ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the practice of forcibly cutting free women’s hair in convict female factories in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), the public debate it generated, and the termination of the practice through changes to prison policy and the Masters and Servants law. By drawing together a historiographical survey of the practice of compulsory hair cutting, following a significant intervention of reform-minded Bishop Robert William Willson, and highlighting the experiences of individual women subject to the practice, we illuminate the interplay at a local level of multiple social and cultural elements which influenced wider penal practices and attitudes across the British empire in the nineteenth century. In doing so, we highlight a form of punishment unique to female offenders in Van Diemen’s Land, one that, surprisingly, was extended beyond the bond (convict) women of the colony and applied to those who had arrived free.
