From the loft

Photographed 29 August 1919 at the Female Reformatory, Long Bay

Holding the glass plate negative up to the light, my attention was immediately caught by the grotesque fox fur dangling around the woman’s neck. My gaze then drifted to her greasy hair and despondent look. She was obviously dressed in her ‘Sunday best’, a rich velvet skirt, full pelt fur and freshly buffed shoes. I was left to wonder why a woman who took obvious pride in her appearance would have such dirty disheveled hair. The answer lay in the northern New South Wales town of Tamworth.

Alma Smith was known around town as the daughter of ‘Jack the Bellman’. It seems she was also known to police as a backyard abortionist. In October 1928 Mrs Frazier of Tamworth visited Smith as she was ‘in a certain condition’, a modest phrase indicating she was pregnant. She had given birth to twins in April that year and wasn’t ready to further expand her family. She decided to visit Smith in order to have an abortion. As a result she fell ill with septicemia, an infection of the blood, and died at the Tamworth Hospital.

The police took a statement from Mrs Frazier and she identified Smith as the abortionist. Smith denied knowing Mrs Frazier but witnesses swore they had seen the two women together. Smith was taken into custody and tried in the Armidale Courthouse. She was convicted and sent to Sydney to serve her sentence. Her unkempt hair is the result of her time spent in custody where she could not complete her usual beauty routine. I presume her best clothes were worn to impress the court during her trial. When she was found guilty she was shipped off to Long Bay in the clothes in which she stood.