The George Town Female Factory was originally built as a residence for the first chaplain in the north of Van Diemen’s Land, the Reverend John Youl, and was subsequently used to house female convicts, then as the Police Office and Magistrate’s Residence.

The Youl family finally moved into their new house in 1821 but by 1825 had moved back to Launceston.

The original female factory at George Town had been set up in a shed in the Lumber Yard. By March 1822 we hear that ‘In the Factory at George Town, cloth from the coarse wool of the Colony, of very good fabric, is made: as are leather and shoes of excellent quality’.

When Youl moved to Launceston, his house was converted for the women.

Newspaper articles in 1832 and 1834 decry the very dilapidated state of the building with broken windows and doors hanging off their hinges. Other problems encountered were shortages of raw materials, machinery and food: unreliable supervision and, increasingly, a problem of overcrowding. In the end the women sent there regarded a spell in the factory at George Town as something of a rest. In November 1834 a new Factory in Launceston was opened and the women were moved there.

In the mid 1830s the house was refurbished and used as the Magistrate’s Residence and Police Office. The first magistrate to live there was G.S. Davies and later, from 1867 James Richardson. In January 1873 the house was again vacated, never again to hear convict women’s tears or laughter, or the magistrate sternly admonishing some wrongdoer. The building was finally demolished in 1889.

A recent archaeological investigation revealed the trenches from which the building’s foundations were robbed for other buildings in the town.