THE FEMALE CONVICTS.
"Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind."
It was not an unusual thing in the old days to see one or more of the
female convicts sitting in stocks about the streets of the Settlement,
suffering a recovery from drink. Most of these women were quite equal
to their liquor, like the men, when they could get it. The principal
drink was rum, and nice stuff it was, too; there was plenty of tobacco
juice in it, so that when anyone got two or three drinks aboard, they
were in a fairly muddled state. When a man went into an hotel, the cry
was generally: "Shout, now, or out you go!" and some of the publicans
kept a plate of salt herring on the counter, and it goes without saying
that they soon got paid for the fish.
Two servants, Polly ---- and Sarah ----, used to be employed at one of
the hotels, and the fact that they each had a sweetheart was well known
to almost everybody. These two servants were working away in the hotel
as usual one day, and there was a good gathering of men discussing
different matters not far away. While thus assembled they noticed these
two girls at the hotel, and the conversation immediately drifted on
to them. This wound up in betting me a bottle of rum that I could not
start the two fighting. I at once undertook the contract, proceeded up
to Polly, and, pointing to Sarah, said: "She pretends to be a great
friend of yours, doesn't she?" "Yes," was the reply. "Well," I said,
"you should hear the way that she runs you and your sweetheart down."
I got her sufficiently excited in this way, and then went to Sarah and
told her the same things about Polly. They flew at each other in a
terrible rage, and fought like two cats, then I commenced to laugh and
to think how nice the rum would be. But they found out the joke also,
when the crowd began to laugh, and it was a good job for me that I
could run well, as they each picked up a clothes prop and chased me for
my life. I then went and got my rum.
Polly was sent to this country for trying to poison her uncle and aunt
to get their money. She had not been long in the Settlement before she
became intimate with a man who was sent from Sydney for having sore
legs. One day she quarrelled with this fellow, and, when night came
on, she attempted to commit suicide by taking a dose of oxalic acid.
The poison was taken shortly before retiring to bed, when she laid out
a number of clean underclothes on a table in the servants' room, and
said to her mate: "Sarah, to-night when I'm dead, I want you to put
these clothes on me; I had a row with Jack to-day, and I've taken some
oxalic acid, as I don't wish to live any longer."
Sarah was thunder-stricken at this state of affairs, and when she
recovered herself, said: "You big fool; I would not poison myself for
all the sore-legged brutes in the world." She then went and told the
boss of the hotel all the circumstances, and in a few minutes the whole
house was in a state of confusion. The doctor arrived, and the police
also came on the scene. The former took the necessary steps to extract
the poison from her, while the latter inquired into the circumstances
and "wet their whistle." After a few days Polly got better, and was
then sent to the lock-up for a week for being silly.
Afterwards she returned to the hotel, and made it up with the
rotten-legged man--both the servants then getting into their usual
habit of going out at night to meet their sweethearts. One night the
boss forbade them to go out, as his wife was ill with an abscess on her
arm. They, however, would not be baffled after making an appointment,
so they dressed up two "dummies," and affixed a melon with a night-cap
on as a head-piece for each, giving anyone the impression at first
sight that they were both in bed and asleep. Towards the middle of the
night the boss went to their door and called them, as his wife's arm
was very painful, and she wanted another poultice made for it. He got
no answer, so opened the door, looked in, and believed both of them to
be asleep. Finally, he walked over and shook one of them, but when one
of the night caps rolled off, and the melon became exposed to view, his
language of flowers was not choice.