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Australia’s Convict Quilt: Something to be Proud Of
00:41:37
An extraordinary quilt handstitched by convict women on board ship as they were transported from Britain to Australia in 1841 has just gone on display in a new exhibition at Australia’s National Gallery. Many of those who made the quilt were...
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- [00:00]
Jo Andrews
Foreign. On April 5, 1841, a British merchant ship slipped her moorings and left the Pool of London on the tide. The rajah was a 40 foot wooden bark made in Whitby in Yorkshire. Her Cargo was human, 180 women and 10 children. She was bound for Hobart in Van Diemen's Land in Australia, and the women were being transported as convicts. There's no record that any of them ever saw Britain or Ireland again. The voyage took 105 days, and in that time, these women, who were poor and had led difficult and chaotic lives, created an intricate and beautiful quilt of nearly 3,000 pieces that has become one of Australia's most loved artifacts, an enduring symbol of its colonial history and the role its convict past has played in creating it as a nation.
- [01:49]
Diane Snowden
I think for a long time, Australians were shy to admit or embarrassed to admit that they had convict heritage. People have discovered that they have got convict ancestors, and they're not that bad. And there are very few tangible indications of our convict ancestry. And the Rajah Quilt is something that we can see, that we can understand, and gives us a reason to be proud of our convict ancestors. And when you think about it, the fact that it was hidden in a loft in Scotland for such a long time and then reappeared, it's a remarkable story in itself. But that makes us think that, well, you know, the convicts weren't that bad. They could create a thing of beauty like this. And I think we all would like to have a Rajah ancestor who'd done that.
- [02:44]
Jo Andrews
Diane Snowden is a researcher of women's convict histories and co author of a book called Patchwork Prisoners. She's proud to have more than 20 convicts amongst her direct ancestors. And this episode of haptic and hue is about the Raja quilt and the women who made it, who, despite their incredibly tough lives, have left us something precious and beautiful. I'm Jo Andrews, a hand weaver interested in the stories textiles tell us and the often hidden hands that make cloth and bring it into being. These tales cast a fresh life on the human story and almost always have something new to tell us about the lives of the people who work with fabric and fiber. The Rajah Quilt is the only example of work completed on board a convict ship that survives. Nothing else from those painful transports has surfaced, partly because for so long this was buried in shame, and also because those transported had so little to start with. This quilt story is an extraordinary one, as we will see, but purely as an object, it still has the capacity to charm.
- [04:25]
Diane Snowden
It's intricate, it's creative, it is the work of convict women and that in itself is rare. The colours are really vibrant, there are little birds and flowers all through it. It's just an amazing thing to see and it's still so colourful after all these years.
- [04:46]
Jo Andrews
The work Diane and her co author Trudy have done on the women who were transported on the Raj allows us to understand how it came to be made and also to see these women as individuals rather than just as anonymous convicts.
- [05:05]
Diane Snowden
Poverty was a long term problem in England and in Scotland after the Industrial Revolution. The women are victims in a sense that they were victims of that, but they also had a certain amount of agency where they took their lives into their own hands.
- [05:24]
Jo Andrews
Some on board the Rajah were first time offenders, others were not. The vast majority were being transported for stealing and often stealing textiles and clothing.
- [05:39]
Diane Snowden
And it does seem particularly unfair that they should be transported for seven years or even longer for what was really a minor offence and something we wouldn't take to court today. But overwhelmingly they were transported for stealing, for some form of theft, including picking pockets. There are a couple of cases of assault. One woman had an argument with a man and threw vitriol over him, but for the most part it was either stealing or receiving. There's another case of coining, so making counterfeit feet money, but they were thieves.
- [06:13]
Jo Andrews
The records show that many of them were also prostitutes.
- [06:18]
Diane Snowden
You couldn't be transported for prostitution. That wasn't a crime. And a lot of the convict records, which are rich in detail, will have marked on them on the town and give the length of time that the women stated that they were on the town. So, you know, six months, two years. Stealing, I think was a form of survival.
- [06:39]
Jo Andrews
It was a hand to mouth existence. One crime that comes up is stripping middle class children out alone of their clothes so that they could be sold on. Jane Burt, aged 15 and her sister Caroline, aged 14, were convicted in Dorchester and transported for seven years just for stealing linen from a hedge. Maria Musgrove, who's one of those whose story we can follow in this episode, stole a blanket and other items. She was tried in the quarter sessions at Exeter where her husband explained that she'd done it because they were being pressed for the rent and he'd been ill and in hospital. He pointed out that she had a five month old baby and he pleaded for mercy to no avail. She was sentenced to 10 years transportation in Scotland. However, often the court didn't pass a sentence of transportation unless the woman also had a reputation for crime.
- [07:57]
Diane Snowden
The Scottish women were rarely convicted first Time. And there's a wonderful phrase in the Scottish legal system that they were convicted of larceny and habit and repute, which meant that they had a reputation of being a criminal.
- [08:15]
Jo Andrews
Women like Eliza Deans, aged 22, who was tried in Edinburgh and transported for stealing a pair of boots. And then there's Rose Ford, convicted of housebreaking, tried in Glasgow and transported for seven years. She was at best 13 years old. All three of her sisters were also separately transported at different times. Diane believes there was a grim, afraid official purpose to all of this.
- [08:53]
Diane Snowden
It was a way of getting rid of a lot of troublesome women as well. You can't find the evidence to prove that, but it seems to me that that's what was going on. And of course we needed women in Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania as it's now known, because there was a huge imbalance. There was one woman to every 10 men, so we needed to do something about that. The people who'd gained land in the colony needed domestic servants. So it was another way of providing labour for the colony was to transport these women from England, Scotland, Ireland and other British colonies.
- [09:30]
Jo Andrews
But first they were imprisoned in Britain while they waited to be transported. Conditions were appalling, but not as bad as they had been nearly 30 years earlier when the Quaker reformer Elizabeth Fry visited Newgate Prison in 1813. Here are her daughters, recording what she found in their diary.
- [10:00]
Constance Wookie
Nearly 300 women with their numerous children were crowded, tried and untried, missed mounts and felons, without classification, without employment, and no other superintendence than that given by a man and his son, who had charge of them by night and by day in the same rooms, in rag and dirt, destitute of sufficient clothing, sleeping without bedding on the floor with the proceeds of their clamorous begging when any stranger appeared among them. The prisoners purchased liquors from a regular tap in the prison, spirits were openly drunk and the ear assailed by the most terrible language.
- [10:59]
Jo Andrews
Mrs. Fry set about changing this through the British Ladies Society for. For promoting the reformation of female prisoners. She advocated basic care for the women, providing them with clothing and bedding and teaching them skills that might help them pursue a life away from crime, like literacy, laundry and needlework. In time, her reforming eyes spread to the women embarking on the long and unknown voyage to Australia, and a separate committee was set up, called the Convict Ship Committee, dedicated to the moral and physical welfare of the women being transported and their children. Sewing kits and fabric were given to every woman who embarked.
- [11:55]
Diane Snowden
There are probably Two ideas at the centre of it. One was to give them some form of religious instruction which was consistent with the Quaker reform movement. But the other was to give them something to do on the ship so they could be under control. Because the last thing that you needed on a convict ship was a ship full of unruly women with nothing to do. And that's when the trouble started.
- [12:20]
Jo Andrews
And these were women who had spirit and energy.
- [12:24]
Diane Snowden
They were unruly women for the most part. I mean, there were some who were very quiet and wouldn't have caused trouble, but for others, they didn't want to be there. They were going to be on the other side of the world. They were going to a future. They had no idea of what it would be like. So under the circumstances, I think I'd be playing up a bit as well. But giving them something to do, giving them some religious instruction, whether they took that on board or not, was one of the central ideas. The other thing that Elizabeth Frowe really advocated was that women should be looking after women. So instead of having men on the convict ship controlling the women, there was a matron, and the matron on The Raja was 23 years old and from a genteel family, and she was given the passage if she agreed to be matron and she had to do some work at the other end. But she was very young. Some of these women were, as I said before, quite unruly. They were rough, working class women. And to be in charge of 108 women and their children was a big ask for someone like Keziah Hayter and.
- [13:36]
Jo Andrews
The matron on board the Rajah. Keziah Hayter is central to the story of the quilt. The voyage changed her life just as surely as it changed the life of the women being transported. She was just 23, as Diane Style says, and the idea of making the Rajah quilt seems to have been hers.
- [14:04]
Diane Snowden
It was her project. I'm quite convinced of that. The women were given bags of patchwork squares and a whole lot of other things when they boarded the ship, that as a gift from the ship committee. And they were able to make their own quilts, but none of those have survived. And we think that the Rajah quilters survived because it was a presentation. It was designed to be presented to someone at the end of the voyage.
- [14:29]
Jo Andrews
What also convinces Diane that the quilt was Keziah's project is the very genteel inscription embroidered at the Quilt Centre to.
- [14:42]
Constance Wookie
The ladies of the convict ship Committee. This quilt worked by the convicts of the ship. Rajah during their voyage to Van Diemen's land, is presented as a testimony of the gratitude with which they remember their exertions for their welfare while in England and during their passage. And also as proof that they have not neglected the ladies kind admonitions of being industrious. June 1841.
- [15:20]
Jo Andrews
The quilt is enormously complex. It is huge, over 3 meters square, that's 10ft by 10ft, and it's made up of nearly 3,000 pieces. It should properly be described as a quilt top, as it's never been made up into a covering simmer. And Maxwell, who's the curator at Australia's National Gallery, has been preparing it for display.
- [15:50]
Simran Maxwell
So when you look at something like this and you look at the detail and you think about the conditions that the women experienced, you sort of are in awe. And for me, I always love the detail. I love to see the juxtaposition of fabric choices. For anyone who hasn't really, really looked at something like a beautiful quilt, you just go, oh, yeah, it's sort of like just throw it up. Actually, to put something that looks just so casual together is incredibly difficult. So to match a pattern with another pattern that works visually and doesn't look too matchy matchy, but that the two pieces really pop and you really see them both is incredibly hard. And you see that in this quilt with the borders. So it's a medallion, a pieced medallion quilt. Essentially, the central part is embroidery purse and there's flowers and birds and then there's four larger birds and then there's a square and then there's applique flowers in a border and then there's 12 more borders and then there's flowers around the. The edge. And there's also an inscription. We know that certain parts were done with one, one hand. The more complicated areas would have been given to somebody who had experience in embroidery and to create a cohesive look. But then as you go through the border patterns, you start to see some stitching that is not as tight as others or not as even as others. Some of those seams are really, really small, which again, is kind of fabulous.
- [17:49]
Jo Andrews
So the work of creating the quilt was most likely overseen by Keziah Hayter. But whose hands were involved? That's the question Diane and her co author set out to answer with their research. They can't definitively provide the names, but they've gathered a list of 45 women amongst the 180 who could have worked on the quilt because they had the right skills.
- [18:24]
Diane Snowden
We knew from what we'd been told by the National Gallery that it was the work of many hands and we wanted to find out who they were. So we ended up with quite a list of people who had sewing skills, very basic sewing skills, to dressmaking skills, and we've listed those in the book and there's quite a few, but we can't categorically say which ones made the quilt. We did have someone come up to us when we were talking once about the blood stains from pricked fingers on the quilt, whether she could get her DNA from that to prove that her ancestor had actually made the quilt, but that came to nothing. Surprisingly. The quilt's been here once in 2004. I saw it again in 2011 in Melbourne, and I'm always amazed at the vibrancy of the quilt. You think after all of this time, it would have lost some of its colour and its brilliance, but it hasn't. It's the most amazing textile I've ever seen.
- [19:28]
Jo Andrews
Our boot stealer from Edinburgh, Eliza Deans, is one of those who had the skills to have worked on the quilt. She was 22 years old and she gave her trade as nurse and needlewoman. And then there is Maria Musgrove, who stated her trade as dressmaker. Maria had left her husband Thomas, behind and by the time she was transported, her little daughter, Mary Ann was 2. We can't prove these two women were quiltmakers, but we know they were skilled needle women. They certainly weren't the only ones who worked on this project.
- [20:15]
Diane Snowden
Some of the pieces are done with great skill and they're exquisite. And there are other bits where originally people thought that the patches had faded, but in fact they were inside out. And when you think about the conditions on the ship, it's not going to be bright light. People were working under difficult conditions. It's really. It's astounding that it was actually finished and created, presented and survived. You can see the differences in the skill level in the patches and the embroidery on the quilt.
- [20:49]
Jo Andrews
Another question is, why did they do it? Here's Simmer and Maxwell again.
- [20:55]
Simran Maxwell
We know that there were 400 different types of fabric used in the quilt and that most of these were new. There are makers marks on some of them. Because it's an online quilt. We can also see the reverse. We also know how much fabric and materials that the women were given before they boarded the boat. So the idea of the quilt is very unusual. Women did make things on board. What. What else would you do for three months? But it was usually things that they kept or that they sold along the way to make some money, so that when they arrived at their destination, they wouldn't be destitute, they would have something to start with. Whereas these women put all their energy into making something to prove to the Lieutenant Governor's wife that they were somebody. They weren't just useless. The hope was that she would look favourably on the group and then help them.
- [21:54]
Jo Andrews
The quilt was finished almost a month before, before the Rajah arrived in Hobart in modern day Tasmania. And it was presented to Lady Franklin, wife of the Lieutenant Governor, Sir John Franklin. She seems to have made very little of it and it rapidly disappears from sight for over 140 years. But because they were in the charge of the British state, the women do not disappear. They're processed and detailed, which is how we learn that Eliza Deans, although from Edinburgh, was a woman of colour and so too was her shipmate, Jane Johnson.
- [22:44]
Diane Snowden
What was happening in the 1800s, during the convict era was that anyone who was in a British colony could be transported to Van Diemen's Land or one of the other places like Bermuda. People from Hong Kong, for example, the West Indies. But these women were from Scotland. The two women of colour and the Rajah were actually from Scotland. The convict records are really rich. So we have a conduct record which is a record of what the women did and where they were after they arrived in the colony. We have a description list which is quite detailed and we have an indent which is. Which came with the women and gives information about living families. So they're really rich records for historical research. The description list for Jane Johnson and the other woman of colour, Eliza Deans, describe them as having a black complexion, black hair, brown eyes, so you know that they would have stood out in the colony.
- [23:47]
Jo Andrews
Eliza was born in America and gives her birthplace as Long Island. Her father is thought to have been a planter from the West Indies. Her mother is unknown. When Eliza arrived in Australia, she was assigned as a domestic servant to the clergyman, the Reverend Mr. Lilly of Hobart. Her shipmate and likely fellow quilter, Maria Musgrove, was not so lucky. Her child, Mary Ann, was quickly removed from her.
- [24:25]
Diane Snowden
When they got to Van Diemen's Land, the children were taken from their mothers and placed into an institution called the Orphans School. Now, it wasn't a school for orphans, but it was a school, an institution for destitute children. And it's unlikely that the women knew that the children were going to be taken away when they got to Hobart. I find that really heartbreaking.
- [24:52]
Jo Andrews
Conditions were dreadful and without their mothers to care for them. Many died. Mary Ann lost her life at the age of three, succumbing horribly to gangrene of the mouth. Ten children made the passage with their mothers on the Raja, but many others were left behind.
- [25:15]
Diane Snowden
They had to choose which ones to bring, so they would take perhaps the two youngest ones. They left children behind and it's unlikely that they were ever reunited with those children that were left behind. So it's a heartbreaking story.
- [25:35]
Jo Andrews
It's known that the women on The Rajah left 90 children behind when they sailed and that they never saw them again. But for some, the voyage was a way to rejoin their families. Mary Sullivan, who had pawned a jacket that didn't belong to her, said she'd done it because she wanted to join her husband, Michael, who'd been transported in 1837. They were eventually reunited and in 1850 left Australia together for San Francisco.
- [26:17]
Diane Snowden
It was quite common for families to be transported either on the same ship, women on the same ship, or later ships. So there's an entire family, and it is an Irish example. The father was transported. He applied for his wife to come out under the convict family reunification scheme. She couldn't wait that long, so she committed a crime and came out. And all in all, there were eight members of that particular family who ended up in Van Diemen's Land. That's the tip of the iceberg. I did my PhD thesis on women who were transported from Ireland after the Famine, and they stated that they deliberately committed the crime in order to be transported. So they'd set fire to something and stand there and wait till they were arrested. And some of them gave reasons like, I did it to better my conditions, I did it to join my father, I wanted to find my mother. So there are heartbreaking stories about the reasons women committed crime.
- [27:27]
Jo Andrews
The journey to Tasmania took all of the women to a different land and changed their lives forever. For Keziah Hayter, the young matron who had organised the making of the quilt, the voyage marked a turning point in her life.
- [27:47]
Diane Snowden
Keziah Hayter was taken under Lady Franklin's wing and she was given tasks to do, such as visiting the women where they were housed. We think that the quilt was presented to the Franklins, we think that it then went back to Scotland because there's another side of Keziah's story in that she fell in love with the ship's captain and married him and he took the Rajah back for another voyage while she stayed here. And The Franklins, in 1843, left on the Rajah. So we think it went back with the Franklins. There's no evidence of it being here and there's a missing link between it going back to England and ending up in Scotland. And it's probably Captain Ferguson had something to do with it, but I can't find the evidence. But the, the young, refined, genteel matron of all of these unruly women married the ship's captain.
- [28:50]
Jo Andrews
No one knows what became of the quilt until quite unexpectedly it turned up in 1987, more than 145 years later.
- [29:03]
Diane Snowden
And it's found in a loft in Scotland. And it would have been so easy for the people that found it to say, what's this bit of rubbish now? Let's get rid of that, we don't need it. But miraculously it was saved and came back to Australia. And it's in the National Gallery where.
- [29:23]
Jo Andrews
It is cared for by Simmering Maxwell and her team.
- [29:28]
Simran Maxwell
And it looks like it was never washed, which is fantastic. So the materials that were used by the prisoners, they reflect the printing industry at the time and a lot of the printing techniques, if they had been exposed to light and also washed against one another and There are nearly 3,000 pieces on, on the textile, then you would have got bleeding, you would have got a lot of fading. And that's why we don't have it on display very often. I mean, not because of the bleeding, because our textile conservators know what they're doing when they're cleaning it. But the fading is a real concern. So the fact that it was in somebody's, you know, linen closet is a blessing in terms of, of the condition that it now appears in and the fact that when, when we are able to get it out, that people can really see that very clear, crisp snapshot of what textiles would have looked like well over 100 years ago.
- [30:31]
Jo Andrews
The Raja Quilt is the National Gallery's most requested work of art. And Simran knows it will be a big draw at the new exhibition.
- [30:44]
Simran Maxwell
And it comes out so rarely because its sheer size, we have had to build this purpose built showcase which is enormous and takes up quite a lot of the gallery space. And you know, from the moment I started working on this show, you know, we always have budgetary issues. It's the sort of never ending discussion. And I said, you know, like, we can juggle any work in this show. We can make, make it work. This is the only one that absolutely has to, has to be on display. And of course it's the one that's caused the most problems because of the purpose built showcase and the special lighting and the glass and the size of it.
- [31:26]
Jo Andrews
For the women who stitched it, it would be almost incomprehensible that their quilt should be much loved and in Australia's National Gallery. Although all of them eventually won their freedom by servitude, their lives continued to be difficult. Maria Musgrove gave birth to two more children, one of whom seems to have survived. Before she was freed, she was convicted of misconduct in having a bottle of wine concealed for which she could not satisfactorily account, and of being in a man's bedroom undressed for an improper purpose, devoid of family and support networks. It seems she was never able to establish a stable life, but survived on the margins. She died in 1885, age 71 in the New Town pauper establishment in Hobart, which is what the orphan school where her little daughter had been placed all those years before had become. And like her daughter, she is buried there. Eliza Dean's sentence was extended by three years for breaking various rules. When she was finally free, she left Tasmania for Victoria on the Australian mainland. She married twice, the second time to the widower of one of her shipmates. When she was 60, she was admitted to the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum in Melbourne, where she died six days later of a disease of the brain. Jane Burt, the little girl who did nothing but steal some laundry from a hedge in Dorset, married and had seven children. She lived to the age of 90 and she's one of the few women from the Rajah of whom we have a photograph. When she died in 1911, her obituary in her local newspaper described her as a bright and cheerful old lady, very highly esteemed by all who knew her.
- [33:58]
Diane Snowden
I have yet to see an obituary that says I came out on the convict ship and then I did. Well, men are referred to as old hands and quite often will find that the convict women are pioneers of the district and much loved or you know, a much loved midwife, if they went into midwifery, those sorts of stories. But it would have been a very tough thing for my grandparents, great grandparents, to admit to their convict ancestry. And all of my grandparents were descended from convicts, but it was never discussed. The other thing about women when they serve their sentence is that during the the time they were under sentence, they were housed, they were fed, they were clothed. After their seven years or whatever their term was, was up, they were on their own hands and they had to find a way of living. Marriage was encouraged for all sorts of reasons, but Even that didn't provide a secure income in a lot of cases. And desertion was common, particularly at the time of the gold rushes in Victoria. So it could be really tough.
- [35:09]
Jo Andrews
But what was created on the Rajah all those years ago in such difficult conditions has become an important icon for part of Australian society. Here's Simran Maxwell in a sort of.
- [35:27]
Simran Maxwell
I guess, a similar way to some people in America who feel, you know, that connection to those people who came out on the Mayflower, the people who came out as convicts, they didn't choose to come here, they were sent there is that connection with Australia, with. With the development of white Australia within history. So for many people, this idea is quite embedded. I also think that quilting communities are very dedicated. These women worked so hard and they were not given the recognition. But there is a huge part of our women visitors who are aware of how skilled these sort of things are and how beautiful they are, so that they want to come and see them.
- [36:26]
Jo Andrews
Migration, forced or voluntary, is always hard. We leave part of ourselves behind and carry forward our hope. These women arrived in Australia as convicts with nothing, not even their freedom. And even though they lived their lives in hardship and obscurity, they managed to make something skillful and beautiful, something that endures to this day and stands for all of us who have ever had to start a new life somewhere else, which gives the quilt a resonance far beyond Australia.
- [37:10]
Diane Snowden
The journey of writing a book was like making a quilt. A little piece here and a little piece there until you've got a whole. And I think, I hope we've done justice to the stories of the women and their children.
- [37:30]
Jo Andrews
Thank you to Diane Snowden and Simba and Maxwell. Without their knowledge and scholarship, this episode would not have been possible. The extract from the Frye daughter's diary and the quilt inscription were read by Constance Wookie. Thanks also to listeners Jo Davidson, Deborah Meeker and Pat Schultz in Tasmania, all of whom separately suggested this story should be told. They were right. Haptic and Hu is hosted by me, Jo Andrews and edited and produced by Bill Taylor. It's an independent production supported by its listeners who bring us ideas and generously fund us via Buy me a Coffee or by becoming a friend of Haptic and Hugh. This keeps the podcast independent and free from advertising and sponsorship. It also brings you extra content every month with a separate podcast called Travels with Textiles, hosted by Bill Taylor and me, where we cover a whole range of different textile news and topics. You can find out more about this episode and see pictures of the Raja quilt and some of the women who travelled as convicts on the ship@www.hapticandhue.com. listen series 6 we'll be back next month with a new episodes about feed sacks. Yes, these are the stuff of American mythology, the frugal fabric of the Depression. But there is so much more to their story than that. Join us next time on the first Thursday of the month. And until then, thank you for listening and enjoy whatever making you are doing. Sa.