This letter illustrates the religious atmosphere that was established in the school in the very month that Ellen and Sarah arrived, perhaps making a great impression on two little girls who had lost their family. But Walker proved to be an inadequate master with no ability to institute proper administrative procedures and a tendency to attend political meetings rather than his duties.
In an inspection of the school in June 1825, the inmates were found to be ‘covered with the Itch and Scald heads’ and suffering ophthalmia (inflammation of the eyes), causing the children to abandon their work and studies. It is likely this affliction also affected Ellen and Sarah, since the school’s assistant surgeon provided 491 treatments for ophthalmia between 25 March 1825 and 14 October 1826. Other reported medical complaints included mouth and scalp ulcers, diarrhoea, constipation, abscesses, dysentery and tinea, which were spread easily between children living in close quarters in dormitories and exacerbated by a poorly constructed sewerage system.35
After Reverend Walker was removed from his position, Ellen and Sarah and the other inmates came under the control of Reverend Charles Wilton and Mrs Wilton, who took over in April 1827. It seemed that the moral state of the 108 girls was an ongoing and irrepressible problem because the new master made complaints to the school’s committee that were similar to those made by Reverend Walker two years before:
I write . . . to say that it is totally impossible for me to prevent immorality in the Servants of the Institution, or to protect the morality of the children, many of whom are growing up to be young women.36
The problem was the ‘improper persons . . . talking to the females through the palings of the Institution’ which the school’s constable was unable to control. However, the Reverend Wilton was very much out of his depth, his words underscoring the shock he felt about the situation he had landed in, fresh off a ship from England. Time proved that he was a man of ‘little judgement’, even less experience and unfit for his duties. Mrs Wilton was also not up to the task, declaring that ‘she could not bear the smell of the children or the house, and would not reside in it’.37
During the time that Ellen and Sarah lived in the Female Orphan School, the number of its inmates grew each year, from 104 in 1825 to 145 in 1831. Their lives were a mixture of hard work and religiosity amidst overcrowded and diseased conditions. But with a matron who expressed her distaste for the children, a master unfit for the job and only an assistant matron in charge, there would have been opportunities for the girls to escape authority whenever they could. But only for a short time, since the colony embraced the idea of the Female Orphan School as a source of labour. Applications by colonists for orphaned girls were so common the school acted ‘as an agency’ for domestic servants. Under the apprenticeship system, girls were supplied to ‘respectable settlers and government officers’ with very few applications refused. In a period of labour shortage, they ‘performed an important function for the colonial economy’.38
Ellen’s and Sarah’s mother might have asked for her daughters to be returned to her but any reunion was impossible until her sentence had been served. Even visits by relatives had been severely restricted after the ‘theft’ by Sarah Patfield in 1821, suggesting that the girls did not see their mother for many years. However, a number of other parents and relatives applied to have their girls returned to them. These applications had to be recommended by a religious minister or a magistrate39 and while they were not always successful, the trustees of the Female Orphan School looked favourably on the applications made by Ellen and Sarah’s family.
Family applications were usually made when the circumstances of a girl’s family improved. Recommendations which stated that a mother was of good or moral character smoothed the way for mothers and daughters to be reunited. Some petitions were granted conditionally when children were returned to parents or relatives as apprentices. In 1828, after spending three years in the Female Orphan School, John Makin’s mother was apprenticed to Edward Raper, who had married Ellen’s eldest sister, Anne Bolton, in 1826.40 On 19 March 1827, Edward Raper wrote to the Reverend Archdeacon Scott:
My wife, Anne Raper, has two sisters, Ellen and Sarah Bolton at present in the Female Orphan School, whom she is desirous to remove from that Institution, and to receive . . . under our own Guardianship, and Protection: because, as we are both free persons, & able to maintain these Children, we are unwilling that they should continue a burthen on a public Charity . . . We therefore respectfully entreat, Reverend Sir, that you will be pleased to direct their discharge from the School.
The letter was signed by a Justice of the Peace who certified that Edward and Anne Raper were married and had the means to support Ellen and Sarah. After this letter was received a note was scrawled by Charles Cowper, Clerk of the Church which ran the School Corporation, to a Mr Harington:
Edward Raper per Tottenham wants a Girl out of the Female Orphan School. He says he is free but that he has lost his Certificate [of Freedom] . . . [W]ill you let me know whether what he says is correct.
Harington Esquire then made a notation in the elegant script of the times:
Edwd Raper per Tottenham obtained a Certificate of freedom on No. 79/2088 the 15 April 1824.
Tottenham was a reference to the convict ship on which Edward Raper had arrived in October 1818 after being convicted in North Riding, Yorkshire on 15 April 1817 and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, although his crime is unknown. As a result of this correspondence, Anne and Edward Raper were successful in gaining the guardianship of Ellen but not her sister, Sarah, who at the age of nine was left to fend for herself in the Female Orphan School.
Nine years later, at the age of 20, Ellen Bolton married William Makin, 35, on 23 January 1837 in St Phillips Church, Sydney and began her 22 year career of childbirth.
After Ellen was released from the Female Orphan School, it took three years and more letters for her sister, Sarah, to be given her conditional freedom.41 On 26 February 1831, Sarah Bolton was apprenticed to Mr Francis O’Meara, a Conductor of Police, who had married the second eldest Bolton daughter, Eliza, in 1828.42 When Eliza O’Meara wrote on 4 February 1831 seeking her sister as an apprentice, her request was approved, although the terms of Sarah’s release into the O’Mearas’ care were strict and the subject of an indenture. This contract required Sarah to faithfully serve ‘in all lawful Business, according to her Power, and Ability; and honestly, orderly, and obediently, in all Things, behave her self towards her said Master’. Today we might be appalled at the thought of a 12-year-old child being indentured as a servant but in 1831 the colony needed cheap labour. The trustees of the Female Orphan School also needed free settlers to take children off their hands in order to be relieved of the cost of their day to day care. The indenture system was a system of slave labour for a limited period of time during which the trustees had to hope that the child’s master and mistress would not neglect, abuse or prostitute the young girls assigned to their care.
Serving her seven year sentence–Mary Bolton’s moral regeneration
Back in January 1825, at the age of 50, John Makin’s grandmother had been sent to the notorious Female Factory at Parramatta where all newly arrived female convicts were held either to work within the Factory or until they were assigned to provide free labour to the colony’s middle class.
With her first assignment, Mary Bolton, four feet, ten inches tall with a dark complexion, black hair and chestnut eyes, was fortunate to end up in the household of an eminent free settler, Dr Patrick Hill, who had accepted a position as surgeon at Liverpool Hospital in January 1821 and obtained a land grant at Liverpool on 17 May 1825.43
Mary Bolton stayed with Dr Hill for over two years, probably being responsible for all the chores in his bachelor household. But it appears she was no longer needed after Dr Hill married Mary Throsby at St Luke’s Church, Liverpool on 12 July 1827.44 Although a free woman, Dr Hill’s newly acquired wife replaced Mary Bolton, convict, in supplying his household needs. In
this way, Dr Hill was a perfect example of the opportunities and privileges accorded to male free settlers—free convict labour, free land (courtesy of the local Aborigines) and a wife who provided more free labour.
Soon after his marriage, problems surfaced in Dr Hill’s household. On 5 December 1827, Mary Bolton appeared in the Court of General Sessions accused of being ‘useless in her service’.45 Her punishment was listed as ‘1st Class at the Factory one month’. A bachelor living alone with a middle-aged female servant suggests there may have been some territorial rivalry between Mary, who had previously been in charge of Dr Hill’s household, and his new wife.
Within the Female Factory, the convicts were divided into three classes. The first class consisted of women who had just arrived from England, those who had been returned from assigned service but with good character reports and second class women who had been moved up because they ‘had sustained six months’ good behaviour’.46 These women were eligible for assignment, as well as marriage. Second class women were on probation, often having been sent back to the Factory because they had become pregnant while on assignment. The third class consisted of women who had been punished for breaking the law or misbehaved on the voyage to Australia.47 Each class of woman was distinguished by her dress, with first class women much better dressed than their lower class companions, while the third class had their hair cropped ‘as a mark of disgrace’.48
Although she had ‘misbehaved’ Mary was probably returned to the first class because Dr Hill wrote her a glowing reference. While this punishment does not sound terribly onerous, the Factory was notorious for its overcrowded conditions and lack of basic comforts. Local men had a habit of visiting new arrivals with liquor in hand ‘for the purpose of forming a banquet according to custom . . . as a prelude to excesses which decency forbids to mention’.49
In the year of Mary’s return, the Factory was brewing rebellion. Not only did the female convicts have to endure damp, overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, but insufficient food and forced hair shaving combined with solitary confinement had also taken its toll. For unknown reasons, the rations of tea and sugar and other victuals for the third class convicts had been reduced by Matron Raine. In fact, salt had been substituted for sugar in the morning porridge. This caused ‘a general spirit of discontent . . . and a determination to have revenge on the retiring Matron’ who was rescued by a party of constables after the women ‘assailed’ her in one of the Factory’s rooms.50 To make matters worse the new matron, Mrs Gordon, stopped the bread and sugar ‘allowances’ completely as punishment.
On 27 October 1827, Australia’s first industrial action took place with a mass escape involving more than 200 women from all classes. At first, the women took over the yard of the Factory, ejecting a constable and allowing no-one to enter. Although there were attempts at conciliation, the frustrated women ‘assailed the [wooden] gates [of the Factory], with pickaxes, axes, iron crows’ then ‘poured forth thick as bees from a hive’ into the surrounding neighbourhood. When about 100 women swarmed into town, the bugles sounded to call the military to arms, with about 40 soldiers ‘flying in all directions with fixed bayonets’ to quell the uprising. Many of the local bakers, rather than be taken over, ‘threw into the street whatever loaves the women required’. Another group of women, shouting ‘Starvation’, attacked a raw quarter of beef hanging outside a butcher’s stall.
But the women, described as violent ‘Amazonian banditti’, stood up to the soldiers. Eventually, with threats to shoot and hunger satisfied, many were brought into line and conducted back to the Factory under military escort, ‘shouting as they went along, and carrying with them their aprons loaded with bread and meat . . . after the manner of a conquering army’. Back at the Factory, the Superintendent of Police ordered the ringleaders to be singled out and confined ‘but so determined were the rioters’ they managed to overcome the soldiers and rescued their companions, ‘declaring, that if one suffered, all should suffer’.
When Mary Bolton returned to the Female Factory in December 1827, she may have found a very different atmosphere as a result of improved rations and emboldened women who had stood up to authority. After her one month sentence in the first class, Mary was assigned to Stephen Owen, a government official who was responsible for paying the contractors who supplied provisions to the colony’s road gangs.51 Mary served Mr Owen for the rest of her sentence.
While still in the service of Mr Owen, Mary Bolton received her ticket-of-leave on 16 July 1829, a reward for good behaviour which enabled her to work for wages, although she was still subject to curfews at night, mandatory attendance at church on Sundays and was not allowed to travel without permission.52
On 9 May 1831, Mary petitioned the School Corporation, seeking the return of her daughter, Sarah, something she must have longed for during her six years of servitude:
Your petitioner being now free, and naturally anxious to have her youngest daughter, Sarah, (who from her tender years, and inexperience require her more particular attention) under her own immediate care . . . prays, that the . . . School Corporation will restore her daughter, Sarah, to her (Francis O’Meara . . . being agreeable to forgo any claim which he may have to her services).
The petition was ‘signed’ by Mary’s mark (a cross) and witnessed by Stephen Owen, who wrote a glowing reference for her:
I certify that Mary Bolton was recommended to my notice by Patk Hill Esqu, Col Surgeon, Liverpool, as a very decent woman, and an excellent servant . . . that she has been in my service for six months, during which periods she has fully maintained the good character awarded her by her former master.
I, further, consider, Mary Bolton, capable of maintaining her daughter, and . . . that she will not be inattentive to the moral & religious obligations which devolve upon her.
Finally, on 13 September 1831 Mary Bolton received her certificate of freedom. As an emancipated convict, she was now able to take custody of her youngest daughter, Sarah, and become a full participant in the British experiment to tame the great southern land. But it was not to be for long since she died on 5 October 1836 at the age of 62 years.
Ellen Makin, mother and survivor
The family history of Ellen Bolton, John Makin’s mother, suggests she was left with her fair share of emotional scars. She had lost her father, experienced the uncertainty of a long sea voyage when very young and, soon after arrival, was separated from her mother and older sisters. In the Female Orphan School she was subject to the regimentation of a school tasked with imprinting morality, obedience and servitude into the very fibre of its inmates.
What effect did the Female Orphan School have on Ellen as a mother? Was she overly strict? Religious? Unloving? Was it inevitable there would be a black sheep in her very large family of eleven children? As one of more than 100 children in the Female Orphan School, which was sometimes diseased and dirty, she would have needed a great capacity for survival, something she would rely on as her fertile body produced a child every two years. When John Makin was born in 1845, Ellen had four children under the age of seven. By the time he was two years old, another son had arrived; by the time he was four, there was yet another and by the time he was six, he had a baby sister. John Makin, middle child, may have been relatively invisible in a household filled with babies and a mother preoccupied with nappies and breast-feeding. When John was eight, his younger brother, William, nearly died after falling into a pot of boiling water.53 With severe scalding, William’s recovery increased the heavy childcare burden on Ellen Makin. As John grew older, every two years, another child was born until there were eleven in 1860 when he was 15 years old. By this time he may have been sick of the sight of young children. As John later revealed during several coronial inquiries and his trial, he was a man who showed little emotion, displaying no empathy towards mothers, babies and his own children.
Despite their less than salubrious origins, John Makin’s parents created a respectable middle-class family in Wollongong, a c
oastal town 84 kilometres south of Sydney. While John moved to Sydney, most of his brothers and sisters remained in the region, reproducing a huge clan of more than 50 grandchildren. John’s father, William, became the holder of general publican licences during the 1850s and 1860s for the Illawarra Steam Packet Inn in Corrimal Street, Wollongong. The family also owned the old Royal Hotel in Wollongong, which was purchased in April 1882 for the sum of £1250.54 But John gained a reputation for being a foolish young man, in and out of trouble, who could not be trusted with money. Was rebellion the only way to catch the attention of his preoccupied parents?
John Makin–black sheep and sheep thief
John started early as the black sheep in the family since, even before his name appeared as a notorious baby farmer, there are several references to him in the newspapers over a 20 year period. The first is on 25 February 1864 when he pleaded guilty to stealing a harness and was sentenced to Parramatta Gaol for six months with labour.55 The entry for John Makin in the New South Wales Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818–1930, states, incorrectly, that he was born in Wollongong in 1844 and was an inmate of Darlinghurst Gaol in 1863, possibly on remand, with the prison number 2109. While there is no record of the crime he committed, this entry shows that John Makin from Wollongong was in Sydney in the early 1860s. The notation on the record of his admission to Darlinghurst Gaol stated that he was a blacksmith with brown hair and blue eyes, was five feet, six inches tall and that he could read and write. This description accords with the one made after John was arrested and held on remand for murder in 1892.
The Baby Farmers Page 5