DANGEROUS WOMEN by Hope Adams

 I am a little biased to books about the forced transportation of convicts to Australia from the mid-1700s on, as I have two ancestors who were transported convicts. One was on the first women only ship of 1777 - the Lady Juliana. This novel is also about a female only ship, the convict ship Rajah, which in this story left England for Tasmania in 1841 with 180 women prisoners. I would like to think that such transportations had improved over that 70 year period, especially for women, who it seemed often ended up being transported more due to their circumstances than their inherent badness. For example stealing food to feed their children, prostituting themselves to survive and so on. This particular voyage was very well documented in the diaries of the ship's doctor, which is the major research resource of the author. The voyage was also notable in that only one convict died. Also on board was a young woman from the British Ladies' Society for the reformation of female prisoners, started by Elizabeth Fry. Kezia  Hayter came from a good family, but fell out with them due to her involvement with Elizabeth Fry and criminal women, leading to her decision to migrate to Tasmania. During the course of the voyage, she led a group of the convicts in making a quilt  - the Rajah Quilt, which is now held by the National Gallery of Australia. 

All this information is readily available, and the author of this novel has created a whodunnit out of the death of the one aforementioned convict. A young woman, who was allowed to take her six year old son with her on her transportation, is murdered about half way through the voyage. It falls upon Kezia, the captain, the doctor and the vicar to try and figure out what happened, why it happened, and who did it. The fears amongst the women would have been immense - they all sleep together, eat together, in very close confines with each other. Through the novel, we get the back stories of many of the women, the tragedies in their lives, children and families they have left behind, what women will do to feed and protect their children, all in a time of no contraception, women having no powers of any sort or ability to seek legal redress. 

The story is written in a very linear fashion, it is easy to read, the investigation into the murder is perhaps a little drawn out. I did like how the women who worked on the quilt found meaning in their lives, in their friendships, that camaraderie that develops between women. I don't know how the lives of the women on the real Rajah panned out once they arrived in Hobart. It is unlikely any of them would ever have seen their families in England again, and that must have been heartbreaking for those who had to leave children behind. But women are tough and I would like to think that they did find successful lives for themselves, and were able to start again. If you have an interest in Australia's convict history, this is a good story and gives great accounts of what ship life would have been like.