'Round ring on the floor'—Collective resistance networks in female factories

Between 1803 and 1853, 13,600 female convicts were transported to Van Diemen’sLand. Those sentenced to secondary punishment were sent to serve time in the ‘crimeclass’ of the female factories. These establishments became the main stage for femalecollective action, culminating in large events like the bread riot in the Cascades FemaleFactory in May 1839. Such actions stemmed from an underlying counterculture inconstant opposition to the authorities. This article traces events of collective actionby cross-referencing offences in the conduct registers and uses network analysis toconnect them. From this process, a picture emerges of a long-standing culture ofresistance. While such a culture was implied by an inquiry held in the early 1840s,digital analysis enables us to link its findings to earlier and subsequent events.Treating the data as a network also enables researchers to identify women who playedcentral roles in an evolving prison subculture and provides the potential to furthercontextualise individual convict lives.