ABSTRACT
In January 1851, a letter was intercepted en route to Jane Walker, an inmate of the women’s prison establishment at Ross, Van Diemen’s Land. When considered together, the presence of this letter and the reaction of the institutional authorities demonstrate overlapping landscapes of penal domination and inmate resistance that operated to create this site. Why was Jane denied access to her relatives outside the perimeter wall of the prison? Who enjoyed the privilege of access? And how did convicts intentionally circumvent and penetrate these disciplinary boundaries? This chapter is concerned with the spatial dynamics of such questions. Inhabitants of the Ross Female Factory occupied a landscape of strictly defined and hierarchically organized locales. These places were spatially and temporally organized to maintain relationships of domination and subordination within the ranks of both staff and inmate inhabitants.
