After Captain John Rolland’s tragic death, Lieutenant Carmac took charge until Captain Henry Gillman arrived in January 1825. In 1824 there were 10 women convicts in Port Macquarie so in 1825 Commandant Gillman had a women’s prison built where the Presbyterian Church now stands.
It was made with logs and it was built to accommodate 50 women, but in 1825 only 10 arrived. Of the men assigned to build the prison one was a well digger so he dug a well just outside the gaol and it is still there today in Munster street. Commandant Gillman named it the Female Factory because he intended that they make convict uniforms but the material never arrived from Sydney.
They did however forge nails and spikes that were used in St Thomas’s Church. In 1833 a men’s gaol was added to the female gaol.
This caused more problems with the men breaking into the female cells. The Female Factory was closed in 1842. Being so few in number, the female inmates were free to come and go as they pleased and there are some terrible stories to be told about the morals of the times. Convict James Frazier, whose wife had died in Sydney, asked for his 16-year-old daughter to be brought to Port Macquarie.
Permission was given and one morning he found Commandant Gillman in bed with her, so he wrote to the Governor, complaining.
All mail had to go through the Commandant so the letter was torn up and Frazier was flogged. Gillman’s wife accused her husband of having a girl under his bed and when she called for help, Gillman hit her with a poker and broke her arm. Gillman replaced Allman’s weatherboard Government House with a substantial brick building with a verandah, reputed to be the first verandah on a Government building in Australia. Gillman’s Government House was on the corner of present day Clarence and School Streets where the Focus building now stands.
Beneath the Focus building are the original foundations of Port Macquarie’s Government House. It was used for all the Commandants up to 1832 when Port Macquarie was handed over from Army to Civil control and then Government House was used by the Magistrates and their families. The convict population had peaked in 1824 and from 1825 convict numbers declined. Many convicts were taken to Morton Bay and Norfolk Island.
However the cedar industry was booming at this time and Gillman and his officers were engaged in illicit furniture manufacture using Government materials and labour for their own use.
Gillman was recalled in February 1826 and he shipped out twenty cases of cedar and rosewood furniture.
