Cascades Female Factory Historic Site

The Cascades Female Factory is defined by high stone walls that enclose the remnants of a nineteenth-century prison. Opened in eighteen twenty-eight on the site of a failed rum distillery, it was a purpose-built institution designed to manage the thousands of female convicts transported from Britain and Ireland to the colony of Van Diemen's Land. For nearly three decades, these yards held women deemed in need of reform, serving as a site of punishing labor, childbirth, and profound human hardship.