Details

Latitude

-42.8937

Longitude

147.299

Start Date

1828

End Date

1856

This purpose-built workhouse for female convicts operated from 1828 to 1856. Female transportees would be housed there upon their first arrival in the colony until they could be sent out to assigned service with an appropriate family; assigned women would also be returned to the factory for disobedience or rule-breaking. The factory's location in a damp, swampy area led to high rates of disease among inmates, exacerbated by overcrowding. In 1869, more than a decade after its use as a female convict factory had ceased, the site became a reformatory for boys who were homeless or had been convicted of offences by the courts. At the reformatory boys would receive a basic education, work on farmland attached to the institution, or be apprenticed out to employers. The reformatory closed in 1876, but in 1884 the site was again opened as an alternative facility to prison for juvenile offenders, now known as the Boys' Training School. The Boys' Training School was transferred to a new site in New Town in 1896. Today the remaining Cascades buildings form a heritage site that is open to the visiting public.

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