@ajsadauskas Some more history from Wikipedia:
"The Parramatta Female Factory is a National Heritage Listed place and has three original sandstone buildings and the sandstone gaol walls. The Parramatta Female Factory was designed by convict architect Francis Greenway in 1818 and the only female building authorized by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. It comprises the 1821 Matron's Quarters and Administration and Stores Building, the 1821 Female Hospital and the 1826 3rd Class Female Penitentiary. It is the first female factory in the penal colony of New South Wales, and is located at 5 Fleet Street, North Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia. It was one of 13 female factories in the colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land.
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"The factory was the destination for many of the convict women sent as prisoners to the colony of NSW. Over 9,000 names have been recorded as passing through the factories, of which an estimated 5,000 went through Parramatta.
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"The first stone was laid by Governor Macquarie in 1818 and the women were transferred from the old factory in 1821. The factory was built using convict labour from locally quarried sandstone and was completed in 1821 at the cost of £4,778.
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"The Parramatta Female Factory was multi-purpose. It was a place of assignment, a hospital, a marriage bureau, a factory, an asylum and a prison for those who committed a crime in the Colony. The reason it is called a factory is because it manufactured cloth - linen, wool and linsey woolsey. It was also the site of the colony's first manufactured export producing 60,000 yards (55,000 m) of woven cloth in 1822.The women also did spinning, knitting, straw plaiting, washing, cleaning duties and if in third class, rock breaking and oakum picking.
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"In October 1827, the factory was the site of women rioting as a response to a cut in rations and their poor conditions. The matron, Mrs Raine, had resigned and she had to be rescued. Ann Gordon began her work as the factory's new matron and superintendent with her first task being to negotiate with the women who had escaped from the building. She was able to persuade them to return, but the disputed ration of bread and sugar remained. In less than an hour over 100 women escaped en masse and proceeded into the town where 40 soldiers and the threat of guns brought them back. They returned with a plunder of foodstuffs and when the ringleaders were confined, they released them. This was the first of the riots. Other riots at the factory occurred in 1831, 1833, 1836 and 1843.
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"By 1842 the factory accommodated 1,203 women as well as children. With the end of convict transportation to the colony, in 1848 the site was reassigned as a Convict Lunatic and Invalid Asylum."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory
#history #AustralianHistory #Britain #colonialism #capitalism #imperialism #Australia #NSW