Frequently the eldest in a family of girls might enter into apprenticeship under a mantua maker or a milliner, with the idea that upon her ‘graduation’ she train up her younger siblings to the trade. The Directory of London, 1794,137 and the Wilson’s Dublin Directory, 1801138 are evidence of a number of established businesses which were managed by related women. Although mantua makers are infrequently listed, there are lone tailoresses and stay-makers. Milliners were frequent, and there are husband- and-wife teams of milliner and haberdasher.139 McNeil has argued in Pretty Gentleman (Yale, 2018) that men who worked in these fashion industries were frequently mocked as effeminate.

In her study on women workers in the emergent ready-to-wear industry, Beverly Lemire, found that in the eighteenth century when trade cards and advertisments were beginning to appear in British papers, there are notices for mantua makers and journey- women who clearly would be set to work in a trade warehouse stitching up the ready- made mantuas, or in quilting workshops making fashionable petticoats for a retail emporium.140 In England, patronising a mantua maker was normal practice for working class women at the end of the eighteenth century when they could afford it. With the availability of exciting new cotton textiles, such competence was found necessary, and by the late eighteenth century, no doubt it was appreciated even by the distant women at Botany Bay itself. Time would weed out the competent mantua makers in the colony – those who owned the “science of the shears,” and those ‘mantua makers’ who had merely stitched together or trimmed the ready-cut ready-mades.

While the official histories speak mainly of men, history accumulates as networks of men and their concerns, their lives webbed together through business tradings, drinking houses, the gaming and the gambling. Women were seen to be necessary in supporting this, and indeed to work beside a husband in his occupation, farmer, blacksmith, leather tanner, etc – the English and Irish city Directories show some amazing combinations.

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Tench in his review of the colony before his departure on the Gorgon notes that while articles to clothe the convicts had previously been sent out ready-made, he commends the “judicious plan” to send out bales of cloth instead as a method of reducing cost, applauding this practical innovation as “an employment of a suitable nature created for those who would otherwise consume leisure in idle pursuits only.”141 (my emphasis)

This was on top of her ‘natural’ wifely duties to cook the food, to wash and mend the clothing, to keep the hut, as well as the “nation-building” business of birthing and caring for the children, creating the generations that are the links in the continuity that is history.

3.9: – THE MANTUA MAKER

In The Last Mantuamaker, Marla Miller explores the decline of the occupational term “mantua maker” and its replacement by the more modern “dressmaker.”142 She draws largely on a database of some 640 American working women who identified themselves as mantua makers and dress-makers in the Boston City Directory in 1789, the first year the directory appeared. It would be some time before a Sydney ‘Directory’ would manifest – James Maclehose published his "Picture of Sydney and Strangers Guide in NSW" in 1838.

Demographically in 1789, Boston in New England was a large fashionable metropolis with a population of 18,038143 and Miller, an American, is able to call on a diversity of sources including portraits, diaries, letters, advertisements and account books as well as a number of gowns in public and private collections. Yet, overlapping in time-frame, these two communities of Boston and Botany Bay converge in idiosyncratic ways.

Subtitling her thesis Craft Tradition and Commercial Change in Boston, 1760-1840, Miller finds that gownmaking women believed advertising to be of dubious value, and therefore, she asserts, they were “less likely than other kinds of artisans to leave the sorts of traces in the documentary record on which historians rely.”144 She reckons “a change of address regularly prompted them to place newspaper notices, and this might be the only time they were sufficiently motivated to do so.”145 Not until 1803 and the launch of the colony’s first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette and Commercial

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Advertiser, would the first notice appear advertising the services of a mantua maker/milliner. A mantua maker was only as good as her reputation, and word-of- mouth played the paramount role in gaining new clients.146

However, 1803 is a striking early date for an advertisement for someone creating fashion in such a harsh environment in which survival was far from certain.

Then Miller turns to specific English practices. In London’s The Book of English Trades, she notes that as early as 1804, while the text refers to the craftswoman as a mantuamaker attending to her client, the illustration nevertheless is captioned “The Ladies Dress Maker:”147

Figure 13: The Ladies Dress Make

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Under this head we shall include not only the business of being a mantua maker, but also of a Milliner ; for, although in London these two parts of in fact the same trade, are frequently separate, they are not always so, and in the country they are commonly united.

In the Milliner, taste and fancy are required ; with a quickness in discerning, imitating and improving the various fashions, which are perpetually changing among the higher circles.148

The Dressmaker must be an expert anatomist … she must know how to hide all defects in the proportions of the body, and must be able to mold the shape by the stays, that, while she corrects the body, she may not interfere with the pleasures of the palate.149

The Dressmaker,

The Book of English Trades (1804)

To complete the dress, the eighteenth-century mantua maker has the hat trimmed and ready on a stand. In devising the bonnets and headwear to complete the tout ensemble of the “dress,” she was embracing the modern age and re-styling herself a dress-maker. As always, the private client remained central for bespoke clothing.

The tyranny of the mid-to late nineteenth century couturier who directed women who they might appear had not yet developed.

Here the client gazes into the mirror, envisioning her idea of the completed garment, seeing not what is – herself in her underwear – but what will be. The stylish mantua maker is draping the cloth about her person, probably maintaining a professional patter of how elegant the gown will look, how well it will suit ‘m’lady’, what others will think, etc. And by the alchemy of the looking glass, that back-to-front gaze remains part of the modern female psyche. 150

Marla Miller examines “how the work of skilled female artisans was rooted in larger communities of working women,”151 finding that New England’s Bostonian gownmakers of 1789 availed themselves of their close physical proximity to like-minded suppliers in local ‘patterns of association,’ and she explores the occupational ‘clustering’ of those attracted by “commerce’s magnetic pull,”152 alluding to the purveyors of the latest trimmings and embellishments, the capes and caps of retailing milliners who “congregated together to draw customers to their wares.”153

For Grace Karskens, the colonial perspective adds a new dimension by contrast, thus contributing to the cultural identity of the inhabitants of Old England’s newest colony. As

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the adroit chronicler of Botany Bay’s archaeological history, she too has looked for local “patterns of association.”154 Analysing Sydney’s District Constables Notebooks, she distills evidence of domestic, social and occupational “clustering” as far back as the wattle-and-daub huts of the 1790s: “Friends and shipmates, and people who arrived at similar times and from similar places and backgrounds tended to group as neighbours,”155 and significantly, “a trade or business or employment sometimes led him to reside alongside others in the same line.”156

Enduring friendships must have been formed this way among working women of the transports, first from the gaols, and perhaps – for those transported for the same crime – even earlier. As Karskens has it, these groupings were fundamental to everyday life in the community,157 and tellingly, for all Antipodeans, “Commonality stemmed also from the sheer precariousness of life.”158

Karskens makes the strong claim that the convicts were actively interested in the world of things: that the crude, wooden dishes given to them insulted people used to the new eighteenth-century ceramics, and that they had a keen interest in and understanding of clothes, which I here call ‘fashions’

For women still under bond, misfortune possibly turned to luck; the narrow constraints of ship-board life may have offered the chance to learn to read or write their names. Bored seamstresses, idle milliners or ambitious needlewomen may have worked alongside a skilled mantua maker during the long months aboard ship, and may very well have ‘graduated’ into the colony with a competency in this specialised creative ‘calling’ which may have been denied to them previously by other circumstances.

While the philosophical Watkin Tench and his kindred spirits may have dreamed of the treasuries and libraries, grand houses and cathedrals etc., in the colony’s future,159 some women too manifested a combination of interests, ideals, and desire to open up new horizons.

And in the ‘mateship’ of like-minded women, perhaps mantua makers and those working women from the allied world of ‘appearances’ aided and abetted each other like Miller’s enabled Boston mantua makers, “who cultivated new skills, who embraced new opportunities, and encountered new challenges in a rapidly changing economy and

160 society.”

And as the eighteenth century drew to its close and a new century began, mantua makers

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would begin to elide into dress-makers, and Marla Miller, reflecting on their disappearing world of frills and feathers, posits the intriguing question which becomes central to my thesis investigation:

“… how such a thriving world of enterprise became so thoroughly lost to historical vision.”161

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CHAPTER 4: THE MANTUA MAKERS ‘… this ghastly waste of a creation’

‘The words of the novelist L.P. Hartley should be engraved

above the study doors of historians of early Australia:

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there'.’ George Parsons, (1988)1

Section 4

4.1: – INTRODUCTION

The new year of 1792 had begun as badly as had the previous years, on reduced rations, and the novelty of a Christmas celebrated in simmering heat and dining on kangaroo or ‘dog-pye’ had long worn off for all but the newest arrivals. The virgin bush around the Cove, now stripped for firewood and building materials, kept at bay the summer wild fires which raged all around the horizon, but not the baking sun, the mind-numbing shrill of cicadas, or the sheer day after day tedium of the little settlement.

Figure 14: ‘If a ship appeared here, we knew she must be bound to us, for on the shores of this vast ocean (the largest in the world) we were the only community which possessed the art of navigation.’

Watkin Tench, 1791.

Worse, the drought continued. It was anticipated that this year’s harvest would be even poorer than the last, and another famine year like 1789 seemed imminent. As always, anxious eyes looked seaward – always beyond – raking the horizon for the supply ships. Dispatched from England in the northern spring, and carrying food, shipping tackle, clothing, news, above all news, they were already on the treacherous seas and ... God willing ... would arrive some time in the mid-year.

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The ships of the year 1791 had brought disturbing accounts of the tensions stirring among England’s European neighbours, and rumour had it that the motherland herself was preparing for war. Even now the great sliding tectonic plates of political Europe might be shuddering the southern hemisphere into new and unpredictable configurations – the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, all plied these southern waters, and in the past decade, England had been at war with all of them. The Judge Advocate, David Collins ponders:

When it was considered that our supplies would always be affected by commotions at home, and that if a war should take place between England and any other nation ... they might be 2 retarded, or taken by the enemy ...

Histories are written from the assurance and security of hindsight but in 1792, these were very real anxieties to the vulnerable community at the farthest reach of the communication flow, and the threat of starvation seemed imminent, a sudden invasion was possible, and the dread of some foul epidemic stirred up old memories of the smallpox scare of ’89 that decimated the small native population co-existing around the Cove. Miraculously, Providence had spared every one of the Europeans ... this time.

Engaging with the antipodean world of these displaced Europeans, this thesis draws on the collection of eye witness accounts of the first few years of the settlement under Governor Arthur Phillip’s administration, 1788 to 1793. As its title suggests, this study focuses exclusively on the dress of women, so distinct in a design sense from the garments worn by men during the same period that they simply cannot be fully explored in the same short text. A reliance on primary sources and, in particular, the narrative of David Collins will enable us to trace the complex intertwinings of historical fact with the serial changes in female dress during this period.

For the researcher working from primary sources, the publication in 1803 of the colony’s first newspaper would mark the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of a sparkling new epoch, for between the pages of The Sydney Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, is the first authentic provenanced ‘presence’ of a mantua maker, a classic beginning for a fashion history.

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Figure 15: Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. “We open no channel to Political Discussion, or Personal Animadversion: Information is our only purpose” 3

By 1792, there were 589 women who arrived in the colony and an occupational analysis of the indents for the three fleets has indicated that an unknown number of obliging mantua makers both urban and rural were residing somewhere in the community, as were others of like occupations – old clothes women, lacemakers, silk throwsters, etc.

Poorly represented in the official documentary records for this period, women are barely hinted at in the primary sources although they mentioned occasionally in the lesser texts (and then as ‘vile Baggages’). Men through sheer numbers predominated in the penal colony and by default have monopolised its written histories. In the quest for an Australian clothing history, only a hyper-alert gleaning between-the-lines for these earliest years discloses the hidden women of history if not their dress.

The First Fleet included people from approximately eighty trades including milliners, shoemakers, silk weavers, a needle-worker, a lace maker, a stocking weaver, a shoe binder, three tailors, a silk dyer and a silk winder, weavers, a dressmaker, a woolen draper, a glovemaker, a button stamper, a leather breeches maker, a pinheader, an artificial flower maker, a tambour worker, a furrier and a staymaker.

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Cheryl Timbury contends in her online post (First Fleet Fellowship Victoria Inc) that ‘many trades were so specialised they were unable to be practiced here’. This view has been dominant as Governor Philip complained of the lack of ‘artificers’ and ‘mechanics’ useful to the establishment of the colony. Yet aspects of their skills might have been very useful and is also suggestive that they were very aware of fashion. Here were many of the representative trades involved in the eighteenth-century ‘appearance industries’, to use Daniel Roche’s term.

The nation’s fashion history is just over two hundred years old, and the first quarter – the distant convict era in New South Wales – is almost forgotten in the mid-nineteenth century’s insistent push to rake over the nation’s convict beginnings. Still raw in living memory, these years would be absorbed into the later accounts and play a part in the stand-alone histories of other later colonies.4 3

An Australian fashion history cannot begin without its Age of Reason, so we must begin again at the beginning in the penal colony when the Sydney Gazette was still 15 years in the future, in the semi-archaeological years of the Enlightenment when Australia was still New Holland, and Sydney was still England’s “Botany Bay.”

Section 5 4.1: – MUTE AS TOADS The dearth of actual garments for this important early period must present as the ultimate challenge – most textile evidence for this early period disintegrated long ago, leaving nothing but rusted pins, broken trinkets and the odd button to be unearthed by the wondering archaeologists of the future. Sadly, today these haunting artefacts “sit there mutely, like toads", to quote archaeologist Jane Lydon: “Artifacts by themselves do not produce questions, discourse or answers.”5

In 2008, the Centre for Historical Research at National Museum of Australia (NMA), ran a Collections Symposium: “Viewpoints on Material Culture,” chaired Dr Peter Stanley who cited the Centre’s “strong interest in material culture.” This collaborative transdisciplinary event focused on objects and artefacts as primary sources, examining the diverse approaches to material culture to emerge from the orientation and understandings of the contributing speakers – an archaeologist, a curator, an anthropologist, and an historian.6

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Mike Smith the Archaeologist, observing that “rarely if ever are objects allowed to shape the historical narrative,” explored the possibilities of an archaeological approach in the discovery of “fresh history.” He went on to examine the potential of object-based research: “Moving beyond the physical analysis of objects we can also look at the social worlds in which objects circulate.”7

The Curator, Guy Hansen, of the NMA, examining the residual material heritage from the Botany Bay years, and marking “the harsh nature of clothing the convict,” observed that:

Objects such as a cat-o’-nine-tails, manacles, leg irons and man traps, all of which commonly feature in convict history exhibitions, carry such symbolic weight that it is difficult to give a more nuanced account of convict life. You cannot help but suspect that the visual impact of 8 these objects reinforces the more bloodthirsty narratives of convicts. The anthropologist Fred Myers, an American, argued that the material reminders of forgotten histories “when they move from the hands of a maker to a museum, they do not give up all the traces of their previous life.” As Professor and Chair of Anthropology at New York University, he regularly spent productive field time in outback Australia as he has a particular orientation towards the art of the Aboriginal people. He reminded the participants that “anthropology was born in museums in the nineteenth century which were object-centred,” and proclaimed: “It is a very compelling and interesting story about the way in which material culture, and attention to other people’s objects, enables us to enter into the life world of the people themselves.”9 And he lauds the latter day role of the museum in “making the histories of native people visible as part of their own history.”

The Historian, Margaret Anderson, hotly defending herself as a “closet old- school historian who prefers documents to things” asked “what kind of social memory and what kind of history do we have if we only have what survives materially?” She finds difficulty with a methodological focus that is dependent on material culture alone when so little evidence from early periods can survive the passage of time. “Historians have traditionally preferred written texts to material culture as historical evidence,” she records. However, “on reflection, perhaps it is because I am an historian, that I will always consider the ideas surrounding things as important as the things themselves.10

For this document of discovery, the particular idea ‘surrounding things’ is fashion itself.

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4.2: – LET THERE BE LIGHT

White Australia was born out of the Enlightenment, and its principles have left a deep imprint on the national DNA. Peter McNeil has argued that fashion change in this period is “a direct result of the ideological revolution brought about by the Enlightenment.”11 McNeil advises above all, “one must first be informed about fashion,” in order to be in fashion. ‘Eavesdropping’ on museum audiences in order to write a review, he remarks on the alarming power of the costume exhibit to detonate modern subjectivities, and the common tendency to “personalize and internalize ... even if the garments were made hundreds of years ago. “Students today can sometimes fail to bridge the connection to the ‘foreign country’ of the past, and thus can “struggle to reconcile form with meaning.”12

In interview, Valerie Steele, Museum Director at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), suggests that audience confusion lies in part within the terminology employed. She contends that “in the past, people wore fashion – not fancy-dress costumes.”13 (my italics) and proposes that the term ‘costume’ be held specific to theatre or film and to exhibitions of traditional folk dress.

There is an implicit compact between clothing and its place in time, and the immediacy of fashion endows clothing with a continuing relevance to its place in history. So in crossing the threshold into the eighteenth century, the ‘different country’ of this nation’s settling, we are passing into its living fashion which like history itself, ratchets forward inexorably towards its own uncertain outcome. And so, for lay people and fashion scholars alike, this document aims to give back to the people of the past their own fragile present.

4.3: – TERMINOLOGY

Within the context of an historical study which draws on primary sources and other documents from the eighteenth century, it is essential to define how words have been used in the past, and how they should be understood in this present document. Clothing is used throughout this study in its generic, utilitarian sense, defining the basic array of gendered garments distributed to convict and free alike. The simple style customarily worn by

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generations of the peasant class throughout Europe, they were also the garments traditionally worn by the common folk in Britain. Apparel and garments are also useful generics used in this sense.

But fashion is a portmanteau term which it is essential to define and redefine constantly. Today, the word has become synonymous with a whole industry and incorporates everything from mass-produced pyjamas to the haughtiest of haute couture. Or indeed anything worn on the body. All too often on the self- iterating pages of the internet, a convict shirt or a few ball-and- chains will suffice as a ‘fashion’ history.

Needing to define fashion as it was understood in its eighteenth century sense, we can turn to no greater authority than Dr. Samuel Johnson, erudite man of letters and compiler in 1755 of that great sorting and classifying enterprise of the English Enlightenment, the Dictionary of the English Language, which formalised and defined the King’s English. Sourced from its sixth edition of 1785, it was the way that both the convicts and their keepers used words in 1788.14 British convicts were drawn from a polyglot of unique languages and local dialects but generally, English was the language they spoke and thought in; it was the etymological framework that patterned their thinking and structured their world view.

To Dr. Johnson, fashion is arrived at as a general consensus and is “approved by custom.” Referring generally to “anything with regard to appearance,” the word applies particularly to the “make or cut of cloaths.” And the word extends as “fashionable,” to describe the stylish wigs, the shoes, the fans, the quizzing glasses, etc. that were adopted by those “observant of the mode.”15 But the eighteenth century term fashionist, for ”a follower of the mode“ is rendered rather pejoratively by Johnson as “a coxcomb,” the vaguely curmudgeonly term seemingly reserved for suspect young men and the upstart parvenu.16 The word fashionist itself has long fallen out of use, but this useful antique expression is retained in this document, which addresses fashion as much as clothing, and will need to differentiate between them.

In the 1990s, art historian and dress scholar, Margaret Maynard embarked on a thorough analysis of all the available primary source material and exploring them in a series of journal articles on clothing and fashionable dress in Sydney Town during the early convict period, she finds:

Practically no clothing or textiles have survived from this early date. Historical records, newspaper advertisements, one or two portraits, and a few stray remarks in letters, are all that remain for the 17 researcher.

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Nevertheless, Maynard pursues and reviews the material evidences held in the nation’s dress collections and she notes that textiles seem to have lost whatever status they once had. In modern museums, historical costumes are rarely on permanent display but remain hidden away in storehouses and backrooms, and as a result “the public has practically no idea of what garments are held in their state collections.”18

We are not entering the world of stable archives and provenanced costume; lacking both textual sources and material evidence, we emerge into the world of the past and its living fashion.

Section 6 4.4: – NORFOLK ISLAND

A history of fashion in the new colony could have begun simply enough with 1788 and the immediate settling of Norfolk Island. The island itself – just “a small speck in the vast ocean,”19 writes Collins in his journal – was remote even from the main settlement, but here in 1768 both the brilliant cartographer and navigator, Captain James Cook of the Endeavor and his paying guest, the gentleman-botanist Joseph Banks had observed flax growing “more luxuriant here than at New Zealand,” and recognised it as that plant from which the natives of New Zealand

“with very little preparation, they make all their common apparel.”20

Held in the Historical Records of Australia (HRA) His Majesty’s “Instructions” to Arthur Phillip had been quite explicit: “We are desirous to diminish as much as possible the Expences which the intended Establishment occasions,”21 and he specifically alludes to the flax of Norfolk Island:

It has been humbly represented unto us that advantages may be derived from the Flax Plant ... as a means of acquiring Clothing for the Convicts and other persons who may become settlers but from its superior excellence for a variety of maritime purposes and as it may 22 ultimately may become an Article of Export.

The one rare eye-witness account written by a woman is written by an unknown convict woman of the First Fleet, possibly from the Lady Penrhyn who compares the breaking up of female friendships made on the long journey:

The separation of several of us to an uninhabited island was like a second transportation ... We are comforted with the hopes of a supply

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of tea from China, and flattered with getting riches when the settlement is complete, and the hemp which the place produces is 23 brought to perfection.

The frontier enterprise on Norfolk Island had begun with hope and promise. Although surrounded with precipitous cliffs and dangerous reefs, Norfolk Island was well watered and fertile, while Sydney was still battling with dried-out wells, gritty sand and unfamiliar shale. All attention was absorbed in setting up tents and building a storehouse for the provisions, clearing the ground for seed planting, building the fences, activities concurrently taking place on a much larger scale in the ‘frontier’ settlement on Sydney Cove.

It took some weeks to discover that the flax referred to was none other than the large ‘iris’ found growing wild and weed-like around the headlands, a plant which King reported “in no manner resembles the Flax of Europe.” Nevertheless, its leaves were collected up, tied into bundles, and “intending to try it after the European method of preparing the Flax,” they were left to ‘ret’ in water.

The enthusiastic Commandant was able to report back to his Governor on the mainland

that “they would have in a short time, all the necessaries of life, except cloathing, and

24 that must depend on the flax of the island.”

Shortly after arrival on the Island, Philip Gidley King had set up house with the convict woman Ann Inett, a mantua maker from provincial Worcester.25 Their son was the first child to be born on the island and was named Norfolk, and when Governor Phillip recalled his Lieutenant to the main colony in 1790, their second son was named Sydney, the vernacular name increasingly used by the people for the little settlement forming around Sydney Cove.

Carrying the Governor’s urgent dispatches, P.G. King had left for London in 1790, to lay before the Home Office the unforeseen difficulties which had waylaid progress in the new colony.26 Phillip’s trusted protégé had acquitted himself well in London, and was promoted to Captain, and at the end of 1791, he returned to the Island commissioned now as the new Lieutenant- Governor, to replace Major Ross whose tour of duty was complete.

While in England, King (or his advisors) judged it appropriate to his new elevated status in the colony’s affairs to take himself a suitable wife, and he quickly married a sensible young woman of his own rank, Anna-Josepha. Shortly after King and his lady-wife returned to

Norfolk Island, she gave birth to a son who would be named Philip Parker King.27 The

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indomitable Anna-Josepha moved gracefully into the role of benign step-mother, and Ann Inett’s children were absorbed into the King household. Although the youngest child, Philip remained the legitimate heir, the three boys grew up together as brothers. All were sent to England to be educated, and as adults, all three, like their influential father, would distinguish themselves in the . Ideally, for the eighteenth century gentleman, in the “different country of the past,”28 that’s how things were done – it was ‘the thing.’

Ann Inett remained in Sydney. With both her sons acknowledged by their high-ranking father and her own standing considerably enhanced by the association, she made a judicious marriage of her own to a good Yorkshire man, a convict like herself. As Mrs. Robinson, she was now numbered among the ranks of the socially respectable and was able, with propriety, to maintain some contact with her young boys as they grew.29

Desultory trials with the New Zealand flax had continued in P. G. King’s absence. On his return to the island, Ralph Clark alludes to the heated exchange that took place between the two Lieutenant-Governors: “Majr. Ross and Mr. King had some words last night ... “30 perhaps elaborated on more broadly in King’s personal letter to a friend in London complaining of the “discord and strife on every person's countenance, and in every corner of the island,” adding significantly, “and almost everything to begin over again.”31

The development of a domestic cloth industry to furnish the clothing of the convicts was imperative if the penal colony were ever to become economically independent of the mother- country. But for all the experimenting, the results continued to disappoint. Every known process failed to weaken the plant’s fibrous content and make the flax workable, and little was produced beyond a rough canvas, too coarse for anything wearable even by convicts.

Thus a focus on a maritime usage has come to dominate the national discourse, some historians speculating that the reason behind the great expense of settling and maintaining the Island was to supply marine canvas and sturdy masts to the ships of the British East India line. But Maynard queries: “Surely a likely reason for the development of any form of flax industry in an undeveloped and remote colony would be the importance of cheap replacement clothing.”32

The issue of cloth and clothing for the people was still at the forefront of King’s mind too when he returned to England with his family in 1796, and he submitted his final report on “The State of the Flax Manufactory.”33 Included as an appendix to Collins’ epic two-volume history of the colony, King details the inadequacies the project had laboured under, asserting that if matters

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were addressed by the Home Office, “this island would soon require very little assistance in clothing the convicts.“34 Maynard argues that a maritime rationale ignores these persistent efforts to establish a cloth industry and furnish the essential domestic requirements, and suggests that this is indicative of ‘historians' ‘blindness’ to basic clothing needs.35

“Basic clothing”, yes, but fashion clothing? There is a difference. For a fashion history could have begun on Norfolk Island.

Buried in the footnotes of the Governor’s official journal, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to

Botany Bay, is a lengthy quote from Captain Cook’s account of his “First Voyage” in which he describes the flax from which the natives of New Zealand made their domestic clothing. However, he neglected to describe the method of its preparation, if indeed he observed it at all. But added is the further intelligence, that from this very same ‘flax’ the natives “by a second method” were able to draw “... long slender fibres which shine like silk, and are as white as snow,” and from these the Maori wove a far superior cloth for their finest clothing.36 And once more, to the chagrin of P.G. King on Norfolk Island, Cook gave no information to the form this processing took.37

King, however, was determined to discover their methods, and risking reprimand by absenting himself from his command post, he would travel from Norfolk Island to New Zealand himself in order to kidnap two Maori men and bring them back.38 Alas, once back on the Island, he would discover that, unlike England where the weaving of cloth was dominated by the still powerful all-male Guilds, in New Zealand, flax processing and cloth-making were definitively female concerns of which his Maori warriors haughtily denied all knowledge.

Governor Phillip’s footnote may seem merely explanatory, but perhaps it is important to ask, was it added as an after-thought? Mundane and ubiquitous, and so much part of the dailyness of everyday life, clothing rarely registers as significant in the primary sources. Or considering the importance given to a gentleman’s haberdashery in the last decades of the eighteenth century, was it so imbedded in the sartorial foreground that in its own time it was thought too manifestly obvious for mention?

The late eighteenth century had ushered in an abrupt and dramatic change in male dress as gentlemen of fashion surrendered their rich silks and embroidered satins and, eschewing the colourful excesses of the Macaroni, to favour plain English woollens and subdued colour. The shift was so sudden and so universally adopted that in a very short space of time, English tailoring became the aspirational norm for gentlemen throughout Europe and in America.

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In England, even slop-made men’s suits – the ready-to-wear of its time – were inflected with the fashion change. This sudden transformation in the dress of men has become known as “The Great Masculine Renunciation,” the term coined in 1930 by the psychologist J.C. Flugel.39 But in its own time, it was merely recognised as ‘the fashion.’

The aesthetic contrast of crisp white linen was integral to the styling of the sober new fashion; but while Britain was able to trade with profit its superior English wools throughout Europe, it needed to import high-quality European flax from the continent at great expense to the national purse. The prospect of vast quantities of such a valuable resource produced by free convict labour, and in a country blessed with abundant sunshine for the bleaching fields was particularly tempting. The infant colony was still heavily dependent on England even for its most basic supplies, and returning ships inevitably sailed ‘under ballast’. The promise then of a superior flax, light and easily compacted into bales, back-loading the returning ships with fine flax for the looms of England, would strengthen the umbilical cord which tethered the forgetful, seemingly neglectful motherland more securely to her antipodean offspring.40

The eminent French social historian Daniel Roche, dates the “rise of the linen” in France and Europe, to the seventeenth century, when rather than bathing, clean linen came to express bodily cleanliness.41

But the emphasis on personal hygiene gathered signification through the eighteenth as an indicator of personal integrity, and a man’s social reputation could devolve onto the whiteness and condition of his linen even more than the new fashion in outerwear.

As the century drew to its close, the display of the linen became progressively more flamboyant, and more and more, this combination of aesthetics and its underlying symbolism became a coded display of moral worth, sartorially demonstrated. This aesthetic synthesis of sombre English wools and a flamboyance of spotless linen would reach its apogee in the first decades of the nineteenth century with the refinements of Beau Brummel, and the Dandies’ attempts before the mirror to finesse the perfect in emulation of their hero.42 And as it was in England, so it was by extension in Australia.

For women – ever the suspect Daughters-of-Eve – the state and quality of their linen assumed a similar metaphoric dimension. Glimpsed in their ruffles and caps, their and aprons, the linen not only conveyed that same invisible spotlessness of both body and soul,43 but for women it assumed a deeper moral undertone, and in its freshness and fine quality, pristine linen was the eloquent enunciator of the female virtues. When the whiteness and quality of a woman’s

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linen was held as the measure of worth, the simple linen handkerchief worn around the neck might indicate even the price of a prostitute: “... silk and diamonds cost a guinea, tammy and paste five shillings, dirty linen eighteen pence... “44

And from the grand coquette to the common street drab, women in every social transaction were assessed and judged on the cleanliness of their appearance and the condition of their dress, and to many in a visually-oriented society (many pre-literate but all well-versed in the visual language of the sartorial codes) the unsullied whiteness of flaxen neckwear might speak volumes.

Despite King’s best efforts, the pioneering of a cloth and clothing industry did not ever eventuate and the project was reluctantly abandoned. In 1803 at the behest of its London administrators, the Island itself was abandoned, and one half of the little community of convicts and settlers was shipped off to settle a second penal colony in the virgin territory of Van Diemen’s Land. At least two decades would pass before any other settlement was attempted anywhere else on the mainland. Norfolk Island would in time become identified in popular memory with its harsh latter-day role as a place of secondary punishment for repeat offenders from the main colony.45

But understood within the context of its own times, a fashion history might well have begun here with the seductive promise of filaments “white as snow” and “shining like silk.” But the tantalising dream of fine linen stayed trapped in Governor Phillip’s footnotes and, deeply imbedded in the fossil record, it remains an academic blind-spot, obliquely directed at fashion itself.

Section 7

4.5: – THE FASHIONABLES

For centuries Fashion had been both the privilege and the obligation of the aristocrat, expressing a power that appeared – and was experienced – as natural and legitimate. Hedged about with sumptuary laws, fashionable life centred around the Royal Court, and fashionable clothing was held to be exclusive to those with rank and wealth. However, time progressed, and cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai observes, “a society of [was] slowly changing into a society of fashion.”46

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And by the tail-end of the eighteenth century, ‘fashionable’ was acquiring a more complex meaning. The word in this new sense makes its first appearance in Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in 1785, where he re-defines fashionable as that “condition above the vulgar, and below nobility.”47

It appears that persons of the middling sort, those of rank or capital who followed a certain modish style of living were termed Fashionables.

This new social class was most clearly delineated by the popular Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth in 1802 in her perceptive Tales of Fashionable Life:

Those who comprehend the rights of the privileged orders of fashion are aware that even a commoner, who is in a certain set, is far superior to a duchess who is not supposed to move in that magic circle.48 Traditionally, new styles had been introduced first among the aristocrats and upper orders of people, but now it was the fashionable elite, the belle-esprits and the social luminaries of the haut-monde who first created the innovations, then set and endorsed the fashion to be emulated to a greater or lesser extent by the genteel aspirant. As Appadurai might have remarked, “the reign of sumptuary law” had finally ceded to “the reign of fashion.”49

In England, a Mr. John Owen in 1806 published The Fashionable World Displayed, and casting a jaundiced eye on this fashionable clique, he declares himself surprised that:

Among the many descriptions which ingenious writers have given of places and people comparatively insignificant, no complete and systematic account has yet been written of the Fashionable World.50

Then, adopting the ethnographic style made familiar by our own early journal keepers making ‘first contact’ with the tribal natives of Botany Bay, Owen undertakes a light-hearted investigation into this singular ‘tribe’ of the Fashionables who “live among the inhabitants of the parent country, neither absolutely mixing with them, nor yet actually separated from them.”51

He is astounded:

That a government of this independent description should exist in the heart of the British empire, an imperium in imperio, will appear scarcely credible to my reader.52

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Consisting “of various and detached societies,” Owen finds the terrain of the Fashionables confusing, “extremely irregular and interrupted,”53 and their numbers, “more fluctuating and uncertain than that of any people upon the face of the earth.”54 However, it appears this peripatetic people connected only by the esperanto of fashion have a collective soul, and however widely dispersed, they maintain a singular collectivity, and “unite into an imaginary whole under the collective denomination of the Fashionable World.”55

Owen marvels at “the sort of communication which these people keep up with each other,” supposing it to require “a species of apparatus which fills their atmosphere with an immoderate degree of Phlogiston.”56 Throughout most of the eighteenth century that mysterious essence, ’phlogiston’ was thought to exist within all combustible bodies. This incendiary ‘principle of matter’ was felt most appropriate to explain the sudden emergence of a new fashion bursting alive and unannounced, combusting spontaneously into pre-eminence, then the enthusiastic adoption, and inevitably, the sputter to sudden death.57

While Owen suspected that “they breathe the same phlogisticated air all over the World,”58 from this ‘World’ he specifically excludes “the convicts at Botany Bay.”59 Residing at a distance of which it seemed almost impossible to conceive, they were, by default, a settled tribe. No place was believed more peripheral to the civilised world than the distant thief colony. Nowhere was more beyond the fringes of the Fashionable life than the convict world of Botany Bay, its people believed to be too rough, too plebeian, too base to be ruffled by the wafting seduction of Phlogiston and Fashion’s temporal aesthetics.

Section 8 4.6: – LITERATURE REVIEW – Australian fashion history

There are a mere handful of secondary sources which address Australia’s fashion history directly, but their value as accurate evidence is questionable. Most draw indiscriminately on American or French sources, or illustrate with fashion garments which certainly never saw the light of any antipodean day. Anachronistically referenced, some quote periodicals and newspapers not yet printed, and most blithely bundle together the dress of men, women, children, the Indigenous, and then scattershot-spread them across extended time zones, unavoidably crossing over multi-generations or trespass into different later colonies with different histories. And almost all, of necessity, resort to papering over the historical gaps with the dramatic changes in male fashion, in what is already an alarmingly gender-neutral history.

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It is surprising then that when the first scholarly history of fashion in Australia appeared in 1984, it was almost exclusively about women’s dress. Costume in Australia by dress curator Marion Fletcher 60 sources the large collection held by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), possibly the most complete of the national collections. Fletcher acknowledges that in the interests of a serial depiction, the largely Victorian-era collection has of necessity been supplemented with some Regency and earlier examples purchased from non-Australian sources.61 Nevertheless, she makes a heroic effort to single out the few extant costumes which are documented “with reasonable certainty as having been made or worn in Australia,”62 and establishes for this particular thesis, the parameters for a genuine colonial enquiry.

Fletcher explains that the reason women’s clothing is so highly represented in the collection is that men’s dress was not collected and preserved, as “on the whole,” it was “undecorated and lacking in colour.“63 While providing a statement on museum collection policies, this observation also gives some insight into the common practice of bundling together dress, , and textiles, and then classifying them all under the decorative arts.64

Following Marion Fletcher’s costume history, another decade would pass, punctuated by historian Margaret Maynard’s series of journal articles on dress in the colony65 before her publication in 1994 of her landmark study, Fashioned from Penury. The dress scholar is also an art historian, and to represent the fashions worn in paintings and portraits, she draws directly on the images of garments authentically worn in the colony by the men, women and children of the gentry. As Fletcher suggests:

All interested in costume can be thankful that 'taking a likeness', the expression used for portraiture, was an essential service required by the small ruling class.66 While the sources remain elitist, the focus will default automatically to the colonial ruling class. The garments presented are unapologetically genteel, and although their wearers may not be truly elite, in the unique socio-political context of a penal colony, they were the over-class and dressed accordingly. But Maynard introduces into the national discourse a new sociological approach to colonial dress and its sartorial codes, and representing the dress of the lower orders, the innovative Maynard undertakes far more extensive research into the Commissariat-issued slop clothing supplied to convicts and free alike than this particular genre of dress had ever been awarded previously.

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Limited by the empirical evidence, both Maynard and Fletcher are dated by their sources to the colonial world that was beginning to emerge around the 1820s, and by 1825, the European population of Sydney, Hobart-town and their separate outlying communities was close to 30,000.67 With the growing number of free settlers, the demographics of the colony shifted, and the distinction had widened between these free emigrants and the bonded convicts and ex-convicts of the transports.68 Maynard states that “the wearing of ultra-stylish dress in the European mode” then became little more than “a triumphant sign of the colonisers' ability to transcend the stain of convict association.”69

At the beginning of 1792, the population of the nation’s first colony stood at just 2,873 souls, of which 2,350 were convicts. An Australian fashion history cannot begin with the fashion and dress of the over-class, but with the 589 convict women who were the demographic reality.

For in 1791, when “The Gorgon Saild With a fair Wind,” she sailed away with the wives of the men of the Garrison70 and the three or four Officers’ ladies, the notional fashion leaders from whom in the orthodoxy of costume scholarship, fashion might mimetically ‘trickle down,’ and the year 1792 began without them.

Section 9

4.7: – GAPS AND OMISSIONS

Margaret Maynard observes:

In the historiography of Australia ... the absence of serious attention to dress, have been especially marked. The silences over the subject, linked as they are to the silences over women and their historical experiences, warrant further scrutiny.71

With the material evidence so sparse, the primary texts so barren, so elsewhere-focussed, there is little to attract the specialised attention of a fashion historian during these foundation years when Sydney alone was settled, and Maynard states that “concerns with clothing remain simplistic and summary, showing little sign of grappling with the intrinsic issues of the subject itself.”72

The discourse surrounding fashionable clothing and women’s dress may lack referencing

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depth, not so the discourse surrounding convict women. For this we must address the collection of writings generated during the halcyon days of the 1970s, when students in the new disciplines of women and gender studies, and like-minded others, enthusiastically threw themselves into the recovery of a women’s history. Despite a feminist methodology, most failed to find clothing and dress significant in any way. Most ignored the day-to-day mundane ordinary clothes-making of women, and produced a steady stream of related secondary sources in which the female inhabitants of the colony might have remained as naked as newborns; a contributing factor not least was the pervasive aura of anti-fashion which surrounded and permeated the 1970s. It is not surprising then that for an historical period when all clothing was made by hand, the silence over the subject of dress has the effect of amplifying the silences surrounding colonial women.

4.8: – MISSING FROM HISTORY

In 1996, historian Ann Curthoys, (who in 1975 had written somewhat ironically perhaps “We had no past”) examined four popularly read and widely distributed texts on women’s history in Australia73 which became set readings for secondary students. Once introduced into the curriculum, their underlying ideologies stampeded across the related disciplines and, cascading down through the consciousness of generations, they are still retained in the collective memory, prompting her perceptive observation: “Like all works of history, they tell us not only about the times they describe but also about the time in which they were written.”74

Reviewing the same period of history, Kay Saunders in 1996 found much of the genre of history produced in this period was 'compensatory and contributory,' and “the formula of 'just add women and stir' [had] inevitably led to more stirring than adding.”75

While this influential body of work has since been reviewed and moderated by the scholars themselves within academia, the common discourse has rarely moved outside it. The preferred alternative of depicting all eighteenth century women as down-trodden victims of various systems remains deeply imbedded and under-examined in the popular consciousness – political opportunism, patriarchal conspiracy, labour relations, ethnic divisions, British imperialism, etc. – and in the 1970s, one of the ‘systems’ was fashion itself.76 Author of My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann, historian, lecturer and educator, Beverly Kingston recounts her singular struggle during these heady years to re-introduce back into the tertiary curriculum for women’s history, aspects of a distinctive female culture centred around the

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traditional concerns of women rich and poor, those essential domestic experiences shared by women throughout history and across cultures and class systems, “however differently.”77 Furthermore, Shirley Fitzgerald, Historian for the , has applauded the work of the ‘herstorians’ “in exposing how limited the voice of the imagined past had been,”78 for when the sediment began to settle, it became apparent that nothing was ever going to be quite the same again.

The Australian-born literary historian and feminist writer Germaine Greer, first brought academic feminism to the masses in 1970 with the Female Eunuch.79 A noted Shakespearean scholar,80 Greer’s recent book, Shakespeare’s Wife, queries what role did the shadowy spouse of the Bard play in the life and work of the playwright. And to grapple into being the “silent and invisible” Ann Hathaway, Greer introduces the numbing concept of ‘Woman’ historically reduced to a “wife-shaped void.”81

Figure 16: “A Government Jail Gang, Sydney N. S. Wales,” Augustus Earle.82 “By doing the right thing, by remaining silent and invisible, Ann Shakespeare left a wife-shaped void in the biography of William Shakespeare, which later bardolaters filled up with their own speculations, most of which do neither them nor their hero any credit.”83

Fragmentary evidence gives birth to mere supposition, but Shakespeare has created some of the most spirited and intelligent heroines in English literature; was Mrs. Shakespeare his homely housekeeper or his poetic inspiration?

Missing from Earle’s sketch of male convicts in their prison clothes, is the dress of convict

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women – what was this invisible cookie-cutter wearing? There are no images of female clothing during the silent early years of Governor Phillip’s reign, and like Greer, we have nothing but questions and supposition.

4.9: – ‘WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY’

Marine Lieutenant Ralph Clark makes an important contribution to the primary sources with the private journal he was keeping for his beloved and virtuous wife Alicia.84 By his chatty informal account of ship-board life aboard the Friendship, we know the women were there, and long before those first ships arrived at Botany Bay, we also know what he thought of them:

Damned Whores ... I never could have thought that there wair so many abandond wreches in England … I am afraid we will have a great dele trouble with them. 85

As indeed we have. His colourful expression has been seized upon, and the implications of “Damned Whore” have dominated much subsequent research into women of the convict era. Of all the foundation documents,86 Clark is the chronicler most women researchers have loved to hate, and they responded with a flurry of women-as-victims accounts based on the empirical evidence.

There was however one convict woman who was no helpless victim, no cookie-cutter ‘wife- shaped void’, a woman “insolent” enough to break through the historical silence in her own time and on her own account, she challenged the Damned Whore stereotype. In doing so, she wrote her own name into history.

Her name was Elizabeth Barbour.

The convoy of ships had barely left England in 1787 when aboard the Friendship, the scandalised Lieutenant Clark records “one of the convict Women abused the Doctor [Arundell] in a most terrible man[ner] and said that he wonted to . . . . her, and cald him all the names that she could think of.“87 Admonished and restrained, yet she vehemently asserted she spoke only the truth. Inevitably voices were raised, the noisy disturbance in the women’s quarters finally drawing the reluctant attention of the ship’s Senior Officer.

When the Captain of the Marines asked the furious woman “how she could raise such a report and abuse Mr. Arundell so,” she turned on that Officer himself and, declaring that “she was

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no more a whore than his wife,” began abusing him “in a much worse manner,” calling him “every thing but a Gentleman.” The woman remained insistent, and although put into leg- irons, she continued heatedly arguing her point. But when as a further restraint, her arms were manacled behind her, she finally lost all sense of decorum,88 and screaming like a Billingsgate fish-wife, she furiously invited the Officer “to come and kiss her C . . . for he was nothing but a lousy rascall as we wair all.”

This unfortunate lapse into the rich patois of London street talk had her gagged. “In all the course of my days,” Clark declared piously, “I never hard such exspertions come from the mouth of human being” – this from a Marine Lieutenant who had spent all his adult life surrounded by men of the barracks.89

Having thus singled herself out for his especial attention, Elizabeth Barbour appears frequently in Clark’s journal throughout the ensuing month, always ironed and frequently bound, sometimes gagged, but always named.90 But she remained determined. Able to read and write, she somehow managed to smuggle her own report concerning the good doctor’s behaviour onto the Sirius and into the hands of the-soon-to-be Governor, Arthur Phillip himself. In it, Barbour accused the assistant-surgeon of being "a poxy blood-letter who seduced innocent girls while treating them for the fever, using his surgery as a floating whore-house."91

In the eighteenth century, the term ‘whore’ was freely used, almost as an alternative to ‘woman,’ but if the Assistant Surgeon was pimping the convict women in his care, and if – heaven forfend – Barbour in her fury, used the term ‘whore-master’, the implication was monumentally infamous, far worse than ‘whore’ – among gentlemen of the eighteenth century, it was in certain circles still a duelling matter.92 No wonder she was gagged.

The Fleet continued sailing south but it was not until three weeks later the convoy of ships put in to the refreshment port of Rio de Janeiro to wood and water, that the Senior Officer was called to the Sirius to give an account of the incident, and Phillip, deeming it to be a military matter, appointed their Commander to follow it up. Major Ross declared the convict woman’s accusations to be merely “fictitious” and although Phillip ordered the unruly woman to be released from her fetters, it was with instructions that if she continued to behave badly, she be flogged. The ‘gentleman’ was believed, she was not, his story, her story ... as it was in England, so it was to be in Australia.93

Elizabeth Barbour appears frequently in Clark’s account, always ironed, frequently handcuffed, or chained to other disorderly women:

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I wish to god she was out of the Ship – I would reather have a hundered more men than to have a single Woman – I hope in the Ships that ever I may goe in herafter there may not be a single Woman.94

Nine weeks after leaving Rio, the fleet arrived at Dutch Cape town; the convicts from the Friendship were discharged to other ships and their quarters were fitted up for horses, sheep and cattle, and when ‘Convict No 33. Elizh. Barbour’ arrived in Botany Bay, she was aboard the Prince of Wales.95

4.10: – BODICE RIPPERS

In the simplicities of popular history, the legacy of the ‘Damned Whore’ lives on in the titillating ‘bodice-rippers’ on light reading shelves, and the marked preference for the stereotype has already exhibited its commercial promise for TV series or reality-style infotainments, where convict women if not cast as active prostitutes are portrayed as little more than the lady-larrikins of a rapscallion convict past. They romped their way throughout the twentieth century and now with the growing economic importance of the tourist dollar, these frisky ladies show promise of rollicking on well into the twenty-first. With their anonymity highjacked by various agendas and more modern ideologies, this one-dimensional stereotype usurps their humanity, and the ‘Damned Whore’ trope, seemingly indelible, returns again and again.

Dominating the wider discourse surrounding women, the term carries the symbolic weight of the convict strumpet, hampering academic movement as surely as Guy Hansen’s iconic “leg irons and man traps.”96

‘Whore’ in its eighteenth century sense was rhetorical. It was applied liberally and without thinking to all lower class women, and in Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue of 1785,97 the simple term ’whore’ is inevitably accompanied with an unsavoury descriptive. Grose’s familiar epithets for females cover all womanhood from aged widows, to molls, drabs, bawds and prostitutes, and the underage young ‘whore’ – “a game pullet.” As editor, he recommends his vocabulary as the key to “the many vulgar allusions and cant expressions that so frequently occur in our common conversation.” He ‘apologises’ for “the burlesque phrases, quaint allusions and nick-names;” declaring his book is “to make gentlemen merry, citizens wary, countrymen careful.”

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Such drolleries, coupled with the innate chauvinism of their bored gaolers, would need to be redressed by all the ‘Damned Whores’ thrust into the penal colony, and historian James Grantham Turner enumerates their future difficulties:

The designation whore is always about credit in every sense – purchasing power, the right to have one's word taken seriously in court, admission into respectable society, entry into employment.98

Section 10 4.11: – TRIVIALITIES

Maynard identifies and challenges the “orthodox view” that there is “some simple, causal link between clothes, women and the trivial.99 She maintains the scholarly myopia concerning clothing and dress tends to neglect the interesting facets in Australia’s dress history. Damned for its transience, its shallow superficiality, its infective viral nature, fashion remains intellectually suspect.

But there was nothing trivial about clothing in the eighteenth century. A heightened interest in fashion and dress absorbed both sexes. By 1792, Watkin Tench had returned to England to write his second volume of his years living in the colony. Needing to connect to the elementary understandings of his English readership, familiar with the four seasons of Britain, Tench chose fashionable dress as an analogy to explain the unpredictability of the weather in the new land: “It is changeable beyond any other I ever heard of ... Three days together seldom passed without a necessity occurring for lighting a fire in an evening.”

And he references the critical Smollett’s disgust with the French practice of changing seasonal dress according to a date set rigidly by the social calendar when he writes “A 'habit d'ete', or a

'habit de demi saison' would be in the highest degree absurd.”100

In England even Joseph Banks, that paragon of the ‘Enlightened’ British gentleman was compiling a draft for his classic “A Work upon Ancient Dresses,” a review of early dress from the Greeks and Romans to the Medieval period,101 and through to the Elizabethan era.

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Figure 17: A Work upon Ancient Dresses

This compendium is comprised of over a hundred loose leaves, most with page numbers. Note the crossing out, finger prints and ink blots. Joseph Banks, date unknown.

But thumbing through the foundation journals again, the alert researcher will begin to notice something very peculiar in the nautical accounts on the long sea voyage to set up the distant penal colony in Banks’ Botany Bay.

Bristling with soundings, sea swells and prevailing winds for fellow mariners, what surprises is the direct interest in their accounts of the dress worn in the various ports of call – Santa Cruz, Rio, Cape Town – where they would comment that here the Court ladies ‘dressed in the English style,’ or there ‘the Governor’s wife and daughters dressed in the French fashion.’ Even Ralph Clark writing from Cape Town is pleased to assure his beloved Alicia, his virtuous wife, “The people dress much after the English heer, the Women in particular.”102

Lieutenant David Blackburn writes to his sister that he had obtained for her some exotic bird feathers although not enough for a fashionable muff.103 Yet it is in an eleven page account of the voyage written to his male sponsor, not his sister, that he writes:

... The Lady's Dress.d in the Most fashionable London taste. With the adition of Some Beautifull Black & White Ostrich feathers on the Head & Left Side of the Waist. The Gentlemen Were Chiefly on

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Horsback, the Ladies in Carriages. Apparently Made in England.104

For the further advice of all future mariners, these seasoned navigators proffered information on the dress of women, noting whether it assumed an English or a French accent, perhaps as a worrying indicator of possible future sympathies, a warning of oncoming events in these troubled times.105

Such readings were possible still from women’s dress – female fashion had not followed male dress into the international sobriety of renunciation but instead was off on its own exuberant trajectory.

In conjuring up what may have happened during Maynard’s silent years in the narrow five- year timeframe of the colony’s first Governor, we must establish an essential working knowledge of the eighteenth century world in which they lived. Immersing ourselves in Australia’s eighteenth century, we may find our twenty-first century selves reverberating with culture shock – physical brutality, infant mortality, basic human rights, barbarous animal cruelty, human enslavement, women’s crippling dependent status, child labour.106

To approach these years, we must leave our own cultural capital at the door in its own century and enter these Enlightenment years with respect.

Cast in the grim shadow of Britain’s harsh eighteenth-century penal system, a history of women’s fashion and clothing may appear, like fashion itself, deeply shallow. Nonetheless, scholar and feminist Olwen Hufton considers the privileges of power and the misogyny of our co-temporary sources; keynote speaker at a series of public lectures for the History Council of Great Britain, she titles her talk Past Imperfect: Reflections on giving women a past, and warns of “the dangers in reducing history to a history of our oppression “proposing “there is doubtless more to history than the revelation of inequality.”107

Section 11

4.12: - DESIGN HISTORIES AND FASHION

In 1988, in his pioneering study Design History Australia, eminent design historian Tony Fry first called for a history of Australian design as a sign of national maturity, a distinct “independent history – that is separate from its accommodation within either art or

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architectural history.”108 From his thesis, Fry excludes fashion history, suggesting fashion design, like architecture and the crafts, already has its own history. Granted, there is not as yet a fashion equivalent to John Freeland’s comprehensive Architecture in Australia, and despite two centuries of European settlement, a complete account of clothing, fashion and dress in Australia still remains to be written.

While Fry’s influential book accepts history’s phallocentrism in maintaining “the centrality of the male world view,”109 he acknowledges: “there are voices of those other than the producers of historical documents.”

These people, especially if they are women ... assert their presence through absence, unspoken utterance and in the form of the mediations of those who speak in their name.110

Nonetheless he permits himself the contentious statement:

The power relations of gender have meant that women have played a very small part in the production of the forms which have shaped our made world ... Women for the most part consume what men have designed and produced.111

Thus Fry consigns fashion and dress to a female ghetto of the “trivial, non- cerebral ... suited to women's interests,”112 and dismisses women from the nation’s design history. His focus on industrial products overlooks the fact that clothes have been produced in large batch and subcontracted ways since at least the seventeenth century, and cloth even earlier.

A design heritage is not merely about iconic buildings, urban vistas or a pantheon of legendary designers, their products and their practices. Shirley Fitzgerald argues strongly that “Heritage is about understanding where we have come from, about social and cultural meanings and roots, and not merely about celebrating ‘good architecture.’”113 The recording eye of our primary sources recounts only the ‘man-made’ huts of brick and mud and the colony’s two imposing architectural monuments, the large brick storehouse of the Commissariat, and the settlement’s presiding eminence, the two-story house of His Excellency, the Governor.114

And the streets of early Sydney, our first city, fall strangely, eerily, silent.

Imagine then to move beyond the world of maps, and from high on the Rocks to look east past the high portal Heads of Port Jackson to that vast empty horizon, and then to the west,

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past Cockle Bay and Long Cove, upriver to Parramatta, and beyond that, a range of impenetrable mountains, hazed blue with distance. Running north and south farther than the eye could see, the Blue Mountains enclosed the Cumberland Plain, confining the people between their lofty heights and that baffling empty sea.115 And there, on the margin of a landmass bigger than the whole of Europe, the keepers and the kept struggled to maintain their tenuous hold on a vast land, to live out their lives on the edge of Collins’ “distant and imperfectly explored ocean.”116

4:13 – INTO THE VOID

At issue is a fashion history held hostage by the silence of women. With their voices lost to the national narrative, there is a real need to foreground women for this early period. It is surprising that there is little women’s history about Australian fashion, and committed women’s historians like Portia Robinson and Grace Karskens have followed them into the void. An exception is Juliet Peers, but her work commences mainly with the late Victorian period.

Robinson was among the first to recalibrate the convict women, not as whores, nor as passive victims, but as active ‘working women’:

The very real contribution of women, as single women, as working women and as family women, has been completely overshadowed by the concentration on their sex-roles in the colony.117

With women subsumed into the gender-neutral – perennially a feminist issue – these women in the parallel world of gender, were “cover[ing] the ground on different feet,”118 and Grace Karskens follows those working women, busy with the timeless preoccupations of women,

“their movements leaving only the barest imprint on written records.”119

It was those 589 transported women of the three fleets whose feet had traced the “webs of footpaths [which] led from door to door and between the rock ledges and outcrops” of the wild convict camp,120 and they were, by 1792, also pattering along, chattering along Chapel Row and Bridge Street, Barracks Lane and Pitt Row. With their feet, they were “flattening the earth into the contours of a town,”121 and inscribing their physical presence into the future.

As we move beyond the world of maps, we also need to move beyond the facts of history, to the responses of the women to their historical present and, primed by Karskens immersive

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approach, to feel for the texture of the times, to re- create the ambience of time and place and the ‘atmospherics’ which set the tone of the community. And in depicting their “myriad criss- crossing voices, paths, journeys, lives,” Karskens recovers the people-scape of the early colony in a way which the sources written for imperial consumption cannot.122

A narrative emerges between two chronological timelines. Firstly, the authoritative account of the Judge-Advocate, David Collins who provides the historical backbone to the story of the colony, and records the development and hard-won progress of the infant colony and its embryonic community. The second is the equally credible chronology of changes in female dress during this period. Tied by emerging new technologies in textiles and dyestuffs, fashion exhibits its own well-documented linearity, and with the implications of emerging nautical technologies and new trading patterns, a fashion history for the remote colony will demand its own historical seriality in its unfolding.123

Between these complementary timelines, the narrative weaves a loose interpretive lattice to catch and hold fragments of primary texts and the scant trifles that remain of the nation’s eighteenth century. Thus, anchored firmly in time, speculation is not merely fanciful but is grounded within the fabric of factual evidence. With all this warping and wefting, this process of controlled serendipity almost becomes a methodology in itself as things connect, divide, contradict, layers deepen, points overlap, gaps appear, generating new questions which demand further interrogation and target areas for further research.

Section 12 4.14: – THE CONTINUITIES

The history of fashion and dress in the European colony of Botany Bay did not simply begin with 1788 – its roots lay deep in the parent culture. At the century’s end, colonial fashion and women’s dress is fiercely, proudly, even xenophobically, British, and they – the lady-wives and convict women alike – were British women and their values, meanings, and aspirations which configured their life-patterns and ways of thinking were British. The women of the transports were breathing their own culture, their own ‘notions of Englishness’124 into life again in the upside-down, down-under world of a penal colony, and fashion in the first formative years of the young colony will rest with these Anglospheric continuities.

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Karskens plumbs the social depths and introduces a cultural dimension which carries over directly to the reader's inner eye and detonates the visual imagination to catch “glimpses” of female lives in those primary narratives, and we find:

the hidden panorama of everyday life, appear[ing] at the edges, incidentally, in the background, as vague shapes and glimpses, snatches of conversation, in fragments retrieved from archaeological excavations.125

Karskens makes the strong claim that the convicts were actively interested in the world of things: that the crude, wooden dishes given to them insulted people used to the new eighteenth-century ceramics, and that they had a keen interest in and understanding of clothes, which I here call ‘fashions’.

In The Culture of Fashion, curator and design historian Christopher Breward explores an English perspective to “present a coherent introduction to the history and interpretation of fashionable form,”citing three approaches “art historical, design historical and cultural [historical].” Thus for the researcher, wary of the broader debates of the culture wars, he provides ‘a rigorous and essentially fluid form framework for the study of fashion in its own right.’126

Fry considers “the history of [designed] products is not a natural history, or one which speaks through the products themselves. It is, above all, a social history,”127 yet he fails to make a connection with fashion and dress, arguably the most social of social histories. However, Breward insists, these material evidences and designed objects “give form and meaning to the cultures within which they reside,“ and he states emphatically:

Of all these genres, clothes are perhaps the most potent ... and it is through the mediating power of fashion that they have become one of the most important elements of the designed world.128

In compiling a dress history for these beginning years, this study aims through fashion exploration to validate women’s significant contribution to the national heritage, and ultimately to Australia’s early history.

4.15: – NEW SOURCES

‘Connecting the dots’ in the recovery of lost lives is a practice almost native to convict era historians, and all respect the laborious work of the professional historians – the Mutch Index,

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Mollie Gillen and others in the indispensable The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989) and the numerous expert contributors to the Australian Biographical Dictionary (ABD), now online. Family historians too have become masters at ‘connecting the dots,’ but frequently unearth little more than the BDMs (birth and death, marriages).

The absence of women in history creates a doughnut effect, and most research on female ancestors must therefore be ‘doughnut research’ – where did the husband live, how many children did he sire, his documented path through the male world of the early colony. And triangulation upon triangulation, we will find at its centre, at best, Germaine Greer’s “wife- shaped void” – we may find the frame but not the picture.

4.16: – MESSAGE BOARDS

The quest for the convict antecedents, particularly on the distaff side, has taken research further afield to the specialised internet message-boards and family history forums. Trafficked by genealogists, historians and descendants alike, these popular forums have become networking centres and collaborative venues to compile knowledge for a growing army of committed amateurs who have amplified, extended, and occasionally outstripped, academic research.129

Thanks to the newer technologies, social networks and more accessible databases, the browsing non-participant stands witness to the mutual recognitions of those whose convict ancestors arrived on the same ship, were in gaol together, or came from the same town. Once in the community, there are the complexities of inter-marriages and the discovery of common antecedents by present day descendants who share and compare the anecdotal evidence handed down through the generations. Although their less-than-academic sources 130 must be approached with some caution, they are nevertheless all evidence of a vibrant living culture of discovery and recovery.131

For those descendants of convicts, the quest becomes far more personal and, to quote a first- generation descendant, even “bland statistics become loaded with emotion when it is your own flesh and blood.”132 These voracious amateurs are hungry for any information on the blank distaff side, and if there is any “calling” or a mantua maker there, they will find her. Surgeon Bowes lists Jane Langley aboard the Lady Penrhyn as a “tambour worker” but through the transcript of her trial, her descendant found her to have been merely employed by a tambour

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worker, and thus was discovered by her descendant to be yet another mantua maker.133 This latter day discovery may be indicative of many more women named in the indents whose anonymous lives still await a focussed retrieval.

4.17: – A CORE TEXT

The discovery in England of a 1787 census which, “rarely for the times” included female occupations, including mantua makers and seamstresses, and the noted English historian and curator John Styles has them “self identifying for the census as one or the other,” suggesting that as:

women of both occupational titles produced women’s clothing, perhaps for census they indicated and distinguished the conceptual and manual skill level they knew to be required.134 (my emphasis)

This enabled Styles to uncover a surprising number of practising mantua makers in one of the poorer more remote rural areas of England’s North. He quantifies the presence of male tailors to active mantua makers in a ratio of 4:1, and in his journal article, “Clothing the North” he reasons that:

If mantuamakers were generally as widespread in the late eighteenth- century north as the Westmorland evidence suggests, it is inconceivable that their work could have been restricted to making outer garments only for wealthy women.135

Styles’ quantitative as well as qualitative research provides irrefutable statistical evidence, and is the final challenge to any easy dismissal of Bowes’ conscientious indent for the Lady Penrhyn. Although the majority were designated as ‘in service,’ there are five mantua makers “self identifying” in the indent, plus seamstresses and others in the needle trades. Researchers who have wrestled with those frustrating indents of the women who arrived on the first three fleets will find that approximately half the female population were from the metropolis and its near environs, the remainder were drawn from the provinces and rural regions (see Appendices 1, 2 and 3). Thus among the 589 convict women known to be present in the colony at the beginning of 1792, we would expect to find not just mantua makers, and milliners but also an unknown number of glovers, lacemakers, furriers, staymakers, embroiderers, artificial flower makers, etc., the whole broad spectrum of pre-industrial skills belonging to female artisans in

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the cloth, clothing and fashion trades.

But any enquiry into the dress of Britain’s underclasses would be next to impossible without

John Styles’ more recent study, The Dress of the People. This comprehensive overview of the clothing worn and fashions adopted by the poor and working folk of England has particular relevance for this thesis. Styles collates the rich resources from decades of English scholarship and, noting the “evidential obstacles that confront historians of clothing worn by ordinary people,”136 he draws on original sources – censuses and directories to probate inventories and poor law records. His references are carefully dated, ensuring their precise relevance to the narrow 1788-1793 colonial timeframe of this thesis.

‘Number crunching’ the indents, Portia Robinson warns that while place of birth is important for those tracing family histories, place-of-trial will not necessarily equate with birth-place,137 but Styles takes us beyond these concerns of family historians, and place of indictment becomes the district most likely to be where a woman of the working sort lived or was making a living, albeit illicitly at the time of her arrest.

Plebeian Londoners enjoyed much more direct engagement with the world of high fashion than cottagers in remote Pennine townships where there were few shops and fewer resident gentry.138

In finding distinctive approaches to dress between Britain’s provincial and rural areas and the metropolis, Styles’ breakthrough text feasibly endows each cookie-cutter woman with a vivid human life. The Dress of the People provides a sartorial back-story not only to the mantua makers and the milliners, the seamstresses and the old-clothes women who arrived in the colony, but the servant girls and washer-women, hawkers and orange sellers, who patronised them.

In enabling the Australian researcher to move beyond the genteel holdings of the museums and the gentry women of the portraits, and into the hurly-burly world of the common people, John Styles’ The Dress of the People is simply the indispensable core text for establishing this nation’s fashion heritage. In the eighteenth century “the world was becoming one world,” begins historian Geoffrey Blainey in The Tyranny of Distance, and it was this term – his term – which has come to signify so much about the wild uncompromising country with its upside down world of seasons. But in England too, distance exercised its own tyranny,139 and Styles observations on fashionable dress in rural areas has immediate relevance to Botany Bay, the most remote of all the British provinces.

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In Britain, a quickening in the pace of change was transforming the life-world of the lower orders. Rural inhabitants were displaced from the land by new agricultural technologies, and country labouring folk with their families were flooding into the towns looking for work, any work.140 Technical change manifested first in the cloth and clothing industries and in Australia, the early male convict indents abound with evidence of transported dyers and weavers, callenders and scourers, stockingers and ribbon makers, as the new technologies bit into tradition-based occupations and eroded the timeless methods of their artisanry. Their mindsets were tap-rooted in the underlying ideologies of England’s eighteenth century.

The practical convict women of 1792, grappling for survival in the small world of Sydney, were not engaged in such navel gazing – regular rations and perhaps a gown-length of bright new cloth and the means to procure a competent mantua maker lay within their modest colonial horizon.

Styles contends: “Material abundance came to play a crucial part in defining what it was to be English for rich and poor alike,“ and ”rooted in material fact,” xenophobic interpretations of Britain’s mounting superiority were valid.141

Thus it seems inevitable that a naval Lieutenant and well-dressed young man-about-town, James Hingston Tuckey, some years later when passing through Cape Town on his voyage to the Antipodes noted a preference for English fashion among the local women, the “fair ones.” But the ardent young patriot just could not resist extrapolating:

The contrast between a gay, attentive, and well-dressed English officer, and a grumbling, coarse, and phlegmatic Dutchman, was too obvious ... their partiality was so openly expressed, that our countrymen could not well avoid taking advantage of it, and in pure compassion, preventing them from “wasting their sweetness on the desert air.”142 Australia out on the vague blurry outer edges of the sea charts was, according to Blainey, “... in a world of its own. It was more isolated than the Himalayas or the heart of Siberia,”143 and here in the living present of a penal colony, English fashion was shredded and frayed by enormous distances and erratic time lapses, and new configurations were inevitable as fashion wove its own tangled story so far from ‘home.’

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Section 13: 4.18: – METHODOLOGY

More than anything, the paucity of source material for these early years has hindered traditional historical research methods, and the whole issue of fashion and dress remains bogged down with problems of evidence. Styles warns that historians seeking out the dress of the lower orders must accept the necessity to work from “a patchwork of sources, all of them to some degree obdurate, flawed and incomplete.”144 With the textual authority of the Sydney Gazette still fifteen years away, and considering the very partial nature of the evidence, nothing proved more “obdurate” than the resistant silence of this pre-1803 period. The challenge therefore has been to find and follow an alternative research path, in order to determine an appropriate methodology in the quest to create new knowledge which a classic historical methodology has failed to disclose.

At some time during my early research among the primary documents and journals, I found that it takes a knowing eye to discern relevance in something that may well have been about something completely different, and realised I had formed the habit of viewing events in the colony from the perspective of the mantua makers. In seeing the life-world of the colony through their lens, I became aware that I was responding empathically to the limitations imposed on these hapless on-the-ground practitioners and in doing so, I had – unwittingly – triggered the imbedded knowledge and certain aspects inherent in my own fashion design practice.

4.19: – THE DESIGNING MIND

Author and editor Nancy de Freitas makes a distinction between the deep conceptual insights of practice-based research, and the alternative, the practice-led research which is more concerned with the processes of reflective design and form-making. She recognises however, that during the evolutionary process of experimentation and development through to application and production, the two frequently intersect in their materiality:

Material thinking skill is acquired experientially, through practice and contemplation. Historically, this specialised knowledge that comes from the handling and forming [i.e. shaping] of materials ... passed down from master to apprentice, even closely guarded by professional guilds.145

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The language of Practice-led Research (PLR) provided a possibility for me to consider correspondences between the garment-making of the eighteenth century mantua maker and my own work practices as a designer-maker.146

This is not the focus of my study, but at times I use my knowledge of cut and construction to analyse traces and survivals of garments from the past.

Nigel Cross, educational researcher and in 1982, editor of the Journal of Design Studies, foregrounds the unique attributes of designers as those which “resolve ill-defined problems, employ abductive or appositional thinking, adopt solution-focused cognitive strategies, [and] use non-verbal modelling media.”147 He proposes that “the intrinsic values [of Design] must derive from the deep, underlying patterns of how designers think and act,” defining this as “the designerly way of knowing.”148

Meanwhile in Australia, during the same period as Cross was writing these words, Geoffrey Caban, design educator and UTS lecturer (later Dean) was working on design in the curriculum and the curriculum in design.149 Caban claimed that designers work easily with uncertainties, possibilities and vague instincts, describing these non-conventional mental processes as “the inner workings of the designing mind.”150

4.20: – LOOKING FORWARD

As Nancy de Freitas has it: “The intellectual experience of material thinking has always been tangible to practitioners,”151 (my italics) and this 'material culture' of design is, after all, also the culture of the mantua maker, the eighteenth century technologist, the designer, doer and maker. These artisanal women engaged with the vital materiality of cloth itself, its kinetic essence tamed by the technical mastery of construction methods, to capture, enhance and extend the changing dialogue of cloth on the body.

In the world of the early colonial mantua makers, neither paper nor pencil were readily available, but the body was – the two-dimensional pattern will be cut like this, so that the three- dimensional gown will fit like that, and the cloth will move like this, the fabric will fall straight or drape, twist and turn, catch the air – the hypothetical garment dances inside the head until the hands massage it into a reality.

Poet, author and academic, Kevin Brophy in his insightful Patterns of Creativity, explores the

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practice of creativity, its sources and methods in a series of essays, thematically connected. He investigates the process that generates an end product, and suggests a transdisciplinary approach is particularly applicable to art, design and other creative enterprises. And he, the poet, admits:

I don't know where the words come from. I can't isolate that process because I'm reading them as they emerge from the ends of my fingers.152 Cross argues that much of active design is inchoate, instinctive, untranslatable, a chronically inarticulate process which

may be inexplicable, not for some romantic or mystical reason, but simply because these processes lie outside the bounds of verbal discourse: they are literally indescribable in linguistic terms.153

But to quote from a fellow exegete struggling to crystallise concept into text:

If I wished to communicate with words I would have become a novelist, a poet. Images are before words, allowing more space for the viewer. Space for? Space for meaning, one's own meaning, shifting, changing, a space in which to think, … not think.”154

4.21: – LOOKING BACK

History writing is about recognising causation and effect, and given Caban’s insightful determination that, “abduction allows the precondition ... to be inferred from the consequence,”155 we are able to not only move forwards, but travel backwards in time from 1803 and ‘M. Hayes,’ the first mantua maker to advertise, to 1788, its indents, its starvation rations, and its Damned Whores.

And so it was, thinking, not-thinking, and idly traversing yet again those very first editions of the Sydney Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, a visual world that seems to have eluded all the “eye-witness” accounts manifests large as life with the advertisements for hair-combs and buttons, stockings and ribbons – milliners goods – then suddenly, shimmered into being, the hidden tactile world of 1788 to 1793, and the living world of fashion, for there are the dimities, the calimancoes, the gauzes which the mantua makers of the penal colony would ‘process’ into garments for their clients of the humble classes who would give them shape, form and meaning.

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Costume, fashion and dress may be a new and unfamiliar ‘way of seeing’ historically for most people, but looking forward and then looking backwards combine as secondary techniques, and work to validate a “designerly way of knowing.” The narrative that develops tracks the complex intertwinings of historical fact and the serial changes in female dress, during this short period and brings Maynard’s invisible women into their colonial context. Designer, maker, sourcer of trimmings and bridging element in the world of women, the mantua maker was an arcing link that spanned the long sea miles to the mother country, and stirred the Anglospheric continuities that were etched deeply into the communal psyche. In wringing new knowledge from the same familiar sources, this methodology approaches on a broad front, and vindicates the reflective nature of practice-led research and the designerly approach in compiling a history of fashion in the earliest years for which so little evidence exists.

Therefore, throughout this thesis, I hypothesise and speculate what may have been likely for colonial mantua makers during the first years of settling in Sydney, and establish its fundamental role in the early settling years of other – later – state histories.

14.1: – THE GREAT DIVIDE

Women’s history of the 1970s was not much interested in the dress of women convicts which was hardly surprising, as feminism generally eschewed fashion as a topic of investigation. Elizabeth Wilson, noted British feminist, was surprised when she received her invitation to write Adorned in Dreams. Yet also published in that era was Seeing Through Clothes (1978) by literary historian Anne Hollander. Hollander in her Preface156 proclaims that she conceives of clothing and dress as a form of visual art, deriving

its visual authenticity, its claim to importance, its meaning and its appeal to the imagination, through its link with figurative art, which continually interprets and creates the way [fashion] looks.157

Pictorially and thus in real life, Hollander’s grand nobles and persons of high rank dressed as became their elevated station, wearing rich and luxurious cloths in lavish quantities as testament to their wealth and power and, in its material and visual amplitude, visually expanding and expressing the wearer’s importance. Hollander addresses the materiality of fashion, specifically defining garments as “objects made of fabric that convey messages beyond the power of the cloth itself to convey.”158

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The "natural" beauty of cloth and the "natural" beauty of bodies have been taught to the eye by art, and the same has been the case with the natural beauty of clothes.159

The rarity of female garments and colonial portraits in the national context has complicated research and frustrated attempts to compile a fashion history for this critical early period. The daunting lack of evidence reflects little more than the sparse number of lady-wives in colonial society, and most histories of fashion in Australia have, of necessity, taken refuge in the dramatic changes in male dress. The dominating importance of “The Great Masculine Renunciation” in Australia’s sartorial history should not be negated; the relinquishing of colourful silks and showy satins was accompanied by an increased refinement in the practices of tailoring and, in its time, was perceived and presented as a reformation in male dress. Nevertheless, when the sheer theatricality of a “Renunciation” has the effect of male-centring all fashion, the necessity is to forcefully redirect focus back onto women and female fashion, and Anne Hollander in Sex and Suits introduces the notion of “The Great Divide.”160

Both populist literature and second wave feminists have trivialised fashion’s role as merely creating the Other, to please a man, to snare a husband. But the eloquent Hollander weaves a robust argument in which male fashion in migrating towards the rational, the disciplined, is clearly seen to be doing the ‘othering,’161 leaving women free to respond instinctively to aesthetic shifts whether in Fancy’s shallows or stirring deep in the fundament.

Now, suddenly, in the last decade of the century, female clothing, rather than ‘reforming’ was beginning to literally re-form, passing through abrupt and dramatic structural innovations, which effected a dramatic change in the architecture of the main garment. This was the terrain of fashion’s technicians, the mantua makers, those with the science of the shears. And off on its own wilful trajectory, female fashion would see a swiftly evolving new silhouettes accompanied by shifts in proportion, emphasis and movement, consolidating into new looks, new posturing, new attitudes.

John Owen, delineating “the modes of dress which prevail in the Fashionable World,”162 captures a little of the excitement, the commotion of women’s fashion in this short period:

So if full petticoats and high kerchiefs are adopted by the misses of the crowd, the dressing-chambers of Fashion are all and confusion: – the limbs are stripped, and the bosom laid bare, though the east wind

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may be blowing at the time; and coughs, rheumatisms, and consumptions, be upon the wings of every blast.163

Owen adroitly furnishes the bookends to a dramatic sequence of change between 1788 and 1803, as fashion metamorphosed into the high waists and the flowing Greco-Roman draperies of the Neo-Classic period, and the eighteenth century segued into the early decades of the nineteenth. It is disappointing that the few books which address Australian women’s fashion in any depth do not resonate more with the exuberance of women’s dress in these turning years of the century.

Section 15 4.22 – THE PIVOTAL MOMENT

In compiling a fashion history from this beginning, we must flashback once more to those anonymous indents and the first European women set foot on Australian soil. This major event – surely notice-worthy considering the gender imbalance – has received no critical attention. And when those first unwilling immigrants disembarked into a strange new life in England’s Botany Bay, becomes the critical point to begin an analysis of female dress in Australia.

The convict women in their bundles carried Bibles, tokens, treasured keepsakes, and some may have brought their tools-of-trade – needles, thread, shears, knitting needles, lace cushions – but all carried with them the cultural baggage of the world they had left behind. And in England, the women, as convicts, had reached their social nadir. Portia Robinson spells it out clearly:

They, and women of their class, were beyond pity to their respectable contemporaries for their felonies had placed them outside respectable society, suitable only for the gallows or the convict ships.165

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Figure 18: The “unsatisfactory abandoned wretches.”166 In the earliest days, and for most of the convict period, convict men were to out-number convict women in a ratio well over 4:1. This lone woman, the focus of all eyes, is being landed from a transport along with four or five convict men sent to Botany Bay. Surrounding the group, there were also a large number of sailors, men of the Barracks and their officers, and the civil administrators present in the colony.

Collectively abandoned by their country, these female outcasts had spent the long monotonous hours aboard, sharing company and talking, telling stories as women do, of their life experiences, of men, of child loss, of success, of failure, tales of near misses, narrow escapes possibly with humour, but sometimes tears. After eight months at sea, raw homesickness had faded, new friendships had been made, networks had formed, and those who would thieve even from their fellow prisoners had been identified.167

Shipboard life had not been easy, but the food had been adequate. Many of the near-destitute who had been living hand-to-mouth by honest and dishonest means, had regained normal weight and were in remarkably good health.168 Together they had been enjoying the pre- eminent ‘comfort’ of an eighteenth century working woman’s life, relief from the necessity of hustling for the day’s food and shelter; as convicted felons, their food, clothing and shelter were now the responsibility of ‘the Government’, and were there not supplies aboard every transport, and great store ships with provisions enough for two years?

In their quieter moments, the women may have speculated privately on how life might be lived in a penal colony. As convicted women, their labour belonged to the , and noting the lack

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of anything familiar, wonder what was in mind for them? Even the country women would have contemplated with alarm the muscular ferocity demanded of the male clearing parties ashore, knowing that poor women of the lower orders toiled side by side with men as farm workers, laboured in the mines, lifted and carried, shifted and shunted.169 Once landed, what would be expected of them, the women, in this forbidding wilderness?

The convict women remained on their transports until the sixth of February. They had been waiting twelve days. Bundles and boxes had been brought up from the holds, and the business of exchange and barter of clothing and services would occupy their time: there were gowns to be aired, caps to be refurbished, trinkets to be traded. Festivities were in the air. A party had been planned, and in the humid February atmosphere of a Sydney summer, the air fairly crackled with excitement.

After days of tense waiting, the convict women now changed out of their tired lice-ridden slops and into the best of their clothing, and perhaps we are to be able to see them with the mind’s eye, clustering together in their small groups, 192 convict women attired in their holiday best, the centre of all attention, the cynosure of all eyes as they stepped ashore onto the sandy soil of Sydney Cove. Surely in any study of female dress in Australia, this is the pivotal moment.

What were the cookie-cutter women doing? In donning their social skins, they were insinuating themselves back into a well-established “hierarchy of differences.” These no-skill, low-skill women of the indents occupied different niches on the social spectrum and manifested by their dress their places in the ordered structured hierarchy of the lower orders where social distinction often turned on occupation. Hyper-aware of the power of the imposed stereotype, these “abandoned women” were alert to the possibilities of sartorial transition, and attired in their best, whether owned or loaned, they instinctively drew on the non-verbal codes held in common within the culture to choreograph a desired response.

Surgeon Bowes with his attention to detail in compiling his list of the women aboard the Lady Penrhyn, was not dismissive of his charges’ ‘trades,’ his oyster seller is there along with those from the fashion trades and the sixty-five women he recorded as being ‘in service’.170

To the despair of our later proactive mindset, these women were not engaged in... not wanting ... not even imagining ... to change the world, these abandoned women at the end of the eighteenth century were grimly intent on changing their world with the only tools they had – the clothing on their backs.171

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Section 16 4.23: – RIGOROUS NOTIONS

Eighteenth century gentlemen were likely to have harboured some rigorous notions about women, but the unexpected appearance just then on shore of noisy foul-mouthed female convicts, clean and mannerly, ran counter to all the expected stereotypes and clearly astonished Surgeon Bowes:

They were dress'd in general very clean & some few amongst them might be sd. to be well dress'd.172

In examining the sartorial practices of the lower orders during the eighteenth century, Styles establishes as a characteristic feature, the singular way men and women “ordered their thinking” about clothing, and recommends the distinction that they made between 'best' dress and day-to-day 'working' clothes as the “essential starting point” for researchers.173

We have some idea of the look of the well-documented unsatisfactory shoddy ill-fitting slop clothing in drab flimsy cloth that was issued to convict women on arrival -- the evidence of the journals in these foundation years that will probably remain unchallenged by any newer material evidence. But mere ‘clothing’ is not fashion, that surrounding ‘idea’ for which time is critical.

Yet timing remains crucial to any fresh analysis of fashion in the penal colony. The de- humanising practice of aligning convicts’ names with that of their transport ship persisted until the end of the convict period, and it is from the year of a transport’s departure from England that we can determine the memory-pictures of what was fashionable at the time of their leaving, and their knowledge of how, when and where the fashion was worn. And as Hollander has argued: “Even actual garments themselves, old or new, offer only technical evidence and not perceptual knowledge.“174

Styles delineates the generics of the dress worn by British working women during the 1780s: “petticoat and gown over stays and shift, supplemented by shoes, stockings, apron, cap, hat and neckcloth.”175 The neckcloth with all its moral and social implications, in all likelihood was always ‘the linen.’

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While at sea, convict women were suffered to be out on deck for most of the day, and in all probability chanced to see not just Surgeon Bowes’ white breeches towed behind the ship, tempting the sharks, but had witnessed their own important lady-linens – shifts, detachable sleeves, ruffles and the ubiquitous handkerchiefs worn around the neck – threshing and thrashing about in the ocean. Bleached and dried in sun, and salt-stiffened and harsh on the skin, they were nevertheless crisp enough to lend a fashionable swell to the spotless buffon.

‘“Clean’ perhaps, as observed by Bowes, but his intriguing comment, ‘well- dress’d,’ is certainly worthy of a deeper interrogation.177

4.24: – HOLIDAY DRESS

In the eighteenth century England, Styles’ women of the lower orders dressed to fit the occasion, leaving behind their everyday work-clothes for fashionable garments and stylish accessories to meet a range of specific social events.

Wearing special, fashionable clothes fitted customary expectations about how the distinction between Sundays and weekdays, holidays and workdays should be marked.178 For grand occasions, they wore a knee-length shift under their stays and over this a ‘petticoat’, the word used to signify both an under-garment and the important outer-garment. This outer petticoat was covered by a long gown or the shorter bed-gown, worn as casual ‘undress’ by the upper, and formally by the lower orders. The essential cap, shoes, stockings and a neckerchief completed the look, with perhaps a dainty apron or the addition of a hat.

Styles contends that the fashionable clothing working people wore for best was essentially “a coarser version of contemporary high style,”179 and by mixing the mundane basics with flamboyant additions, a showy interpretation of upper class dress was concocted from affordable items such as ribbons and neck-handkerchiefs, approximating “elements of elite fashion while self-consciously maintaining a distance from it.“180 Purchased from fairs, street stalls or itinerant hawkers, these fashionable delights “enlivened the wardrobes“ of most plebeian women and even the working poor:

As new fashions moved through the social hierarchy, they changed. They were made from different materials, they joined different assemblages of clothes, and, most importantly, they were worn in different circumstances, acquiring different meanings in the process.181

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John Styles quotes a German visitor who in 1792, describes the chosen dress of the poor and lower classes of London:

The cloathing manufactured for the poor and common people, is in small proportion to their number, and few or none of them like to wear it…. in London, or the great towns, it is seldom or never to be seen. All do their best to wear fine clothes, and those who cannot purchase them new buy the old at second-hand, that they may at least have the appearance of finery.182

For John Styles’ women-folk, being ‘well dressed' involved wearing 'fine' versions of many of the items that constituted the normal woman's wardrobe,183 with an increasing emphasis placed on those fashionable accessories found in the inventories of drapers and retailer-milliners. From court transcripts, these might involve a fine muslin neckerchief, a delicate lace trimmed cap, or an embroidered apron, a pair of elegant silken mittens, and black stockings – or white for the most aspirationally refined. And he records “a pattern of plebeian women owning both leather shoes, and shoes with uppers made of worsted stuff,” possibly with dainty heels, needing skill and clogs or pattens to keep the fragile textile above the mud.184

Dressed in the living present of the colony and out in their holiday best, dress and behaviour was expected to be congruent, and 'best' dress demanded a change of demeanor befitting the occasion, a practice so well-known at the time, it had found its way into song:

Do not rumple my topknot, I'll not be kissed today. I'll not be hauled and pulled about

Thus on a holiday

Come upon a working day

When I have my old clothes on.

I shall not be so nice nor coy

Nor stand so much upon.185

4.25: – “THE DRESS OF NEW PRODUCTION”

At the heart of fashion change, Hollander identifies the “esthetic longing,” which “satisfies the eye” and precipitates “a desire to change the extant style in a way that satisfies the psyche

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first.”186 Fashion was set in England by the fashionable elite, and by the end of the decade, the rich brocades and silks were falling out of fashion, as were heavy wools for all the outer garments. Coming into favour were the lighter printed linens and colourful cottons.

For a few of the metropolitan women perhaps it was the “dress of new production”, something as familiar to any astute mantua maker recently transported from London as it might be to the readership of the New Ladies Magazine in England in 1788:

a demi-riding-coat, made of pale yellow taffety, with a very large collar, pinked; on the sleeves of which are two rows of large mother-of-pearl buttons and a white taffety petticoat .... the corsage or shape is tight- laced, and covered with rose-coloured silk, having two rows of mother- of-pearl buttons on the stomacher, to match the sleeves of the riding- coat.187 And if indeed if any of those women of First Fleet really did carry green fans and wear yellow gloves with “poppy-coloured” shoes – all in the current “taste” according to the Magazine – the “well-dress’d” polychromatic fashioniste of Botany Bay, on disembarking, might have challenged even the shrieking parakeets.188

At that time too, the influence of the new male fashions were manifesting even in women's garments, mainly for horse-riding dress. But made up by a mantua maker rather than a men’s tailor, they were ‘tailored’ to fit close to the female body,189 and despite the pervading masculine influence, female fashion exercised its sartorial independence, and the plain “taffety petticoat” began looping and bunching in ways unrelated to anything masculine. Women’s dress in this period, says Hollander, was “extremely expressive” and “very deliberately decorative and noticeable,”190 and when even the most virtuous of women wore no underwear, the timeless petticoats both veiled and drew attention to the naked shrouded mysteries of the woman beneath.

As Hollander has observed, eighteenth century fashion was preoccupied with the “display and projection of the female body”:

Her pelvis and legs always a mystery, her feet a sometime thing, and her bosom a constantly changing theatrical presentation of some kind.191 A gossipy commentary published in The Times in 1789 on the departure from Plymouth of the all-women ship, the Lady Juliana, reviewed the 246 female unfortunates destined for the penal colony and reported:

Five of them appear to have been blest with the favours of Providence,

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and a good education. – One of the latter class was about four years ago at Brighton, and, in the most gay and alluring style, drove her phaeton.192

Despite the pervading masculine influence in riding dress, the petticoat was retained.193 But increasingly, even urban ladies began to modify their frivolous ‘taffetty demi-riding-coats’ and adopted the sensible riding habit, appropriating from masculine dress the same the high stock, the waistcoat, and the cuffed coat. Such loss of femininity was widely criticised and perhaps experienced by some as a transgression into the world of men, but other women only snapped their riding crops against their long seditious skirts and wore their stocks even higher. Needing little more than a top hat and an arrogant expression, the tout ensemble crossed any number of boundaries – the tailored jacket, the waistcoat, the swagger! – evoking not just male costume but, reeking of expensive horseflesh, the hunt, fine wines, landed estates, it was, subversively, the dress of “gentlemen,” a presumption available not just to English Fashionables, but inevitably to the fashion-abled.

In 1802, Maria Edgeworth, the observant writer of Tales of Fashion Life and the author of many notable literary characters, describes the discomfiture expressed by country companions when confronted with the masculine-inspired riding habit and the heroine explains:

All such things in high life go under the general term dashing. These young ladies were dashers… Alas! perhaps foreigners and future generations may not know the meaning of the term!194

Country women were mostly isolated from these urban influences; fashions were set by the local gentry and Hollander argues that “informal English country life and country dress had come to be the last word in late-eighteenth- century noble elegance.”195 The tailored riding costume, complete with matching skirt, became standard wear for most of their outdoor activities – riding, walking, and the informal visiting. Inevitably the practical country women out in the provinces adopted, and then adapted, the day wear of their social superiors.196

But fashion evaporates, and as garments became faded and worn, patched and mended, they were relegated to doing duty as every-day dress or working clothes. Evidence of this sensible practice of the lower orders could be no better observed than in the distant penal colony made up of working folk; David Dickinson Mann, erstwhile forger and colonial author recorded:

Last night’s dashing belles ... may often be seen of an evening attired in the greatest splendour ... and on the following morning are hid from public view with extremely mean attire.197

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There were working clothes enough, but even in the colony where there were traditional festivities and frequent occasions for finery, the eye could become jaded. The empowered then were those who had the skills and perhaps the sense of merriment, the sense of play, to consciously invent and ‘set a fashion’ from their limited vocabulary of whatever was available in the colony, accompanied no doubt by a touch of self-mockery.198 And like Maria Edgeworth’s fictionally famous belle esprit and dictator of fashion, the Lady Delacour, perhaps some colonial fashionistes did ‘set a fashion’ for a time. Until the ships came in. Collins describes the “gleam of sunshine” elicited by each new ship arrival, bringing to the isolated community:

a sudden change in the ideas, [which] operated so powerfully on the mind, that we all felt alike, and found it impossible to sit for one minute seriously down to any business or accustomed pursuit.199 When the flag went up and the news rumbled around the colony that an English ship was in the offing, then the usual general rush to the shore as the ship tacked up the harbour to Sydney Cove. Fashion had a different pacing in the colony and what had segued slowly on the streets of London, or even in provincial districts could, in this narrow but important period, explode dramatically with the arrival of a ship, and each stylishly-dressed new arrival is likely to have found herself the centre of all attention. Inevitably included in the audience were the mantua makers, their clients and any aspiring fashionistes to gauge the latest immediacy, before repairing to the linen draper or milliner (or more prosaically in the colony of 1792, a ship-side auction), the latest new look needing only a trained eye to reproduce among the gumtrees, all fashion’s folly and affectations.

In Britain, fashion was worn equally by Hollander’s lofty élégantes and Styles’ humble maidservants, and Styles issues a caveat: “We should beware of reproducing eighteenth-century snobberies by portraying such behaviour as an attempt at emulation that inevitably misfired.”200 He cites the concern with dress and appearance by young working class Londoners, who considered themselves ‘flash’ and ‘especially knowing', and who in devising “fashions of their own,” remained “impervious to the siren song of emulation.“201

Although the broad focus of the settlements around Parramatta was unremittingly agrarian, Arthur Phillip’s “Albion” stayed stubbornly resistant to his vision of the pastorale, and Sydney- town itself would remain obstinately metropolitan, even international in its orientation. As the primary contact point with the ‘civilised world’, when ships were in port, its community was the first to receive the new information and to adopt their urbanity, their fashionable “knowing” worldliness.

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4.26: – CLAIMING RESPECTABILITY

The designation whore is always about credit in every sense – purchasing power, the right to have one's word taken seriously in court, admission into respectable society, entry into employment.202

So declared historian James Grantham Turner. All those ‘outcast’ women – the Damned

Whores who arrived on the transports – knew the overwhelming impediments they faced if they wished to relinquish their reputations earned in their home country. With the rhetoric of Hannah More and others ringing in their ears, they knew it did not do for a woman of notoriety to appear in ragged clothes, or present as “bedraggled, dirty and unkempt, women who lacked any of the expected attributes of respectable females.”203

A convict woman intent on establishing a respectable standing in the colonial world might improve her social graces by moderating her behaviour and eschewing rough company, and acknowledging the importance of appearances on the new social frontier. Repositioning in the community might be, as it was in Britain, as simple as a discreet name change – a new name for a new life – or as complex as marrying well and regular church attendance in her Sunday finery, becoming visible as a well-dressed member of the congregation.

As each transport disembarked, each woman knew that this would be her own critical moment as she stepped ashore in the best of her dress, possibly the refined village elegance of the tight jacket and petticoat combination of a simple tailored riding costume, or the full grandeur of a fashionable open gown and a quilted petticoat, all second hand and brought from England.

But for the desperately poor and destitute who had arrived on board with no more than the clothes they stood up in, it may have been the drab shapeless government slops issued on arrival, now sewn to fit and jollied up with a new cap or a bright ribbon. And above all, the pristine whiteness of the linen announced all the demure female virtues and conferred instant respectability.

But from the very beginning, something very strange had happened. Distinct characteristics very different from their English experiences had begun to manifest in Arthur Phillip’s penal colony. Governor Phillip simply promoted the ‘industrious’ men in the community, the brickmakers, carpenters, ironworkers, millers, etc. whose skills were central to establishing the settlement,

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rewarding them with land grants and other indulgences, and he encouraged marriage and motherhood to the women as the path to their colonial respectability.

Pardons and privileges were rarely given directly to women, the authorities assuming that the wedded state equated with a pardon, or at least a ticket-of-leave. Yet single women also, some mothers of children, could win the Governor’s approbation for their good behaviour and habits of industry in their own enterprises, and Robinson explores the Governor’s changing response to his female charges:

morality was expressed not necessarily by legal marriage, but by economic independence, gained in the colony either through their own efforts or as wives.204

For convict women in the colony, dressing well was a sign of her belonging, and her entry back into society. Nevertheless, Anne Hollander contends, fashion exercised its own “erotic sway,” and she states that rather than ‘feminine,’ the fashionable dress of the time was declamatory and displayed a lively female consciousness and she contends mischievously,

The language of clothes is essentially wordless, that is what it was created to be, so that it can operate freely below the level of conscious thought and utterance.205 In the colony, in the search for a good man to fulfill her connubial aspirations, a sensually attractive dress style might find the way to stir a young man’s heart, thus serving the social and moral codes in Phillip’s penal colony. Robinson elaborates on the intentions of the Governor:

Marriage was to remain the symbol of colonial respectability among the women of Botany Bay, and the incidence of legal marriage in the colony, the yardstick by which the reformation of the convicted women was measured.206 (my italics)

But the die had already been cast, and as early as 1790, Captain John Hunter, the Governor’s aide-de-camp, would record:

Governor Phillip did not reckon on the little labour which may be got from the women ... the greatest part would always find employment in making their own, and the men's cloathing, and in the necessary attention to their children.207

4.27: – THIS BADLY-RUN COLONY

According to Styles, propriety demanded at least a token recognition of the prevailing social

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distinctions, and the wealthy and well-dressed Reverend Samuel Marsden was appointed senior chaplain arriving in the colony in 1794, after Phillip’s departure. He testily noted that men, ex-convict and convict alike, had acquired

… such false notions of their real state that they frequently pass the superior officers of the Colony without paying the least respect.208

Marsden was one of the early colonial reformers. He approved matrimony as it decreased licentiousness in the men and curtailed the promiscuity of women, and he made a list of the married and unmarried women in the colony, nominating the single, the widows (with or without children), the under-aged, as “concubines” and their children as bastards.

Deeply concerned at any disruption of the existing social order, or blurring of the boundaries, that permanently irascible divine sought a clear demarcation between himself and the convicts, and particularly the ambitious well-to-do emancipated, demanding they be forced to wear nothing but common clothing.

Such a man, in his fine boots, coat and chaise, loses no opportunity to push himself forward into that Rank of Society, or even into a higher one than the one from which he had sunk by the Sentence of the Law.209

The question arises why the “well-dressed” convict woman did not elicit the same cultural anxiety provoked by the dress of convict men. The fact is it did not matter: they were only women, it was only fashion.

Women continued to have the freedom in the colony to dress as they pleased until the 1820s, when Home Office was alerted to the license which women were able to exercise in this out-of- control badly-run colony – rather than donning the coarse clothing provided for them, these convict women were permitted “to land in their own dresses,” hisses Commissioner Bigge in his Report to the Colonial Secretary in 1822.210

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CHAPTER 5: INFERENCES FROM AND WITHIN HISTORY Towards a new history of Australian colonial dress, 1788-1793

An “inferential” approach is endorsed by the

historian George Parsons who reasons: “it is

often the only alternative to neglecting

the field of study altogether.”

George Parsons (1988)1 INTRODUCTION

My research has proceeded by recounting how three fleets of convict transports would

see the colonial world swell from those first 192 women of the First Fleet to 569 after the arrival of the Third Fleet -- an adequate number for the statistical probabilities of the Appendices.

Despite failing crops, hunger, and empty seas, these British women would attempt to rebuild their lives in this new terrain. The focus of my thesis is their dress and appearance – and whether these ‘damned whores’ might have engaged with contemporary fashion despite a hostile climate, minimal material resources and criminal status.

I have interrogated a wide range of textual sources to date, mainly diaries, letters and stories in the eighteenth-century periodical press, as well as analysing the construction and style of a rare and possibly early woman’s shift.

The prime narrator, Judge Advocate David Collins himself asks of his peers:

In what other colony under the British government has a narrator of its annals had such circumstances to record? No other colony was ever established under such circumstances.2

No further explanation is necessary – the “circumstances” would demand a different approach to dress history. Thus from its convict beginnings in Sydney in the eighteenth century, in the ‘atmospherics’ of a penal colony, Australia would have a different sort of fashion history from any other place on earth.

Yet very little of that early history has been written to date, with Maynard (1994), a few entries in her edited volume of the Berg Encyclopedia of Fashion (2010 ) and the current

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research of Melissa Bellanta (unpublished at the time of writing) and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne working with professor Antonia Finnane being the main

contributions.3

Noting “the dearth of direct evidence,” George Parsons endorses working within a framework of possibility, and a theory is posited that it is possible to construct a clothing history from limited evidence, devising a methodology through the eyes of a mantua maker which could be applied to later time frames. Nevertheless, lacking material evidence, Maynard’s invisible women of her 1994 monograph4 remained hidden, unimaginable, undressed, and we have to concede the unresolved difficulties of finding fashion rather than dress in Australian colonial histories.

Following the publications of John Styles on the dress of the British poor in the past ten years, a whole panorama of British female (and also male) experience has now opened up, disclosing the fashionable dress of plebeian women and the poor in Britain, bringing into focus their British continuities, justifying this as an appropriate entry point into the way clothes looked and were worn in the colony during Australia’s eighteenth century.

Shirley Fitzgerald argues strongly that “Heritage is about understanding where we have come from, about social and cultural meanings and roots,”5 and for the women of the colony during the foundation years, the characteristic nature of eighteenth century marriage must be addressed, as must the inevitable offspring which proscribed then and still, the female life.6

Peter McNeil designates Europe’s ‘long’ eighteenth century as seminal to any study of fashion’s history,7 and in the fourth year of Australia’s very ‘short’ eighteenth century, the ideals and social values expressed in these years of the Enlightenment would pattern the culture and the lifeways of the people in Governor Phillip’s colonial world. The year 1792 would be a turning point, the tipping point, critical mass, for the penal colony, poised on the edge of its own future.

Section 17

5.1: – WIVES & MARRIAGES

Elizabeth Barbour endured her restraints and humiliation aboard the Friendship until

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the Fleet arrived at the Cape, where the ship was cleared of convicts to make way for sheep and livestock for the new colony, and Barbour finally arrived in Botany Bay on the Prince of Wales. Significantly the outraged convict woman, a prisoner since 1782 and now unfortunately exiled for life, married within days of her arrival rather than spend one more day under the supervisory eye.8 Recontextualised now as a ‘wife’ (and therefore subject to her husband), Elizabeth Barbour, “that abandond wretch” had at last achieved a notional freedom, her life folded now into the colonial destiny of one Thomas Brown, a First Fleet convict from the Scarborough. A plant nursery man, he was farming in partnership with a ship-mate on 60 acres out on one of the frontier communities developing around Parramatta, and there in 1791, shortly before his departure from the colony, Tench recorded her presence merely as “wife with one child.”

Two miles out from Parramatta, their small community of five convict settler-families included two ship-sisters from the Friendship; Mary McCormack, a receiver of stolen goods, and the old clothes dealer Frances Anderson, who memorably for Ralph Clark was among the “six of the worst.”9 And there but for Tench’s incidentalism in his last chapter on the state of the penal colony, Elizabeth Barbour’s life and her assertive resistance to the assumptions and presumptions of the ruling order is swallowed up into history.

Another ‘Damned Whore’ to be precipitated into a speedy marriage was the London needleworker Elizabeth Needham. Transported on the Lady Penrhyn, she was, according to Surgeon Bowes, “a most infamous hussy.” Only days after the landing of the women she was brutally beaten by Private Thomas Bramwell, “because she would not goe up in the woods with him to – – --”10 as Ralph Clark so delicately frames it. Under Phillip’s manifest of British law-and-order, the sexual assault became a subject for a military court-martial and Private John Easty recounts in his diary that his brother-in-arms and ‘best mate’ Bramwell was “Sentenced 200 Lasshes recieved 100” before he succumbed and was admitted to hospital.11 A week later, and probably still sporting the bruises, Elizabeth Needham married Scarborough convict, William Snailham.

Married in 1788 but by 1794 Elizabeth Needham was alone and living in Sydney in Chapel Row (now Castlereagh Street), next-door-but-one to the chapel that stood at the corner of Hunter and Bligh Streets. William Snailham had received his 30 acres out

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on the new frontier community developing north of Parramatta on the , before disappearing completely from all colonial records. Speculation runs rife – desertion, death, or a surreptitious return to England, leaving her with three children to support?12 Or perhaps after six years, Mrs Elizabeth Needham – Bowes’ maker of Child Bed Linen – finding the colonial marriage not to her taste, had conveniently let it be known that she had a husband still living in England – ‘divorce’ Botany Bay- style?

With the sexes so unequal, women without connection were vulnerable and these abandoned women, ruptured from context and far from ‘family and friends,’ not only lacked familiar support systems, but the complementary family associations which might constitute their whole social identity. In the eighteenth century, marriage for women was a serious business and most would have preferred to take their time – a precipitant marriage could be personally hazardous and could severely disadvantage dependent wives and children. She might be allowed to own the clothes on her back, but not always; as John Styles has it, for by British law, “the owner of a wife's or daughter's clothing was the male head of the family.”13

In a population of garrotters and gamblers, inveterate thieves and habitual drunks, marriage in the colony was a terrain to be negotiated warily. Not all would qualify as desirable partners for a savvy woman seeking to overcome her own socio-civic shortcomings by marriage, the bedrock of respectability and status in Arthur Phillip’s colony.14 These sudden eighteenth-century couplings were neither romantic love nor even lust matches, but were entered into pragmatically as companionate partnerships.15 And with her own idiosyncratic ‘way of seeing’, Grace Karskens gives us a perceptive glimpse into these companionate marriages:

Women and men could have their own circles of friends, both male and female; these might overlap, or they might not. It was not necessary that wives and husbands spend their leisure time together, (although they often did) and it was quite acceptable for them to go their separate ways in pursuit of a living or leisure. In some cases they did not even live together all the time, pursuing different paths and coming together occasionally, yet this did not erode their sense of being married.16

Karskens maintains that even initial promiscuity could merge gradually into the quest to find a suitable partner. An active sexual life seems not to have interfered with the loose-living wantons who did not mind being ‘rumpled’ or ‘pulled about’ on occasion,

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nor did it impede them from forming enduring relationships and ultimately enjoying all the comfort of “companionship, loyalty, affection, consideration, and belonging.”17

Despite the ‘over-writing’ of the judgmental nineteenth century, sexual mores in the eighteenth were not so very different from modern partnering practices. Couples simply set up house together and many a defacto partnership just blossomed into a relationship of long standing, a woman merely assuming the name of her ‘husband’, the name by which she was known in the community if not in the official records.

5.2: – THE CONSORT WIVES

Ambiguously-placed in the civic life of the colony were the female consorts of the

Officers. As ‘wives’ and mistresses of the powerful and frequently mothers of their children, these women would not assume the name of their ‘protectors.’ Some had been in service in England and they were duly recorded officially as housekeepers and servants, and even nurse-maids to their own children.

Welcome companions, they did their time as free women, over half continuing on to become the mistresses of large households, managing the household servants. While the contribution of womanly everyday skills is a given and goes unnoticed with the builders of empire, perhaps a pair of sparkling eyes and a ‘well-dressed’ appearance may not. It was the prerogative of the officer class to board incoming ships and make their purchases directly from the consignments before they were landed, and their ‘wives’ and mistresses were probably better dressed than most.

Well aware of their heightened status yet socially distanced from their own peers, these consort-wives possibly created a restrained social world of their own. These women were – de facto – in stable relationships and, indulged with generous land holdings for their good behaviour, they managed their properties in their own right, expanding and developing, buying and selling, and discreetly entered into the economic life of the colony.

5.3: – THE CONVICT WIVES

Portia Robinson’s investigative zeal and quantitative analytical approach has scraped away at the layers and exposed yet another group of women equally as ambiguously- placed as the consort-wives. These were the “convict-wives.”

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From the beginning, Governor Phillip’s many epistolatory discussions with the Home Office had centred on the difficulties of maintaining law and order in a society with so few women in it:

the number of female convicts bearing a great disproportion to that of the males, it was thought advisable that such of the latter that were married should be allowed to take their wives with them on board the ships.18

Arriving as free women to join their convict husbands, the convict-wives according to Robinson, are truly “the forgotten women of Botany Bay.”19

The transports of the year 1791 had shipped 2,050 male and female convicts to the colony, and also introduced the first of the convict-wives. Six women, all county women, some with children, had taken free passage to Botany Bay to set up life again with a partner with whom they had found “affection, security, loyalty and companionship.”20 These “forgotten women” would dribble into the colony a few at a time over the next decade and would form a distinctive group in the land of the keepers and the kept. Initially all bore the taint of their spouse’s offences, but they were nevertheless free, and would in time become a singular and respected part of the wider community.

Robinson records that this privilege was primarily conceived of as an incentive to the ongoing good behaviour of male convicts:

Passages were considered 'an indulgence' and were granted on the known character and worthiness of the convicted husband rather than on the circumstances in which his family found themselves after his deportation.21 Little thought was given to these women, and until such time as the husband was free, the plight of the wife and children was rarely considered. The assumption was that they, like the low-skill no-skill convict women of the transports, were devoid of any useful skills.22 Until her husband received a ticket-of-leave to work on behalf of his family, the convict-wife found to survive she must petition the Governor directly for those things necessary to enable her to maintain herself and her children.23

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But what happened next was not anticipated ...

None were prepared for the alacrity with which a humble county woman would request farming land – her right as a ‘came-free’ settler and therefore entitled to convict labour – and apply to have her convict husband assigned to her, and tender to supply the Commissariat with the produce.24 Who could have foreseen their determination in applying for all the necessary permits and licences to brew or distil, and then run inns or public houses managing their businesses with or without the ancillary help of their assigned husbands.25

No longer the desperate deserted wives of convicted felons as they had been in England, they found in the topsy-turvy world of the penal colony, “a society which offered them and their families respectability and opportunities for economic independence.”26

Robinson declares,

It was the strength and often strident and vocal determination which … changed entirely the roles and expectations of wives [and all women] in New South Wales.27 For women, convict and free, married and unmarried, they demonstrated that it was possible to overcome the corrosive effect of destitution and opened up new horizons to

which others however disheartened might aspire.28

Although many applied, the number of convict-wives in the community remained small and Robinson maintains that “there was no recognition, by contemporaries or later historians, of the distinct and significant contributions they made to that society.”29

5.4: – WOMEN & WEDLOCK

Most of the 589 convict women at the end of 1791 had been transported for 7 years and some who had arrived on the first ships were just coming out of their time of servitude. Once free and with little capital, post-convict women opened up small shops in the front room of their houses selling basic commodities and perhaps dealing in such creature ‘comforts’ as tea and tobacco. Or they leased larger premises and became ‘house-holders,’ taking in paying lodgers, or set themselves up as washerwomen and shirtmakers for the large surplus of single men in the colony.30

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And some, like the milliners and mantua makers, chose to cater to their own sex, and with the lace-makers and embroiderers, the straw-hat makers and makers of child-bed linen, they lit the first incipient flickerings in the colony of a female economy, that was coalescing elsewhere in the European world around the new fashions and ways of dressing.31 These independent women demonstrated that despite Phillip’s well- intentioned recommendations, marriage was not intrinsic to survival, and for the entrepreneurial, the legal restrictions of legitimate wedlock were something to be

avoided completely.32

Attraction between the sexes was considered natural and normal, and for a woman of a mind to wed, the colony was one big marriage mart. The majority of women landed on the shores to inaugurate the new thief colony were aged between 18 and 35,33 but until the mid-nineteenth century, the average lifespan for male and female alike was no more than 50 years.34

As Karskens observes, in the eighteenth century, life could be very short indeed. These women from the lower tiers of British and Irish society were instrumental in establishing a new social construct where ‘morality’ was redefined in colonial terms, and even that infamous highway-woman, notorious in England as Hell-fire Moll – Mary Humphries of the Lady Penrhyn – slipped blamelessly into a marriage with John King, a bricklayer.35 Ideally, like the book-stitcher Elizabeth Barbour, she too may have found ‘comfort’ in the companionate marriage.36

5.5: – WOMEN & WORK

Both Karskens (1995) and Robinson (1998) uncovered and discovered the hidden

women of Australian history in a way that other histories had not.

Their work can be mapped onto Maynard’s analysis of clothing culture which was published around the same time (1994) – but had been many years in preparation (since

the 1980s).37

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Clothing and dress cannot eclipse its human subjects, but it is an essential part of humanity, and beneath the veneer of official documentation there emerged the first stirrings of what Robinson terms “a distinct and distinctive female society” that out outpaced and then outgrew the traditional class system of Old England. Convict and free, married and single, Robinson contends these women “lived and worked within a class structure which barred no woman ... their stepping-stone to colonial respectability

was economic achievement.”38

Analysis of clothing in the Australian colonies will therefore be distinctive compared to other colonial societies and outposts as women’s lives, marriages and opportunities were quite distinctive.

No longer the degraded “vile baggages,” of many accounts,39 they were reformed – transformed even – into worthy citizens, and as Robinson argues, it was they who are

primarily accredited with:

the new structure of female society which emerged at Botany Bay, based on colonial conditions, standards and achievements, resulting in a class system which differed entirely from that in Britain.40 Fate (and the superiority of numbers) had stripped away the irrelevant shibboleths of old England, replacing them with a new hierarchy of the useful trades, and with a new periodicity – a fashion life punctuated not by the London ‘Season’ or seasonal change as in France, but by ship arrivals and cargoes. Small as it was, the little settlement on Sydney Cove “possessed all the evils and allurements of a sea port of some standing,” according to the Judge- Advocate.41 During the colony’s transport ‘season’, with restored rations and full bellies, the populace was out and about, regaling gullible newcomers and naive visitors with their lurid stories, while the professional gamblers and practised con-men, male and female, would descend upon the port town to relieve the free-spending seamen of their cash.

Some incorrigible good-time girls did not aim for reformation at all. Life was short, and like Defoe’s loose-living thief Moll Flanders, they too declined “to have the scandal of a whore, without the joy,”42 and they continued joyously to exchange their company and sexual favours for a length of ribbon, a trinket or two, just as they might have done in Britain.

Section 18

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5.6: – THE ARRIVAL OF THE PITT

The new year of 1792 began, and once again there was the drawn-out uneasy wait for

the arrival of the supply ships. Rations were reduced and then reduced again, and Collins records that the colony’s administrators were becoming increasingly wary of “any riot or disturbance” among the under-classes.43 Of the 122 male convicts who came out in the previous year, Collins estimates “only 50 were [still] living,” something he seems to find truly regrettable:

... had not such numbers died ... we should not at this moment have had any thing to receive from the public stores; thus strangely did we derive a benefit from the miseries of our fellow creatures.44

Although the year had begun hot and dry, by early February the summer rains had come and suddenly the land was lush and green. The arrival mid-February of the first transport for 1792, the Pitt, with 368 convicts added 49 more convict women,45 and also brought in the last influx of the New South Wales Corps and their commander Major Grose, to replace the departed Major Ross.46

The tired little Supply had returned to England and had arrived safely and the Pitt, as a replacement, carried on her crowded deck a new sloop ‘in frame’ to be completed in the colony.47 No doubt forewarned by the returned troops of what to expect in the colony, this half-made vessel competed for cargo space with the personal belongings and the ‘private investments’ of the gentlemen officers and men of the new Corps, on which account, Collins observes, “many very useful articles for the colony“ and “several bales of clothing” had been left behind.

Major Francis Grose records his first impression of the poor soil of that deceitful landscape: “I find there is neither the scarcity that was represented to me, nor the barren sands I was taught to imagine I should see;” and he writes to a colleague in England:

The whole place is a garden ... fruit and vegetables of every description grow in the greatest luxuriance. ... You may rest assured, that hunger and misery attack none here, but those who are too idle to help themselves.48 And immediately on arrival, help themselves they did. Commandeering with permission a house at the water’s edge, the officers of the Pitt opened up a sale- shop

for their private speculations, prompting a critical Collins to express his reservations 137

about “the high price at which every thing was sold.”49 As for the garden-like appearance, although the Indian corn was green and growing, the wheat was not. At this time, when wheat-bread and salt meat were dietary staples for Britons of all classes, the Pitt carried no flour at all to the distressed colonials.

Mid-year Collins describes “the inexpressible joy“ of the population when at last the laden storeship the Atlantic, so desperately dispatched to Bengal the previous year for emergency provisions, finally anchored safely in the cove.50 Rather than purchasing expensive supplies from Dutch-held Batavia or Cape Town, the Home Office had taken up the notion to provision the colony directly from British suppliers in Calcutta, despite knowing from a previous instance that if victualled from such a long distance, the coarse Bengali flour would sour in transit and the experimental barrels of salt pork would arrive “for the most part putrid ... not fit for men to eat.“51

Collins calculates the numbers at 4,639 hungry bellies – ”a vast body of hard-working people,” dependent for nourishment upon inferior cereals “without one ounce of meat!“ – and even the quietly circumspect Judge-Advocate is driven to the use of an exclamatory to express his feelings.52

5.7: – RICHARD ATKINS

A Mr. Richard Atkins, gentleman, newly arrived free on the Pitt, diarised his own

poetic impressions of the colony on his first exploratory walk along the main road south to the Brickfields, and the little hamlet of brick-makers’ huts built near the claypits:

A very good road is made the whole way to it through the wood, where trees of an immence size border it on both sides, their lofty and wide spreading Branches look beautiful ... The underwood is mostly flowering shrubs, some of whom are now in blossom of the most vivid and beautifull Colours imaginable, and many of them most delicately formed.53

For this newcomer, the shortfall in provisions was noted as endemic to the colony: “God help the poor wretches that work hard and have nothing but their allowance to

feed on.”54

With the clustering of small ex-convict settler-farms around Parramatta and the

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opening up of the new ground at Toongabbie, the permanent presence of a magistrate for the area appeared essential to the orderly administration of the expanded colony. In May, Richard Atkins was formally sworn in as magistrate and Justice of the Peace, and stationed permanently at Parramatta.55

Coming down river every week to dine with the Governor in Sydney, he was beguiled by Arthur Phillip’s bucolic vision of a new ‘Albion,’ and became party to his concerns and hopes for the new colony. Developing a strong respect for the man – “too much praise cannot be given to the Governor for (I may say) the paternal care and encouragement he give to all and each of them who deserve it.” Atkins formed the opinion that under Phillip’s humane administration the convicts were “in every particular much better situated than they could possibly be in England.“56 But he recorded his disquiet again mid-year when the supply ships that were to follow the Pitt had still not arrived:

It is now about twelve months since we left England and no Ship is yet arrived, our provisions ... and all kinds of Slops [roughly made basic clothing] run very short.57

Eventually the ships did come, and supplies continued to straggle in over the ensuing months. The ships of the year added 123 more women from London and the English provinces and, for the first time, Irish women direct from Dublin, after London the second largest city in all Europe.

The transports were widely perceived as shiploads of common thieves by the growing number of ex-convicts. Moving now into their newly respectable post-convict lives, they were beginning to accumulate something to lose. They in their turn were viewed with equal suspicion by the wary, bewildered people arriving in the notorious tainted thief colony of Botany Bay, new faces to be distributed across Sydney, Parramatta and Norfolk Island, strangers to be processed into a community. The Judge-Advocate comments: “Indeed neither the property nor the persons of individuals were safe for some time,” and here Collins seems to indicate that a sea change would take place as the new arrivals absorbed the ‘atmospherics’ of Phillip’s open gaol and acclimatised to the different cultural ambience and the transmission of a specific local culture.58

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5.8: – CLOTHING THE WOMEN

By the end of the year the Commissariat was able to distribute to the women still on

stores, “one cloth petticoat” plus “one coarse shift; one pair of shoes; one pair of yarn stockings,”59 hardly a complete outfitting for the free-born women of British working folk who were proudly reputed, by themselves and acknowledged by visiting foreign travellers, to be the best dressed in all Europe.60 Actions can speak louder than words, and echoing down through time is the response of one London convict woman aboard the Lady Penrhyn, who in 1788 made her own withering critique of the government issue by flinging the slops back to the issuing officer, then flounced off in her own clothes as it was noted, into the virgin wilderness, never to be seen again.61

Collins records the long list of civic occasions that were an opportunity for the display of patriotic fervour, when anniversaries and birthdays of the King and the royal family were celebrated with an almost religious zeal.62 Their healths were loyally toasted with an allowance of rum, “in acknowledgment that we were Britons, who, however distant and distressed, revered our king, and loved our country,” recorded Captain Hunter.63

Although the convicted women through their crimes had lost the rights and privileges of free women, they were nonetheless British women and retained their faith in the rule of English law and British civil liberties. They were aware of the wider world of their own times but only insofar as it might impact on their own lives. Portia Robinson observes, “They were women to whom public physical punishment was neither extraordinary nor barbarous,”64 although it was reported they found the punitive practice of hair cutting abhorrent, and head shaving in particular, barbaric in the

extreme.65

Australian historian Cassandra Pybus critiques the histories which seem to take no account of the lived experience of that daunting trans-oceanic voyage into an unknown new world and deplores the written narratives which “invariably [start] in England and then [jump] to Port Jackson, as if the eight months in between were some limbo where history and life experience was suspended.”66 Some women had never in their lives ventured far beyond their own neighbourhoods,67 but now thrust into the forced intimacies of crowded shipboard life, many would find the voyage a transformative experience.

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Section 19 5.9: – REVOLUTIONS

Meanwhile half a world away on the other side globe, another woman, another traveller, was about to undergo a similar life-changing experience. For reasons not clearly specified, an observant and articulate English gentle-woman had returned to France in the year 1792 in the aftermath of its dramatic political Revolution of 1789. And she displays the same deeply internalised sense of Britishness when she writes to her brother in England lauding, “a constitution which requires no oath to make you cherish it: and a national liberty, which is felt and valued without the aid of extrinsic decoration.”68 She is puzzled to find the French nation so changed after an absence of only two years: “Before the revolution, France was at this season a scene of much gaiety,“ and she writes, “I have not yet been here long enough to discover the causes of this change.”69

Even though France was once more at war with Austria and skirmishes raged nearby, the gentlewoman and her British companions continued their touring and the English woman proudly reports “feeling a momentary importance at the recollection of my country,” when she was able to assert “Je suis Anglaise et par consequent libre d'aller ou bon me semble.”70 Despite occasional ‘interference,’ she reassures her brother, “our

revolution aera has passed tranquilly in the provinces.”71

A lady of uncertain years and marital status, she remained resident in the country for the next four years, maintaining throughout a covert correspondence with her brother back in England. The epistolatory collection was published anonymously in 1795. Titled “A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795,” it carries as its subtitle: “a Series of Letters from an English Lady: With General and Incidental Remarks on

the French Character and Manners.”72 Inevitably the intelligent Resident Lady turns her ‘visitor’s eye’ on French culture, and predictably its fashion:

For many years we were content to let France remain the arbitress of the lighter departments of taste: lately she has ceded this province to us, and England has dictated with uncontested superiority...

Thoughtfully, she goes on to observe:

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But if, while we export fashions to this country, we should receive in exchange her republican systems, it would be a strange revolution indeed.73

It was an age for revolutions. Britain itself, the land of the Three Kingdoms, was under siege. To the west were the stubborn, resistant Welsh and to the north, the politically restless determined Scots, while further west across the Irish Sea were the “wild lawless Irish,”74 dispossessed of their lands, creating havoc and demanding independence. In this light, the occasional reference in Australian sources to the Irish “croppies” hoeing corn and grubbing up stumps out on the Government farms may not be, as Australian researchers might easily assume, a simple reference to their agrarian toil in the cornfields, but rather to their hair cropped in the style of the rioting Parisian sans culotte, and possibly a disturbing sign of Republican sympathies festering away in His Majesty’s colony.75

Irish Republicans often cropped their hair, and sometimes were killed by the British who covered their heads in pitch and then set it alight.

The colony at the end of the world was not remote from the competitive maritime

world of the seaways existing at the end of the century. Even in their own short history

had there not been the unsettling arrival of two French ‘discovery’ ships within days

of their own arrival on the isolated coast of New Holland?76 England was developing

apace as a maritime and colonial power, commanding a new importance in the global

trading patterns, but France was still the most powerful state on the whole of the

European continent.

Section 20

5.10: – THE FRENCH

A young Austrian princess, Marie Antoinette, was only 14 years old in 1770 when she arrived in France to wed the 15-year-old Dauphin, heir to the French throne. The dynastic political marriage was intended to consolidate two kingdoms and unite two countries that had been enemies for generations.77

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Largely ignored by her shy introverted young husband (the marriage itself would not be consummated for another seven years), the young Dauphine, so soon to be Queen, threw herself into the fashionable life of the most fashionable, most influential court in all Europe.

France and the French court ruled in all matters of style and French-inspired grand- habit de cours were donned daily in royal courts throughout Europe.78 Worn with the low-cut ceremonial bodice – whale-boned and very tightly laced – was the ever- widening skirt and its petticoats which needed the firm support of metal or whalebone panniers on each hip to display the heavy figured brocades and lavish embroideries. The style itself was physically demanding, requiring new postures, new gestures, new ways of moving to accommodate it.

When in 1846, Frederick Fairholt, antiquarian and artist, compiled his comprehensive Costume in England, he advocated his book, illustrated with his own woodcuts, as an indispensable guide for all portrait artists as “correct information [of fashion] has become an acknowledged essential to the historical painter.” His account extends from the classic dress of the Greeks and Romans to George III and the year 1800, and he describes the English court of George III and Queen Charlotte thus:

neither of the two royal personages was particularly distinguished as graceful or brilliant, and the king had a strong predilection for a quiet, domestic country life, and the practical operations of farming.79

With such leadership, English court fashion was less than directional and in England, the mantle for stylish innovation had long fallen to John Owen’s Fashionables, who

in every part of their demeanour ... have reference to some invisible standard, which they call the Ton or the Fashion ... and by this mysterious talisman, their manners, their dress, their language, and the whole of their behaviour, is tried.80

Like ‘moderns’ of the present day, the artist Fairholt, not born until 1814, finds women’s fashions of the recent past tragically bizarre: “All sorts of uglinesses were invented and worn, answering to all kinds of queer names.”81

But Fairholt reserves his full ire for the dressing of the hair and the elaborate coiffure “which increased in monstrosity and reigned for more than twenty years,” and

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established the iconic look associated in most modern minds with eighteenth century dress.

The style was known as the pouf. Towering above the face by almost a metre, it required "many a good pound of wool" – and wire, and horse-hair, and hair appropriated from the poor. The whole construction, glued into place with a mix of pomatum and hair powder, was left undisturbed for weeks, Fairholt declining a description of “its numerous inhabitants” as “too revolting for modern readers.”82

Figure 19: Photo-montage Tristan Hanlon and Author

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A specialist in eighteenth-century French literature and culture, historian Caroline

Weber, in her erudite biography Queen of Fashion, and writing about the distinctive fashion of this era, subtitles the work, What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution.83 Weber is particularly attentive to the politics manifesting in dress and she describes her book in interview as simply a history “told through wardrobe.”84

With the fall of the Bastille in July 1789, Paris was in turmoil, the rioting mobs demanding reform and a constitutional monarchy. The absolute monarch, Louis XVI with his royal household fled to Versailles, but in October, the royal family were forced into carriages and dragged back to Paris by irate working women to be tried by the populace. Left behind were the young Queen’s grand gowns, and the rich laces, brocades and embroideries were all looted or destroyed. The loss of this important material evidence “certainly posed a challenge,” and thrust Weber into constructing Marie Antoinette’s sad short history from little more than her sartorial notoriety gleaned from the ‘public prints’ – the French newspapers of the time.

Marie Antoinette’s heightened status as Queen was expected to be legible from her dress, but she had begun to lose her hold when she wilfully began to breach the strict sartorial etiquette that governed French . Even the common citoyens were scandalised when she renounced the gargantuan hoops and tight- laced ceremonial . Transgressing everything they held sacred, she chose to assume simpler, more playful gowns, particularly the much-criticised ‘muslin gaulle.’ Surprisingly, ironically, those very same revolutionaries who were calling for her execution would soon adopt the radical white gaulle for informal wear.

5.11: – THE YEARS OF TERROR

In 1792, the Resident Lady records that it was now not unusual in France for well- dressed women to be verbally abused on the streets. Even she – an English woman! – was “nearly thrown down” for unwittingly wearing a bonnet sporting green ribbons, a

colour politically identified in France with the aristocrates, the Royalist supporters.85

Within weeks, and now a reluctant ‘participant observer’, the Lady has a disturbing insight: “Man is a proud animal even when oppressed by misfortune, he seeks for his tranquility in reason and reflection; whereas,“rationalises this practical English

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woman, ”a post-chaise and four, or even a hard-trotting horse, is worth all the

philosophy in the world.”86

And finally exasperated with masculine literary meanderings and philosophic prognostications, she informs her brother: “... carriages are ordered for seven

to-morrow ... seven females, with all their appointments, are to occupy them.”87 The genteel English party was escaping to the depths of the French countryside.

And so began the Years of Terror:

Our society consists mostly of females, and we do not venture out, but hover together like the fowls of heaven ... Paris is the scene of proscription and massacres ... every day subtracts from my courage, and adds to my apprehensions.88

Section 21

5.12: – THE EYE OF THE MANTUA MAKER

Like Caroline Weber, we too must construct our eighteenth century fashion history for this 1788-1793 period without much surviving material evidence. We are doubly challenged as our own “public print,” the Sydney Gazette, was still a decade away and the fashion of this foundation period in Australian history will not be found in any paper trail (although this candidate has already discovered much evidence in diaries, letters, broadsheets and British newspaper reports).

Discovered on display in a country museum,89 patronised more for its strong connection with the Ned Kelly story than for its eighteenth century fashion, is the elegant embroidered gown featured above.90 From the 1770s, the era of Marie Antoinette, it has no place in our colonial fashion-scape, and by the criteria established by both Fletcher and Maynard, it can play no part in any authentic Australian dress heritage.91

However, its forms and ethos remind us that the First Fleeters had seen such elite clothes on a daily basis before they sailed. This type of dress remained in their mindset as the aspiration of elegance, even if it is well understood now that the ‘poor’ did not simply

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ape the rich but had their own modes of appearing and behaving that were not simply aspirational in a modern or contemporary sense of the word.

Figure 20: Photo-montage: Author

This second view of the gown featured in Figure 19 reveals that it lacks the formalities of le grand-habit de cour, and is not a court dress. Nevertheless, it retains all its important lines and proportions, and portrays the same long waist as the tight-fitting corps de robe, and the under-petticoat and its matching trained over-gown are still en . The whalebone constrictions and unwieldy contraptions under-pinning full court dress are replaced here by separate stays and the modest padded hip rolls of the seventeenth century mantua (Section 21.1, Figure 5). The gown keeps the same high armholes and

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narrow-cut sleeves which confined the elbows well to the side, constraining practical arm movement to little more than the fluttering language of the fan.

The provenance of this museum piece itself is complex. It was custom-made, probably by a mantua maker for an Isabella Brown and, anecdotally, was worn in Glasgow. This heirloom gown was handed down through her direct descendants in the female line until it was sent on to her Scottish descendants in Australia, arriving in the ‘colony’ in the 1950s, unpicked and in pieces. It was kept for decades tissue-wrapped in a box, its style dismantled, its sentiment forgotten, until eventually the pieces were donated in 1994 to the local history museum by Isabella Brown’s great-great-great grand-daughter.92 Today we know nothing about Isabella Brown herself beyond her name, and this gown.

Its history lost through the generations, it was no doubt retained for its valuable fabric, the creamy silk brocade hand-embroidered with sprigs of pink flowers and green leaves by a long forgotten needlewoman. This museum piece was re- constructed from its original pieces during 1995 under the informed direction of a modern mantua maker – museum volunteer and costume history lecturer, Norma Miller Grubb, dressmaker and pattern-maker. By following the original needle-prickings of its long-dead seamstress, she ‘read’ its architecture, its blueprint, its pattern,93 and assembled and stitched by the nimble-fingered, the museum volunteers finally restored to the gown its fashion.94 It proved to have the graceful sacque-back and small train of a Watteau painting, the style known as the robe à la française. This style was worn throughout Europe and Britain – and in Glasgow, Scotland – during the 1770s.95

Inevitably the long torso and cumbersome wide skirts began to shrink and women’s gowns began to undergo rapid change shortly before the departure of the First Fleet in 1787. The long waistline had continued to rise imperceptibly with every London Season since, and when their mistresses cast off old fashion to engage with the new, traditionally many a servant girl received her mistress’s cast-off clothing, and as one astounded German visitor writes, out in the countryside even milkmaids might have “the look of

Strand misses.”96

Outside London, in the provincial capitals and the countryside beyond, a genteel elegance was appreciated and fashionable clothing need not embody the constant novelty generated in the buzzing metropolis with its plethora of dress resources. In the remote colony on the other side of the world, women might be expected to adopt a provincial approach, and something very similar in silhouette to Isabella Brown’s gown

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might have been worn as special holiday dress.

It was unlikely at that date that such a garment might have been made of silk, although silks arrived very quickly in the colony from India, and their adoption by colonial women was much commented upon by visitors from the 1820s and 30s. It is possible, however, that some women adjusted their hair in order to look fashionable.; McNeil’s research on Macaroni men has suggested that male fops in the English countryside adopted such practices, even when they could not afford fine clothes.

“The great feature of this period of English costume were the high heads of the ladies,”

states Fairholt, and it was not until 1789 that the ladies of England “began to relieve

themselves of their load of hair.”97 In 1787 even the fashionable affectations of ‘big hair’

may have diffused as far as the transported Mary Davis, the servant girl whom Bowes

records bounced on her head when she fell down a gangway on the Lady Penrhyn.98

Section 22

5.13: – THE DAZZLE OF CLOTH

Historians Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, co-authors of East & West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe, chronicle the seminal role of textile goods in European fashion from the 1500s to the 1800s, finding in the last decades of the eighteenth century, “a new articulation of the fashion dynamic” gestating around an “insatiable appetite” for oriental textiles, and the evolution of a fashion system which ultimately reshaped

Europe.99

The authors define fashion itself as “a self-perpetuating process which informed the historical dynamic, linking itself with other components of the society and economy,”100 and argue persuasively that in addressing both elite and plebeian tastes, the “fashion contagion” presented the contentious prospect of “a society remade, reordered,

reformed.”101

The ‘fashioning’ of textiles in Europe had relied mainly on time- consuming techniques of weaving on the loom and embellishing with the needle. ... Painting and printing were more adaptable, faster and less expensive than weaving design.102

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European women were drawn like moths to “the brilliant colours of Indian cottons ... unmatched in any fabric they knew.”103 Indian dye technicians, ever ready to cater for the diversity and stylistic preferences of their international clientele, reworked the ingenious designs of traditional Indian patterns and botanicals sourced from the differing regions of the sub-continent to accommodate current European tastes and a wide range of markets.104

While entrepreneurial European merchants endeavoured to import Indian dye and printing methods into their own workshops, their English counterparts had been inventing and developing new mechanical and technical devices since early in the eighteenth century and, experimenting with their own dye recipes and methods, they had originated unique formulae unknown to Indian dyers.105 Once developed and refined to meet popular tastes and preferences, English entrepreneurs found even for their discriminating European markets, “the copy could become more appealing than

the original.”106

Here John Styles moves us from the general to the particular; London was “the largest urban centre in western Europe,“ he states, and here “new products were imported, invented, endorsed, Anglicized, copied, adapted, reformulated and marketed.”107 Textiles whether in the light delicate tints like Isabella’s embroidered gown, or brightly ‘sprigg’d’ with painted flowers, or even patterned in the complex nuanced hues favoured by the elite, the exciting new fabrics required only a mantua maker’s sure hand on the scissors to fashion them into the mode.

When the competitive ladies of the ‘Quality’ could distinguish themselves by the latest modish appearance expressed in the sumptuosity of the fabric coupled with the amplitude of cloth, we can call on the taste and expertise of Maria Edgeworth’s literary doyenne of fashion, the haughty Lady Delacour, who pontificating to an aspiring fashion novice, advises her that any lady of note could gauge one’s social worth minutely, “au juste, to a farthing a yard.”108

And in the less rarified air of plebeian women, Styles is more specific; for prints on hard wearing local linen or the new imported cotton, the key characteristics distinguishing quality were “the coarseness of the yarn, the density of the weave, the register of the printing.”109

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Both the socially elite and women of the lesser orders made their choice from this cornucopia of commercial delight, and had their cloth cut, fitted and trimmed in the current fashion by their mantua maker or a tailor; even the poor and those in remote rural areas expected their outer garments to fit well and display a modicum of what Lemire and Riello term “fashion consciousness.”110

And so with Styles’ erudite “mapping the diffusion of new products socially and geographically”111 across England, we move from his British particularities to the specifics of Botany Bay, the most singular of all Britain’s colonies and dominions.

Far off the commercial trade routes, the colonials were thrust into developing closer ties with English suppliers in Bengal and Calcutta, and Indian fabrics would acquire a particular significance for the benighted penal community in their cheap osnaberg

(coarse woolen cloth).112 The proximity to India would also invite the first tricklings of independent traders who might essay a commercial venture so far south.

Collins records the occasion when the lookout flags signalled a ship from Calcutta was in the offing, and there working its way up to Sydney Cove was the exotic Shah Hormuzear, manned by Lascars who were all “trembling with cold.”113 Its English captain had “embarked some property on a private speculation for this country,”114 mostly marine supplies and much-needed livestock) but forewarned in port by the transports returning from Botany Bay, he surely was alerted to the dearth of cloth and clothing in the colony.

Enticing Indian designs were derived and developed by entrepreneurial English manufacturers at home,115 and shipped directly to the colony or were acquired from Britain’s commercial agents on the sub-continent. From mundane indigo blue dungaree and checkered madras, to the fine calicoes and delicate gazars, India was not only the source, but the inspiration for much of the cloth that arrived in the colony.

In time, the easy maritime connections to Calcutta and Bengal may have tempted folk of modest means to embark on their own small commercial speculations of cheap bandannas and brightly coloured shawls, and in time, gold and silver trinkets, watch chains and shoe buckles, earrings and bangles. These are the essential frivolities intrinsic to eighteenth century fashion consciousness, which Collins would crossly dismiss as the “sweepings” of an Indian bazaar.116

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Section 23

5.14: – ORAL HISTORIES

Eighteenth-century recorders are a patrician lot. No doubt they had an understanding of fashion within their own cultural sphere but how authoritative are their eighteenth century texts in speaking for the sartorial culture of the transported felons of Botany Bay? Drawing on transcripts of the court records at the Old Bailey, these verbatim “oral” histories capture their own perspective on fashion and bring the voices of the past to enlighten the present.

The dress of the labouring classes was always a contentious issue, and at the courts of the Old Bailey, any overtly fashionable appearance of a felon attracted attention. Styles quotes one judge’s derisive reproof of a defendant for her appearance in his court, asking if such “finery” was “fit for a washerwoman,” and the pert response of the young

woman, “My Lord, it was all the finery I had.”117

Or witness the sarcastic rhetoric directed at a stylish man-servant, the tipsy victim of two wily “women of the town” who took his watch, then his breeches, and when he called for a Constable, pushed him out through the window and locked him half-naked outside on the first floor of the building. “You was too much a man of fashion for that” quipped the Prisoner's Counsel to the gallery, and the women were acquitted.118

In the Old Bailey Sessions Papers, a fashionable appearance among the underclasses was viewed with suspicion, and frequently perceived as evidence of some low-class chicanery. Prosecuting employers, all too aware of the wages they paid their servants, were uniquely placed to notice any modish discrepancy and an aggrieved linen-draper

professes: “What led me to suspect him was his dress.”119

Establishing the worth of goods was a particular concern to the courts as the value of items stolen determined the sentence, and when anything above two pounds might be a hanging matter, the official tendency was to question, “What is the value of it,

without fashion?”120

A prosecuting craftsman identifying his own goods attests “they are quite out of the present fashion;”121 and a defensive but disappointed thief describing the stolen items he had pawned states, “articles grown out of fashion ... become less valuable.”122 Asked

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for the value of stolen property, a prosecution witness for his shop-keeping master explains, “there is no putting a real value upon these things ... it is such a fancy trade, we lose such a deal by fashion.”123 Cloth and textile products appear in the prosecutorial lists and their material fragility, subject to wear, fading and insects, created a particular difficulty in assigning worth to stolen waistcoats and widows’ weeds. However evidential solidity is found in a prosecution for the theft of finger rings when the response of one dealer was: “Things that are old are only fit for breaking,” and he adds almost needlessly, “on account of the old fashion of them ... if I had put them in the window, they might have laid there twenty years.”124

5.15: – BORROWING NETWORKS

Researching theft patterns in England from the Old Bailey transcripts, Canadian

historian Lynn MacKay quantifies the appropriation patterns of women thieves in the decade between 1779 and 1789, and concludes, “Female thieves were not simply paler reflections of the male norm.“125 She finds a common sameness in women’s lives, reflecting their traditional domestic responsibility to provide for the needs of the household, and identifies a female preference pattern for the theft of cloth, clothing and household goods. Clothing absorbed the major part of household outgoings particularly if there were children, and she finds necessity prompted much of the female theft in the decade between 1780 and 1790, a particularly critical period for British labouring folk.126 This is a significant period for our convict women who were sentenced in this time- frame. Many would find themselves destined for Botany Bay.

MacKay finds “surfacing” in the indictments, evidence of what she identifies as “borrowing networks.”127 From her insights into a discrete women’s culture, MacKay determines “females were more likely to engage in certain forms of mutuality,”128 and even as strangers, “they often behaved with generosity to one another.”129

For instance, the case of Elizabeth Parry and one kindly milkwoman:

The prisoner came to me as a person that was out of place, a country girl just came to town, she desired employment in the milk business, she said she had no friends nor no money; for that reason I took her.130

When after some months Elizabeth Parry fell sick, the milkwoman “got her bled, and

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gave her three-pence to pay for it,” then left the sick servant alone in the house. Returning two hours later, she discovered the invalid gone, her own trunk open and all her property missing – the money she had put by to pay her cow-keeper, and but for the work clothes on her back, all her clothing stolen, including an unworn bombazine gown and petticoat just come new from the mantua maker. Taken up wearing the new gown and other stolen items, the prisoner Parry admitted to the arresting officer they were her mistress’s property, but once in Court, she lied blatantly; “I wore that gown two months in this town, before ever I saw this woman,” she protested vehemently despite the testimony of the mantua maker who insisted, “I know my work.”131

Elizabeth Parry was found guilty and arrived in Australia in 1790 on the Second Fleet. Within three months she had met and married another convict, who being “bred to the business of a farmer,” farming was in his blood.132 Ruse had expressed to the Governor a wish to stay on in the colony at the expiration of his sentence and to settle on the land, and aired some practical ideas of rendering the unpromising soil more productive. This elicited an allocation of land at Parramatta and the euphoric Arthur Phillip, vindicated at last, named it Experiment Farm.

Watkin Tench in his review of the state of the colony prior to his departure, visited the settler couple in 1791 and he quotes James Ruse, “I have no person to help me at present but my wife ... she is industrious.”133

Elizabeth Parry, the ‘industrious’ farm wife, was first of the few convict women to receive an Absolute Pardon directly. In 1792, Collins records Governor Phillip’s delight in officially granting her a full remission of sentence by extending “the hand of forgiveness,” and restoring “her rights and privileges as a free woman.” The Judge- Advocate was equally elated: “This power, so pleasing to the feelings of its possessor, had hitherto been very sparingly exercised.”134

Women in the Old Bailey cases frequently loaned each other gowns or items of dress to marry in, to apply for a job, to win over an errant husband or lover. Inevitably there were misunderstandings whether the item in question had been gifted or was merely on loan, but Elizabeth Parry’s disappearance with her mistress’s best gown and her whole stock of clothing had broken the unwritten rules that governed these informal short term loans.

MacKay argues that while women’s collective approach was “an important

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makeshift,”135 these humble “borrowing networks” exacerbated the “somewhat fluid notion” of personal ownership that differed markedly between the lower classes and the keepers responsible for law and order, the empowered elite: “Crime – especially theft – was thought to be a very serious social problem.”136

Among themselves, cash-stricken women frequently loaned each other items to pawn in emergencies, and even pawnbrokers’ pledges themselves could function as a currency. The financial dynamics were thus “a precarious, complex juggling act”137 staged between three factors, the borrower, the lender and the pawnbroker.

This native practice carried over into the new colony; the first convicts would have lost no time in restoring the liquidity which by custom and common sense was believed ‘natural’ to all clothing, however threadbare, while more expensive items like best gowns and jewellery moved with regularity in and out of the pawnbroker’s. And all convicts would have been familiar with the ubiquitous British pawnbroker whose neighbourly community spirit was wryly lauded into song:

What a blessing it is, in this place of renown To know that we have such an Uncle in town; In all cases, degrees, in all places and stations,

'Tis a good thing to know we've such friendly relations.138

Lacking these convenient avuncular go-betweens so central to the domestic economy of working folk, the First Fleeters and later arrivals established their networks to facilitate these simple day-to-day transactions, and adopted the more formal colonial practice of seeking temporary credit from amiable innkeepers or trusting friends who would accept an IOU.

By the unrecognised generosity of family and friends, some fortunate women may have brought in their bundles and boxes, caps, neckerchiefs, capes, jewellery and even gowns, gifted to them on their departure by wellwishers – they were a store of value which could be sold on to accommodate the uncertainties of the future.

5.16: – STOLEN GARMENTS

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Stolen garments, however, required more specialised dealers. One of the earliest court cases in New South Wales involved a women receiver. An unnamed miscreant was publicly whipped, and then pompously forced by the authorities to wear ‘the dress of shame’: “her slops [were] marked with the initials, R.S.G.” thereby adverting to a population of practised cloth and clothing thieves, ever alert for opportunity, that here indeed was a genuine no-questions-asked Receiver of Stolen Goods.139

Judge-Advocate Collins blamed the easy access between Sydney and Parramatta. The road traversed by Richard Atkins between tall trees with their “lofty and wide spreading Branches” to the brick pits, continued on past the little Brickfields hamlet, and crossing rivulets and dry creek beds, followed what was little more than a winding bridle path a further thirteen or fourteen miles west to the township of Parramatta:

The easy communication between Sydney and Parramatta had been found to be a very great evil from the time the path was first made ... stolen property was transferred from one place to another by means of this quick conveyance.140

Therefore, in the year 1792, the Governor set up town markets at both Parramatta and Sydney “for the sale of grain, fish, poultry, livestock, wearing apparel, and every other article that convicts might purchase or sell,” reports the Judge-Advocate, adding emphatically, ”... to prevent the selling or interchanging of stolen goods among the convicts; a measure that appeared to be daily becoming more necessary.”141

Held under the perspicacious eye of the responsible record-taking market clerk, the town markets could be used for more legitimate purposes by old-clothes dealers and china women, and as likely as not, by the stocking knitters, lace makers and straw hat women, the poor making-do with what little was available as they had in England.

In proposing that theft be understood as a gendered experience, MacKay singles out shoplifting as a “largely female undertaking.”142

“Shoplifting was a particular speciality of women,” observes Beverly Lemire:

Deep pockets under aprons or petticoats, as well as the capacious petticoats themselves, concealed all manner of pilfered garments, from gowns and stays to shoes, petticoats and handkerchiefs.143

In 1786, a sixteen-year-old shoplifter had been caught by a milliner-

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supplier’s eagle-eyed shopwoman pocketing two long lengths of expensive black silk lace, each “a proper quantity for a cloak.” Abrahams, a milliner, was caught red-handed, but made no defence in court and she arrived on the Prince of Wales in 1788. Her dark good looks drew the attention of the Lieutenant of the Marines, George Johnston. Like Ann Inett, she became one of the privileged consort-wives, and the mother of seven children. As “Mrs Julian” she led a secluded life and was rarely seen in public at all, thereby rousing a lot of prurient interest among the local gossip-mongers. Because of her ‘relationship’, the erstwhile milliner automatically received grants of land for her ‘good behaviour’, and this long standing de facto arrangement ended in a marriage in 1814, legitimising her children and finally, from 1826, ensured a comfortable widowhood.

Trial transcripts also open a new window into the old-as-antiquity craft-skills and arcane knowledges associated with the cloth, clothing and dress trades. Identifying and defining themselves by their occupations, the participants slotted into a complex hierarchy of trades, but their socio-economic status (decipherable by their peers) is no longer discernable to modern readers.

Browsing the trial transcripts brings up not just the mantua makers and milliners, but silk throwsters, tire-women, piece-brokers, small clothes makers, chamber milliners, trimming makers, pin-headers, shopwomen, hoop-makers, fullers, frippers, comb- makers, button makers, calico printers, bonnet makers, feather merchants, callenders, masquerade costumiers, stocking frame knitters, mitten makers, dry-scourers, lace- brokers and even smugglers.144

Women’s employments did not attract a living wage, and numbered among the 49 latest arrivals transported on the Pitt in 1792 was the “outspoken” Mary Owen, employed simply as a “forewoman.” Taken into custody for theft from her master, she told the judge she had looked upon the off-cut remnants she had “stolen” from her workroom as her customary perquisites: “I had but eight shillings a week. I did a man's work.”145

To these women living out their fragile lives, eking out a living, Styles maintains, “even a pair of silver buckles embodied life's possibilities: garments that were old, patched and ragged represented its peril.”146 And from the lone opportunistic pilferer like Mary Battams snatching up a pair of shoes, only to find when accosted, they did not even match, to the collaborating professional thieves like the formidable pair of flash mollishers from the Lady Juliana caught in the act of concealing a cumbersome roll of fine fabric

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under a stylish cape, many were candidates for transportation, and ended up in Botany Bay.

Section 24

5.17: – COLLECTIONS & MUSEUMS

Margaret Maynard has long been critical of the disparate collecting policies of our national museums, finding at best, fashionable dress and costume sit awkwardly within the various official classifications selected by museum and gallery administrators for their collections; at worst, confronted with harsh budget cuts, clothing and other items of dress are always among the first to be subjected to reduced funding despite their “immense conservation and storage problems.”147 Thus the “inadvertent survival” of numbers of these relics becomes problematic as fragile heritage items, warehoused and stored off-site with limited maintenance, become little more than musty old clothing in some way inappropriate for museum display.148

An Australian curator, Robyn Healy voices an innately national response:

If there were collections in Australia of costume worn from the first we should not just marvel over the intricacies of stitching but wonder at the stains and wear, and clutch however tenuously at the material evidence of a history.149 (my italics)

Healy is also a curator at time akin to an imaginative installation artist, and unfazed by a superfluity of unrestored garments, she collects up the sweat-stained silks, the threadbare woollens, the lace capes in tatters. Reviewing her Noble Rot exhibition that was held in a National Trust property, art historian Anthony Gardner discovers the bodices “puffed out with packing paper as though breathing back to life;” or a plumped

up wedding dress that “rests in an armchair in a pose of anthropomorphised fatigue.”150

The history of dress (which often maintained a strong focus on material culture) and the rise of Fashion Studies (which tends to privilege topics including discourse analysis or identity politics) has tended to lead to a bifurcation of histories and theories of fashion.

Eighteenth century dress specialist, Peter McNeil contends that “both the objects of

fashion and the historical understanding of fashion are integral to the research agenda of 158

Fashion Studies.”151

The art of the caricaturist often draws together aspects of material culture as well as discursive domains of politics, gender identities, labour, nationhood and many other complex themes.

Depicting ‘the fair sex’ at work and at play, women become again the sly-eyed whores and strumpets, and bodices agape, sprawling legs akimbo, their visible and stays laying by, the comic nature of the caricature can have the unfortunate outcome of reducing “dress studies [to] entertainment.”152

France must always have been within the imaginary mindset of the British in Sydney Cove.

I refer again to the sobering 1792-1795 diary kept by the articulate Resident Lady, rusticating deep in the provinces during France’s reign of terror which “astonished not only the rest of Europe, but France itself.”153 It summons up the turbulent times at the end of the century and the Francophobic undercurrents that shaped the wary antipodean world of 1792.154 Since the beginning of the century, France had identified as the most politically powerful state in all Europe, and Paris dictated European taste for most of the eighteenth century.

The great historian of dress Daniel Roche (writing in the 1980s) actually mentioned Sydney in the following statement, concerning the dispersal of French taste:

to the furthest limits of the civilised world, and Parisian style was inseparable from the Enlightenment, from Saint Petersburg to Botany Bay.155

Well, perhaps not Botany Bay, not in these twilight years of the Enlightenment, not these nervous Anglophiles in the vulnerable little colonial outpost in the closing years of the century.

5.18: – ‘THIS FAIRY GROUND’

ut what of that transcendent, fashion itself – that contagious aura surrounding mere B 159

‘cloathes’ and garments? In the eighteenth century, fashion was not the exclusive domain of the feminine; the latest notions and innovations were scrutinised, discussed, and theorised about in salons and on street corners by both women and men, and John Owen describes his contemporaries as “cast[ing] a very pertinent glance over ‘this fairy ground.”156

Dr. Johnson, the eighteenth century man of letters, who related fashion in general to “any thing with regard to its outward appearance” and specifically to “the make or cut of cloaths;” determines unfashionable as “not according to the fashion,” and then he adds an intriguing addendum – “unartfully.”157

Anne Hollander comprehends ‘artful’ clothing as “a visual arrangement made up of

body shapes, insistent clothing shapes, and the combined movements of each.”158 In the late eighteenth century, the seductive allure of the modern prompted a heightened pace of change, and Hollander distinguishes this energetic dynamic as “the sign of fashion’s own life.”159

Maynard, in interview, has defined fashion as the “active and material demonstration of change,”160 and as fellow-travellers into the different country of the past, we must consider that fashion is the pixie-dust that connects material form to time. As new colours, new weaves, and new designs entered the European market, they “sparked desires and encouraged fashion consciousness, of various sorts down the social scale,” as Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello attest.161

Section 25

5.19: – ‘SO MANY PRETTY THINGS’

The novelist, playwright and diarist, Fanny Burney in her theatre-piece The Witlings,

sets the scene for her 1779 comedy of manners in a milliner’s shop: ”A counter is spread with caps, ribbons, fans & bandboxes … several young women at work,” and the author puts words into the mouth of the gushing Mrs Voluble:

There are so many pretty things to look at in your store, that one does

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not know which way to turn oneself. I declare it’s the greatest treat in the world to me to spend an hour or two here in a morning; one sees so many fine things, & so many fine folks.”162 Shopping had become a social event for women of all classes, and particularly in John

Styles’ London:

The density of information networks and personal interactions in which Londoners were enmeshed, educating them as consumers by exposing them to fashion and novelty in a particularly intense way, was unmatched in even the largest provincial towns.163 In the colony of 1792, even the discharging of the Pitt was an event of some note. Bales, boxes and cases of goods spilled out onto the wharf, some destined for the Commissariat, the rest for shipside auctions or the impromptu sale-shops ashore initiated by the gentlemen officers of the new NSW Corps for their private investments. There was for a short time an astonishing plentitude of goods unprecedented in the colony, and the response has Collins dumbfounded: “The avidity with which all descriptions of people grasped at what was to be purchased was extraordinary.”164 It was an “avidity” that was English-born but Australian-made, and what was “extraordinary” was the sudden abundance of goods in a community so recently lacking even its most basic commodities.

5.20: – A DEMONIC FRENZY

The described “avidity” also suggests a demonic frenzy, an unleashing of consumerist

desires, but in describing the ‘fashion consciousness’ of this era, historian and author Frank Trentmann advises the word ‘consumer’ must be used with caution: “The early modern transformation of the world of goods did not coincide with the creation of the

new identity of ‘the consumer’.”165

Cultures of Consumption 2003-2007 was an international multi-disciplinary Research Programme into consumer cultures past and present staged mainly online. Under the renowned Trentmann’s direction, this five-year project attracted many prominent academics from around the world, plus a diverse internet audience of interested non- participants like myself.166 Tracing the genealogy of consumerism, Trentmann finds “the word ‘consumer’ rarely used in the early modern era,“ and the word itself was ”never conceived of in its modern sense.”167 Historian John Brewer, delivering the Introductory address “The Error of our Ways: Historians and the Birth of Consumer Society,” challenges the “historical preoccupation” of scholars intent on discovering the origins of the modern

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consumer society in the pre-industrial past. He decries the practice of many scholars to facilely “extend modernity back in time, flattening our sense of the distinctiveness of different historical periods.”168

Modern questions and erudite theory has rerouted the topic of women, material culture and consumption into new arenas, but the subjectivities and democracies of modern consumerism were not yet fully imbedded in the collective psyche in the eighteenth century. As Malcolm Barnard observes in Fashion as Communication:

In post-modernity, that trace of human labour has been lost and the relationship to work has been concealed. … The link with production has been severed in favour of a connection with consumption.169

The hazard of asking modern questions of past times has produced a steady stream of secondary sources that all too often are mired in the issues of their own historical present, perhaps never more acutely so than post-millennium, when fashion itself is locked in a toxic death roll with consumerism.

Styles queries the modern rationales for the consumption of clothing – to eighteenth century working folk, their clothing was their principal capital resource, and a garment was significant because it was a flexible realisable asset.

Modern semiological approaches that fixate narrowly on consumerism fail to engage with the sheer ludic pleasure of dressing up and Styles draws our attention to the memoirs of one William Hutton, a successful bookbinder and bookseller who discovered in his impoverished but aspirational youth that “dress … is the passport to the heart, a key to unlock the passions,” and describes his early pains to acquire “a genteel suit of clothes” and the inner transformation he experienced: “the girls eyed me with some attention; nay, I eyed myself as much as any of them.”170

Nor in the colonial sources is there a sense of the collective exuberance of occasion when decorous market wife and ardent fashioniste alike dressed up to see and be seen. While the disapproving John Owen might deplore all the “gaping, gadding, and gossiping”171 that polluted the Sabbath, in Custom or Consumption, Styles contends, “It was above all on special days [that] plebeian men and women … were able to observe and be observed in their finery.”172

Historian Jane Elliott explores early Sydney at the end of the 1790s when the convict

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class were still in the majority. Plausibly they, like William Hutton, were able to internally ‘observe’ themselves to the same transformative effect, and she titles her informative article with a question: “Was there a convict dandy?”173

Sourcing her information from the accounts and day-books of the colony’s early merchants, she finds that “clothing and related goods dominated as consumer desirables in the whole context of commerce inside the colony.”174

Perhaps more than anything else, the fact that most convicts could afford to buy new clothes made it impossible for them to behave as if they were prisoners, and difficult for others to consider them as such.175

From the penal colony’s inception, a local festive calendar with communal drinking, dancing and bonfires had maintained cultural coherence with their traditional English ‘holiday’ practices. Official events in the colony were interspersed with frequent private revelries, celebrating weddings, christenings and birthdays, or ship arrivals and ship farewells. Then the populace was out and about and dressed in their social skins – making-do, making merry, making fun, and Elliott argues that dress “played a vital part in the process of changing the colony from a prison to a fully functioning

society.”176

In the snakes-and-ladders world of Botany Bay, the paramount fashion historian Daniel Roche, who wrote mainly on French Enlightenment culture, might well have observed of the convict folk at play: “It was a victory over the fragile life.”177

Section 26 5.21: – CAST-OFF CLOTHING

The English Enlightenment produced its own stellar list of classic economists and

luminaries who are still cited today. Eminent economist and author Nassau Senior categorised goods into “necessaries, decencies and luxuries,” but in these pre-industrial years, recognising that commodities would be consumed differently across the social spectrum, he pronounced: “a carriage is a Decency to a woman of fashion, a Necessary to a physician, and a Luxury to a tradesman.”178

Although Senior did not deign to address the humble pedestrian, the radical Scotsman

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Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, identifies the “necessaries” of life, as “those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary.” These requirements that in the humanistic Age of Reason extended – in theory perhaps, if not always in practice – even “to the lowest rank of people.”179 In these basic transactions, Adam Smith observed:

he exchanges [cloaths] for other old cloaths which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, cloaths or lodging, as he has occasion.180

Past and present, the trade in used garments is steeped in history, and in Old Clothes,

New Looks, editors Alexandra Palmer and Hazel Clark establish the important social and economic role that second hand garments have always played in clothing society. “Clothes are cast-off before they are worn out,”181 and they suggest that historically, cast garments were the first ‘ready-to- wear.’182

Indeed “cast clothing” was familiar to all levels of society. Even the wellborn eighteenth century gad-about James Boswell, author and lawyer, had recourse on occasion to this ancient trade to recoup his personal finances, noting in his famous London Journal: “This day I cast my eye on my old laced hat ... No sooner thought than done. I carried it to a jeweler's in Piccadilly and sold it for 6s. 6d.”183

Palmer and Clark consider that the “conundrums and contradictions” inherent in the retailing, purchase and wearing of pre-worn garments make second hand clothing “especially relevant” to fashion research,184 and to prove their point, they approached Australian researcher Margot Riley, to situate discarded clothing “within the discourse of a nation that was founded on the discards of European society.”185

“The trade in second hand clothing in Australia has a history as long as white settlement itself,” begins Riley, and she develops the history of used clothing in Australia from its inception until Federation and beyond. ”At first,” she announces, these “discards” found they had “to dress themselves without familiar patterns of clothing consumption.”186 She elaborates on the panorama of commercial venues that had serviced them in Britain – “'slop' shops selling ready-made garments, second hand clothes brokers, pawnshops, and cast-off or stolen clothing via peddlers [sic], and rag fairs,”187 conjuring up the Old Bailey transcripts where all too frequently, these outlets also figured as the scene-of-the- crime.188

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“NSW had no currency of its own until 1813,” declares Riley:

Paucity of local supply and irregularities in shipping made clothing a valuable commodity for barter ... cloth and clothes were often used in exchange.189 Considering the unique context in which these transactions took place, the working- class world of a penal colony, we would expect a pragmatic matter-of- fact evaluation and a canny appreciation of almost of anything that would guarantee a ready return on the original investment. Clearly, this was especially important for women whose stock of clothing was almost always their sole ‘capital’ and thus we would expect an acute sensitivity to the currency of fashion in the domestic ebb and flow of clothing in the colony. Fashion enhanced immediate market advantage, but unfortunately fashion evaporated, and garments and other stylish items would gradually depreciate in value.

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5.22: – THE ‘KNOWING EYE’

By 1792 there were any number of experienced specialised traders in the colony such as the First Fleet old clothes dealers Fanny Anderson, Dorothy Handland or , and other later arrivals. They were clever women with the ‘knowing eye’ who were familiar with colonial conditions and were aware of prevailing local tastes. As Beverly Lemire states succinctly:

Style mattered. It was a key if shifting element, a fact of which all clothes dealers were well aware and none more so than in the second hand trade.190 (my italics)

Second-hand clothing is airily dismissed from most fashion histories, but in Australia, it must claim its own sovereignty. Not only was clothing the earliest currency, but in a world made up almost exclusively of the common people, second-hand apparel was the sole alternative to the only other ‘ready-to-wear’, the coarse ill-fitting, sloppily-made Government issue of flimsy osnaberg or woollen kersey.

Cast-off clothing was also welcomed as a latent opportunity to engage directly with fashionable dress. Lemire’s assertion that “Fashion’s force in the market was a real phenomenon, working to liven the market.”191 and in the idiosyncratic world of cloth and clothing thieves, the traffic in used clothes was both legitimate and illicit, and Lemire eloquently singles out “the complex, often messy, fertile expressions of economic life which persisted for generations on street corners and by kitchen doors.”192

Margot Riley traces the more legitimate transactions in the colony: “From its earliest days the hub of colonial society was the marketplace,” she observes,

Goods brought by merchant ships were auctioned on landing or at the importer's premises but unsold cargo and second hand goods found their way into the market place, making the Sydney Market a cross between Britain’s rural markets and the flea markets of London.193

The ships of the year 1792 had disembarked 123 more women, bringing the number of transported women in the colony close to 712,194 and included were the usual significantly large proportion of citified ex-Newgate hussies to be distributed across Sydney, Parramatta and Norfolk Island.195

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Rather than physically ‘trickling down’ from the Lady-wives, the self-styled local ‘aristocracy’ (alas, too few in number to contribute significantly to the old clothes market), second hand fashion offers its own peculiar distillation in the divided two- tiered social order of the keepers and the kept. Untrammelled by the more complex social concerns of England, second hand fashion never ‘trickled down’, but seeped out and down, up and through the porous social layers of the penal colony.

5.23: – DOING TIME

John Styles proclaims, “The rule of decorum decreed that different kinds of dress and

different forms of conduct were appropriate to different stations in life,”196 and the much maligned government issue might furnish a reasonable work-a-day dress for most of the settlers, liberating funds for the acquisition of stylish new and second-hand clothing and accessories.

The women in the colony spanned the full range of civic conditions, age, and the varied life-stages common to all women, and generated a diversity of responses to matters of dress by which a woman of the lower orders might establish her social identity and begin to express her personal taste.

Small as it was, Sydney was the ‘metropolis’ of Australia, and Karskens writes of the attractions which drew these working women to its centre:

The town itself, although enlivened by modern attitudes to commerce and trade, still took a preindustrial form. … They were interested in fashion and in seeing and learning new things, and in endowing their children with skills, good marriages and property.197 English sources concerning the clothing of working folk at the end of the 1780s have offered only “a dreary picture of shabby clothes made from coarse materials that were worn for too long,” but Styles insists that “what is missing is any real consideration of labouring people's own standards of sartorial decency and of the trade-offs they were prepared to make to achieve them.”198

Lynn MacKay’s quantitative analysis for the decade 1780-1790 interlinks with the ‘stuff’ of Styles’ statistics and the Old Bailey transcripts from which he draws inferences for British fashion and clothing. Both extend seamlessly into the thief colony – the Old Bailey records of those who passed through the courts are the very same records for the transported male and female felons of the indents who found themselves ‘doing time’

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in Botany Bay.199

Section 27

5.24: – GOVERNOR PHILLIP

In July 1792, Richard Atkins’ entry in his private diary reads: “The Govr. very ill.“200

Not until October is there any comment in the official journals, Collins recording that the month closed with “a circumstance that excited no small degree of concern” as the Governor:

perceiving that his health hourly grew worse, and hoping that a change of air might contribute to his recovery ... Governor Phillip signified a determination of quitting his government and returning with the Atlantic to England.201

Phillip had been subject intermittently to acute chronic pain in his side; with the appointed Lieutenant-Governor now resident in Sydney, Phillip was seizing the opportunity to take some well-earned leave. His departure would leave Major Grose the Acting Governor for the duration. While Collins voices his concern for the Governor and “the fatigues of a protracted voyage,” he nevertheless perceives a primary advantage for the community: that “the information of which his Excellency was in possession respecting these settlements ... might as quickly as possible be laid

before administration.”202

Only Providence knew what natural hazards they might meet in the months and miles ahead if a war were suddenly declared, and what jeopardies the ship might encounter with the cruising of unforeseen alliances patrolling their approach to mother England. The Atlantic had been fitting up and re- rigging for ocean voyaging and the ship was ready for departure, but the Governor himself not yet aboard, when – consternation! The lookout on South Head was giving the signal for an approaching vessel, a ship flying from her mast a strange flag ... and there, out of nowhere, standing- to outside the Heads was the first of the American merchant-adventurers.

5.26: – MERCHANT ADVENTURERS

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The implications were ominous as the first ‘American’ warped its way up the harbour to the small village on Sydney Cove – England and the rebel colonies of the New World had been at war as recently as 1783. But the seafarers were welcomed, and David Collins documented that Governor Phillip bought “such part of the cargo as he thought was immediately wanting in the colony,” and what remained of the cargo – wine, rum, gin, tobacco and little luxuries – were eagerly taken up by the officers and other settlers.203

And then within the same week – who could believe it! – yet another ship from the rebel colonies on the east coast of America. Both ships were on their way to China for tea, textiles and other China goods, and each independently of the other, had arrived in

Botany Bay.204

And so, Australia’s commercial history begins to intersect with the maritime history of the dynamic new republic of America. Lloyd Churchward in Australia and America, an alternative history 1788-1972 examines these first important trade links with the early penal colony which he describes as “small, isolated and atypical“. With a mere 4000 people, mostly poor convicts and low-paid Garrison men, the out-of-the-way penal colony appeared to present little to tempt any trader.205

The American colonies were already two centuries old before any European set foot in Australia.206 They too had once been a convict destination as the earliest Old Bailey transcripts demonstrate, and capital offences were frequently mitigated to transportation to or America. In 1776 the American colonies rebelled and, supported throughout by the revolutionary French, they finally declared their independence from Britain. Since the secession, numbers had mounted in Britain’s foetid gaols and crowded hulks, and transportation did not resume until 1787 when the First Fleet set sail for Botany Bay.207

Among those arrived on the First Fleet were 67 convicts originally destined for America, but now dispatched to Africa aboard the Mercury. A few disgruntled seamen seized the ship, and were joined by the convicts, male and female, but all lacked navigation skills and the mutineers ran the ship aground on the English coast shortly after sailing. Once more before the court, all the convicts (however innocent) received the death penalty for return-from-transport.208

Small-time thieves originally sentenced for 7 years were permanently exiled to Botany Bay never-to-return, and of these miscreants only the worst could be expected. There

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were eight unfortunate female ”mercurys,” aboard the Friendship – the book-stitcher Elizabeth Barbour was one of them, the mantua maker Frances Hart was another.208

In December, in his last act before leaving, Governor Arthur Phillip formally handed over the care and administration of the colony to his Lieutenant- Governor and, attended with all pomp and ceremony, boarded the Atlantic for home.

Private John Easty of the Marines was also returning home on the same ship, and on December the 10th and 11th entered in his diary:

This day His Excelencey Arther Philip Governer and Commander in Chief and Captain Genaral in and over his Majste Terrotoryes of New South Wailes Embarked on bord the atlantic for England when the NSW Corps was undur arms and Paid him all the Marks of honour.209 Watching the departing Atlantic sail out between the Heads, a pensive Collins records

that:

Governor Phillip quitted the charge with which he had been entrusted by his Sovereign, and in the execution of which he had manifested a zeal and perseverance that alone could have enabled him to surmount the natural and artificial obstacles which the country and its inhabitants had thrown in his way.210

Perhaps he was remembering back to their long weeks on the trackless seas, and that first exultant realisation of the whole Fleet’s safe arrival in Botany Bay. Possibly he was recollecting sharing with Governor Phillip and Captain John Hunter the surprising good fortune to discover in Cook’s overlooked Port Jackson, a “noble and capacious harbour,” and marvel at the little Cove with its deep anchorage and “a run of fresh water.”211 Maybe he was recalling the little triumphs and the minor successes in their joint venture to establish something more than just another gaol, and the Judge-Advocate, David Collins, records with modest pride, “The colony had now been established within a few weeks of five years.“212

5.28: – NEW YEAR 1793

A fortnight later, on the first day of the New Year of 1793, Magistrate Richard Atkins

upriver at Parramatta reminisces of home: ” The new year sets in very hot, while our

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friends are shivering in England, we are broiling here.”213 On the Queen’s Birthday later in the month, he is thinking of his absent mentor: ”Had my good friend Govr. Philip been here I should have dined with him at Sydney... but Tempera matentor.”214

Collins writes of dwindling stores and reduced rations (alarming enough) but with a totally new threat to the composure of the community – the amount of liquor in sudden circulation – the colony was awash with the “pernicious American spirit.”215 The ever- watchful Judge-Advocate is conflicted:

As the colony had not yet seen the day when it could have independently said, 'We are not in want of provisions; procure your wood and your water, and go your way,' the lieutenant- governor directed the commissary to purchase such part of his cargo as the colony stood in need of.216 With the departure of Phillip, the administration of the colony had fallen to Lieutenant- Governor Grose until such times as further instructions should be received from England. Thus began the ascendancy of the gentlemen-officer clique of the NSW Corps; under the Great Seal of Britain, the officers were each awarded 100 acres of prime land and officially ten convicts to work it, a number soon broken, as convict labour was increasingly diverted away from government works to the land-holdings of the officers.

Through their ‘private speculations,’ some officers established themselves as merchant- traders.217 They dominated the import trade and now were in control of the “pernicious spirits,” and as Collins acerbically records, “Not being restrained from paying for labour with spirits, they got a deal of work done.”218 As early as 1792, he had written, “The want of public money had been very much felt by every one in the colony,” and it was during 1793 that rum became a useful currency.219

And so began the years of combination and monopoly, and when the ruthless opportunism of ‘gentlemen’ met the colony’s ingenious, opportunistic ‘light fingered gentry,’ New South Wales was born modern.

Section 28

5.29: – THE FIRST FREE IMMIGRANTS

Mid-January 1793, Collins announces, “the signal which always gave satisfaction in

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the colony was made at the South Head;” for the flags announced the arrival of the Bellona from England with stores and supplies.220 Aboard the Bellona were five free settlers and their families – a singularly exciting event, a marker in the young colony’s history – the first five bona fide settlers arrived to take up land. Disembarking into the Cove along with their wives, children and servants, their furniture and belongings, they were the first of the free migrants of a nation that would develop as an aggregation of migrants, willing and unwilling.

The Bellona brought news of Governor Phillip’s safe arrival. Now recuperating in London and close to the seat of power, his influence is felt in the colony for the first time; the Home Office had dispatched large supplies of sturdy brown cloth and hard-wearing black Russia duck which promised to alleviate at last the recycling and constant

maintenance of worn and weary cloth.221

Unfortunately, the overloaded vessel had experienced “very boisterous weather on her passage” and when the Bellona’s cargo and supplies were unloaded and examined, it was found that among other essentials, 68 bales of cloth – 13,675 yards in all – were water-damaged beyond use as a result of inadequate stowage. Collins rails helplessly

against the carelessness of the shippers:

... the inconvenience that must be felt from the want of every damaged article, and the impossibility of getting them replaced for a great length of time.222 Nevertheless, this year the Commissariat – possibly on Governor Phillip’s advice – is able to issue for the first time in the colony’s history, a full complement of slop clothing to the women. Collins lists all the basic components of English working women’s dress – a linen shift, a petticoat and a jacket, but also those essentials necessary to comprise an acceptable appearance – shoes and stockings, along with a cap, a ‘neck-handkerchief’ and a hat.223

5.30: – STRANGE SHIPS

In 1793 a passenger boat service to Parramatta was established. Watermen in little boats were busy shuttling between Sydney Cove and Parramatta, Sydney Cove and the Heads, Sydney Cove and Neutral Bay on the north shore. The foreshores were busy with ships fitting out for a return to England or whaling ventures in the rough southern

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seas. Some departures were on their way to China for tea, others for sealing ventures and some, despite “not having any thing on board on for sale,” nevertheless stayed to ‘refresh, wood and water.’224 The abject ‘atmospherics’ of the past years had begun to lift, and Botany Bay, that cesspit of all Britain’s flotsam and jetsam, was beginning to show promise as a refreshment port!

However, the unannounced arrival in March 1793 of two strange ships prompted the usual ambiguous mixture of anxiety and curiosity. Eyewitness Richard Atkins records in his diary:

Two Spanish Ships arrived at Sydney, their destination unknown, but they say they are upon a voyage of discovery.

Time will shew.225

The ships were the Descuvierta and the Atrevida.226 Discovery expeditions for scientific knowledge and information of a cultural nature were part of the context and texture of the Enlightenment. They had sailed south from their Spanish colonies in the Philippines to explore the lands and people of the Southern Ocean.

Collins welcomes the newcomers: “The arrival of these strangers ... gave a pleasant diversity to the dull routine that commonly prevailed in the town of Sydney,” and he describes:

everyone striving to make their abode among us as cheerful as possible, and to convince them, that though severed from the mother country, and residing in woods and among savages, we had not forgotten the hospitalities due to a stranger.227

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5.31: – JUAN RAVENET

Aboard the Descuvierta was the limner, Juan Ravenet, and swirling out of the mist of

words and text comes the first visual representations of the women of Botany Bay in their dress.

Figure 21: Convictos enla Nueva Olanda

Ingeles enla Nueva Olanda

Captioned in Spanish, “Convicts in New Holland” and “English in New Holland”, these drawings of 1793 are acknowledged in Australian sources as representing the dress worn by the upper class and the poor during the convict period. Described at the time of their purchase as 'Australia's first fashion pictures,' they were accessioned in Australia in 1962 and are held in the Mitchell Library.

The drawings are unsigned but they have been widely accepted in Australia as the work of Juan Ravenet although his authorship has now been questioned.228

The first shows the convict woman in the traditional costume customarily worn by peasant women throughout Europe including Spain, and the basic dress of the poor and working women in Britain. It is a sketch, possibly an aide-memoire for later working-up

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into a print or a painting. Here are the individual garments found in the accounts of Styles and Collins – a bed-gown worn over a petticoat, a cap and the essential shoes and stockings. The petticoat is a sensible length for a busy working woman “doing things” and quite a deal shorter than the formal long open-fronted gown worn by the elite, even in their leisured moments. Topping the petticoat is the thigh- length bed-gown229 and with sleeves rolled up, it is worn over the hidden and stays.

Fig. 22 Ravenet, attrib.

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Underneath the bed-gown – and barely glimpsed here – the important kerchief worn around the neck is tucked into the top of the stays covering the curve of the breast. The cloth may have been the coarse ‘osnaberg’ of the earliest years but it is tempting to imagine that in 1793 it may have been some of the recently arrived water-damaged black or brown cloth which had been retrieved from the disaster and disappointment of its arrival.

The adroit limner has also captured the ‘natural’ look of the body in its garments, and balancing the forward thrust of the torso – yes – that slight shift in the centre of gravity that implies the wearing of a bum roll. Her artful stance presents what Hollander refers to as “an integrated vision of clothes and body together.”230

The shoes are sturdy leather but the stylish buckles on her shoes are not Government issue. Nor is the large ‘handkerchief’ that hangs loose, displayed like the newly

fashionable Indian shawl.231

The black hat is not the everyday straw hat worn in the colony but a genuine fashionable hat as worn by Maria Edgeworth’s dashers, the female whips breaking hearts in Brighton, and is “distinguished from the men's only by a ribbon tied round the crown.”232 Beneath her hat, she wears a cap ruffled onto a band, the back a pouch into which the hair could be pinned away for work-a-day dress but here, the hair is worn loose and fashionably ‘frizzled.’ Fashion was afoot.

More preliminary works than finished drawings, the sketches are in stark contrast to Ravenet’s detailed depictions of the exotic dress of other inhabitants of Oceania. However, to those nameless cookie-cutter symbols of the pie- charts,233 they give an ultimate form, and it is possible to discern the individual garments and the components of dress, here worn as Styles suggests of the common people “... in combinations of new and old, costly and cheap, elegant and indifferent.”234 The cloth may be shoddy, her hat-ribbon less than voluptuous and the buckles mere pinchbek rather than silver, but the right effect was important, and the look of the mode was everything.

The second fashion picture is captioned in Spanish, “English in New Holland,” and it is widely accepted in our secondary texts as illustrating the dress of the colonial gentry.235 However, given the numerical dominance in the 1790s of convicts and ex-convicts, fashion certainty is turned on its head in the penal colony, and she could possibly be just another “well dress’d” convict woman, recently arrived and out ‘in company’ in her fashionable holiday dress. Ravenet seems to have put more time into this sketch, paying

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particular attention to the accessories, and drawing them in greater detail.

The wide-brim high hat with its ribbons and fulsome ostrich feather dominate, and there is no sign of a cap. We notice in particular the wide frill surrounding her neckline and the arrangement of the large shawl which ‘echoes’ the familiar gown-and- petticoat combination which had been worn for most of the eighteenth century.

It looks like the new ‘round gown’, the closed gown introduced during the 1790s, when Styles’ plebeian English women were beginning “to move away from open gowns towards closed gowns in an increasingly classical style.“236 “Simple long white dresses were not news to English duchesses,” proclaims Hollander, “by the beginning of the nineteenth century they had been wearing them for two decades, and so had the French in imitation of them.”237 The Resident Lady, the English woman trapped by circumstance in an increasingly tumultuous France, mustered up her English courage even in the face of the Terror, to comment, ”the eye in time becomes fatigued by elaborate finery, and requires only the introduction of simple elegance to be attracted by it.”238

Fig. 23 Ravenet, attrib.

Figure 23: English in New Holland (detail)

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The veiled breasts are now emphasised by the gauzy fulsomeness of a dramatic bouffante rising high to the chin and, balancing the fore and the aft, the addition of a bum-pad acts as counterpoint.239 But most significant, most directional – almost prescient – Ravenet’s sketch shows a dark wide ribbon sash wrapping the natural waist. Although almost hidden here by the voluminous shawl, its novel presence would not have gone unnoticed by any colonial mantua maker.

5.32: – ANALYSIS OF THE RAVENET DRESS

Millia Davenport, costume designer and author of the great classic of fashion history,

The Book of Costume, skillfully maps the transition from Isabella Brown’s long-waisted 1770’s robe à la français to the higher-waisted closed gown which came into fashion during this important end-of-an-era, the 1788-1793 study period of Australia’s settling. Davenport might almost be describing the limner’s sketch when she writes: “Between the ruffles at the bosom and the fullness of the skirt, rising into a bustle, the torso almost disappears,” and she singles out the “arrogant wide-brimmed high-crowned hat which accompanied the pouter-pigeon kerchiefs.”240

The contrasting sash or belt introduces a strong horizontal line mid-torso, visually shortening the bodice, and thus the eye is ‘prepared’ for further modifications. Once the accentuating broad ribbons and contrasting sashes are eliminated around the late 1790s, the high-waisted dress springs immediately into being. and under the aegis of Davenport’s insightful leadership, we are able to see “the sheer, naked gowns of the Classic Revival are beginning to be indicated.”241

Davenport credits the round gown as the fore-runner to the diaphanous white gowns and the sculptural drapery of the Neo-Classic revival which persisted in both England and France until well into the first decades of the nineteenth century.242 Both nations claimed the same noble lineage with roots arising from the aesthetic styles of the Classics – ancient Greece and Rome – and both coincided in the philosophies, rationalities and intellectual leanings of the Enlightenment.243

However, the fashions of the two nations were expressed differently, and although France would shortly be “swept by a wave of Anglomania,” Millia Davenport, an American, maintains:

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The War of Independence changed America's traditional cultural allegiance to England [and] French fashions continue in sympathetic use in America long after they have been supplanted by English styles in France.244

This new style – “the classical white muslin dress, embroidered in silver, gold or white “with “the tiny fitted bodice which reached only to the armpits and the base of the breast” was claimed by America and by its political ally France, as the fashion of the

Directoire or Empire period – and that ‘Empire’ would be ’s.245

In England, King George III was ailing and periodically unstable, and the kingdom fell to the rule of the inebriate, libertine, debt-ridden Prince of Wales, the Prince Regent and the heir to the British throne. The high-waisted Neo-classic style would become identified and later claimed by Great Britain and its colonies (and New South Wales) as the distinctive look of England’s Regency period. The Regent would not ascend to the throne as George IV until the death of his father in 1820.246

John Owen in his Fashionable World Display’d is appalled by the scantiness of the sheer, clinging gowns of the Classicists: “The fair sex,” he rails, “set all limits and restraints at defiance,” and once caught up in the vortices of fashion:

They seem to feel themselves at perfect liberty to follow the prevailing mode, whatever that mode may be. The consequence is, that modesty is often the last thing considered by the young, and propriety as completely neglected by the old.247

Section 29 5.33: – SOUNDSCAPE

The cries of street-traders dominated the urban sound-scape of the eighteenth- century

city and the production of the popular "Cries of London" series was a mainstay of English printmakers for over three centuries. They were the original work of Francis Wheatley, English artist and portrait painter, who catered to the aristocracy and was elected to the Royal Academy. Composed in the final years of his life between the 1790s and 1801, the “Cries” depict the everyday dress of London’s working women – the hawkers, the milk maids, the ballad-singers, the fish women – as well as disclosing the dress of the better-off during this period of dramatic change in women’s dress. As a result, the “Cries” are particularly relevant to a fashion study.248

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Figure 24: The Mackerel Woman

This poor fish woman has come straight from the fish markets, and smells of fish. Note her stooped back, her heavy basket with its writhing eels, her wrinkled stockings and down-at-heel leather shoes, her shapeless functional hat and her gown’s ragged hem. She represents England’s working poor, who undertook all the disagreeable and noisome jobs. Such dress is likely to resemble the working dress worn in Sydney Cove.

This print shows a typical ‘kitchen-door’ transaction in smoke-filled gloomy London, and three women. We see the fish-woman with her protective heavy duty working apron to preserve her clothing now tucked up and wrapped behind; the flinty-eyed

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suspicious servant girl with her tray, squeaky clean in her neat pinafore, and a well- dressed woman with her ornate high-crowned lacy black bonnet and black shawl might be the mistress of the house, or just another kitchen visitor attired in her best dress.

Envisage if you will, the fresh clear air of Sydney Cove with the whole wide blue sky above and Margot Riley’s noisy marketplaces, and imagine what might be the ‘Cries of Botany Bay.’ There are the cockle, mussel and oyster collectors, the gatherers of native vegetables or the sweet tea plant,249 wild flower sellers, the collectors of feathers exotic and mundane, or the farmer-wives disposing of eggs and surplus pumpkins, and all the while, the bartering, the wheeling and dealing as hawkers and barrow women ‘cried’ some clever verbal patter to draw custom. No trade cards have been found for this early period, but there may have been hand-drawn notices promoting goods and services that were available.250 It also seems plausible to expect that when the ships came in, erstwhile ballad singers might compose clever jingles advertising to sailors and new arrivals, eating houses and drinking parlours where a good time could be promised. The ‘noise’ of the street was an essential part of eighteenth-century life.

Once free, some convicts laboured for wages, while others, particularly men, picked up their trade again. With the domestic market so small, tradesmen and their ‘industrious’ wives often had to manage across a range of income opportunities, the most entrepreneurial setting up new businesses to supply some perceived need in the colony. But small as the market was, it was overwhelmingly male, and their wives integrated their busy family life with remunerative domestic services such as char-ladies or laundresses or catered for lodgers. Collins in 1792 was witness to the sudden change wrought in a male workforce that John Hunter had once found “indolent to astonishment”252::

A striking proof of what some settlers had themselves declared, on its being hinted to them that they had not always been so diligent when labouring for the whole, “We are now working for ourselves.”253 But there were independent working women too, perhaps with their own market stalls and perhaps the flying fingers of the lacemakers had been busy at their pillows. Lace in this period was a fashionable sought-after trimming and drew the ready custom of the fashionistes and the mantua makers, milliners, and the makers of child-bed linen, and Maria Hamilton and Lucy Brand of the Lady Penrhyn knew the appeal of lace depended entirely on the craftswoman’s skill and talent.254

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The busy weekly market also provided a regular venue to socialise and share the gossip. Punctuating the soporific pace of life in the colony, it was a welcome occasion to pay a little special attention to dress. And then the day over and transactions done, “Both men and women drank and danced in hotels together, they also sang, talked, ate and drank in private homes together,” writes Karskens.255 Bursts of song, snatches of words, ominous silences and then inevitably the fiddles and tin whistles would start up, and dancing would begin in any cleared space. The sounds of these impromptu revelries drifted across the waters of the Cove and as Karskens contends, evidence of ‘Public Disorder’ was perhaps most clearly perceived in leisure activities such as “gambling, drinking, dancing and singing through the night,”256 and a firm nine o’clock curfew was imposed on all labouring folk.

Perhaps the philosophical Watkin Tench who found “Man ... ever an object of interest, curiosity and reflection,”257 was vaguely wistful of the fun as the sounds of merriment drifted across the waters on the damp evening air, and perhaps physically and metaphorically he ventured across the muddied social waters to the other side of the Cove:

I trust that no man would feel more reluctant than myself to cast an illiberal national reflection, particularly on a people whom I regard in an aggregate sense as brethren and fellow- citizens, and among whom I have the honour to number many of the most cordial and endearing intimacies which a life passed on service could generate.258

Eighteenth century leisure time occupations were similar across both sides of the Cove. The Governor’s house was a social centre, and here his Excellency received and entertained the officers from visiting ships and hosted the various celebratory dinners for the gentlemen of the colony.259 Observing all the formalities of vice-regal dinners, the drinking of numerous toasts was obligatory,260 before the company settled down to some serious drinking, the men gaming, singing and sometimes dancing together, trading puns and witticisms, and recounting famous bon mots, until finally “disguised in liquor”, the gentlemen staggered home to their beds.

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Section 30

5.34: – WAR IS DECLARED

Timely communications between the distant colony and the mother country were always problematic, and were further prolonged by the increasing tension between monarchist England and the Republic of France. In October 1792, the Resident Lady writes to her brother:

I know not if the English are conscious of their own importance at this moment, but it is certain they are the centre of the hopes and fears of all parties, I might say of all Europe … The aristocrates wait with anxiety and solicitude a declaration of war.261

Meanwhile in London, Governor Phillip, on the advice of his doctors, had formally resigned his Royal commission.262 The sad news that he would not be returning to the colony did not reach Sydney until mid-July. Within that same month, England would finally declare war, and invade France.

Within a fortnight the genteel English foreigners in France were arrested. The Resident Lady writes to acquaint her brother that “all this military apparel was to put the seals on my papers, and convey my person to the Hotel de Ville!“ and she describes the whole menacing experience: “There was no reasoning with ignorance and a score of bayonets.“263 Now just another prisoner, just another convict miles away from home, her belongings were impounded and the respectable English woman was hustled into a crowded French gaol “without even a change of linen.” We can sense her genuine distress when she writes:

I do not ennuye – my mind is constantly occupied ... curiosity serves instead of interest, and I really find it sufficiently amusing to conjecture how long my head may remain on my shoulders.264 She spent the next two years confined in a French maison d’arrêt as did so many others who had presumed too long on their Englishness. Maria Edgeworth’s brother, Fanny Burney’s brother, even James Hingston Tuckey himself, all lived under the shadow of Madame La Guillotine.265

The Resident Lady was one of the lucky ones to survive, returning to England and her brother in 1795. Yet wisely, the Lady author maintained her anonymity lest she betray

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the secret accomplices in still-volatile France who had conveyed her clandestine letters out of the country. She claims the English “do not suffer our principles to be corrupted by a man … rhyming nothings into consequence,”266 and when she finally vents all her

frustrations in her last letter we find her core Anglospheric beliefs remain vividly intact:

The undefined notions of liberty imbibed from poets and historians, fade away ... the sole object of my political attachment is the English constitution, as tried by time and undeformed by the experiments of visionaries and impostors.267

Section 31 5.35: – CLAIMING HERITAGE

To establish the beginnings of our unique fashion heritage we have come a full circle –

the Judge-Advocate David Collins’ balanced ‘official’ account, converging with fashion’s unfolding history in the age of the Enlightenment, and his eighteenth-century text frames the context in which to situate the mantua makers and their clients, and restore Maynard’s hidden women to their place in history.

Women’s history moves in tandem with the history making of men, yet as National Trust historian, Linda Young observes:

The low profile of women in heritage presentations of all kinds has been a topic of concern among feminists and professional historians for

many years.268

Notions of “good taste and antique furniture” she suggests, are “typical of house museums as a species,”269 and presentations are generally oriented to celebrate a “Great Man“ – his life, his accomplishments – while the women of the household are barely represented at all.270 Mistress and maid, the women are there, but in the interests of a deeper personal historical experience Young challenges the domestic stereotyping, asking why the “big themes of female experience and female culture“ have been ignored. “Is that all there is?“ she asks rhetorically.271

“Invisible people are obviously a problem for the historian,” declares Karskens,272 but any inferential history is a bold undertaking.273

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5.36: – A ‘GENIUS IN BONDAGE’

Among the convicts transported on the Pitt in 1972 was the Scottish-born artist and

gentleman-forger, . Sentenced to 14 years, he was a very tardy arrival – he escaped at Cape Town while the Pitt was loading supplies for the colony. Recaptured by the Dutch, Watling was forcibly put aboard the very next ship continuing on to

Botany Bay, arriving later in the year of 1792.274

“At first this will seem to him to be a country of enchantments ...” he writes to his “ever revered aunt” back in Dumfries, Scotland:

Perhaps nothing can surpass the circumambient windings and romantic banks of a narrow arm of the sea, that leads from this to Parramatta, another settlement about fourteen miles off.275

And then having positioned himself for us, his readers, among the ‘Enlightened,’ the talented forger, writing from “the labyrinth of all my sufferings,” informs his aunt: “My employment is painting for J. W––, esq. ... a very mercenary sordid person.”276 And indeed Watling’s delicate and accurate watercolours of the country’s rich natural offerings are the unacknowledged source of the prolifically illustrated Journal published

in England by the Surgeon-General, John White.277

He seethes that he is also being “lent about as an household utensil to his neighbours, there to exert these abilities without any other emoluments than illiberal reflection,” and he compiles a scathing critique of the ways of colonial gentlemen, “our pretending and aspiring gentry”:

Unless we can flatter and cajole the vices and follies of superiors with the most abominable servility, nothing is to be expected – and even this conduct, very often after all, meets with its just reward – neglect and contempt.278 There are many depictions of the strange new land and its flora and fauna but Watling scornfully records, “The landscape painter may in vain seek here for that beauty which arises from happy-opposed off-scapes.”279 And indeed, the anonymous and possibly composite artist, ‘the ’ – so named by the art historian Bernard Smith in 1960 – portrays the convict shore accurately and pragmatically as a cleared area,

denuded of trees and studded with stumps through which pigs and goats wander.280

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But the theatrical Watling is at the height of his eighteenth century eloquence:

The Poet may there descry numberless beauties, nor can there be fitter haunts for his imagination. The elysian scenery of a Telemachus, the secret recesses for a Thomson's musidora, arcadian shades or classic bowers present themselves at every winding to the ravished eye.281 Eventually the artist confesses he has fallen under under the spell of this new country and he artfully includes two officers in their red and blue dress, and rearranging trees and tangled underbrush, he captures the wide blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and the deep cool restful shades.

Women in the Frame at last …

Figure 25: “Sydney in 1794.” “A direct north general view of Sydney Cove, the chief British settlement in New South Wales as it appeared in 1794, being the 7th year from its establishment. Painted immediately from nature by T. Watling.282 Photo-montage: Author, with detail from “Convicts in New Holland” and “English in New Holland” by Juan Ravenet.283

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Like Anne Hollander, we practiced time-travellers have been literally “seeing through clothes” to liberate the women trapped in the interstices of historical fact, and to the right, I have foregrounded Ravenet’s women of 1793, and with this, these shady ladies are clearly in the ‘frame’ of our Australian/British dress history.

Watling’s 1794 view is taken from high on the Rocks, and looks across the waters of the Cove to the small cluster of huts that housed the officers of the civil administration. Dominated by the grand two storeys of the Governor’s house, this was Sydney’s ‘dress- circle’ society from which he, by his civil condition, was excluded. It is also the world of orthodox costume and history writing, of print trails, portraits and provenances, and our modest collection of sartorial artefacts which are inevitably skewed towards the genteel colonials and those ‘pioneer’ lady-wives of the Britain’s latest frontier, whose fashions were purchased in England and shipped to the colony in trunks, rather than held in deep pockets or rolled in wraps.

Emboldened by Millia Davenport’s perception of the portraits of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, as “the great English costume documents of their period,”284 I submit these humble colonial ‘costume documents’ by the limner Ravenet as examples of early colonial women’s dress.

5.37: – ‘REMEMBER ME’

At the other extreme of artistic skill to the aesthetics and expertise of Watling’s art practice were the modest love tokens produced by the folk of the lower orders. Common coins were filed down to a smooth surface and then roughly engraved with emotive sentiments, recalling the absent donor to the memory of the recipient.285 Sometimes called Leaden Hearts, these do-it-yourself tributes of the common people were gifted to lovers, family or close friends as mementos. They may even have been made in the colony where convicts still under bond were bureaucratically assigned, and long-term non-married couples could be separated and dispatched to different settlements.

One of the NMA collection of love tokens is circled with the words, “When this you See Remember me,” and it is signed H. Hale.

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Figure 26: Leaden Hearts - Front - NMA collection.286

These words encircle a couple holding hands, and apparently gazing into each others’ eyes, he stylishly attired in breeches, waistcoat and dress coat with a broad brimmed hat, she in a fashionable open-fronted gown of the late eighteenth century (minus panniers and with the new shortened waistline) and wearing a hat with ribbons, and her hair curled in the style of a Joshua Reynolds portrait.

Figure 27: Leaden Hearts - Reverse – National Museum of Australia 287

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On the reverse of the token, she is named as Mary Ea[s]ter, (spelled out incorrectly here as it happens) and dated to 1794.288 Here the gown is depicted in more detail. Anne Hollander enjoins us to remember that “a palimpsest of old modes always remain on the scene to confuse the future historian,”289 this curious eighteenth century ‘fashion plate’ of the common folk shows the garment to be the open-fronted long gown, with the more modern shortened waistline, worn here over a fashionable quilted petticoat. They were possibly bought second-hand in England and worn for best dress in the colony in 1794, when fashion was at its most volatile.

But our convict woman wears an apron and, although she sports fashionable buckles on her high heeled shoes, she is shown hard at work pushing a wheel-barrow apparently laden with rocks. A young seaman Jacob Nagle describes the onerous tasks that fell to female convicts in the frontier colonies:

The Convicts were Amediately Employed in Cutting down timber & Clearing… and fencing in ground & the Wimen Employ’d Carreing the Stones Away into the Corners of the fences.290 While this image might confirm the austere life endured by convict women, David Collins, the Judge Advocate records as early as 1792, the respectable females now present in the community:

On account of their sex were not harassed with hard labour and [they] in general shared largely of such little comforts as were to be procured in the settlement.291

Working women in their dress were active participants in most of the events that took place in the colony.292 Yet Maynard finds that their fashion and dress remain “elusive and conjectural” until well into the next century.293

5.38: – AUTHENTICITY

When Maynard calls for authenticity of “items known to have been worn in Australia

[to] shape our view of the appearance of earlier Australians,”394 we must look not to the dress of the common folk, but to the provenanced wardrobes of the colonial gentry and here there is the quintessential item, the first gown known to be both made and worn in Australia.

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It is a high-waisted gown in the full Regency style, which curator Marion Fletcher illustrates and captions: “Mrs Philip Gidley King’s Dress.“ 295

Figure 28: Anna Josepha’s Gown

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The gown has a short waist and short sleeves, and the long skirt has a small train at the back.

The sheer cotton muslin is embroidered with flat pure silver thread (called ‘plate’) and is

patterned all over with small spots and flower sprigs. The trailing hem is richly worked with

a border in a floral design.

‘Mrs Philip Gidley King’ is none other than the indomitable Anna-Josepha, who arrived in the colony in 1791 as the bride-wife of Lieutenant P.G. King and was the kindly stepmother to his ready-made family – the mantua maker Ann Inett’s two boys – raising them as brothers to her own baby son born on Norfolk Island.

In 1800, P. G. King was appointed the third naval Governor to the colony in New South Wales, and as the Governor’s wife, Anna-Josepha became the first First Lady in the colony. This was the sort of gown that graced the Governor’s table.

The silver and white cotton muslin is recognisably Indian. The taste for oriental botanicals and motifs had set the whole European fashion world a-tingle in the eighteenth century,296 and by 1803 and the Sydney Gazette, fine embroidered Indian cloths were finding their way directly to the colony via the ambitious private speculators and would likely have been ‘fashioned into the mode’ by a nameless mantua maker practising in the colony of 1805 or even earlier.

Section 32

5.39: – ENGLAND’S BOTANY BAY

England’s Botany Bay was becoming Sydney-town, and earlier arrivals like the transported

Mary Easter might have been pleasantly surprised with the reassuring familiarities of their new location; as Karskens forthrightly affirms:

“It was less the town of Governors, empire and imprisonment than one created by convicts, and belonging to them.”297 (A point surely recognised and addressed by Commissioner John Bigge making his Report of 1822)

Yet “Botany Bay” would linger on longest in the Rocks, since acknowledged and promoted as “the birthplace of the nation.”298 It is possible still to imagineer the women of Botany Bay in their dress, and to see Karskens’ women of The Rocks with the mind’s eye as they 191

sauntered through its narrow alley-ways and crooked streets in their living fashion.

Phillip’s friend and champion Richard Atkins has the final word in 1793, on his “good friend” Governor Arthur Phillip’s bequest to the nation:

He reared it from its infancy with trembling anxiety, he brought it to some degree of knowing its own resources [and] laid a solid foundation for the happiness of future generations.299

Section 33

5.40: – TOWARDS A CONCLUSION

Present with Governor Phillip at that memorable ‘First Contact’ were the two naval Officers

who would follow him into the governorship of the prison colony – Captain of the Sirius, John Hunter would be appointed its second Governor in 1795, and Phillip Gidley King would succeed as its third in 1800.300 The year 1805 marked the appointment of . His stormy Governorship culminated in the in 1808 when he was deposed by the New South Wales Corps. He was the last of the naval appointments.

In the quest for things sartorial to compile a costume heritage, a reasonable place to start has been with the documentary heritage, the collection of foundation journals of the years 1788 to 1793 – Phillip’s years. They may appear to have had little to do with fashion, but in digging up fragments from these primary narratives, snatches of text began to cluster, ideas began to present and resolve, and finally Maynard’s Gordian Knot of silence and invisibility began to unravel.301

After years of ‘doughnut research’ – where disappointingly we found only the frame – we have spiralled in, gradually bringing into focus the shady ladies of Botany Bay (hence my poetic re-interpretation of the Watling landscape).

Strong colonial links to Britain were maintained throughout, and the Anglospheric continuities of fashion were maintained by the Botany Bay women of all castes, from the pioneering lady-wives, to the post-convict matrons in all their respectability, to the lowliest of the convict women. Here John Styles breakthrough text Dress of the Common People allows even Greer’s ‘wife-shaped void’ to gradually take on form, assume a fashion contour, thus anchoring each invisible convict woman to her own time in history. And regenerated

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through their historical experiences and made a visible part of the narrative, these flesh-and- blood eighteenth century women can then take their place in the civic remembering, and thus we can assimilate them into the collective consciousness of the nation.

But not all women. To address the full spectrum of women in the colony, we must ask what became of George Worgan’s elusive naked ‘Evites’, the women of the First People, who in this period would play no part in the Euro-centred fashion cycle?

5.41: – TERRA NULLIUS AND THE MYTH OF ‘NAKEDNESS’

The Age of Reason was also the Age of Wonder, and in 1768, Captain Cook in the Endeavour

embarked on a discovery voyage, perhaps to disclose the wondrous South Land supposed to exist somewhere ‘south of the Line.’ Like all previous British maritime explorers, Cook received his private instructions from his Sovereign of the procedures to be followed in this lucky event:

With the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient situations in the name of the King of Great Britain, or if you find the Country uninhabited, take possession for His Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.302

Cook believed the new land he had claimed was sparsely populated and indisputably, the precept of terra nullius was Royal law. Two decades later, this determined Arthur Phillip’s righteous response to his Monarch’s newest subjects, the few natives residing around Sydney Cove, as the First Fleet ships disembarked, and 778 noisy convicts and their keepers spilled out onto the ‘virgin’ earth of New Holland and onto the ‘country’ of the Eora.

Patriotically overwhelmed by the significance of the experience, Judge- Advocate Collins states the Britishers “stepped from the boat literally into a wood” which had:

… for the first time since the creation, been interrupted by the rude sound of the labourer's axe … a stillness and tranquillity which from that day were to give place to the voice of labour, the confusion of camps and towns, and the busy hum of its new possessors.303 Hidden and watching from the dark woods on those first tentative occasions when native and European first met, were the native women. “We could see these curious Evites peeping through the Bushes at Us” writes Worgan to his brother. It took some time – months – to establish relations with the natives, but the women continued “extremely shy & timid.” Eventually some of the friendlier males were prevailed upon to bring a few forward, and Worgan lyricises: 193

one of these Wood-Nymphs (as naked as Eve before she knew Shame) obeyed and came up to Us; when we presented her with a Bracelet of blue Beads for her obliging Acquiescence.304. As the ethnographic Watkin Tench observed, direct communication with the ‘Indians’ was initially impossible, but by sign language and later by word repetition, some conversation, even joking became possible. Lieutenant Dawes was compiling a vocabulary of Eora words and expressions, aided by Collins and Captain Hunter which King appends at the end of his account of the colony in 1790. Together they finally determined the word the Eora used for their white-skinned visitors: “The appellation by which they generally distinguished us was that of 'bereewolgal', meaning men come from afar.”305

First Lieutenant of the Sirius, William Bradley appears to have spent little time in the new colony. He enthusiastically participated in all the Sirius voyages under Captain Hunter, and would return with him to England to give his account of the loss of the vessel. However, in 1788 in Sydney Cove and living at sea level aboard the Sirius, Bradley developed a penchant for these fishing people and interested in their novel lifeworld and systems, he kept an observant private diary which he illustrated with his own informative sketches.

Bradley reports the occasion when “sailor like,” two straying seamen from the Sirius naively ventured into the woods “without any thing to protect them selves.” Inevitably,

[they] met with some Natives, Men, Women and Children who very very friendly, met them without fear and eagerly accepted of a Jacket which one of the Sailors gave them, they were all entirely naked.306 (my italics) This puzzling response of the naked ‘Indians’ to the white man’s jacket has arrested the attention of Grace Karskens. The short jackets when worn exposed all the manly attributes, but they were also left open to display the raised cicatrices and body painting about the torso and arms which indicated the status of the wearer, and she explores the cultural relevance of these jackets as items important for trade and negotiation. She hypothesises:

Wearing them may have reinforced the warriors’ status as leaders and diplomats; it was also a sign of goodwill and politesse towards the Berewalgal.307

But as Karskens notes, the jackets were instantly gendered. Commandeered by Aboriginal males, the jackets would be worn by initiated men, rarely the women who were therefore obliged to remain ‘dressed in their nakedness.’

Not until 1790 does Governor Phillip record gifting his favourite – Bannelong – with a

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dashing red jacket with silver epaulets, when he requested a gift for his nagging wife, and “a petticoat, and several other little presents were given to the lady.”308 Petticoats (as skirts were commonly termed in that period) were also issued to convict women; they were simply a width of cheap fabric economically cut, a drawstring gathering in at the top to fit the garment to the waist.

Later sketches would discover among the convict slops, men’s shirts and simple female shifts, all as elementary in cut as a square-draft shift.309

These items were probably worn by the young native girl, Abaroo, orphaned by the small pox and adopted as a small child by the Rev. Johnson and his wife. When the growing girl suddenly declared she had come of an age to be married, she was given her freedom and she “appeared to be pleased with having her liberty.” When next some young persons of her age came into the Cove, she readily joined them, and the next day she was seen naked with them in a canoe. But returning some days later she “put on a petticoat before she [re]joined the clergyman.”310

No material evidence of these petticoats, shirts and shifts, or the iconic jackets, remain, and Karskens has designated them “ghost artefacts” as today they only exist in the sketches and texts of white people and then “often conveyed through thick lenses of ridicule, revulsion or pity.”311

But beyond the jackets and this random distribution of clothing, Hunter has observed “they certainly suffer much from the cold in winter,”312 and duly, the Governor issued blankets to the Eora, men and women alike, although this practice would not be regularly formalised until 1814.313 The handout of warm woven blankets complemented their normal practice of warming themselves on frosty nights by huddling together around their fires, sleeping on the ground as had the generations before them.

And as practical fisher-folk, they adopted and then sometimes adapted the blankets, simply cutting holes ‘’ style to leave the hands and arms free. Sketched by later eye-witnesses, there is something classic in the drape, even noble in their depiction, whatever the artist’s intention.

Karskens challenges Maynard’s “hegemonic model” where clothing was distributed to the native people as ”a weapon of coercion in the colonising process, forced upon naked Aboriginal people in order to civilise and subdue them.”314 For on the ground in 1788, Bradley recorded that because they “seem'd to suffer much from the Cold,”315 they 195

appeared pleased to have the convenience of the Governor’s warm blankets, as well as the jackets, while Karskens argues convincingly that the gifting of clothing to the poor in the eighteenth century, was “an act of kindness and charity.”316

On his arrival in 1792, the convict artist Watling had found the resident native people around the Cove “in general very straight and slim, but extremely ill featured; and in my opinion the women more so than the men … their virtues are so far from conspicuous that I have not, as yet, been able to discern them,” and he observes caustically, ”they have not apparently the smallest idea of a Deity, much less of religion.”317

This negative perception was almost universal. The natives were unpleasant to European noses and their hair and bodies smeared with fat and fish oil to which the dust, smoke and grey ash clung, they were generally depicted as ‘grotesque.’ Even so, with the attentional eye of the artist, Watling recorded them as “Bedaubing, or streaking themselves in various forms with red or white earth,” adding that this “completes the ton of dress of the inhabitants of N.S.Wales, either for war, love, or festivity.”318

However, ever critical of the Establishment, Watling decries the “great error in many of our voyagers is the giving – prematurely – a decided opinion of what falls within the circle of their observation.” While he agreed that they might be “centuries” behind some other native peoples, he insisted that this in itself was ”no criterion of judging mental ability.”319

In a further example of the amiable exchanges between the two cultures, Watling reported: “The natives are extremely fond of painting, and often sit hours by me when at work,”320 and possibly they were at work too with their ochres and charcoal, inscribing their wooden implements and weapons with patterns and symbols of deep significance to them.

But as they watched, the European artist brought into clear recognition the familiar shells, butterflies and flowers, and birds, fish and animals sprang to life under his brush, and they may have attempted to replicate his processes and produce something similar. Watling was one of the few people in the community who had free access to paper, ink and watercolours, and it is possible the bored artist shared his paints and tools with them.321

But in time, even Watling succumbed to the exotic women of the New World, for as Worgan had alerted his brother:

I can assure You, there is in some of them a Proportion, a Softness, a roundness, and Plumpness in their Limbs & Bodies were they but cleanly, that would excite tender and amorous Sensations, even in the frigid Breast 196

of a Philosopher.322

And from the pen of an accomplished artist comes the first visual representation of Worgan’s ‘Evites’: In these naturalistic likenesses, Watling has captured in these Eora women, their soft lips, white teeth, dark eyes and sweeping lashes, all physical attributes widely acknowledged in Anglospheric circles as the feminine ideal.323

Figure 29: The Watling Collection.

The “Evites” of Eora country – Dirr-a-goa and Da-ring-ha

Dirr-a-goa is wearing a ba-rin made of strands of possum skin, the pubic covering of a young unmarried woman. She also wears a necklace of dried reeds, bracelets and a fringe of animal teeth stuck to her hair with gum.

Watling sketches in the distinctive amputation of the little finger which was common but not universal among the Eora-al-leon (Eora women). Most Europeans assumed it was purely practical, a removal for convenience sake while fishing with a hand-line.

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Da-ring-ha is a ‘married’ woman and has a baby. She is totally naked but for her cloth neckband and head band. The sketch is signed and Watling has left his personal instructions for the engraver and printer, “must be broke down to a sombre tint.”

From the beginning, the quest for better farming land fuelled early exploration into the interior, and land suitable for the government farms was found upriver from Sydney Cove in 1788 and named Parramatta. But by 1789, after months of drought, Governor Phillip was eager to travel north to explore the rich alluvial soils of the free-flowing Hawkesbury River. In his travels into the hinterland, Tench had discovered at some distance west of Parramatta, another substantial north-flowing river which he named the Nepean, and the explorers had hypothesised that it was part of a larger river system which at some point would converge with the Hawkesbury before it emptied into Broken Bay.

Therefore, charging Captain Hunter and his crew to trace the uncharted Hawkesbury upriver up to its source, Governor Phillip and his party chose to walk cross-country, following the coast north from Port Jackson, leaving their two boats and their crews under the command of William Bradley, to await their return.323

Surgeon Worgan had participated in several of these . He describes the natives “painted in a variety of ways … their hair ornamented with the teeth of fish, fastened on by gum,” but as it was May with winter coming on, the weather began to blow cold, and he noted that one of the naked native men was wearing the skin of a kangaroo. 324 But August was the coldest windiest month experienced yet and Worgan reports a second occasion, when another

“wore a skin of a reddish colour round his shoulders.”325

Away from the coast and in the higher altitudes, kangaroo skins, even possum skins may have been worn for warmth. Both were food sources, and the pelts dried and tanned by smoke and fire were no doubt used in some way. made of possum skins were observed and recorded by James Hingston Tuckey in southern parts the continent in 1804:

The only covering they make use of, to preserve their persons from the winter's cold, is a square cloak of opossum skins, neatly sewed together, and thrown loosely over their shoulders; the fleshy side, which is worn inwards, is marked with parallel lines, forming squares, lozenges, &c. and sometimes with uncouth human figures in the attitudes of dancing.326

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Figure 30: Ceremony drawing by William Barak. South Australian Museum

William Barak's paintings illustrate the magnificent designs that the cloaks were decorated with. Many of his paintings depict ceremonies with people singing and dancing in their cloaks. Barak was a Wurundjeri elder, and he made first contact with the ‘whitefellas’ in the 1830s; his ‘country’ lay around the Yarra River valley in southern Victoria. Barak paints a realistic interpretation of his people performing ceremony – men, women and children of all ages, dancing in their possum-skin cloaks. Even small babies are shown, swaddled in fur.

Meanwhile in 1788 Governor Phillip with his exploring party was making a discovery of his own. Returning to where Bradley and his seamen waited to collect them, they had trekked back through the tribal lands of the mysterious Worimi, and when they arrived, they brought news of their ‘find.’ Bradley records their news:

Near the banks on the East. Side they [had] found a party of Natives sitting round a fire broiling a Kanguroo Rat, they all ran away as soon as they discover'd any Person near them.327

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Figure 31: Watling Collection, Natural History Museum, South Kensington London, UK. Here Watling has illustrated what was a normal sight observed by all who lived around Sydney Cove – the fire and the feast. The British explorers were gradually becoming aware of further ‘tribal’ communities beyond the Eora, and Worgan speculated: “They associate (we have reason to think) in Family Tribes.”

The family group had fled on their approach, disappearing into the dark surrounding woods. However, Bradley reported, some things were left behind:

Amongst other things found there, was a piece, made of the skins of small animals sew'd or laced together… these were curiously carved on the inside, every skin having a different pattern and the whole formed a piece that was supposed they might use to cover a child with.328

With those few words, Bradley manages to evoke the “essential domestic experiences” which Beverly Kingston in 1975 argued, were “shared by women throughout history and across cultures, however differently.”329

Was the perceptive Bradley disappointed to have not been a participant in this serendipitous discovery? Governor Phillip and his companions did not dwell long on this event, but Bradley zealously documents and describes their findings in detail, and in following up its processing, he discovers:

The Needle they use was found. It is a hard piece of wood much in size and shape of a small bodkin, with which they make holes (it not having an eye) to receive the thread which was found and appears to be the sinewy fibres 200

from the tail of some small animal.330

5.42: CONCLUSION ̶ STITCHING TOGETHER TWO CULTURES

At the NMA Symposium 2008, the noted American anthropologist, Fred Myers Silver Chair and Professor of Anthropology at New York University championed all endeavours of “making the histories of native people visible as part of their own history.”331

With their painted bodies coloured with red ochres and white pipeclay, the naked people of terra nullius were inscribed with raised scars and ancient symbols. Bequeathed by direct Ancestors, the ochre itself connected each body with its ancient land, and to its own ‘country.’ The arcane patterns and symbols in ochre and charcoal would reiterate on cloak skins, tools and on cave walls, and Ancestral Beings and life forms would be incised or painted onto rocks and cliff faces throughout Australia.332

Myers contends that all Indigenous art works are suffused with ”the sacred traditions of the ancestral Dreaming.”

“[They] gave the Aboriginal cultural world its meaning and shape … It is the very materiality of these objects that has made it possible for these kinds of histories and analyses to be made.” 333

A possum skin cloak of Australian Aboriginal production was collected from NSW in 1839-1840 by an American, Dr. David Johnson. This venerable item was acquired “on country” in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney, near Lake Macquarie – in the lands of the Worimi.

It is the oldest possum skin cloak in the world.334

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Figure 32: The Oldest Cloak, Smithsonian Institute, USA.

This valuable cloak is held by the Smithsonian Institute of America – an esteemed organisation. However, it only appeared in Australia for the first time in 1985, as part of The Magnificent Voyagers exhibition held at the Australian National Museum in Canberra. It has since returned to America.This Indigenous garment of their own making was ‘stitched’ together by a nameless man or woman of the First Peoples. Its artistry expresses their Law, their ancient culture and traditional knowledge, and ‘Ancestral Dreaming’ permeated their every-day life, their cultural practices and their future on a continuum, and in embracing Time – past, present and to come – this priceless ageless cloak transcends fashion.

Juxtaposed with this archaeological phenomenon is the fashionable Neo-classic gown made for Anna Josepha King. Within the criteria used by both Maynard and before her Fletcher, it is the first fashion garment known to have been “made and worn” in Australia. This high- waisted embroidered gown evokes Greece and Rome, calls up reminiscences of rustic ‘wood- nymphs’ and troublesome pixies, theism and the European social order, and nostalgic fading memories of an elsewhere home – a different dreaming.335

So we have ended where we commenced with a new type of ‘stitching’, with the resolute mantua makers of Botany Bay who in the ‘forbidding wilderness’ of a penal colony, “shape[d] our view of the appearance of earlier Australians,” as Maynard contends.336 The mantua

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makers have brought us the materiality of their living fashion, and the look of European women in the waning years of the European Enlightenment.

In moving from the concrete to the abstract, we have touched on the concept of fashion itself as a catalyst for change within the cultural sphere, and opened up for further examination, the allure of modernity. In suggesting they ‘stitch’ together our pasts, I refer to the well- known classic, The Subversive Stitch, by Rozsika Parker (1984), which reconceptualised the relationship of women, embroidery, labour and gender.

Myers in his field work among the Indigenous recalls “historic moments” in the study of art and artefacts, when meaningful connections between cultures can be made, citing:

the growing ethnographic interest in “history” and “memory” as significant social practices to be studied, as forms of contemporary culture-making and as intimately connected to the material forms in which they are embodied.337

Neither the ancient cloak nor the fashionable embroidered gown are lost memories to be numbered amongst Karsken’s intangible “ghost artefacts,” for today they both visibly exist in all their material reality; their provenances are recognised, and both are listed in the Australian Dress Register.338

Thus interwoven, these two garments play an important and ongoing part in establishing the nation’s shared history. In this case I have proposed a dress history.

Largely overlooked in the historiography and secondary sources, these important foundation years 1787 to 1793 were in the last waning years of the English Enlightenment, and the importance of these embryonic years under the command of his Excellency Arthur Phillip seems to have faded. A humane man of vision and firm but enlightened principles, his influence during his administration remains deeply imbedded in the national psyche and the imprint of the British Enlightenment is enshrined in our contemporary politics.

By mustering up a panoply of sources – primary, secondary and material – I have conjured up the fashion-scape of Sydney Town in its eighteenth century – not nineteenth as is more common in the literature. The innovation of my work has been to see the beginnings of Australian colonial fashion culture present from the First Fleet, and to have highlighted the fashion imaginations of the ‘damned whores’ accompanied by ‘god’s police’ (the title of Anne Summer’s iconic best-selling work of 1975) who landed in this country on January 26, 1788.

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Figure 33: Governor Arthur Phillip’s memorial in Westminster Abbey.

“First Governor of New South Wales and founder of modern Australia.”

This wreath for his ‘In Memorium’ was laid by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in August, 2014.

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Endnotes

THE FIRST FLEET ENDNOTES

1 Throughout this document, the term ‘Australia’ will, for clarity’s sake, be used as a convenient shorthand for the land more properly known in this early period as New Holland. The full extent of the eastern coast was charted and named by Captain Cook on his ‘discovery’ voyage of 1770-1, and was claimed as ‘New South Wales.’ However, Collins, in 1792 refers to “this extensive continent” (Collins, (1788-1796) Account Vol. I, January 1792.) indicating that the conception of the land had moved beyond the vague line of the sea charts indicating the western coast of New Holland (although it was not until 1801-2 that Matthew Flinders circumnavigated the whole landmass and confirmed it was indeed a continent). Flinders was the first person to refer to the continent as Australia, naming it in his account, A Voyage to Terra Australis. The settlement on Sydney Cove was not shortened to “Sydney” until 1791 (Hunter, Historical Journal, March 1791) and Port Jackson gradually became Sydney Harbour some time afterwards.

2 Clark, Ralph (1787-1791), The Journal and Letters of Lt. Ralph Clark. Accessed 01/04/2005.

3 Worgan, George, (1788), Letters, June 18, 1788. “Therefore rally your Patience Brother Dick – and take your Seat on one side of the Fire, and while I fancy Myself seated on the other, I will relate You a string of little Transactions, Occurrences, Excursions & Adventures … I am unwilling to omit them, because I think they may, possibly, afford You and Your Friends half an hours Amusement, and a new Topic to Reflect and Comment upon in your social Meetings.” Letters, June 12, 1788.

4 Worgan, George, (1788), Letters, June 12, 1788 Where the Deuce is Sydney Cove Port Jackson’?”4

5 This picture was painted in England. John Hamilton-Mortimer was English and had not been to Australia. National Library of Australia , nla.pic-an7351768-gd300.

6 Palmerston, quoted in Becke, Louis and Jeffrey, Walter (1899) The Naval Pioneers of Australia, Accessed 10/04/2006.

7 Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild,

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Accessed 15/11/2003.

Collins, David (1788-1796), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales Volume I, p.61.

9 Worgan, G. (1788), Letters, June 12, 1788.

10 Phillip, A. (1788-1793), The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay.

11 Hunter, J. (1788), An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, Chapter II, January 21, 1788. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15662 accessed 9/4/06 http://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/6/6/15662.txt

12 Phillip, A. (1788-1793), Voyage.

13 Tench, W. (1788), A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, [Vol. I] Chapter VIII. Accessed 15/12/2004.

14 Tench, W. (1788), A Narrative [Vol. I], Chapter VIII.

15 Clark, R. (1787-1791), Journal, January 24, 1788.

16 Worgan, G. (1788), Letters, July 2, 1788. The journal kept by Captain David Collins, who arrived with them aboard the First Fleet, is the longest of all the journals, and maintains an historical continuity between 1788 and 1800, covering the governorships of both Arthur Phillip and John Hunter. He left for England in 1796 after the appointment and arrival of Phillip Gidley King.

17 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, December 25, 1787:

18 Bowes. A. (1787–8), Journal, January 10, 1788.

19 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, December 10, 1787. 206

20 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, December 10, 1787.

21 Historical Records of New South Wales, pt 2, pp 106-7, June 5 1787. Phillip to Sydney, Santa Cruz.

22 Historical Records of New South Wales, I, ii, 111-12, September 2, 1787.

23 Clark, R. (1787-1791), Journal October 11, 1787 x

24 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, November 29, 1787

25 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, December 10, 1787

26 Bowes, A. (1787-8), Journal, 10 December 1787.

27 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, December 8, 1787.

28 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, February 5, 1788.

29 Bowes, A, (1787–8), Journal, February 6, 1788.

30 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, February 6, 1788.

31 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, February 6, 1788

32 Robinson, Portia (1993), The Women of Botany Bay: A Reinterpretation of the Role of Women in the Origins of Australian Society. The age range:

207

51 between the age of 10-19 116 between the age of 20-29 40 between the age of 30-39 15 between the age of 40-49 8 over the age of 50 TOTAL ------230 women

33 Bowes, A. (1787–8), Journal, February 6, 1788. Grace Karskens and Sian Rees examine “the myth of Sydney’s foundational orgy “designating it as one Sydney's favourite urban legends.” See Dictionary of Sydney.

34 Parker, Derek (2009), Arthur Phillip: Australia’s First Governor, p.64. Phillip's views on the conduct of the expedition and his perception of the women who were to accompany the expedition, Phillip found them 'unsatisfactory abandoned wretches'.

35 Black-eyed Sue, and Sweet Poll of Plymouth, National Library of Australia, nla.pic- an5577509-v.

36 Jordan, Sarah (2001),“From Grotesque Bodies to Useful Hands: Idleness, Industry, and the Laboring Class,” p.67.

37 Jordan, S. (2001), Grotesque Bodies, p.62.

38 Jordan, S, (2001) Grotesque Bodies, p.63.

39 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, July 14, 1789. Collin’s convict numbers do not always coincide with other sources and no single list of First Fleet arrivals exists. Authoritative data is sourced from Portia Robinson who has investigated female indents in great detail, and has wrestled with the multi- entries and conflicting evidence. Another useful database of the convicts arriving on the First Fleet ships has been compiled by the University of , drawing from a wider range of contemporary documents. Accessed 15/10/2007

40 Robinson, P. (1988), The Women, p 83-85. “Most of the crimes of the women of London

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were offences against the 'working' people of the city, the tradesmen, shop keepers, publicans and those members of the upper working classes and lower middle classes sufficiently affluent or conscious of their position to employ domestic help.”

41 Bowes lists 6 mantua makers. The seventh mantua maker is the convict woman, Mrs. Frances Hart from the Friendship who we hear about because Ralph Clark charged her to cut and stitch up some “trowsers” for him: “Gave Mrs. Hart one of the Convict woman some thread to make me a nother pair Trousers.” (Clark, R. Journal, July 23, 1787)

42 Jane Dundas progressed to the position of housekeeper and oversaw the domestic affairs at the Governor’s house. She would return to England with the departure of Phillip from the colony.

43 In England, “Dame” schools were found in many towns and villages. Children aged from three or four years attended these schools and the general expectation of the parents who paid a few pence per week was that they would be taught to read. The children usually left them at seven or eight years of age to take up work, usually within the family.

44 Bubacz, Beryl M. (2007), The Female and Male Orphan Schools in New South Wales, 1801-1850, p.29. In a short time there were three schools conducted by convicts: Isabella Rosson’s in Sydney, and then in 1791, Mary Johnson, a later arrival on the Third Fleet transport Mary Ann, adopted a similar curriculum for her dame school at Parramatta. Later in 1792, Thomas McQueen on Norfolk Island established a school for older children. Accessed 15/03/2010.

45 Bubacz, B. M. (2007), Orphan Schools p.29. In 1794, two members of the New South Wales Corps, William Richardson and William Webster, were appointed to two schools. Isabella Rosson, dame school mistress married the teacher William Richardson, and Isabella’s history is swallowed up in the name change.

46 If a woman were also a “wife,” she frequently considered herself to be trained in ‘domestic service,’ and this was seen as her primary usefulness when necessary to state her ‘trade’. There may have been some convict women, and wives among them, who identified as “in service” but could also be categorised in the clothing and fashion trades, but not employed independently therein.

47 Smith, S. D. (2005), “Women’s Admission to Guilds in Early-Modern England: The Case of the York Merchant Tailors’ Company, 1693–1776,” pp.118-22, Gender & History, Vol.17 No.1 April 2005.

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48 Smith, S. D. (2005), “Women’s Admission to Guilds in Early-Modern England: The Case of the York Merchant Tailors’ Company, 1693–1776,” pp.118-22, Gender & History, Vol.17 No.1 April 2005.

49 Lemire, B. (1991), Fashion's Favorite, p.181. “Banyans, or morning gowns, could be bought ready-made from numerous retail premises for men, women, and children. … By the 1730s, at least five London gown warehouses specialized in morning gowns.”

50 This engraving can be found on Nicole Kipar’s Costume Portfolio site Accessed 10/12/2014.

51 Smith, S. D. (2005), Women’s Admission to Guilds p.118, quoting Bernard Johnson, in “The Acts and Ordinances of the Company of the Merchant Taylors in the City of York (York: privately published, 1949), pp. 82–6, 154–8, 158; MTA 2/2, p. 106b, 107; 2/3,p. 24– 5.”

52 S. D. Smith in his study of the guild of the master tailors in the City of York found the weakness implicit in the wording of their statutes themselves. The merchant-tailors, who included those who made women’s clothing, argued that as mantuas could be produced “ready-made” rather than made to measure, they were outside the defined realm of bespoke tailoring and thus beyond the law and order of the Guilds. The Guild was called York Merchant Taylors’ Company, and the “company” was divided into Master Tailors who made bespoke clothing and Merchant Tailors who both made bespoke clothing and retailed ready-made clothes.

53 The London Season coincided with the sitting of Parliament when all the members of both houses were required to be in attendance from November until May. It also indicated a return to the city metropolis from the countryside for the gentry and aristocracy.

54 Worgan, G. (1788) Letters, 9 February 9, 1788.

55 Fowell, Newton, The Sirius Letters: the Complete Letters of Newton Fowell, p.16.

56 Robinson, P. (1988), The Women, Ch. 2 p.41, footnote p. 315. Robinson quotes the editors of the original, The Malefactors' Register or New Newgate and Tyburn Calendar.

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57 Historical Records of New South Wales, British Museum Papers Newspaper Extracts, Vol. II, pp. 746-747

58 Historical Records of New South Wales, British Museum Papers Newspaper Extracts, Vol. II, pp. 746-747

59 Worgan, G. (1788), Letters, May 19, 1788.

60 The alarming arrival of two French ships in Botany Bay possibly precipitated Governor Phillip hurry to carry out his Monarch’s “Instructions” immediately: “You are, as soon as circumstances will admit of it, to send a small Establishment thither to secure the same to us, and prevent its being occupied by the subjects of any other European Power.”

61 King, P, G. (1788), Journal, February 1, 1788: “This day His Excellency Governor Phillip signified his intention of sending me to Norfolk Island with a few people & stock to settle it.” February 13, 1788: “I was appointed Superintendant & Commandant of Norfolk Island.”

62 Daniel Defoe, describing Worcester in 1722 “This city is very full of people, and the people generally esteem'd very rich, being full of business, occasion'd chiefly by the cloathing trade, of which the city and the country round carries on a great share, as well for the Turkey trade as for the home trade.”

63 The naming in Bowes’ document of the heavily pregnant “Ann Yates” – the one woman who chose not go to Norfolk Island – is an unnecessary and puzzling addition unless the anonymous “seaman” was in fact none other than the Judge Advocate himself.

64 Phillips, A. (1787 - 1793), The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, Letter to Phillip from Lieutenant King, March 19, 1788, Phillip’s Journal: “King’s Instructions.” www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/…/nsw2-doc-1987.pdf>

65 Phillips, Arthur (1787 - 1793), The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, Chapter VI Entry for March 19, 1788, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15100. Accessed 29/02/2004.

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THE SECOND FLEET ENDNOTES

1 Collins, D. (1788-1796), An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales Volume 1, January 1789.

2 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Volume I, January 1789.

3 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Volume I, October 1788.

4 Tench, W. (1788), A Narrative [Vol. I], Chapter XV.

5 Worgan, G. (1788), Letters, April 21, 1788.

6 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, November, 1788. “The month of November commenced with the establishment of a settlement which his excellency named Rose Hill, in compliment to G. Rose Esq. one of the secretaries of the treasury.”

7 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, February, 1789.

8 Hunter had taken with him Governor Phillip’s dispatches, to be sent on to London from the Cape on the first ship bound directly to London, in order to alert Lord Sydney of the food crisis that was developing in the isolated colony.

9 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, May 6th 1789.

10 1789, “Botany Bay Boys: neat as imported,” London. National Library of Australia Collection. Accessed 22/04/2008. Perhaps ‘neat as imported’ uses ‘neat’ in a Shakespearean sense where ‘neat’ can be read as foppish.

11 Tench, W. (1790), A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson [Vol. II], Chapter VI, January 1790.

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12 Anonymous letter printed in the Gazetteer on 29 December. 1790. Quoted by Hugh Anderson in Farewell To Old England: A Broadside History of Early Australia, p.26. “We have had so many disappointments about arrivals, etc., that the sullen reserve of superiority has only increased our apprehensions; and some of the most ignorant have no other idea than that they are to be left by the troops and the shipping to perish by themselves!”

13 Collins, D. (1788-1796) Account, Volume 1, March 1790. ”On the day following, MARCH 5 left the Cove one hundred and sixteen male and sixty-eight female convicts, with twenty- seven children, were put on board.” 14 King, Phillip Gidley (1790) Transactions at Norfolk Island and Port Jackson, Chapter XV, March 1790 to April 1790, March 13, 1790. “Lieutenant King’s Journal” (one of several) was published as a supplementary to Captain John Hunter’s An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, the publisher acknowledging an obligation to Sir Joseph Banks to whose charge Lieutenant King had committed a copy. Accessed 9/4/06

15 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, April 1790:

16 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, April 1790:… with an account that was of itself almost sufficient to have deranged the strongest intellect among us ... the Sirius, which was to have gone in quest of relief to our distresses, was lost upon the reef ”On the day following, one hundred and sixteen male and sixty-eight female convicts, with twenty- seven children, were put on board. “ The Sirius lost on March 19th

17 The Rocks had claimed the mighty Sirius In the background is the Supply “The Melancholy Loss of HMS Sirius off Norfolk Island” is by George Raper, Midshipman of HMS Sirius. Written beneath the image: “Taken from the flagstaff on the beach by Geo. Raper.”

18 Judge-Advocate David Collins’ entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography online Accessed 27/01/2007.

19 Cobley, John (1962), Sydney Cove 1788, p.184. “Captain William Hill’s Letter to Jonathan Wathen”, published in the Oracle, April 25, 1791.

20 White, John (1790), April 17, 1790, published in Gentlemen’s Magazine, 213

London, January 1791, pp. 79-80.

21 Tench, W. (1790) A Complete Account [Vol. II] Chapter VI, January 1790.

22 Tench, W. (1790) A Complete Account [Vol. II], Chapter VII, June 1790.

23 Tench, W. (1790) A Complete Account [Vol. II], Chapter VII, June 1790.

24 Tench, W. (1790) A Complete Account [Vol. II], Chapter VII, June 1790

25 Tench, W. (1790) A Complete Account [Vol. II], Chapter VII, June 1790.

26 Lemire, B. (1991), Fashion's Favorite, p.99

27 King, P. G. (1790) Transactions at Norfolk Island and Port Jackson, Chapter XV, March 1790 to April 1790. “Lieutenant King’s Journal” (one of several) was published in Captain John Hunter’s An Historical Journal also published as a supplementary to Captain John Hunter’s An Historical Journal.

28 Gazetteer 29 December 1790 in Select Documents in Australian History, C. M. H. Clark. Vol. 1, 1788-1850, Angus & Robertson, 1975 (first published 1950), p. 53.

29 Worgan, G. (1788), Letters, May 19, 1788.

30 Hunter, J. (1787) An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, (May 1789 to January 1790, Chapter VI, July 1789 (n.p.): “I was under the necessity of objecting, for want of shoes, the last march having tore all but the soals from my feet, and they were tied on with spun-yarn.”

31 Tench, W. (1790), A Complete Account [Vol. II], April 1790.

32 Tench, W. (1790), A Complete Account [Vol. II], April 1790.

33 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Volume I, June 1790 214

34 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Volume I, June 1790.

35 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Volume I, June 1790.

36 Extract from a Letter from one of the women convicts that sailed from England in the Lady Juliana, dated Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, July 24 , 1790: “there died in their way here on board the Neptune 183 men and 12 women, and in the Scarborough 67 men and in the Surprize 85;” At the beginning of her letter she describes her own voyage on the Lady Juliana -- “only three women died, and one child.”

37 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, June 1790. Collins is horrified at this lapse of honour: “… no interest for their preservation was created in the owners, and the dead were more profitable (if profit alone was consulted by them, and the credit of their house was not at stake) than the living.”

38 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, June 1790.

39 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, June 1790.

40 Historical Records of Australia (HRA), 17 July 1790; “Governor Phillip to The Right Hon. W. W. Grenville despatched per store ship Justinian via China, acknowledged 10 January 1792.”

41 Extract from a letter from one of the Women Convicts that sailed from England in the Lady Juliana, dated Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, July 24 , 1790. http://image.sl.nsw.gov.au/banks/80898.jpg.

42 The Right Hon W. W. Grenville (Whitehall) to Governor Phillip at Port Jackson, July 1790. (HRA)

43 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, June 1790.

44 The Lady Juliana left England in July 1789, but took a full 12 months to reach its destination. The official Second Fleet transports set sail much later to arrive in 1790 within three weeks of the Lady Juliana.

45 4 The cant language of the streets in which “the Family” members communicated amongst 215

themselves was sometimes called ‘Flash’. Dictionaries of Flash language were found necessary both in England and in Australia for the lawyers when taking evidence to interpret the Flash vocabulary. Absorbed into the vernacular, many Flash expressions are still found in Australian slang; ‘scrag’ which indicates an unseemly or unattractive woman is one example.

46 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, June 11, 1790.

47 On the voyage to Botany Bay Governor Phillip stopped off in Rio, and had purchased some kermit beetles (and the “Prickly Pear” cactus on which the insects lived) probably for ‘refreshing’ the scarlet of the military uniforms, and was also supplied with a stock of familiar basic dyestuffs and their essential chemical mordants. In the spirit of England’s colonial ventures, there was a heightened botanical interest to collect, try and test the new and exotic species for sending back to the motherland. George Worgan tried planting indigo seeds in his garden and fustic was found growing wild near the Hawkesbury River.

48 In the 1960s craft revival, in the same spirit of curiosity and trial-and-error science, Jean Carman produced a slim booklet, Dyeing with Australian Eucalypts for the use of craft weavers and wool-workers. In the colony, the leaves and wood of the native acacia growing wild were discovered to be eminently suitable for tanning hides, and there was early experimentation with leather dyeing using traditional methods and native acacia. Dye-pits were established early in marshy Blackwattle Bay and at Parramatta to deal with the all- important and necessary “shoes,” and cordwainers and cobblers were taken off the government farms in order to manufacture harness, saddlery and boots.

49 Tilke, M. (1956), Costume Patterns and Designs, Introduction, n.p.

50 In western countries, added triangular gores and gatherings had shaped garments to fit both male and female bodies since medieval times. Accessed 16/08/2015.

51 Tilke, M. (1922), Oriental Designs Preface, p.5.

52 Email from Wayne Johnson, Archaeologist & Curator, Rocks Discovery Museum, 6 June 2014. My thanks to Chris Murphy and staff at the Museum for facilitating access to this important relic. The Australian shift: (not currently on display), The Rocks Discovery Museum, Kendall Lane, The Rocks, Sydney NSW.

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53 Tilke’s African Djellaba – Tilke, M. (1956), Costume Patterns and Designs: A survey of costume patterns and designs of all periods and nations from antiquity to modern times, Plate p. 20 and Details of Plates, p.19.

54 Freeland, J.M. (1968), Architecture in Australia, p.45.

55 The cabbage tree was omnipresent in the settlement and was used prolifically for both food and building. The cabbage tree (Livistonia australia) grew in the cool valleys surrounding the harbour, and its servicable soft wood was easily worked with inferior tools for the rapid construction of the wattle-and-daub huts to get the people out from under canvas and into a hut.

56 Young, Arthur (1804), General View of the Agriculture of Hertfordshire, Chapter XV, Section III, The Poor, p.222. Arthur Young was widely regarded as “the first person in England to write extensively about land, who owned it, its produce and stock,” and widely regarded, he “was appointed secretary of the Board of Agriculture in 1793. In 1784 he began the publication of the Annals of Agriculture, which was continued for 45 volumes. Accessed 12/05/2005.

57 ‘Saucy’ is used in some eighteenth century texts in the sense of ‘independent’ rather than cheeky.

58 Young, A. (1804), General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hertfordshire, p. 222. Accessed 13/10/2008.

59 Fiennes, Celia (1697), Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary. Accessed 06/08/1993.

60 In a Preface, her 1888 transcriber remarks on the “quaint manners and customs of those times” and notes in particular, the “absence of roads.” For Fiennes, “miles,” while a fixed unit, are “long” or “short” depending on the terrain and the ease of travel. 61 Fiennes, C. (1697), Through England on a Side Saddle: Tour: Coventry to London.

217

Accessed 06/08/1983.

62 Fiennes, C. (1697), Through England on a Side Saddle 1697 Tour: Coventry to London. Accessed 06/08/1983.

63 Lemire, B. (1991), Fashion's Favorite, pp. 133-134.

64 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture And Commerce, p 50.

65 Lemire, B. (1991), Fashion's Favorite, p.194, quoting The Universal British Directory (1790), i, 56, 98, 300, 340.

66 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture And Commerce: Ch. 2, p.63 .

67 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture And Commerce, Ch.1, p.11.

68 Lemire, B. (1991), Fashion's Favorite, p.195.

69 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture And Commerce, p.71.

70 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture And Commerce, p.44.

71 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture And Commerce, p.44.

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THE THIRD FLEET ENDNOTES

72 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, February, 1791.

73 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1 January 1791

74 Clark, R. (1787-1791), Journal, April 9, 1791.

75 Tench, W. (1790), A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson [Vol. II] Chapter VI, February 1790.

76 Prior to sailing, Traill had taken all clothing, money and personal belongings from the convicts aboard his ship – for “security reasons” – and having “disposed of them”to his personal benefit, was unable to return any on arrival in the colony. The clothing situation was particularly dire. The Neptune had transported 90 women, of which 78 survived (or 78 women, of which 66 survived) the conditions aboard ship. The Neptune indent, possibly compiled retrospectively on arrival and with little care, numbers vary widely. I have followed Portia Robinson’s unravelling account of the Neptune indent, which impacted on the numbers of women until the end of 1792

77 Jordan, Sarah (2001), “From Grotesque Bodies to Useful Hands: Idleness, Industry, and the Laboring Class” Eighteenth-Century Life Vol. 25, No 3, Fall 2001, pp. 62-79 and Footnotes, 3 and 4, p.73. Sarah Jordan has coined this particular term: "comfortable class" as a way “to designate that minority of people who did have these things and who thus were at little risk of having to turn to the parish for relief if they could not immediately find work that would afford them a living wage or if they became incapacitated for labor.” I adopt the phrase "comfortable class" to avoid the cumbersome repetition of "upper- and middling-class (or ‘sort’).”

78 Jordan, Sarah (2001) “Grotesque Bodies to Useful Hands: Idleness, Industry, and the Laboring Class,” Eighteenth-Century Life, Volume 25, Number 3, Fall 2001, p.62

79 Elizabeth Macarthur (neé Veale), 1790. Watercolour on ivory miniature National Library of Australia, Accessed 29/01/2014.

219

80 King, Hazel (1980) Elizabeth Macarthur and her World, Letter to Bridget Kingdon. p. 17.

81 The Aboriginal Language of Sydney: the Notebooks of William Dawes. School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS] Special Collections, London Website at Accessed 20/1/2014.

82 Clark, R. (1787-1791), Journal, September 3, 1790.

83 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, July 1791.

84 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, June 1791.

85 The transports that arrived in 1791: August 1: the Matilda, 205 male convicts. August 20: the Atlantic 220 male convicts. August 21: the Salamander 160 male convicts, sent on to Norfolk Island August 28th William and Ann 181 male convicts. They would in the next month be followed by: September 26: the Active 154 male convicts from England, September 26: the Queen 126 male and 23 female Irish convicts directly from Ireland The last of the ships arrived mid-October: October 13: the Albermarle 250 male and 6 female convicts, October 14: the 129 male convicts. October 16: the Admiral Barrington, 264 male convicts.

86 Hunter, John (1791), An Historical Journal … Chapter XXIII, September 1791 to December 1791.

87 Parker, Mary Ann (1795), A Voyage round the world in the Gorgon Man of War, p.68.

88 Parker, M., (1795) A Voyage, p.71.

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89 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, Oct 1791.

90 Parker (1795) A Voyage, p.92. “Our parties generally consisted of … the ladies who reside at the colony …”

91 Parker, M., (1795) A Voyage, p.68.

92 Parker, M.,(1795) A Voyage, p.92.

93 Parker, M., (1795) A Voyage, pp.93-4.

95 Thomas Gosse, 1799. “Founding of the settlement of Port Jackson at Botany Bay in NSW.” Hand-coloured mezzotint, collection, National Library of Australia, Accessed 17/09/2014. An English engraver and portrait painter, Gosse derived this picture from his own imagination without leaving England. He never came to Botany Bay.

96 Tench, W. (1791), A Complete Account, [Vol. II], December 2nd, 1791.

97 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, December 1791.

98 Robinson, P. (1993) The Women, Ch.5, pp.104-5

99 Robinson, P. (1993) The Women, Ch.5, p 107.

100 Robinson, P. (1993) The Women, Ch.5, p.106.

101 Robinson, P. (1993) The Women, Ch.5, p.130.

102 Robinson, P. (1993) The Women, Ch.5, p.109.

103 Robinson, P. (1993) The Women, p.104, and on Ch 5 p.111, ”[that] many of the inhabitants were not loyal to King George, was more significant than the fact that most were Catholic.”

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104 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Volume 1, December 1791.

105 Robinson, (1993) The Women, Ch.5, p.108.

106 Robinson, (1993) The Women, Ch.5, p 106.

107 Styles, John (1994) “Clothing the North: The Supply of Non-elite Clothing in the Eighteenth-Century North of England,” Textile History 25, 1994, pp. 151–152. The Westmorland census of 1787 lists both seamstresses and mantua makers represented almost equally in that northern rural district, thus he would find that even in remote rural villages there were “a fair sprinkling of women dressmakers who were competent or qualified to produce outer clothing for women.”

108 Styles, John (1994), “Clothes, Fashion and the Plebeian Consumer in England, 1660-1820,” Textile History, 25, 1994, p.154.

109 Wilson’s Dublin Directory, 1783, and Wilson's Dublin Directory, 1801. . .

110 Miller, Marla (2006) “The Last Mantua maker: Craft Tradition and Commercial Change in Boston, 1760-1840,“ Early American Studies, Vol. 4 p.3.

111 Miller, M., (2006), Needle’s Eye, Ch.5, p.136.

112 Miller, M., (2006), Needle’s Eye, Ch.5, p.135.

113 Aldrich, Winifred (2003) “The Impact of Fashion on the Cutting Practices for the Woman's Tailored Jacket 1800-1927,“ Textile History, 34 (2), 2003, p.135.

114 Miller, M., (2006), Needle’s Eye, Ch.5, p.136.

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115. French couture still distinguishes between the tailoring and the flou.” But in the 1950s, fashion magazines describing women’s suits made a stylistic distinction between ‘dressmaker suits’ and ‘tailormade suits’, which were not always made up by a tailor.

116 Miller, M. (2006) Needle’s Eye, Ch.2, p.65. on tailoresses.

117 Lemire, Beverly (1999) “In the hands of work women,” Costume No 33, p.34. Quoting Eric Hobsbawm, p.26: “The obvious way of industrial expansion in the eighteenth century was not to construct factories, but to extend the so-called domestic system.”

118 Lemire, B. (1991) Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain 1660-1800, Chapter 5, pp.163-4.

119 Lemire, B. (1991) Fashion’s Favourite, Chapter 5, p.174.

120 Lemire, B. (1997) Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660-1800, Chapter 2, p.65.

121 Miller, M. (2006), The Last Mantuamaker, pp.152-3.

122 Lemire, B. (1991), Fashion's Favorite, The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660-1800, p.91. Lemire in her socio-economic study of the cotton trade has also used the Old Bailey and other legal records to access information on fabric usage in the lists of stolen property.

123 The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Ref: t17850112-22: “I met the prisoner coming down stairs, I asked her who she wanted, she said she had been to one Mrs. Robinson, a mantua- maker, and there was no such person in the house.” See also OB Ref: t17800223-29, and OB Ref: t17870912-51.

124 The discovery of the prisoner "with a silk gown on her back, which I had to turn." OB Ref: t17810425-62. “I am an apprentice to Miss Elizabeth Probyn; I was coming from her house ... with four cotton gowns; she is a mantua-maker; I was going to deliver them to the person they belonged to.” OB Ref: t17860531- 4.

125 “I well knew they were not their own property, by reason I made the gowns for Mrs. 223

Richardson, and nobody knew them better, excepting the owner.” OB Ref: t17831029-36.

126 “I am by trade a mantua-maker, I made a gown for Mrs. Clark, and she desired me to go with her to buy a bit of bordering for the gown,” OB Ref: t17830910-80. “Did not you hear that woman say, I cannot purchase it till my mantua-maker comes, and was not it settled between the mantua-maker and her, how many yards would be necessary?” OB Ref: t17830723-3.

127 “I am a mantua-maker, I work journey-work for Miss Jacques.” OB Ref: t17960622- 76.

128 “I went to fetch it to make up, I am a mantua maker. OB Ref: t17830723-99.

129 “I am a mantua-maker, I had been into the Strand with some work; ... I felt the bundle all at once go out of my hand; somebody snatched it from behind me… I had my pattens [outdoor use, wooden soled slip-over shoes] on; coming up the steps I fell down.” OB Ref: t17880109- 18.

130 “… the prisoner lodged in the house … several things mentioned in the indictment were lying on the table in the parlour … I was in great distress, on account of losing things which were not my own.” OB Ref: t17810425-62.

131 “I had not cloaths enough to appear in; she said, my dear, do not you be faint hearted at that, for anything that is mine, or Miss Baker's is at your service.” OB Ref: t17830226-20.

132 The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Reference: t17940716-13.

133 “I let that room to two girls that sold matches and hat pins about the streets.” The two girls, barely beyond girlhood, lived marginal lives in appalling circumstances with a group of younger street children, and were eventually both taken up for theft. They arrived in Botany Bay with the First Fleet. OB Ref: t17870221-43.

134 A Bond Street milliner: “... she is a mantua-maker, and does plain-work for me.” OB Ref: t17830430-48.

135 “I was a servant for one twelvemonth, and a mantua-maker for two years.” OB Ref: t17831210-23. “I have heard that she is a mantua-maker, and that she has kept gen-men's 224

houses.” OB Ref: t17920523-24.

136 The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Reference:: t18020428-14.

137 Kent's Directory for the Year 1794, Directory of London and Westminster, & Borough of Southwark. Accessed 9/02/08.

138 Wilson’s Dublin Directory, 1801, Accessed 9/02/08.

139 The common ‘twinning’ of haberdashery & millinery, indicates that these two retail occupations were not identical, but I have not been able to ascertain their difference from the evidence of the Old Bailey – it appears that stock was similar if not identical, and there were male and female versions of the same thing. Fanny Burney’s play, The Witlings, shows that men generally avoided going into milliners’ shops unless it were to ogle the sewing girls.

140 Beverly Lemire (1994) quoting The Public Advertiser (29 March 1765; 14 January 1771,) in “Redressing the History of the Clothing Trade in England: Readymade clothing, Guilds, and Women Workers 1650-1800,” Dress, Volume 21, 1994, p. 59.

141 Tench, W. (1791), A Complete Account, [Vol. II], December 7, 1791.

142 Miller, M. (2006), The Last Mantuamaker, pp.372-424.

143 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.35. Boston was founded in 1630 by English Puritans fleeing religious persecution. The township, settled with 700 free people, was 160 years older than the penal colony settled in 1788.

144 Miller, M. (2006,) Last Mantuamaker, p.18.

145 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.26.

146 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.15

147 The Dressmaker, (1804) The Book of English Trades and library of the useful arts 225

. 148 Book of Trades, pp.222-3.

149 Book of Trades, p. 224

150 The Dressmaker, (1804) The Book of English Trades and library of the useful arts

151 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.6.

152 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.27.

153 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.28.

154 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, Thesis Ch.2, p.77

155 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, Ch.2 p.88

156 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, Ch.2, p.78.

157 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, P.360.

158 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, Ch.2 p.115.

159 Tench, W. (1791), A Complete Account, [Vol. II], December 2nd, 1791.

160 Miller, M. (2006), Last Mantuamaker, p.43.

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161 Miller, M. (2006), Needle’s E

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228

CHAPTER 4 ENDNOTES.

1 Parsons, George (1988), quoting L. P. Hartley (1953) in The Go-Between, in his Preface p.xvi. for A Difficult Infant: Sydney before Macquarie, Graeme Aplin (ed).

2 Collins, David (1788-1796) Account Vol. I, June 1793. Collins extols “the spirit of loyalty and affection for our justly-revered sovereign which breathed throughout the nation, accompanied with firm and general determinations to maintain inviolate our happy constitution.”

3 Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Volume 1 Number 7, Sunday April 17, 1803, p.4.

M. Hayes Milliner and Mantua-Maker At R. Sidaway’s, Back of the Store, Sydney

Respectfully informs Ladies that such Commands as they may be pleased to honor her with in either of the above branches, shall be executed in a Style of fashionable taste and neatness, with the utmost punctuality, and on terms that may recommend her to future favour.

She also begs to offer her service in the making up of Child-bed linen, in which she flatters herself she may have the happiness to render satisfaction.

4 In 1803, a second penal colony was established south in Van Diemen’s Land at Hobart. Initially administered from the mainland, it became independent in 1825 but remained a penal colony until 1853. In 1824 another penal colony was established north at which would become Brisbane. Perth and the was formed in 1829, with the intention of encouraging free settlers, but received convicts between 1831 and 1868. A settlement at Port Phillip was established by free settlers relocating from Tasmania in 1834, and in 1835 it was named Melbourne. South Australia and its capital, Adelaide were established in 1836 and, uniquely for Australia, was planned to be convict-free, and settled by free migrants only.

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5 In Karskens, Grace (2002), Engaging Artefacts: Urban Archaeology, Museums and the Origins of Sydney, p.43, answering a critique concerning her hybrid historical/archaeological methodology, and quoting the comment of archaeologist Jane Lydon.

6 Chaired by Dr Peter Stanley from the Museum’s Centre for Historical Research, this 2008 Symposium offered the following speakers: The Archaeologist Dr Mike Smith (National Museum of Australia); the Curator, Guy Hansen (National Museum of Australia); the Historian, Margaret Anderson (History Trust of South Australia) and addressing the material evidence of the Australian indigenous peoples, the Anthropologist, Fred Myers (New York University): National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008 : Viewpoints on Material Culture, Chaired by Dr Peter Stanley. http://www.nma.gov.au/audio/transcripts/collections/NMA_viewpoints_20 080530.html

7 Smith, Mike (2008), “An Archaeologist’s view,” Viewpoints on Material Culture, National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008.

8 Hansen, G. (2008), “A Curator’s View” Viewpoints on Material Culture, National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008.

9 Myers, Fred(2008) “An anthropologist’s view,” Viewpoints on Material Culture, National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008

10 Anderson, Margaret (2008), “An Historian’s view,” Viewpoints on Material Culture, National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008

11 McNeil, Peter and Sanda Miller (2008) Fashion Writing and Criticism, pp.6-7.

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12 McNeil, Peter (2008) ‘“We’re Not in the Fashion Business’: Fashion in the Museum and the Academy,” Fashion Theory Theory, Volume 12, Issue 1, p.67.

13 Steele, Valerie (2009) cited by Marco Pecorari. “I use the word “fashion” rather than “costume” because I want to emphasize that even in the past, people wore fashion – not fancy-dress costumes. The word “costume” should be restricted to theatrical/film costume or folk costume. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a fashion museum – meaning that we look at fashion, not as “art” (like in an art museum, where they tend to focus just on haute couture) or “history” (like a history museum, where clothing is used to document or illustrate other aspects of the past) but as a legitimate type of design that has both artistic and historical elements – and that has its own history.” Accessed 15/12/2009.

14 Dr. Samuel Johnson first published his dictionary of the English language in 1755, upgrading through numerous editions to keep pace with the changing nature of language. For this authoritative document, we cite the 6th edition published in 1785. In his Introduction, editor Jack Lynch, describes it as "a faithful record of the language people used until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 150 years later.” Lynch J. (2003) "Introduction to this Edition", p.1.

15 Johnson, S. (1785), A Dictionary of the English Language, pp.775-6.

16 Johnson, S. (1785), A Dictionary of the English Language, pp.775-6.

17 Maynard, Margaret (1990), Civilian Clothing and Fabric Supplies: The Development of Fashionable Dressing in Sydney, 1790-1830,” p.88.

18 Maynard, M. (1991), Terrace gowns and shearer's boots: rethinking dress and public collections, p.88.

19 Collins, D. (1788-1796). Account Vol. I, March, 1789, n.p.

20 A footnote in Phillip’s Journal in Chapter X. March 1788 19 March 1788, quotes from Captain Cook's First Voyage, vol. iii. p.39.

21 Governor Phillip’s Instructions, April 1787, p.6.

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22 Governor Phillip’s Instructions, April 1787, p.5. Accessed 07/06/07.

23 Historical Records of New South Wales, British Museum Papers Newspaper Extracts, Vol. II, pp. 746-747. The inclusiveness of “several of us” seems to indicate that they were all from the same ship. The women selected by Bowes were all from the Lady Penrhyn; the woman who may have been party to this who chose not to ‘volunteer’ was Nancy Yates, a milliner who became the colonial companion and mother of children to the Judge Advocate, David Collins.

24 King’s Report on Norfolk Island appended to John Hunter’s Journal. Experimenting with the unfamiliar plant continued for an extended time, but despite “repeated trials,” with this novel plant, all the traditional English methods had “no other effect than separating the vegetable part from the fibres; and a ligneous substance still remaining, it could not be reduced to an useful state.“

25 Daniel Defoe, (1697 – 1731) was a prolific writer and pamphleteer who travelled widely throughout the British Isles. He describes the town of Worcester thus: “This city is very full of people, and the people generally esteem'd very rich, being full of business, occasion'd chiefly by the cloathing trade. Accessed 07/09/2006 In the Worchester News 21/1/2005, there appears further news of Ann Inett appearing under the headline: “One final mystery in gallows-to-glory tale.” Clearly she could not have been without appeal to the handsome naval officer and was described as ‘an attractive woman, small framed, dark haired and with a neat and clean appearance.’ She accepted Gidley King's offer to be his housekeeper and, according to records, proved to be “an industrious and accommodating woman, keeping all the public quarters clean and tidy as well as cooking Gidley King's food, keeping his home comfortable, and warming his bed at night. Accessed 29/09/2011.

26 The administration in London was in a continual state of flux, and throughout this document, it will be referred to as the ‘Home Office’. Those asterisked were merely Acting Governors between Governor Phillip’s departure, and the appointment and arrival of Governor John Hunter.

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27 In 1800, Lieutenant-Governor P.G. King was appointed Governor to the colony, the third of the three naval governors, overseeing the requirements of the colony between the years 1800 and 1809. He was, with George Howe, the instigator of the Sydney Gazette in 1803. His son and heir, Philip Parker King, was an explorer and became influential in colonial politics. In order to distinguish him from his father, he is frequently referred to as P.P. King in the historical sources.

28 Hartley L. P. (1953), The Go-Between London p.xvi. Quoted by Parsons.

29 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, p.56. The emancipated couple received a liquor licence and permission to open up a public house which they named “The Yorkshire Grey.” As a free, working couple they were able to participate in the growing commercial life of the colony.

30 Clark, Ralph (1791), Journal, November 8, 1791.

31 Bassett, Marnie (1956), The Governor's Lady, p.24.

32 Maynard, Margaret (1994) Fashioned from Penury, p.33.

33 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol.II, Conclusion.

34 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol.II, Appendix, (P.G. King: “Particulars of the Britannia's VOYAGE to ENGLAND; with Remarks on the STATE of NORFOLK ISLAND, and some Account of NEW ZEALAND.”) There were no proper tools for flax dressing and weaving beyond those they made themselves and there was only one loom. The processing of the flax and its manufacture into cloth employed at first only nine people and “barely keeps them in practice.” “State of the Flax Manufactory [to September 31, 1796] Invalids gathering the flax 3 men

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Preparing it 7 women Beating and washing it 3 who are invalids Flax-dresser 1 Spinners 2 women Weaver and assistant 2 men TOTAL 18

35 Maynard M. (1994) Penury, p.33: “Surely a likely reason for the development of any form of flax industry in an undeveloped and remote colony would be the importance of cheap replacement clothing, arguably as immediate a concern as the possibility of a naval resource.” …“In fact much historiographical debate concentrates on the strategic importance of flax at the expense of the more significant consideration of the textile needs of the colony. This omission indicates historians' blindness to clothing needs as a factor in the manoeuvrings of historical protagonists.”

36 Phillip, A. Journal in Chapter X. March 19, 1788. Quoting Captain Cook's First Voyage, vol. iii. p.39. as a footnote: * The flax plant is described in Captain Cook's first voyage, vol. iii. p. 39. as found at New Zealand. “Of the leaves of these plants, with very little preparation, they make all their common apparel; and of these they also make their strings, lines, and cordage for every purpose, which are so much stronger than any thing we can make with hemp, that they will not bear a comparison. From the same plant, by another preparation, they draw long slender fibres which shine like silk, and are as white as snow: of these, which are also surprizingly strong, the finer clothes are made.”

37 The use of the same word for different species often causes considerable confusion. Two species are widely known in New Zealand as 'flax'. One species is native to New Zealand and Norfolk Island, and is called New Zealand flax or Flax lily; the other is native to New Zealand. This flax, woven very evenly and finely, made a soft draping fabric with a silky sheen which closely resembled the fine garments woven from linen flax in Europe. They are distinguished by their Maori names as wharariki and harakeke, and in Linnaeus’ binomial system as Phormium tenax and Phormium cookianum. Accessed 27/04/2012.

38 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol.I, September 1792.

39 Flügel, J.C. (1930) The Psychology of Clothes, pp.111-2.

40 Hainsworth, D.R. (1981), The Sydney Traders, p.193. In 1810, and other traders “considered the production of flax for export for naval purposes a fruitful way to increase local commerce. They had, therefore, sent to India and Britain for flax

234

seed, and to India for artisans skilled in turning flax into canvas and cordage. … in the meantime they hoped to set up an enterprise in New Zealand where grew a plant 'of considerable National importance.'” The intent was for returning transports, rather than travel empty, be loaded with bales of the valuable fibre. When a ‘valuable’ commodity finally eventuated, it would be fine wool that was compacted into bales for the streamlined purpose-built wool clippers that rode the winds of the southern ocean. Wool became the ideal staple export, and for generations Australia was said to “ride on the sheep‘s back.”

41 Roche, Daniel (1994). La Culture des Apparences, p.151.

42 Elliott, Jane (1975), Was there a Convict Dandy? p.373. Sourcing colonial account books between 1788 to 1815, Elliott discovers a wide cross-section of the population “spending more consistently on haberdashery, [and] material for clothing, tea, sugar and tobacco than on alcohol,” and she finds “The convict dandy rather than the convict derelict was the man abroad in the streets of Sydney or Parramatta on his day off.“

43 Styles, John (2007), Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-century England, p.169.

44 See Laura J. Rosenthal in “Understanding Whores,” her book review of Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture by James Grantham Turner, Eighteenth-Century Life, Volume 33, Number 1, Winter 2009.

45 Those committing secondary crimes in the colony were once again ‘transported’ – sent away from the main settlement and put to hard physical labour at a distance, breaking rocks, building roads or mining coal. Women were also consigned to ‘hard labour.’

46 Appadurai, Arjun (1996), Consumption, Duration and History, p.71-2.

47 Johnson, S. (1785), A Dictionary of the English Language, p.776.

48 Edgeworth, Maria (1811), Almeria: A Tale of Fashionable Life,

49 Appadurai, A. (1996), Consumption, Duration and History, p.72.

50 Owen, John (1806 – 5th ed.), The Fashionable World Displayed, Introduction, p.ii. Originally published under the pseudonym “Theophilus Christian” this satirical attempt to give “a complete and systematic account” of the Fashionable World of the eighteenth century was soon published under his own name.

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51 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.2.

52 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.20.

53 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.5.

54 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.16.

55 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.15.

56 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.10.

57 Since the sixteenth century, “phlogiston” had represented the flammable aspect of gases and all matter. For an outline of the important role of ‘phlogiston’ in eighteenth century chemistry, see Mi Gyung Kim (2008) “The ‘Instrumental’ Reality of Phlogiston,” International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 14, No.1 (2008), pp. 27-51. < http://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/14-1/kim.htm> Accessed 20/06/2009.

58 Owen. J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.11.

59 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, “John Owen” was a common enough name. His lighthearted approach to his subject has all the hallmarks of a life lived in certain fashionable circles himself. Although the author is very concerned with the morality and eternal happiness of the “Fashionables,” he is probably not the eminent theologian and prolific pamphleteer, John Owen D.D. However, he may have been the lesser known Rev. John Owen. The popular ‘ethnographic’ treatise The Fashionable World Displayed, was already in its 5th edition by 1806, and by the time it was in its 17th edition, this younger Rev. John Owen was a Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and a passionate supporter of the translation of the Bible into the vernacular for missions abroad. He was familiar with the mission activities in the Pacific communities, including Botany Bay.

60 Fletcher, Marion (1984), Costume in Australia, p.20. Marion Fletcher, a senior textile and design lecturer at RMIT, in 1968 found herself committed to curate the clothing collection held by the National Gallery of Victoria. Fully trained in Edinburgh, Scotland she drew on her textile and craft background to bring historical and curatorial order to this major collection. In the Introduction to her excellent Costume in Australia, she deals with the nation’s early settlement years. Although she focuses to a large extent on the dress of ‘the ladies,’ she alerts us to the over-reaching importance in the Sydney years that the colony self-defined as an antipodean English community, and thus was influenced by European fashion.

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61 The Sydney collector Anne Schofield, part of whose personal collection of historical costume is housed in the NGV, found it was not possible to make a comprehensive serial collection for Australia without acquiring some articles for the earliest period from overseas.

62 Fletcher, M. (1984), Costume in Australia, p.20.

63 Fletcher, M. (1984), Costume in Australia, p.20.

64 Fletcher, M. (1984), Costume in Australia, p.20

65 Maynard, M. (1990), “Civilian Clothing and Fabric Supplies: The Development of Fashionable Dressing in Sydney, 1790-1830,” Textile History, 21 (i), 87-100. Maynard, M. (1991), “Terrace gowns and shearer's boots: rethinking dress and public collections,” Culture and Policy, v.3, no.2, 1991: 77-84. Maynard, M. “A Form of Humiliation: Early Transportation Uniforms in Australia,” Costume Vol 21; p.63.

66 Fletcher, M. (1984), Costume in Australia, Introduction, pp.18-19.

67 “In 1823 and 1825 the official Population figures [were] of 29,692 and 38,217 ... " Colin Forster and Cameron Hazlehurst, (1988) "Australian Statisticians and the Development of Official Statistics" Year Book Australia, 1988. Accessed 17/04/2010.

68 John Macarthur refused an offer of marriage for his daughter Elizabeth from William Charles Wentworth because of the ‘convict stain’ in his lineage. Both young people were born in the colony and grew up and socialised together. For the self-styled ‘Exclusives’ the colonial population was further divided artificially into “currency” and “sterling” – those who had been born in the colony, and the English-born offspring of free settlers. See W. Carlton Dawe (1894), Confessions of a Currency Girl, University of Sydney Digital Library Accessed 09/08/04.

69 Maynard M. (1994) Penury, p.58; Maynard, (1990) Fashionable Dress p.96. “The significance of such fashions in Sydney during the 1820s became crucial because of the increasing entry of ex-convicts into social circles.”

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70 Scott, James (1791) Remarks on a Passage: “Port. Jackson, on Bd the Gorgon December 13, 1791: Major Ross two Capts. one Capt Lt Quarter Master Adjt. three first Lts. three Second Do. 9 Serjts 8 Corpls. 6 Dms. & 50 privates Embarkd on Bd the Gorgon, for a passage to England, together With 21 Women & 43 Children of the Marines, & 4 Convict Children, brought home by the officers.”

71 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, pp 3-4, then on p.5. “This study hopes to stimulate interest in a neglected area of cultural heritage by opening up the possibilities of dress and bodily adornment as a rich new site for both theoretical and material investigation.”

72 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, p.3.

73 Curthoys, Ann (1975), “Towards a feminist labour history,” in Women at Work, a special issue of Labour History, Ann Curthoys, Susan Eade [Magarey] & Peter Spearritt (eds), p.2.

74 Curthoys, A. (1996), “Visions, nightmares, dreams: Women's history, 1975,” Australian Historical Studies, Apr 96, Vol. 27, Issue 106, p.89. Vickery, Ann (2007) “Feminine Transports and Transformations,” p.71 notes the tendency to “treat archival material as documentary text” that has “an unproblematic relationship to the reality.”

75 Saunders, Kay (1996) “Visibility problems: Concepts of gender in Australian historical discourse,” Australian Historical Studies; Apr 96, Vol. 27 Issue 106, p.142.

76 See Susan Magarey’s paper presented at the Women’s History Conference 2009: “What Is Happening To Women’s History In Australia At The Beginning Of The Third Millennium?” www.history.sa.gov.au/chu/programs/history_conference/SusanMagarey- WhatIsHappeningToWomen'sHistory.pdf> Accessed 07/06/2007.

77 Historian Beverley Kingston was employed at the University of New South Wales. Her book, My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann (1975) focused on domestic work as an experience which historically the great majority of women share. The book met with academic resistance for its triviality rather than exploring the grand themes of suffragettes, women artists and academics, and the exploitation of female labour. In “Home truths from the 1970s: Twenty years on,” Kingston maintains in her defence the everyday life of women of the present day and “the richness of female culture.” “Home truths from the 1970s: Twenty years on,” Australian Historical Studies; April 1996, Vol. 27 Issue 106, p.30. 238

78 Fitzgerald, Shirley (2000), “History? You must be joking - A talk by Dr Shirley Fitzgerald, ” Fifth annual History Lecture of the History Council of New South Wales, pp.12-13. Dr Fitzgerald has published many books on the history of the city and in this lecture she addressed the issue of why we should be bothered with history. Is it just for interest, or for entertainment, or does it actually have some importance for our present lives?

79 The well-known feminist and Australian-born literary historian Germaine Greer launched her academic career with Shakespeare’s early comedies and as Professor has continued to lecture and publish extensively as a Shakespearean specialist. The Female Eunuch was published in 1970.

80 Greer’s thesis for her PhD in 1969 University of Cambridge was entitled “The Ethics of Love and Marriage in Shakespeare’s Early Comedies.”

81 Germaine, Greer (2008), Shakespeare’s Wife: Introduction, p.1

82 Augustus Earle, Lithograph 1830 nla.pic-an5577509-v. A Government Jail Gang, Sydney N. S. Wales.

83 Greer, G. (2008), Shakespeare’s Wife: Introduction, pp.4-5.

84 A close reading of Ralph Clark through his diary/journal and his letter book reveals a man homesick, lonely and the butt of the messroom jokes. Like many of the military officers, he and his wife survived on “half-pay” when he was not on active duty in one of England’s wars. He had taken the position because although he was an “officer and gentleman,“ he had not those ‘independent means’ that a gentleman’s life implied. He records instances of his economies and frugality in comparison with his fellow officers throughout his diary. The tour of duty in Australia appears to have been a joint decision by the couple to “get ahead,” and, as he reports in his journal written for his wife Alicia, “his only friend,” he hated every minute of it.

85 Clark, R. (1787), Journal, July 18, 1787.

86 The foundation journals were written by civil and military officers but letters, memoirs and diaries were also kept by soldiers and seamen.

87 Clark R. (1787), Journal, July 18 1787. 239

88 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, p.208. Decorum “was a keystone of the code of politeness “ and “required at least a nominal acceptance of prevailing social distinctions and hierarchies.”

89 Clark, R. (1787), Journal, July 18, 1787.

90 Bowes, A. (1787), Journal, December 10, 1787. “Upon any very extraordinary occasion such as thieving fighting with each other or making use of abusive language to the Officers, they have thumb Screws put on – or Iron fetters on their wrists.”

91 Summers, Anne (1975), Damned Whores and God’s Police, p.269 Footnote 41. “One convict woman, Elisabeth Barber accused Thomas Arndell, the assistant surgeon of the ship on which she was transported of being "a poxy blood-letter who seduced innocent girls while treating them for the fever, using his surgery as a floating whore-house." The source of this quote is unknown; Barbour’s smuggled report to Arthur Phillip may be a possibility, but it does not seem likely that the letter was kept.

92 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.30. Owen delivers a harangue on Law of Honour, whereby “reputed friends sacrifice to resentment with as little reserve as the bitterest enemies; and that, perhaps, to settle a coffee-house dispute, or to avenge a theatrical quarrel!“ and Footnote p.30: “Fatal duels are now become almost as common as highway robberies; and make almost as little impression upon the public mind. The murdered is carried to his grave, and the murderer received back into society with the same honour, as if the one had done his duty in sacrificing his life, and the other had only done his in taking it away.”

93 The prosecutor and victim of the crime, tells a tale that late at night he went into a public house where he was known for a pint. He was accosted by Barbour who took him upstairs and asked him to go on the bed with her. As he “did not chuse it;” he turned to leave, and inadvertantly caused a shelf behind the door holding crockery to come crashing down; whereupon the prostitute’s four accomplices had entered the room and prevented him leaving until he had paid for damages “if any,” whereupon the two women fell upon him, and took his watch and his money from his fob pocket before they let him up. And was he sober? Yes he was.

Elizabeth Barbour, a book stitcher and a part-time prostitute, tells a different tale of a wet cold night and a gentleman “staggering” drunk, of a warm room upstairs where he might sleep it off, and of his invitation for her to undress and lay naked with him. When she refused, the ‘gentleman’ transformed into a drunken violent bully who not only would not leave, but he seized a poker iron from the fire place and lashed out, smashing up a cupboard and breaking the crockery. Then he turned on her. The noise he generated of course attracted others in the drinking house. Two men wrestled the poker from his hands and when he fell on the floor, two women relieved him of his cash and his watch. Barbour 240

had probably rented the convenient room “from an acquaintance” and her account for damages must now have been considerable. While the others – probably professional thieves – thought to furnish character witnesses, Barbour’s only defence to the Court was “I rely on your mercy: ... I am in the hands of very wicked people.”

94 Clark R. (1787), Journal, July 18, 1787.

95 On 11th September 1782, Barbour was convicted and sentenced to death which was commuted to transportation to America, and when the war with America intervened, she was then loaded onto the Mercury transport set for the coast of Africa. However, soon after leaving England, the convicts aboard mutinied, but as none of them were seamen, they ran the ship ran aground back on English soil, and were captured. Now sentenced to death for return-from-transport, her sentence was not commuted until 1787 when she and other ‘Mercurys’, male and female were put aboard the First Fleet, and permanently dispatched to Botany Bay, never to return under pain of death. The 30 year old book stitcher had been held in various gaols, hulks and prison ships continuously since she was 25. Old Bailey Proceedings Online Reference Number: t17820911-38 accessed 24 November 2011.

96 Hansen, Guy (2008), “A Curator’s View” Viewpoints on Material Culture: National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008 : (transcripts) See also Maynard, M. (1991), “Terrace gowns and shearer's boots: rethinking dress and public collections,” Culture and Policy, v.3, no.2, 1991: 77-84: “Collections of spectacular parti-coloured and labelled penal clothing of men which do remain in a number of museums throughout Australia … are likely to have been preserved because of the fascination with the grim nature of convict life rather than any real interest in working dress.”

97 Grose, Francis (1785), A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Collected from “rogues and gypsies, and “soldiers on the long march, seamen at the capstern, ladies disposing of their fish and the colloquies of a Gravesend boat.”

98 James Grantham Turner (2009), “Understanding Whores,” book review, p.101, Eighteenth-Century Life, Volume 33, Number 1, Winter 2009.

99 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, p.3. 241

100 Watkin Tench was one of the few officers who signed up for two tours of duty in the colony. His first commissioned Account was dispatched to England to his publishers, Debretts and was published in London while he was still in the colony on his second tour of duty. His second volume is even more reflective, and was compiled back in London after his departure from the colony in 1791. He refers to Tobias Smollett who in 1766 wrote: “When an Englishman comes to Paris, he cannot appear until he has undergone a total metamorphosis ... He must even change his buckles and the form of his ruffles; and though at the risque of his life, suit his cloaths to the mode of the season. For example, though the weather should be never so cold, he must wear his habit d'ete or demi-saison, without presuming to put on a warm dress before the day which fashion has fixed for that purpose.”Travels through France and Italy, 1766. Quoted by Aileen Ribiero (1991) “Fashion in the Eighteenth Century: Some Anglo-French Comparisons,” p.334, Textile History, 22 (2), 1991.

101 Sir Joseph Banks died in 1820 and the script has no date. It comprises over a hundred loose leaf compendium and goes to at least Easter Monday in 1810. This series was previously located at ML A80-2. It was purchased in 1884 from Lord Brabourne by Sir Saul Samuel, the Agent-General for New South Wales, and transferred to the Mitchell Library in 1910. It was part of the accession which became known as the Brabourne collection.

102 Clark R. (1787), Journal, October 18, 1787.

103 Blackburn, David (1787), Blackburn Letters, September 2, 1787 sent to his sister: ”I have got some skins of birds of this country which I think will be worth your acceptance, tho' I fear I shall not be able to procure enough to make a muff.” (Blackburn Letters September 2, 1787, Mitchell Library MSS: ML Safe 1/120)

90

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104 Blackburn, D. (1791) Letters, received by Richard Knight, 12 July 1788, 19 March 1791, p.5, Mitchell Library MSS: ML Safe 1/120

105 Phillip, A. (1787), Journal, Chapter V. October 1787. “Yet the minds of his people were not at this time in a tranquil state; the accounts from Holland were such as occasioned much uneasiness, and great preparations were making at the fort, from apprehension of a rupture with some other power.”

106 These issues were just beginning to stir in the salons of the Bluestockings.

107 Hufton, Olwen (2000), Past Imperfect: Reflections on giving Women a Past, p.8.

108 Fry, Tony (1988), Design History Australia, p.12. “The book acknowledges certain limits. These are based on the many divisions of knowledge of design practices, often with their own history. For this reason three particular areas have been excluded: crafts, fashion and architecture.”

109 Fry, T. (1988), Design History, p.41.

110 Fry, T. (1988), Design History, p.19.

111 Fry, T. (1988), Design History, p.53.

112 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, p.3.

113 Fitzgerald, S. (2000), “History? You must be joking!” p.10.

114 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol I, March 1788. “The principal street of the intended town was marked out at the head of the cove, and its dimensions were extensive. The government-house was to be constructed on the summit of a hill commanding a capital view of Long Cove, and other parts of the harbour; but this was to be a work of after-consideration; for the present, as the ground was not cleared, it was sufficient to point out the situation and define the limits of the future buildings.’

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115 White, John (1788), Journal, June 4, 1788: “The governor nominated the district which he had taken possession of, Cumberland County; and gave it such an extent of boundary as to make it the largest county in the whole world.” The English claim of New South Wales encompassed the whole eastern coast of New Holland, from Cape York in the north to the very bottom of Van Deimen’s Land and spread inland to the longitude of 1350E, marking off western Australia which was still the Dutchmen’s New Holland. Watkin Tench, Narrative Vol.I, Chapter X.: “By this partition it may be fairly presumed that every source of future litigation between the Dutch and us will be for ever cut off, as the discoveries of English navigators alone are comprized in this territory.”

116 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol I, January 1788.

117 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.10, p.261.

118 Hanna, Bronwyn (2004), Re-gendering the landscape in New South Wales quotes feminist historian, Sarah Falcus.

119 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.260.

120 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.36.

121 Streets were identified colloquially and at first, names were purely descriptive – Soldiers’ Row, Back Row, Sergeant Majors Row, Chapel Row, Pitt’s Row, etc. Thus in 1792, High Street was the backbone of the colony extending south to the Brickfields, before veering off to the west and the thirteen bushy miles to Parramatta. Pitt’s Row is now Pitt Street, which was not extended to the water’s edge until 1853. Until then, access to the wharves and foreshore was only by the High Street which Governor Macquarie in 1810 would formally rename George Street in honour of the King. The parallel streets to the west were named for his princely sons, the Dukes of Sussex, Kent, Clarence, and York, while those parallel to the east he soberly renamed for Lord Castlereagh and William Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, honouring these political worthies. The remaining two he named for his wife and himself, Elizabeth and Macquarie Streets.

122 Karskens, G. (1997),The Rocks, p.146.

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123 The disappearance of narrative history from the school curriculum in favour of themes, has disempowered a generation of fashion students by divorcing them from important historical reference points within clothing culture.

124 Breward, C. (1995), The Culture of Fashion, Introduction p.5.

125 Karskens, G. (1997), The Dialogue of Townscape, p.112.

126 Breward, Christopher (1995), The Culture of Fashion, p.3.

127 Fry, T. (1988), Design History, p.13.

128 Breward, C. (1995), The Culture of Fashion, p.xi.

129 A valuable new resource for family historians was made possible during the writing of this thesis over the past ten years with the rise of the internet, such as the family historian groups and a Rootsweb message boards and mailing lists. One of the oldest is the Message Board for Port Jackson Convicts, those who began their Australian lives in Port Jackson (Sydney). With archives dating back to 1995, this most active and high volume forum aimed for a high degree of academic rigour under the mentorship of its founder and listmaster, genealogist Lesley Uebel (decd.) The message board required that contributing members had at least one convict ancestor during the first few years of the colony, and it constructively remained a work-in-progress, collating, upgrading and correcting the research of networking descendants. Run in conjunction with her Claim-a-Convict website, it is now indexed and published as Uebel’s “The convicts to Port Jackson 1788-1842: convicts during the 61 years of transportation.” Today is online at

130 Sources such as daily newspapers, new sites, new apps and webpages – newspapers “anniversary” facsimiles can be particularly hazardous.

131 To a large extent, the technological development of the internet has overcome the tyranny of distance for this Australian study, and has allowed rare access not only to the Old Bailey and British archival sources, but also to out-of-copyright digitised books, manuscripts and periodicals, today freely distributed by Gutenberg. Other

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providers long since defunct such as Blackmask, GeoCities, Tripod, web rings, and numerous individual web pages played a big part in the early days of the browsers, and in the first days of the 1990s, allowed easy access to important out-of-print books and particularly for the eighteenth century, the ‘voices’ and eye-witness accounts of those contemporary with Australia’s eighteenth century.

132 Rick Feneley and Julie McAlonna (2009), “Sons and daughters of the Southern Cross,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2009.

133 Jane Langley – Convict Female Lady Penrhyn 14/9/85 Old Bailey Larceny 114.5 Transportation 7 years Tambour Worker. Tambour work is a form of embroidery with a hooked needle which pierces through the fabric from the front, drawing up the thread from behind into a chain-stitch on the surface. A capable mantua maker was employed to work on garments rather than household textiles such as curtains, cushions or table cloths.

134 Styles, John (1994), Clothes, Fashion and the Plebeian Consumer in England, 1660-1820, Textile History 25, 1994, pp. 139 – 154: The Westmorland census of 1787 lists both seamstresses and mantuamakers represented almost equally in that northern rural district. Thus he would find that even in remote rural villages there were “a fair sprinkling of women dressmakers who were competent or qualified to produce outer clothing for women.”

13 Styles, J. (1994), “Clothing the North: The Supply of Non-Elite Clothing in the Eighteenth-Century North of England,” Textile History 25, 1994, p.152.

136 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Appendix 1, p.327.

137 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, p.28. “To assume from these figures that most of the women of Botany Bay were women from urban areas of Britain would be as erroneous as to assume that those women tried in county districts were invariably county women with the skills and backgrounds traditionally associated with country women.”

138 Styles J. (2007), Dress of the People, p.7.

139 Blainey, Geoffrey (1972), Tyranny of Distance, p.3.

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140 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.1 p.30.

141 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Introduction, p.2.

142 Tuckey, James Hingston (1804), The Account of a Voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass’s Strait, Chapter IV.

143 Blainey, G. (1782), Tyranny of Distance, p.3.

144 Styles J. (2007), Dress of the People, Appendix 1 p.327.

145 de Freitas, Nancy (2009) “Material Thinking as Document.” Studies in Material Thinking, Vol. 3 (November 2009), p.1.

146 See Preface–Author’s Statement.

147 Cross, Nigel (1982), “Designerly Ways of Knowing” Journal of Design Studies. Chapter 2, quoting Charles Sanders Peirce: “Abduction is a method of logical inference ..... for which the colloquial name is to have a "hunch". Abductive reasoning starts when an inquirer considers of a set of seemingly unrelated facts, armed with an intuition that they are somehow connected. The term abduction is commonly presumed to mean the same thing as hypothesis; however, an abduction is actually the process of inference that produces a hypothesis as its end result.”

148 Cross, N. (1982) “Designerly Ways of Knowing,” Journal of Design Studies, p.vi.

149 Caban, Geoffrey (1985), “Initiating a New Design Curriculum,” Designing Change.

150 Caban, Geoffrey et al (1991) ‘Initiating a New Design Curriculum’, Designing Change: “Designers use a particular form of reasoning which is different from the conventionally acknowledged forms of inductive and deductive reasoning and which can be described as ‘abductive’ (suggesting that something may be rather than must be or actually is.” 247

151 de Freitas, N. (2009) “Material Thinking as Document,” Studies in Material Thinking, Vol.3, November 2009, p.1

152 Brophy, Kevin (2007), in Interview: Kevin Brophy and Paul Magee Accessed 3/10/2013.

153 Cross, N. (1982), “Designerly Ways of Knowing” Journal of Design Studies, p.20.

154 Page, Donna (2010), Her honours thesis accompanying her exhibition is titled “Felicity, Passion and Rapture”, College of Fine Arts, UNSW 2010. Fashion and textile student to creative merchandiser turned window and display artist, she is now an exhibiting sculptor. She displays a complete coherency in her career path, and today her art installations and conceptual exhibition pieces follow the themes of desire, commodification and women.

155 Cross, N. (1982) “Designerly Ways of Knowing,” Journal of Design Studies, p.19.

156 Hollander, Anne (1978), Seeing Through Clothes, Preface p.ix.

157 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through Clothes, Preface p.xiv.

158 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through Clothes, Ch 1 p.2.

159 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through Clothes, Preface p.xiii.

160 Hollander, A. (1994),, Sex & Suits, p.63.

161 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.22. “The idea is that when fashion became very flighty at the end of the eighteenth century, men simply quit, as if in protest.”

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162 Owen, J. (1806) Fashionable World, Introduction

163 Owen, J. (1806) Fashionable World, Chapter VI. pp.75-76.

165 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, p.49. 166 “Abandoned wretches” Sourced from Convict Creations

167 Pybus, Cassandra (2008) “First Fleet follies” The Australian October 01, 2008 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/first-fleet-follies/story- e6frg8px-1111117565662 Historian Cassandra Pybus is highly critical of the narratives which begin in England and then invariably jump to Port Jackson, “as if the eight months in between were some limbo where history and life experience was suspended until the settlers touched terra firma once more.“

168 Hunter, J. Historical Journal, October 1786 to September 1787. “We had not been ten days in this harbour, [Rio de Janerio] before we found the convicts in every ship much more healthy than when we left Spithead. “

169 Ryan, Edna & Conlan, Anne (1975) Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work 1788-1974, Ch.1 pp.1-2.

170 Bowes, A. (1788), Journal, February 6, 1788.

171 Karskens, G. (1995) The Rocks and Sydney, pp.299-300: “Some historians are vaguely disappointed that the evidence of resistance to the ruling order is so individualistic, so meagre, so ideologically incorrect, and spend a great deal of time trying to explain the absence of something that could not have existed in the first place.”

172 Bowes, A. (1788), Journal, February 6, 1788. See also Grace Karskens, (1995) The Rocks and Sydney, p.274, where she quotes convict, William Noah in a letter to his sister, remarking that convict women 'go clean and neat much more so than in England.”

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173 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.18 p.305.

174 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through, Introduction, p.xii.

175 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.18 p.310, and Ch. 2, p.55.

177 Bowes, A. (1787) Journal, December 1, 1787.

178 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Conclusion p.325.

179 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.1, p.24.

180 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.12, p.198.

181 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Conclusion, p.324.

182 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.1, p.20 quoting a visiting German traveller, visiting London in 1792 : Friedrich August Wendeborn, A View of England towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols (London, 1791)

183 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch 2. pp.32-33.

184 Curators would now define the inventories of eighteenth century milliners sourced from the Old Bailey transcripts as fashion accessories, and gloves, lace, embroidered pockets and fine stockings are collected, de-contextualised and displayed as separate artefacts, in the past collected as examples of craft skills.

185 Wardroper, John, 'The Coy Lass Dressed up in her Best Commode and Topknot' from Lovers, Rakes and Rogues: A New Garner of Love-Songs and Merry Verses, 1580-1830, quoted by John Styles (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.18 p.306.

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186 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.99.

187 New Ladies’ Magazine, August 1787, p.445.

188 New Ladies Magazine, 1788, p.40.

189 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.58.

190 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through Clothes, Ch. 5 p.360.

191 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.48.

192 The Times, 4 August 1789, quoted in Robert Jordan, Convict Theatres, p.94.

193 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.58.

194 Edgeworth, M. (1809), Almeria: A Tale of Fashionable Life, p.49. This early Irish story-teller published profusely, and was widely read in her own time, most books going into several editions, and her witty satirical stories of the fashionable life were among the first to be available for sale by book sellers in the colony. Her later admirers and emulators included Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens.

195 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing Through Clothes, p.118.

196 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Chapter 5, p.94.

197 Mann, D.D. (1811), The Present Picture, p.43.

198 Karskens, (1995) The Rocks and Sydney, p.274, quotes convict William Noah, who wrote his first impressions of the colony on arrival in his “letter to a sibling.”

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He recorded a very odd fashion note concerning the appearance of the women at Botany Bay, who had ”very fine hair which they plat Down their Backs.”

199 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol.I, June 1792.

200 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Conclusion p.324.

201 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Chapter 12, p.201.

202 Book Review – James Grantham Turner (2009), “Understanding Whores,” p.101, Eighteenth-Century Life, Volume 33, Number 1, Winter 2009.

203 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.8, p.190.

204 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.10, p.269

205 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.13.

206 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.10, p.256

207 Hunter, J. (1790), Historical Journal, Chapter XVII. Transactions at Port Jackson. Governor Phillip, June 1790 to July 1790 p.259.

208 35 Opinions on the Conduct of Convicts. Unpublished Appendix to Bigge's Reports. 20 Jan 1820, CO 201/118 [PRO].

209 Evidence of Samuel Marsden in Ritchie, The Evidence to the Bigge Reports II, pp. 92-3.

210 Bigge, John. T., “State of N.S.W.”, p.15. Commissioned by Lord Bathurst in 1819, Bigge’s investigative report into the state of the colonies at Sydney and Hobart required that the experiment of Sydney and its successful settlements must be curbed and “their growth as colonies must be a secondary consideration,” as the original intent was that “transportation be made the object of real terror.” Bigge

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advises, “The leading duty of those to whom their Administration is entrusted, will be to keep up in them such a system of just discipline as may render transportation an object of serious apprehension.”

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CHAPTER 5 ENDNOTES

1 Parsons, George (1988), A Difficult Infant: Sydney before Macquarie, Graeme Aplin (ed) Preface p.5.

2 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, Sept 1796.

3 As modern America still carries the seeds of its Puritan ancestry – the plurality of dissenting sects, interpretations, pluralism – Australia, conceived at the end of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, inherited a more science-oriented, secular culture that stressed reason and a growing individualism.

4 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, pp 3-4, The silences over the subject, linked as they are to the silences over women and their historical experiences, warrant further scrutiny.” Then on p.5. “This study hopes to stimulate interest in a neglected area of cultural heritage by opening up the possibilities of dress and bodily adornment as a rich new site for both theoretical and material investigation.”

5 Fitzgerald, S. (2000), “History? You must be joking!” p.10.

6 Riello, G. & McNeil, P. (2010), The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives, Part 3, ‘The Fashion Revolution’, p.173.

7 Elizabeth Barber Barbur Convict Female 1/9/82 Old Bailey Assault Robbery 46 Death – Commuted to Transportation 7 years Bookstitcher 30 English Married Thomas Brown in February 1788.

8 Clark, Ralph (1787), Journal, August 11, 1787: “On our Return on board found that Lieut Long had been on board with an order to discharge the following [Friendship] women to the Charlott, viz. Susanah Gought, Hannah Green, Francis Hart, Eliz Harvy, Mary Watkings and Ann Baighly, the six very best Women we have in the Ship, to receive six of the worst from the Charlott which I dont think is right, viz. Margt. Stuart, Fanny Anderson, Mary Phillips, Hanah Smith, Elizh. Cool, Ann Combs —... I dont know what I shall doe now, as well as the rest of use [us], for the[y] are the only women that can wash amonst them.”

9 Clark, R.,(1788), Journal, February 9, 1788.

10 Easty, John (1788), Memarandom, Febuary 9, 1788. From the first, events such as these precipitated the seething unrest amongst the Marines versus the ‘indulgences’ permitted to the convicts: “this Night about 1/2 past 8 oclock I was Confined by Serjt

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Hume for bringing a feameale Convict into Camp.” (Easty, March 8, 1788.)

11 This ‘most infamous hussy’ supported her children with her needle skills. Bowes lists her as a maker of childbed linen, stitching and embroidering and trimming with lace the fancy layette for the laying-in of a mother and her baby. Years later Elizabeth Macarthur, one of the few gentlewomen in the colony at that time remembered employing her possibly in this capacity, and recalled her as good tempered and very good looking.

12 Styles, John (2007), Dress of the People, p.40.

13 Karskens, Grace (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, pp.174-5: ”Marriage was generally seen as a superior status to being single: it implied the security, fixedness, steadiness, and it was rewarded. ... Married women were considered 'settled' rather than 'loose', and were regarded amongst themselves as mature and worldly. Mothers in particular achieved respect after they bore children.”

14 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.176

15 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.179.

16 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.156 and p.177.

17 Robinson, Portia (1993), The Women, Ch.7 pp.170-1, quoting Grenville to Phillip, HRA December 24, 1789; Catie Gilchrist, exploring the concern generated by male convicts and their sexuality: “The emphasis that has been placed upon female sexuality completely ignores the moral anxieties generated by all-male convict establishments.” (Gilchrist (2006) Male Convict Sexuality, p.350.)

18 Collins, David (1788-1796), Account Vol I, July 1791.

19 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.7 p.157.

20 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.7 pp.173-4.

21 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.11 pp.283-4: “The difficulties faced by these family women while waiting for their husbands to be assigned to them are detailed in petitions for assistance from the governor. ... the usual request [was] to be placed on stores and victualled by the government.”

22 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.9 p.219.

23 A convict husband was precluded during his term of servitude from owning land or 255

participating in the commercial life of the colony. However, any sign of “industriousness” was encouraged, and they could hire themselves out to work for wages in their available free time.

24 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.7, p.186.

25 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.12 Conclusion, p.300.

26 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.9, p.219: ”There was no expectation that some of the women might be as enterprising, ambitious and successful as the industrious ex- convict men. As 'women of proven good character', they would engage in trade, in importing and exporting, … would obtain official positions and responsibilities, such as Keeper of the Sydney Markets and Tolls and Keeper of the Pound. Neither was it expected that ex-convict women would become farmers and landholders, stock-keepers and dairywomen and agriculturalists, responsible for their own properties in their own right, or as the wives of convicts or disabled men or as widows.”

27 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.7, pp.156-7.

28 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.7 p.157

29 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.9 p.235: “Many of the women who requested leases confirmed in their own names were those who had scarcely owned the very clothes they wore when committed for trial in Britain.”

30 Styles, John (2007), Dress of the People, F/N p.82: ”It is probably significant that both these examples of commercial washing facilities were in places with large populations of seamen.”

31 Gamber, Wendy (1997), The Female Economy: p.7: “The voices of dressmakers and milliners are more difficult to hear because they lacked meaningful forums. … The challenge for future scholars will be to render these women visible.”

32 Sharpe, Pamela (1998), Female merchants, p.295. “Under common law, the married woman [in England] experienced a more constrained situation than in any other European country. Her legal identity was entirely subsumed into that of her husband, and she was unable to make contracts or sue for debt.“

33 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.1 p.34: “The average age at the time of trial 256

was in the mid-twenties, those sentenced in Ireland being slightly older than those from England ... Many of the girls from London were under sixteen when convicted.”

34 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.194: “The average lifespan in the colony was still under 50 by mid [nineteenth] century.”

35 John King Convict Male Scarborough 21/4/84 Old Bailey Larceny Apparel 18 Transportation 7 years. Bricklayer 33 English married Mary Humphries, October 19, 1790.

36 Hirst, John (2009), Sense & Nonsense in Australian History, p.48: “The companionate marriage in which a husband and wife were partners emerged in Britain in the late eighteenth century ... both took decisions which affected the family as a whole … This form of marriage came to Australia and became more widespread than in Britain. A man who wanted to exercise authority could still do so, since that is what the law allowed, but there is no doubt of the cultural pressures on men to accept the enhanced status of women which the companionate marriage provided.”

37 Maynard, M. (1994), Fashioned from Penury, Intro pp. 3-4: “In the historiography of Australia ... the absence of serious attention to dress [has] been especially marked. The silences over the subject, linked as they are to the silences over women and their historical experiences, warrant further scrutiny.”

38 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.12 p.269: “They found their own levels in the economic strata of convict society. They lived and worked within a class structure which barred no woman.” Although see Pam Sharpe (1998), Female merchants, p.295 concerning the legal restrictions were imposed on English women.

39 Worgan, G. (1787), Letters, Sydney Cove, 12 June 1788: In a letter to his brother Richard sent from “The greater part of the women convicts are a shocking abandoned set ... in short they are a vile pack of Baggages continually violating all Laws and disobedient to all Orders.” ML Ms p.19.

40 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.10 p.269.

41 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, October 1792.

42 Defoe, Daniel (1722), author of Robinson Crusoe, was an early English novelist. He wrote Moll Flanders in 1722 and ‘researched’ Newgate women while he was in Newgate himself, for debt.

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43 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, January 1792: ”The convicts were strictly forbidden ever to assemble in numbers under any pretence of stating a complaint, or for any other cause whatever, all complaints being to be made through the medium of the superintendants or overseers.”

44 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, May 1792.

45 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, February 14, 1792, The Pitt brought 49 female convicts, five children, and seven 7 free women.

46 Swinburne, Gwendoline H. (1919), Source Book, p 1. ”a new corps raised specifically for duty, to take up duty in the penal colony.”

47 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, March 1792: They neglected to send the copper sheeting. “had she been put together, coppered, and sent out manned and officered from England; by these means too the colony would have received many articles which were of necessity shut out of the Pitt to make room for her stowage.”

48 Grose, Francis. (1792), Deputy-Governor N S Wales Letter to an unknown correspondent, April 2, 1792. Accessed 29/01/2009.

49 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, February 1792.

50 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, July 1791: “Intimation was likewise given, that a cargo of grain might be expected to arrive from Bengal, some merchants at that settlement having proposed to Lord Cornwallis … to freight a ship with such a cargo as would be adapted to the wants of the colony, and to supply the different articles at a cheaper rate than they could be sent hither from England.” While waiting anxiously for the return of the Atlantic: “To her arrival, however, we looked forward at this period with some anxiety ... there being only fifty-two days flour, and twenty-one weeks salt meat in store at the ration now issued.” (Collins, Account, Vol I, March 1792.)

51 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, July 1792: “The different species of provisions which had been received from Calcutta were not much esteemed by the people.”

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52 Even in July of the year, Collins would once more have occasion to observe: “… the necessity of sending out supplies from the mother country until the colony could support itself without assistance would have become so evident from the frequency of our distresses and the reduction of the ration, that the journalist would no longer have occasion to fill his page with comparisons between what we might have been and what we were; to lament the non arrival of supplies; nor to paint the miseries and wretchedness which ensued.“ (Collins, D. (1788-1796) Account, Vol I, July 1792.)

53 Atkins, Richard (1792), Diary, April 17, 1792 … the High Street was named for the King George III during the Governor Macquarie era, and is still called George Street.

54 Atkins, R. (1792), Diary, April 14, 1792.

55 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, May 1792.

56 Atkins, R. (1792) Diary, May 12 1792.

57 Atkins, R. (1792) Diary, June 26 1792.

58 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, Jan 1792.

59 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, November 1792. In November, the women each received • one cloth petticoat; • one coarse shift; • one pair of shoes; • one pair of yarn stockings; The addition of a pound of thread, and a small allowance of pins and needles; a thimble and a pair of scissors, and one pound of soap, probably did little to assuage their disappointment.

60 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, p.265. “ and undergarments were the items that even the poorest labouring families struggled to acquire regularly in order to sustain a minimally decent wardrobe, along with stockings.“ He quotes Pehr Kalm in his Visit to England: “Here it is not unusual to see a farmers or another small personage's wife clad on Sundays like a lady of ‘quality’ at other places in the world, and her every-day attire in proportion.” (Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People Ch 1 p.19.)

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61 Bowes, A. (1788), Journal: “one woman (Ann Smith) who had always behaved amis during the Voyage, upon giving here some Slops & at the same time Mr. Miller taking notice of the very indifferent Character She bore & how little she merited the Slops, throw'd 'em down on the deck & wd. not have anything.” Runaways were identified by what they wore, and Collins in his Account of 1789 records the discovery of a torn scrap of fabric caught up on a bush which was “said to have formed part of a petticoat which belonged to Anne Smith, a female convict who absconded a few days after our landing in the country.“(Collins, D. (1789,) Account, Vol.1 (1789). Probably it was identified by some of the women – in the visual/oral culture of the late eighteenth century, people were recognised by their clothing, and clothing was submitted in evidence of identity in the English courts. But what did happen to her? Her disappearance along with the French convict Peter Perris (Paris) seems more than just coincidental at the time when the short-handed French discovery ships were moored in Botany Bay. Were they both smuggled aboard by the seamen?

In 1796, on the reported sighting of a white woman living among a northern tribe, Collins ponders thoughtfully: “There was indeed a woman, one Ann Smith, who ran away a few days after our sitting down in this place, and whose fate was not exactly ascertained; if she could have survived the hardships and wretchedness of such a life as must have been hers during so many years residence among the natives of New Holland, how much information must it have been in her power to afford! But humanity shuddered at the idea of purchasing it at so dear a price.” (Collins, D. (1796), Account, Vol II, July 1796.)

62 Collins, D. (1788-1796), August 1788: “The anniversary of the Prince of Wales's birth was observed by a cessation from all kinds of labour ... a public dinner was given by the governor. Bonfires were lighted on each side of the cove at night, with which the ceremonies of the day concluded. …His royal highness Prince William Henry's birthday was distinguished by displaying the colours at the flag-staff; and this compliment was paid to other branches of the royal family whose birthdays were not directed to be observed with more ceremony.”

63 Hunter, John, Historical Journal, Ch. VII February 1790 to February 1791.

64 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.1 p.16.

65 Bowes, A. (1787), Journal, December 10, 1787: “Upon any very extraordinary occasion such as thieving fighting with each other or making use of abusive language to the Officers, they have thumb Screws put on – or Iron fetters on their wrists ... and sometimes their hair has been cut off and their head shaved, which they seemed to dislike more than any other punishment they underwent.”

66 Pybus, Cassandra (2008), “First Fleet Follies,” The Australian, October 01, 2008, (n.p.)

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67 Robinson P. (1993), The Women, Ch.1, p.32: “The extent to which women left the places of their birth and travelled throughout Britain in search of employment in the latter half of the eighteenth century was not typical of the traditions of their class.”

68 Resident Lady (1795), France, August 4, 1792, p.18.

69 Resident Lady (1795), France, June 24, 1792, p.15.

70 Resident Lady (1795), France, July 24 to August 1792, p.23. She provides this translation as a footnote: *"I am a native of England, and, consequently, have a right to go where I please.”

71 Resident Lady (1795), France, July 24 p.16: “Our revolution aera has passed tranquilly in the provinces, and with less turbulence at Paris than was expected.”

72 In the Introduction the editor, John Gifford states: “The Letters are exactly what they profess to be; the production of a Lady's pen, and written in the very situations which they describe.” (Resident Lady (1795).

73 Resident Lady (1795), France, December, 1792. pp.51-2.

74 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, September 1793, “a ship full of wild lawless Irish.”

75 Karskens G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.136: “'Croppie' was the colloquial, usually derogatory, name for the Irish, some of whom cropped their hair like French revolutionaries.” For the Irish, ‘Death or liberty!’ was a common toast. In the upside down world, occupational status was turned around by the demands of colony building; brickmakers, iron workers, carpenters were in the ascendant, while other skilled artisans might be labouring at the hoe in the fields.

76 See The First Fleet, 1788 and Appendix 1:.

77 The political bonding of the house of the Bourbons with the Hapsburg empire was imperative, and any tardiness in producing the all-important heir was attributed to the Queen.

78 Resident Lady (1795), France, p.86. “Those attached to courts, so nearly 261

resemble each other in all countries …”

79 Fairholt, Frederick (1846), Costume in England, p.377 quoting Charles Knight, (1791- 1873) The Pictorial History of England (1837).

80 Owen, John (1806), Fashionable World, Ch.5 p.62.

81 Fairholt, F. (1846), Costume in England, pp.399-400. Mercifully Frederick Fairholt born 1814, died in 1866, just as the cage crinoline was coming into fashion. He would have been apoplectic!

82 Fairholt, F. (1846), Costume in England, p.383.

83 The author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, she was interviewed on the ABC The Book Show by Michael Gurr, on January 1, 2008.

84 Caroline Weber interviewed by Claudia Solacini. Accessed 11/09/2011

85 Resident Lady (1795), France, p.45.

86 Resident Lady (1795), France, p.20. See also the Lady’s entry for June 18, 1795, pp. 294-6 on the occasion of being permitted to finally leave France and return to England: “If you examine most of the publications describing foreign countries, you will find them generally written by authors travelling either with the éclat of birth and riches, or, professionally, as men of science or letters ... if their stay be protracted at some capital town, it is only to be fêted from one house to another, among that class of people who are every where alike.”

87 Resident Lady (1795), France, July 24, - August 1792. p.22.

88 Resident Lady (1795), France, September 4 1792, p.37 “A journey of an hundred miles, with French horses, French carriages, French harness, and such an unreasonable female charge, is, I confess, in great humility, not to be ventured on without a most determined patience.”

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89 I discovered this dress online in 2003 on the website of the Benalla Costume and Pioneer Museum. Benalla is a country centre deep in Kelly country in the hinterlands of Victoria, on the main road between Sydney and Melbourne. Accessed 2003. The Benalla Costume and Pioneer Museum in the old Police Station has been re- housed and renamed The Benalla Costume and Kelly Museum (now 14 Mair Street, Benalla). For the website see: The gown was no longer displayed on the web site at the time of writing.

90 Isabella Brown’s gown is also seen above Figure 15.

91 Maynard M. (1991), Terrace Gowns: “known to have been worn in Australia [which] shape our view of the appearance of earlier Australians.”

92 Unpicked and in pieces, the gown fortuitiously avoided being used for fancy dress parties, and escaped the usual destiny for old costumes – being donated to the local theatre to be made over and used for plays or dress-ups.

93 Personal comment. I am grateful to the modern mantua maker herself, Norma Grubb Miller, who recounted the history of the gown once it arrived in Australia. Fortunately she was also conversant with the old method of following the original seams and the needle-tracery of the eighteenth century semptstress. She also described some of the technical difficulties she encountered in re-creating this gown into its original mold. The sleeves were a challenge.

94 There are few new technologies associated with the manufacturing of clothing, and today’s made-to-measure, bespoke garment, remains much the same, with little change beyond replacing a sewing woman – a seamstress – with a sewing machine. The first sewing machines attempted to replicate the stitching methods of the seamstresses but the machine itself was technically not commercially viable until the 1850s, and in 1793, it was generations away.

95 McNeil, Peter (2004), Appearance of Enlightenment p.384: “The robe à la française, or sack-back, an open robe with box pleated panels falling from the shoulder to form a train was popular dress for the wealthy women. and their upper servants throughout the century and became acceptable at the French court shortly before the Revolution.” See also Breward (2003), Culture of Fashion, p.115: ”The one-piece mantua, draped from the shoulders or waist at the back (respectively à la française or à l'anglaise) and open at the front to reveal a brocaded, embroidered or lace-trimmed petticoat formed more usual and 263

up- to-date day wear.”

96 John Byng, (1781) “I meet milkmaids on every road, with the dress and looks of Strand misses.” Vision of Britain through Time, (n.p.) Accessed 07/09/2008.

97 Fairholt F. (1846), Costume in England, p.381 and p.399: “In 1789 the ladies began to relieve themselves of their load of hair.”

98 Bowes, A. (1787), Journal, December 18, 1787: ”This day Mary Davis one of the Convicts, fell down the fore Hatchway & pitched on her head – wh. being well defended by false hair, rolls &ca. &ca. she sustain'd no matereal injury.” See Appendix 1: The First Fleet, 1788.

99 Lemire, Beverly and Riello, Giorgio (2008), East & West, pp.895-6.

100 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, Footnote 10, p.908.

101 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.895.

102 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, pp.893-4.

103 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.893.

104 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.903.

105 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p. 900. The English discovered and perfected vat dyeing, unknown in India. Their use of innovative dye winches, and steam driven rotary printers rather than artisanal block or screen printing was an early precursor to the sophistications of the Industrial Revolution.

106 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.900.

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107 Styles, J. (2000), Product Innovation, p.128.

108 “Lady Delacour” appears in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, Volume II, p.13.

109 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.7, p.116.

110 Styles, J. (2000), Product Innovations, p.161.

111 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.894.

112 Styles, J. (2000), Product Innovations, p.128.

113 Collins, D. (1788-1796) Account, Vol I, February 1793. Grace Karskens (1997), The Rocks p.120. In 1806: “Observing and mimicking the rituals of visiting Muslims in their celebration ... in honour of the renowned ‘Hassaen,’ the children succeeded so well in imitating their manners as to give much offence, and frequently to require their instantaneous banishment.”

114 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, February 1793.

115 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.895.

116 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, January 1796: “... a large investment of India goods, muslins, calicoes, chintzes, soap, sugar, spirits, and a variety of small articles, apparently the sweepings of a Bengal bazar.”

117 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, p.54: “A sceptical Old Bailey judge asked Ward: 'Is this finery fit for a washerwoman?' to which Ward offered the circumspect reply: 'My lord, it is all the finery I had.'”

118 Old Bailey Reference Number: t17880625-84: Charlotte Hughes, Mary Ford, Theft from a specified place, 25th June 1788.

119 Old Bailey Reference Number t17800405-27: David Davis, theft: simple grand larceny, 05 Apr 1780.

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120 Old Bailey Reference Number: t17860531-80: Daniel Marshall, Theft, grand larceny, 31st May 1786.

121 Old Bailey Reference Number: t18001029-54: John Simmons, Theft, grand larceny, 29th October 1800.

122 Old Bailey Reference Number: t18001029-54; William Bell, Theft, grand larceny, 9th July 1800.

123 Old Bailey Reference Number: t17861213-19: Samuel Phipps, Theft, burglary, 13th December 1786.

124 Old Bailey Reference Number: t17900526-1, Thomas Hopkins, Theft, shoplifting, 26th May 1790.

125 MacKay, Lynn (1999), Why they stole, p.10.

126 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, p.1: “… the 1780s. This was a seminal decade in the development of modern attitudes toward crime and punishment. ... There were also major difficulties in this period: 1780 to 1782 were, of course, war years. When the American War ended in 1783 some 130,000 soldiers and sailors were very rapidly demobilised. As well, 1782 and '83 saw poor harvests, and in the latter year an economic slump and high food prices made life difficult for many in the labouring classes. Toward the end of the decade there was another period of economic difficulty which peaked in the crisis of 1788. This was made worse by severe weather, particularly in the winter of 1788-89 when a frost lasted from November until January and the Thames froze over.” This is a significant period for our convict women who were sentenced in this time-frame; many would find themselves in Botany Bay.

127 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, pp.6-7.

128 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, p.6.

129 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, p.7.

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130 Old Bailey Reference Number: t17871024-20, Elizabeth Parry, Theft from a specified place. Portia Robinson’s scrupulous indent has her arriving on the Lady Juliana. (Robinson, P. (1993), The Women.)

131 Old Bailey Reference Number: t17871024-20: Elizabeth Parry, Theft from a specified place, 24 October 1787.

132 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, July 1792.

133 Tench, W.(1790), Account, Ch. X, November 1790: “I have no person to help me at present but my wife, whom I married in this country; she is industrious.“

134 Collins, (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, July 1792.

135 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, pp.6-7.

136 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, pp.6-8 and p.1: “Crime – especially theft – was thought to be a very serious social problem.”

137 MacKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, p.7.

138 Egan, Pierce, (1824) Life in London, Volume I Part II, Footnote, p.369.

139 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, December 1788: “These [two] women were immediately apprehended, and one of them made a public example of, to deter others from offending in the like manner. The convicts being all assembled for muster, she was directed to stand forward, and, her head having been previously deprived of its natural covering, she was clothed with a canvas frock, on which was painted, in large characters, R. S. G. (receiver of stolen goods) and threatened with punishment if ever she was seen without it. This was done in the hope that shame might operate, at least with the female part of the prisoners, to the prevention of crimes.”

140 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, January 1792

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141 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, July 1792: “a market had been established for the sale of grain, fish, or poultry, similar to that at Parramatta; a clerk being appointed to superintend it, and take account of the different articles brought for sale, to prevent the barter of goods stolen by the convicts.”

142 McKay, L. (1999), Why they stole, p.2

143 Lemire, B. (1997), Dress, Culture and Commerce, Chapter 5, p.137.

144 I have been unable to discern the distinction between the stock kept by haberdashers and by milliners. ‘I keep a haberdasher's and milliner's shop,’ an occasion where the husband ran the haberdashery and his wife the millinery aspect of the business. Mantua makers made bonnets as well – they were dress makers, i.e., making the whole ensemble, which eventually in the early nineteenth century coalesced into ‘dressmaker.’ See The Third Fleet, 1791 and Appendix 3. Paris appeared to have more specialized clothing providers at all times.

145 Robinson, P. (1993), The Women, Ch.4, p.84. “Perquisites” were an expected addition to monetary wages until the last years of the eighteenth century. The modern notion of “perks” attached to a job or position derives from this ancient practice.

146 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.3 p.69.

147 Maynard, M. (1991), “Terrace gowns and shearer's boots: rethinking dress and public collections,” Culture and Policy, v.3, no.2, 1991: p.78.

148 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, p.6: “Many items, usually of middle-class origin, languish limply in tissued museum drawers as sad and sometimes faded reminders of grand society balls or weddings, or perhaps worn out and stained from use. The precise agency and experiences involved in the wearing of these individual items of dress may never be entirely known.”

149 Healy, Robyn (2006), curator: Catalogue entry, 2006.

150 Gardner, Anthony (2006)

268

Accessed 05/08/08.

151 Riello, Giorgio & McNeil, Peter (eds) (2010), The Fashion History Reader: Global perspectives, Introduction, p.7.

152 McNeil contends that museum practices sometimes “run the risk of fetishizing artifacts,” discombobulating “many academic scholars whose understanding of fashion is image, not material based.” McNeil (2006), Fashion in the Museum and the Academy, p.70.

152 McNeil, P. (2006), Fashion in the Museum and Academy, p.68. citing Lou Taylor. Also, for an instance, see Anne Hollander (1978), Seeing Through, Ch II, p.118: “women have enormous bubbly hemispheres fore and aft, outlined by the emphatically sketched lines of their dresses.“

153 Resident Lady (1795), France, August 12, 1794, p.190.

154 Britain was almost permanently at war with France and its allies – the Seven Year’s War (1756-1763), the French Revolutionary War (1793-1802) and the Napoleonic War (1803-1815)

155 Roche, Daniel (1994), La Culture des Apparences, p.281.

156 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, Intro p.i: “our prose-writers have occasionally cast a very pertinent glance over ‘this fairy ground.’“

157 Johnson, Samuel (1785), Dictionary, 6th edition 1785.

158 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through, Ch.II, p.85.

159 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex and Suits, p.16.

160 Buick, Nadia (2013), “An Interview with Margaret Maynard.”

269

161 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.894.

162 Burney, Frances (1779), The Witlings, Act I.

163 Styles, J. (2000), Product Innovation, p.129.

164 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, February 14, 1792: “… could only be accounted for by the distance of our situation from the mother country, the uncertainty of receiving supplies thence, and the length of time which we had heretofore the mortification to find elapse without our receiving any.”

165 Trentmann, F. (2004), The Modern Evolution of the Consumer, pp.8-9. Accessed 20/11/2008

166 “Cultures of Consumption” was a £5 million ESRC Research Programme 2002- 2007.

167 These direct quotes from Dr Frank Trentmann, accessed in 2006, appeared on an early website which has been taken down. A selection of the various ”Working Papers” are published under the heading of “Findings.” See .

168 Brewer, John (2006), “The Error of our Ways: Historians and the Birth of Consumer Society” pp.7-8.

169 Barnard, Malcolm (1996), Fashion as Communication, p.162. He ventures, “Part of the motivation for writing the present volume was the lack of suitable material on semiology and fashion.“

170 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.3 p.58, quoting William Hutton, The Life of William Hutton F.A.S.S. (London 1816) pp.26-7

171 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, p.47.

172 Styles. J. (2010) “Custom or Consumption,” p.188, in The Fashion History Reader, Giorgio Riello & Peter McNeil (eds). See also John Styles (2007), Dress of the People, Conclusion, p.325. ”Affordable, new fashions readily insinuated themselves into popular 270

ways of dressing precisely because wearing special, fashionable clothes fitted customary expectations about how the distinction between Sundays and weekdays, holidays and workdays should be marked.”

173 Elliott, J. (1995), “Was there a convict dandy?” Australian Historical Studies, Volume 26. 1995, - Issue 104, p.375.

174 Elliott, J. (1995), Convict Dandy, p.389.

175 Elliott, J. (1995), Convict Dandy, p. 388.

176 Elliott, J. (1995), Convict Dandy, p. 391.

177 Roche, D. (1994), La Culture des Apparences, p.144.

178 Senior, Nassau (1828), “Two Lectures on Population: delivered before the University of Oxford, Lecture 1.” Saunders and Otley, London 1828. Although he didn’t venture as far as analysing the “decencies” of the humble pedestrian, Nassau Senior was nevertheless appointed as a member of England’s Poor Law Enquiry Commission in 1832. See John Styles (2007) Dress of the People, Chapter 16, p. 270: “The limitations of Poor Law provision are confirmed by sporadic evidence about the clothes owned by those who sought relief.” And p.266 – it was overwhelmingly, “the elderly and mothers of young children, who made up the bulk of the adults on relief,” that is, those unfortunates in the Workhouse.

179 Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations quoted by John E Crowley (2001) The Invention of Comfort p.152. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith identified candles as one of the “necessaries” of life, by which he meant “not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.” See also Adam Smith, quoted in Beverly Lemire, Shifting Currency, Ch 2 p.31;

180 Palmer, Alexandra and Clark, Hazel (2004), (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks, Introduction, p.3.

181 Palmer, A. and Clark, H. (2004), (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks, p.3. See also John Styles (2000) Product Innovation, p.160: ”Even in 1681, in a complaint about the damage salesmen were inflicting on other trades, it was still possible to describe their activities as 'this new Trade' and to assert that 'many remember when there were no new Garments sold 271

in London, as now there are, only old Garments at second hand'”.

182 Palmer, A. and Clark, H. (2004), (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks, p.5

183 Boswell’s London Journal, p.109. The “jeweler” obviously catered discreetly to a higher clientele than the local neighbourhood pawnbrokers patronised by the hoi-polloi.

184 Palmer, A. and Clark, H. (2004), (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks, Introduction p.5.

185 Palmer, A. and Clark, H. (2004), (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks, Introduction p.11.

186 Riley, Margot (2004), “Cast-Offs”, in Palmer, A. and Clark, H. (2004), (eds) Old Clothes, New Looks, Chapter 3, pp.51-2.

187 Riley, M. (2004), Cast-Offs, p.51.

188 Lambert, Miles (2004) “‘Cast-off Wearing Apparell,’” Textile History, 35 (1) p.2: “The process of researching second-hand clothing can provide an entrée into a disturbingly lawless social underworld, feeding on crime and deprivation, and these criminal records provide a vital research tool.”

189 Riley, M. (2004), Cast-Offs, p.52.

190 Lemire, B. (2004), “Shifting Currency,” in Palmer and Clark (eds) (2004), Old Clothes, New Looks, Chapter 2, p.43.

191 Lemire, B. (2004), Shifting Currency, p.42.

192 Lemire B. (2004), Shifting Currency, p.30.

193 Riley, M. (2004), Cast-Offs, p.53.

194 The First, Second and Third Fleets transported 746 convict women to the penal

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settlement, and there were approximately 800 women of the lower classes in the colony by the end of 1792. This count includes the women who came free, the convict-wives, the garrison-wives, the female households of the free settlers, and any personal servants, nurses or governesses of the Civil and military Officers and their lady-wives.

195 There were 49 female convicts aboard the Pitt, 47 on Royal Admiral, and 27 on the Kitty. Over half were from London and its environs.

196 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.12, p.208.

197 Karskens, G. (1997), The Rocks, Introduction pp.10-11.

198 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.13 p.216. See also Styles (2007) Dress of the People, Ch.16, p.271: “As we have seen, parishes across the country made genuine efforts to address the clothing needs of their poor, but they did so by means of a narrow range of basic clothes made from cheap, coarse fabrics in drab colours, according to a standard set by the most hard-pressed among working families.”

199 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Appendix 1, p.327. While Styles found these same records of the criminal courts “particularly important“ to “provide quantitative as well as qualitative information,” he states that transcripts from the Old Bailey offer “a perspective that is wider than probate inventories in its social reach, its chronological span and the detail it provides about clothing in particular.”

200 Atkins, R. (1792), Diary, July 13 1792.

201 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol. 1, October 1792.

202 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, December 1792.

203 The merchants and shipmen of America’s Atlantic seaboard were venturing into the China trade on their own behalf. Lieutenant P.G. King, on his voyage back from England aboard the Gorgon had met the captain in port at the Cape of Good Hope and aware of the ongoing duress and need the colony was in, he suggested that a speculative cargo of provisions and supplies would be welcomed by those in the colony. As the Lieutenant– governor on Norfolk Island, he would have been aware of the dearth of cloth and clothing for the community.

273

204 Collins, (1788-1796), Account, Vol. 1, November 1792: “About this time there anchored in the cove [another] American ship, with a small cargo of provisions and spirits for sale. The cause of his putting into this harbour, the master declared, was for the purpose of procuring wood and water, of which he stated his ship to be much in want; thus making the sale of his cargo appear to be but a secondary object with him ...

205 Churchward, Lloyd (1979), Australia and America, p.8. “The early trade with Sydney was a direct outgrowth of the trade with China, and to a lesser extent the trade with the East Indies.” (Churchward, Australia and America, pp.3-4.)

206 Churchward, L. (1979), Australia and America, p.3. By 1774 the population of the American colonies already exceeded 2,500,000. The largest cities and towns were the ports along the Atlantic seaboard, 2,000 miles distant in the days before the Panama Canal was opened. Boston had 20,000 inhabitants, New York with almost 30,000 and Philadelphia with a population of almost 40,000 was the second city in the British Empire in size and wealth.

207 See The First Fleet 1788 and Appendix 1.

208 “Mercurys” were those 67 unfortunates, male and female, who had originally been dispatched on the mutinous transport ship, the Mercury which they ran aground on the English coast shortly after sailing. Once more before the court, all the convicts however innocent were sentenced to death for return-from-transport. Put aboard the First Fleet, they were permanently deported, never to return.

208 There were eight women ‘mutineers’ from the Mercury. Originally sentenced to 7 years, they were distinguished as ”mercurys,” and transported for Life. Frances Hart 36, Mantua maker, London Middlesex, 7 Yrs. Sentenced 1787 and arrived on the Charlotte Elizt. Barbour 27, Book Stitcher, London Middlesex 7 Yrs. Sentenced 1787 and arrived on the Prince of Wales. Susannah Garth, 24, no trade, London Middlesex, 7 Yrs Sentenced 1783 and arrived on the Charlotte Hannah Green, 31, no trade, London Middlesex, 7 Yrs. Sentenced 1783 and arrived on the Charlotte Rachel Harley, 24, no trade, London Middlesex, 7 Yrs. Sentenced 1787 and arrived on the Prince of Wales Charlotte Ware, no trade, London Middlesex, 7 Yrs. Sentenced 1787 and arrived on the Prince of Wales. Elizt. Dudgeon, 23, no trade, London Middlesex 7 Yrs. 274

Sentenced 1787 and arrived on the Prince of Wales. Margaret Hall, 22, no trade, London Middlesex, 7 Yrs. Sentenced 1787 and arrived on the Prince of Wales.

209 Easty, John, (1792), Memarandom, December 10, 1792, and December 11, 1792.

210 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, December 10, 1792.

211 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, January 21 and January Jan 25, 1788

212 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, December 1792. The Judge- Advocate, David Collins would stay on in the colony until 1796, maintaining his journal throughout.

213 Atkins, R. (1793), Diary, January 18, 1793.

214 Atkins, R. (1793), Diary, January 1, 1793: “May God of his infinite mercy send us what is good for us, and may this Government be has happily administered this year as it was last under the fostering hand of a Govr. who had most sincerely at heart the happiness and prosperity of this his adopted child.“

215 Churchward L. (1979), Australia and America, p.16: “Rum was indispensable in the convict colony of New South Wales. Not only was it a universal beverage among convict and free alike, but with the shortage of specie during the first decades of the colony it soon became a means of exchange. This was advantageous to Yankee shippers as they had specialized in the rum and spirit trade for generations.”

216 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, November 18 1792. Collins records that 7,597 gallons of (new American) spirits, which was distributed among the military and the civil officers of the colony, which now included the superintendants and favoured emancipees..

217 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, February 1793.

275

218 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account Vol.1, November 1792. England sent out two chests of silver dollars to pay the “artificers” and superintendants in the colony.

219 It was not until 1795 that Captain John Hunter, the legendary ex-captain of the Sirius would be appointed as Governor. His mandate was to rein in the excesses of the avaricious cartel of military and civil officers, familiar today as the Rum Corps.

220 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, January 15, 1793..

221 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol I, January, 1793 “With great pleasure we also found that Government, in consequence of the representations of Governor Phillip,” had directed “a strong substantial Russia duck to be substituted for the slight unserviceable Osnaburgs with which the convicts had been hitherto supplied.” ‘Duck’ is a strong light canvas, much like modern denim.

222 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, January 1793 “Russia duck, which was excellent in its kind, and which had cost the sum of £6636 0s 9d; sixty-eight bales, containing thirteen thousand one hundred and forty-eight yards, were damaged.”

223 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, October 1793: “The women were issued with • one petticoat, • one shift, • one pair of stockings, • one cap, • one neck-handkerchief, • one hat, and • one jacket made of raven duck.

224 Collins, D. (1788-1796) Account, Vol.1 October, 1793.

225 Atkins, R. (1793) Diary, March 13, 1793.

226 Translating as the Discovery and the Intrepid, the Spanish expedition was under the command of Alessandro Malaspina, who had named them in homage to Captain Cook the famed navigator of the Discovery and the Endeavour.

276

227 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, March 1793

228 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, April 1793. Collins names two of the artists aboard the Spanish ships, firstly “the limner Ravenet” and then Brambila, the landscape painter. Juan Ravenet left a record the dress of Pacific island communities and is likely to be the only one who would be bothered with the dress of the obscure inhabitants of a British penal colony. However, more preliminary sketches than finished drawings, they are in stark contrast to his detailed depictions of the exotic dress of other inhabitants of Oceania. The all-purpose faces, male and female, share a certain anonymous asexual similiarity with the facial characteristics of his detailed drawings of the exotic women of the Philippines, Tonga, etc. In 1982, the sketches were re-attributed to Felipe Bauza, by the Spanish art-historian C. Sotos Serrano. Malaspina was suspected of Republican ideas and on the ships’ return to Spain in 1795, he was imprisoned, and his numerous papers from 1789-1794 Pacific Expedition were confiscated. They were held by the Felipe Bauza family in England. Serrano gives no evidence for her attribution other than the drawings' provenance in this collection, which contained over 200 charts and drawings. (Dictionary of Australian Artists Online, )

229 See The Second Fleet: 1789-1790 for a description of the ubiquitous and its construction.

230 Hollander, A. (1978), Seeing through, p.85.

231 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.2 p.36: “Alongside worsted stockings, stuff gowns and check aprons, the women owned the shawls that were newly fashionable in the 1780s, plated buckles, silk bonnets and aprons made from muslin, Holland and flowered lawn.”

232 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Ch.17, p.285: ”Handkerchiefs and neckcloths were both worn round the neck.... More was spent on them than any other accessory. This is not surprising, because they were relatively inexpensive, but highly conspicuous.”

233 See First, Second and Third Fleets and Appendices.

234 Styles (2007), Dress of the People, p.305. “in combinations of new and old, costly and cheap, elegant and indifferent.”

277

235 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, p.45. “… an extremely stylish gown and undergown, with fine linen fichu or buffon, and the very high crowned hat fashionable in Britain in the 1790s.”

236 Styles, J. (2007), Dress of the People, Introduction p.15.

237 Hollander (1978), Seeing through, Ch.II p.118: “by the beginning of the nineteenth century they had been wearing them for two decades, and so had the French in imitation of them, albeit still with the conventional constricting corseting, multiple petticoats, and elaborate hair.

238 Resident Lady (1795), France, December, 1792, pp.51-2.

239 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.655: ”By 1780, the paniers grow smaller and circa 1785 are replaced by the tourneur, a crinolined bustle.”

240 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.779

241 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.793.

242 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.656

243 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.793. “The favoured wraps … were large square or oblong shawls, of the size and proportions of the Greek and , draped in Greek ways.” The sheer bulk of Ravenet’s draped shawl seems to anticipate the .

244 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.793

245 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.788.

246 The Regent, the Prince of Wales was betrothed to a German princess whom he had never met and once married, he disliked her intensely. Caroline of was neither well educated nor demure, and he immediately set about trying to divorce her, preferring to spend his time drinking and with his collection of scandalising mistresses. 278

247 Owen, J. (1806), Fashionable World, pp.77-8.

248 A rare copy of the “Cries of Dublin” was discovered in Australia in 2002, a visual record of Dublin's street commerce. Handed down through the generations of a pioneer family in rural Victoria, this album was not discovered until it was put up for auction. The National Library of Australia hoped to purchase it, but it was eventually knocked down to a private buyer.

249 White, John (1788), Journal of a Voyage. His entry for August 16, 1788 records: “That which we call the sweet tea is a creeping kind of vine, running to a great extent along the ground …. The most plentiful is a plant growing on the sea shore, greatly resembling sage. Among it are often to be found samphire, and a kind of wild spinage, besides a small shrub which we distinguish by the name of the vegetable tree, and the leaves of which prove rather a pleasant substitute for vegetables.”

250 Recently discovered deep in the Canadian archives, and gifted back to Australia in 2007 is our nation’s oldest white Australian surviving document. Collins’ account of a theatrical performance in the colony dates it to February 1796. (Collins, (1788-1796) Account, Vol I, February) The theatre programme has P. G. King’s handwriting on the back.

252 Hunter, J. (1791), Historical Journal, February 1790 to February 1791.

253 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, December 1792.

254 Resident Lady (1795), France, August 1792, p.24: “By requiring no more implements than about five shillings will purchase, a lacemaker is not dependent on the shopkeeper, nor the head of a manufactory. … Another argument in favour of encouraging lace-making is that it cannot be usurped by men: you may have men-milliners, men-mantuamakers, and even ladies' valets, but you cannot well fashion the clumsy and inflexible fingers of man to lace- making.”

255 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.183.

256 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.109.

279

257 Tench, W. (1791), A Complete Account, [Vol. II], Chapter XVII, (n.p.)

258 Tench, W. (1791), A Complete Account, [Vol. II], Chapter XV, (n.p.):

259 In the mid-nineties there were so few ladies in the exalted society of the east, so few women possible to be received at the Governor’s table however well-dressed.

260 White, J. (1788), June 4, 1788. In describing the procedures followed when formal dining, gives an instance of a typical political word play of the period, much admired in upper circles: “After the cloth was removed, his Majesty's health was drank with three cheers. The Prince of Wales, the Queen and royal family, the Cumberland family, and his Royal Highness Prince William Henry succeeded. His Majesty's ministers were next given; who, it was observed, may be Pitted against any that ever conducted the affairs of Great Britain.” Speculation that Pitt Street was named for the water tanks is in error.

261 Resident Lady (1795), France, October, 1792, pp.48-50 “If we may credit the French papers too, what they call the cause of liberty is not less successfully propagated by the pen than the sword. England is said to be on the eve of a revolution, and all its inhabitants, except the King and Mr. Pitt, become Jacobins.” (Resident Lady, France October, 1792, p.50.)

262 Not until 1795 was another governor appointed and Collins’ Account, Vol I, August 1795 reads: “We had the satisfaction of learning that Governor Hunter was on board [the Surprize] and might be daily expected.” This was Captain John Hunter, Master of the lost Sirius, He became the second of the four naval officers to be appointed Governors of the colony; the third was Philip Gidley King, and the fourth and last was the famous naval officer William Bligh who precipitated the Rum Rebellion.

263. Resident Lady (1795), France, August, 1793, p.105.

264 Resident Lady (1795) France, March 1, 1794, p.171. The French term “ennuye” is used several times in her letters, and always in the sense of being idle, bored and unable to entertain the self.

265 Resident Lady (1795), France, February 15, 1793, p.67.

266 Resident Lady (1795), France, January 30, 1795, p.256.

280

267 Resident Lady (1795), France, January 30, 1795, p.256.

268 Young, Linda (2002), Woman’s Place, p.1. Linda Young at this time was Cultural Heritage Administrator for the National Trust.

269 Young, L. (2002), Woman’s Place, p.12.

270 Young, L. (2002), Woman’s Place, p.7.

271 Young. L. (2002), Woman’s Place, p.2.

272 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, Ch.4, p.261.

273 In his Preface to A Difficult Infant, Australian historian George Parsons notes “the dearth of direct evidence” and comments on “the need to rely on an inferential history… it is often the only alternative to neglecting the field of study altogether.”

274 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.1, October 1792. Royal Admiral forty-seven females, and the 289 male convicts included Thomas Watling, transported for 14 years, “who found means to get on shore from the Pitt ... and who had been confined by the Dutch at the Cape town from her departure until this opportunity offered of sending him hither.”

275 Watling, Thomas (1794), Letters from an Exile at Botany Bay to his Aunt in Dumfries: giving a particular account of the settlement of New South Wales, with customs and manners of the inhabitants. There are only two known copies of his book in existence today, one of which is in the British Library. It is now available unpaginated, as an e-book. Accessed 16/11/2012.

276 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791 (n.p.) Watling was furious that his work was being coopted by White for his own journal, and indeed its extensive Appendix was contrived in its entirety by this talented self-described “genius in bondage.”

281

277 White, John, Journal of a Voyage, Appendix 1. [Smilax Phylosefera] ”The leaves have the taste of liquorice root accompanied with bitter. They are said to make a kind of tea, not unpleasant to the taste, and good for the scurvy.”

278 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791. (n.p.) It appears from the date given 1791– that Watling had already planned to self-publish his Letters from an Exile, and he writes in the third person: “The Publisher of the ensuing production sends it into the world for the two following reasons: First; he hopes it may contribute a little to the relief of an old, infirm, and friendless woman, to whom it is addressed. And Secondly; he imagines, the account here given of a country so little known, may be interesting to some, and amusing to all. With the original, which is now in his hands, he declines taking any liberty, but leaves the unfortunate exile to tell his story exactly in his own words, and how he acquits himself, the public must determine.”

279 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791 (n.p.).

280 Smith, Bernard (1960), European Vision and the South Pacific. Smith noting differing stylistic similarities across the wide range of unsigned watercolours sourced from the Banks, Nan Kivell, and Watling collections of the early settlement, attributing them to a group of individuals who worked in Sydney between 1788 and 1795.

281 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791, (n.p.)

282 Inscription on reverse of original canvas, in brown paint – “A direct north general view of Sydney Cove, the chief British settlement in New South Wales as it appeared in 1794, being the 7th year from its establishment. Painted immediately from nature by T. Watling." National Library of Australia Collection nla.int-ex6-s46-item.

283 Detail of “Convicts in New Holland” and “English in New Holland” by Juan Ravenet, State Library of NSW, PXB 1620/Vol.01, SAFE/DGD and DGD2.

284 Davenport, M. (1948), The Book of Costume, p.757.

285. Karskens, G. (2002), Engaging Artefacts, p.8: Convicts made or bought, left or brought a great range of things to exploit, to make the 282

new land familiar, to hold fast to who they were, and to remind those they would never see again of their existence. … Those about to embark smoothed coins to blanks, then scratched, stippled or engraved them with messages of love, remembrance, promises of fidelity and gave them to the loved ones left behind.

286 . Accessed 06/07/2013.

287 . Accessed 06/07/2013.

288 A Mary Easter, was indicted at the Old Bailey on October 30, 1793. As the private servant of a laundress, she was indicted for stealing a male customer’s linen shirt and muslin neckerchief. She immediately took the stolen items to her local pawnshop, exchanging the prosecutor’s linen in order to get something of her own out. Was it this gown? And who was H. Hale? There is a possible narrative here. She was found guilty, and was fined and ordered to be imprisoned for 6 months in the House of Correction. (Old Bailey Reference Number: t17931030-40) Her behaviour there was monitored, and she may have transgressed again badly enough to be transported.

289 Hollander, A. (1994), Sex & Suits, p.16.

290 Nagle, Jacob, His Book, p.85. Transcript: Jacob Nagle (1775-1802) His Book, A.D. One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty Nine.

291 Collins, D. (1788-1796), Account, Vol.I, March, 1792.

292 See Tony Fry (1988), Design History, p.53: “Women have played a very small part in the production of the forms which have shaped our made world.”

293 Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, p.6.

294. Maynard, M. (1991), Terrace gowns and shearers boots, p.77.

283

295 Fletcher, M. (1984), Costume in Australia, p.9, illustration 9. The gown (75161) is held by the National Trust of Australia (NSW).

296 Lemire and Riello (2008), East & West, p.895.

297 Karskens, G. (1995), The Rocks and Sydney, p.429.

298 Karskens, G. (2003), Tourists and Pilgrims, p.30.

299 Atkins, R. (1793), Diary, January 1, 1793.

300 The year 1805 marked the appointment of Captain William Bligh. His stormy Governorship culminated in the Rum Rebellion in 1808 when he was deposed by the New South Wales Corps. He was the last of the naval appointments.

301 Maynard, M. (1994), Fashioned From Penury, Intro pp. 3-4: “In the historiography of Australia ... the absence of serious attention to dress [has] been especially marked. The silences over the subject, linked as they are to the silences over women and their historical experiences, warrant further scrutiny.”

302 Quoted in Partington, Geoffrey (2007), “Thoughts on Terra Nullius,” Chapter 11, n.p., Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference of The Samuel Griffith Society, 2007.

303 Collins, D. (1788) Account, Vol 1, January 25, 1788.

304 Worgan, G. (1787), Letters, Sydney Cove, June 12, 1788.

305 Hunter, J. (1790), Historical Journal, Chapter XV, Transactions at Norfolk Island and Port Jackson: Lieutenant King’s Journal, (n.p.) Compiled from P.G. King’s Dispatches, King adds: “I shall now add a vocabulary of the language, which I procured from Mr. Collins and Governor Phillip; both of whom had been very assiduous in procuring words to compose it; and as all the doubtful words are here rejected, it may be depended upon to be correct*. [* This Vocabulary was much enlarged by Captain Hunter].”

306 Bradley, W. (1788), Voyage, January 21, 1788, p.61.

307 Karskens, G. (2011), “Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal men and clothing in early New South Wales,” Aboriginal History ,Volume 35, 2011, pp. 14-15

284

308 Phillip, A. (1789-90) Dispatches, Chapter XVIII - Journal entry for September 17, 1790. (n.p.). Captain John Hunter’s account, An Historical Journal, of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island 1787 until 1791, includes An Account of Port Jackson from 1789 to 1790, compiled by Hunter from Governor Phillip’s dispatches, and appends P.G. King’s Journal.

309 See illustrated in Section 2.6 Figure 28. Karskens records that Phillip “ordered men’s and jackets for the Eora, writing that ‘these would do for men and women alike’.” Karskens, G. (2011), “Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal men and clothing in early New South Wales,” Aboriginal History, Volume 35, 2011.

310 Hunter, J. (1787) Phillip’s Dispatches Entry October 6 1790.

311 Karskens, G. (2011), “Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal men and clothing in early New South Wales,” Aboriginal History, Volume 35, 2011, p.9.

312 Hunter, J. (1788), Chapter III, January 1788 to August 1788. “These people have not the most distant idea of building any kind of place which may be capable of sheltering them from the severity of bad weather; if they had, probably it would first appear in their endeavours to cover their naked bodies with some kind of cloathing, as they certainly suffer much from the cold in winter.”

313 Governor Macquarie initiated the practice of issuing blankets annually to all the ‘native’ population at Sydney and Parramatta.

314 Karskens, G. (2011), “Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal men and clothing in early New South Wales,” Aboriginal History ,Volume 35, 2011, p.4. “Maynard suggested an inverse relationship between European clothing and Aboriginal well-being: ‘The adoption of European dress is likely to have aided in the destruction of Aboriginal culture through the undermining of self-esteem and erosion of health’.”

315 Bradley, W. (1788), Voyage, June 25, 1788, p.115.

316. Karskens, G. (2011), “Red coat, blue jacket, black skin: Aboriginal men and clothing in early New South Wales,” Aboriginal History ,Volume 35, 2011, p.10.

317 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791.

318 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791. (n.p.)

319 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791. (n.p.)

320 Watling, T. (1794), Letters from an Exile, Letter for December 13, 1791. (n.p.)

285

321 There are a few paintings of native persons in the Pt. Jackson painter which are unsigned but attributed to Watling, but they appear to be very rough and ready. Could it be that some of these were made by the Aboriginals themselves and were merely collected up among his paintings and sketches?

322 Worgan, G. (1787), Letters, Sydney Cove, May 24, 1788, (n.p.) Watkin Tench describes the charms of one young woman of Botany Bay in his masculinist terms: “Gooreedeeana … belonged to the tribe of Cameragal, and rarely came among us. She excelled in beauty all their females I ever saw. Her age about eighteen, the firmness, the symmetry and the luxuriancy of her bosom might have tempted painting to copy its charms. Her mouth was small and her teeth, though exposed to all the destructive purposes to which they apply them, were white, sound and unbroken. Her countenance, though marked by some of the characteristics of her native land, was distinguished by a softness and sensibility unequalled in the rest of her countrywomen, and I was willing to believe that these traits indicated the disposition of her mind.” Tench, W. (1791) A Complete Account, [Vol. II], Chapter XVII, Miscellaneous Remarks … on its Natives, etc. (n.p.)

323 Bradley, W. (1789), Voyage, June 25, 1789.

324 Worgan, G. (1787), Letters, Sydney Cove, May 30, 1788.

325 Worgan, G. (1787), Letters, Sydney Cove, May 30, 1788.

326. Tuckey, James Hingston (1804), The Account of a Voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass’s Strait, Chapter V, Transactions at Port Phillip.

327 Bradley, W. (1789), Voyage, June 30, 1789, pp.167-8.

328 Bradley, W. (1789), Voyage, June 30, 1789, pp.167-8.

329 Historian Beverley Kingston was employed at the University of New South Wales. Her book, My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann (1975) focused on domestic work as an experience which the majority of women share throughout history. The book met with academic resistance for its triviality, rather than exploring the grand themes of suffragettes, women artists and academics, or the exploitation of female labour. (Kingston, Beverly (1996),“Home truths from the 1970s: Twenty years on,” Australian Historical Studies; April 1996, Vol. 27 Issue 106, p.30.)

330 Bradley, W. (1789), Voyage, June 30, 1789, pp.167-8.

331 Myers, F., National Museum of Australia Collections Symposium 2008. Viewpoints on Material Culture .

l>

332 Myers, F., NMA Australia Collections Symposium 2008:.

333 The Australian Dress Register is a collaborative, online project about dress with Australian provenance. It was established by a team led by Lindie Ward at the Powerhouse Museum, now retired. Museums and private collectors are encouraged to research their garments, and share the stories and photographs while the information is still available, and within living memory. It is active but no longer ‘moderated’. Such sites are an indication of the fragility of much our information about dress. This possum skin cloak is registered and its provenance is dealt with in detail. Accessed 17/04/2016.

334 Maynard, M. (1991), Terrace gowns and shearers boots, p.77. “Items known to have been worn in Australia that have survived in institutions for whatever reason, shape our view of the appearance of earlier Australians. Indeed the very fact of their inadvertent survival and collection has imperceptibly created cultural perceptions about the nature of dressing in the past.”

335 Myers, F., “Anthropology of the Future, Ethnographies of the Present,” p. 5.

336 Myers, F., “Anthropologies of the Future, Ethnographies of the Present, “p. 15.

337 Myers, F., “Anthropologies of the Future, Ethnographies of the Present“ p.7 “This was all culture, none of it outside my ethnographic frame, and this led me to a different way of engaging the phenomenon as fundamentally intercultural.

287

APPENDIX 1

The Women of the First Fleet

Although statistics for women servants across all the ships of the First Fleet have been generalised and extrapolated onto other ships’ indents which lack occupational information, the focus on the clothing trades articulated so fulsomely by Bowes and his working women is assumed not to have occurred on any other ship. According to Bowes remarkable indent, there were six mantua makers among the Lady Penryhn women. For the purposes of analysis, place of trial has been used to approximate either place of origination or merely where the female convict was living and working at the time of arrest, allowing us to quantify and compare the employments and background for the 192 women who had arrived in the colony in 1788.

Table 2: The First Fleet 1788 : 192 convict women disembarked.

Ships: Lady Penrhyn, Friendship, Prince of Wales, and Charlotte (all sources)

London/Middlesex Rural/Provincial No. of Women Percent

Servants 49 24 73

288

Tradeswomen 37 8 45

No Trade 29 45 84

Total 115 77 192 100

289

The indents show that 24 servant women hailed from England’s provincial centres and country areas but, disconcertingly for Governor Phillip’s plans, they are outnumbered by the 49 women who are listed as servants from London and Middlesex, the metropolis. Comparing the two, the largest proportion (59.9% and 55.8%) were urban women, while a lesser number originated from England’s provincial and rural areas, (40.1% and 44.2%) and thus were able to supply those useful skills which Governor Phillip would have valued – the familiarities and cultural capital necessary for frontier living.

Table 3: The First Fleet 1788 : 102 convict women disembarked. Ship: Lady Penrhyn. (Source: Bowes)

London/Middlesex Rural/Provincial No of Women Percent

In service 39 19 58 44.2% Tradeswomen 38 6 44 55.8%

No Trade 0 0 0 0%

Total 77 25 102 100%

In contrast to the cookie-cutter women of the first indents, Bowes’ indent assigns an occupation to every woman on the Lady Penrhyn. The detail presented by Bowes proved superfluous to need, and was never repeated. Future indents might list women from one or two of the familiar apprenticed trades such as dressmaking or millinery, but no other flower maker or furrier was ever listed.

290

Thus when the civil and military officers at Sydney Cove had set about overseeing the convict-building of their own huts of cabbage tree and mud which then required ‘house- keepers,’ they may possibly have selected from amongst the female convicts, a woman whose own apparel indicated a familiarity with the lifestyle and standards of the elite however direly placed.

The reasoning behind the allocation of these women becomes increasingly ambiguous as there is an early indication that some officers already had their ‘favourites’ from their time under sail. One of the few non-elite first hand accounts comes from James Scott, a humble Marine sergeant travelling on the Prince of Wales. He kept a private diary, Remarks on a passage Botnay bay 1787, and in his entry for August 1787, he records that mid-ocean, four female convicts were transferred from the Prince of Wales to the all-women Lady Penrhyn, and his “remarks” are illuminating:

The[y] that wee sent Was the Officers’ feverits, & often bread Disturbence in the Ship.1

1 Scott, James (1827), Remarks, August 29, 1827.

291

APPENDIX 2

The Women of the Second Fleet

Occupations for the penal colony were of no concern to the Foreign Office. The indents offer only minimal information, endowing the cookie-cutter women of the Second Fleet only with their ‘convict identities’. But taking our cue from Portia Robinson, whose formidable forensic research into the women of the transports is the most authoritative, the intent here is to analyse through place of trial, their cultural ‘capital,‘ the knowledge and skills they may have brought to the colonial enterprise.

Table 4: The Second Fleet 1790 : 246 convict women disembarked. Ship: Lady Juliana, 1790. (Source: Robinson)

Trial Place No. of women Percent

London/Middlesex 161 65.4%

Rural/Provincial 85 35.5%

Total 246 100%

Thus we find, of the 246 women aboard the Lady Juliana, over half originated from urban areas, while the remainder were rural and provincial women. Like the First Fleet 292

women, the majority of women on the Lady Juliana hailed from London and Middlesex, and comparing them with the women already in the the colony of 1790, the women already are likely to have the same citified urban

293

ways as the women from the first transports who were already in the colony and they are they are likely to have exhibited a similar range of skills and knowledge and so lend themselves to an occupational analysis. Contrasting the women of the Lady Juliana with the 192 women of the First Fleet, (See Table 2, Appendix 1) : 192 convict women disembarked and in compiling statistical data, and we find the two are readily comparable. The largest percentage of women originated in London and Middlesex, (65.4% and 59.9% respectively) while a smaller quotient (35.5% and 40.1%) were drawn from the provincial and rural areas.

This is in direct contrast to the convict numbers who arrived on the Neptune.

Table 5: The Second Fleet 1790 : 103 convict women disembarked. Ship: Neptune 1790 (Source: Robinson)

Trial Place No. of Women Percent

London/Middlesex 33 32%

Rural/Provincial 70 68%

Total 103 100%

The 103 women of the Neptune were drawn from a wide catchment area of county gaols, and provincial centres, and while the women of the Lady Juliana, came from 19 provincial areas, the Neptune women were drawn from a far broader span and 33 separate regions are represented.

294

Results are far too variable to render any more than an approximate analysis however. Some women are listed as transported on both the Lady Juliana and the Neptune, while others on the Neptune indent are also listed on the Mary Ann which would not arrive until 1791 as part of the Third Fleet, and for two women, even later on the Pitt transport, which would not appear until the year 1792.

Perhaps some of women arriving on the Lady Juliana and particularly the Neptune were even raised in the provinces of the southern Midlands and some may even have been ‘bred up’ from early childhood to the stripping and the plaiting of straw and its manufacture into hats. The tools were of the simplest manufacture, and the low-level technology could be easily replicated in the colony, or even on Norfolk Island, with its intransigent flax. As the pie-charts show, place of trial and an anonymous empty indent can stimulate and lead to further hypothetical observations.

Historically, cabbage-tree hats are most nearly associated with men. The hats are thought to have first appeared around 1799, and in the male-as-the-gender- neutral world of Australian historiography, cabbage-tree hats enter history as being fabricated by shepherds while tending sheep.1 Cabbage-tree hats, sewn into “wide-awakes” entered the vernacular dress of men when the 'squatting rush' to the interior began in the late 1820s. This dashing headwear, unique and native to the country, had already become the standard wear among bushmen but, shady and practical, it seems extremely likely they were made up by women for themselves and their men long beforehand. But not until the 1828 Census were women registered as active straw hat makers.

Daniel Defoe, creator of Robinson Crusoe and the perceptive Moll Flanders, documents some of these changes. Defoe was training to become an Anglican minister but was drawn inexorably toward the excitement of trade. He writes enthusiastically of the distribution practices through the market towns and cloth Fairs, constantly celebrating the “immense indraft of trade to the City of London,“ and the blossoming of Britain’s nascent mercantile trading empire: “... inhabitants fully employed in the richest and most valuable manufacture in the world – viz., the English clothing.”2 Eighteenth century spelling, always ambiguous, can use “cloths” and “cloathes” interchangeably and in this case Defoe probably refers not to clothing but to cloth-making and the success of the highly acclaimed English cloth production.

Defoe began his writing career in 1697, and became an enthusiastic observer and a prolific writer. But his focus moves beyond the great network of rural cloth production – the worsteds, baizes, serges, etc, were frequently identified with particular regions and their communities – to the growing commercialisation of cottage industries. He lists the wholesalers and retailers who travelled to the provinces from as far away as London to attend the major cloth and clothing fairs whereby goods were wholesaled to provincial distributors. He describes the Sturbridge Fair, which in 1722 was then at the height of its popularity, drawing in:

295

all sorts of trades, who sell by retale, and who come principally from London with their goods;... milleners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers ...3

Buoyed up with “the spirit of trade“ he writes enthusiastically of the growing network for the distribution of ready-made goods produced to order or on speculation, supplying small local outlets or those travelling with pack horses and carts, and the humble pedlars, male and female, who conveyed milliners’ goods in back-packs even to the most remote country hamlets.

1 Homemade cabbage-tree hats.

Accessed 14/03/2012 See also Maynard, M. (1994), Penury, pp.169-170.

2 Defoe, Daniel (1722), Somerset and Wiltshire

3 Defoe, D. (1722), Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722

First accessed 07/01/2004. This e-book now online

296

APPENDIX 3

The Women of the Third Fleet

Calculating the arrivals on this Third Fleet, there were 23 women from Ireland who arrived on the Queen, and 143 women transported on the Mary Ann from Britain, with six more arriving months later on the Albemarle, making 172 women in all. Approximately half the women – whether from urban or country districts – would have defined themselves as ‘in service.’

The bulk of the women hailed from urban Dublin and metropolitan Middlesex/London, the international hub of the British fashion trade and their occupational profiles were probably comparable to those listed for the Lady Penrhyn.

Table 6: The Third Fleet 1791 : 172 convict women disembarked. Ships: Mary Ann, Albermarle and Queen, 1791.

Ship Metropolitans Rural/Provincials No. of Women Mary Anne 74 69 143 Albermarle 6 0 6 Queen 16 7 23

297

Total 96 76 172

Percentage 75.5% 24.5% 100%

Thus the indents of the Third Fleet ships show that 75.5% of the 172 women were from the great metropolitan fashion centres of London and Dublin, while only 24.5% hailed from the provinces. Therefore, a little more than three-quarters of the women of the Third Fleet were urban, tried and convicted either in London and Middlesex, and of the 23 Irish women arrived on the Queen, sixteen were city women sentenced in Dublin. However, there was a much smaller percentage of provincial and rural women with their important specific skills. Compiling the indents, Robinson uncovers 182 females who were assigned to be transported on these ships but, as noted in the Appendices 1 and 2,1 The indents are a mélange of misinformation – the transports of the Second Fleet in 1790 are muddled and particularly so with the all-women ship, the Mary Ann. Robinson scrupulously cross references the British sources, concluding that if only ten women out of 182 escaped, were mis-recorded, or died before departure or on the voyage, and Robinson reduces this large number to approximately 172 convict women. The Third Fleet introduced nearly two thousand male convicts to the colony, and with the great influx across three months of convict men to be housed and put to work, any female potential for contribution to the wellbeing of the colony goes as unrecognised as any before. Trial place for women may also correspond with their birthplace and upbringing, and provide further clues to their broader backgrounds, and for women from provincial or rural areas, skills or knowledge albeit with a touch of the Hibernian which they may have been able to contribute to the colony. The female convicts disembarking into Sydney Cove joined the 417 women already in the colony and were vastly outnumbered by the numbers of men now in the colony. By the end of 1791, the 589 females were divided across the three settlements of Sydney, Parramatta and Norfolk Island.

1 See Appendix 2, the Women of the Second Fleet.

298

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