Cot in police house

This cot would have once cradled the babies born to the police sergeant and his wife, who lived in the house in the 1870s. Three of their 12 children would sleep crammed together in a trundle bed - one in this cot and the others top to tail in the remaining beds. The police sergeant’s family home was part of a bigger complex also comprising the police station, gaol and courthouse. Their family slept and played not far from the prison, which included four short-term cells for white prisoners, kept one or two prisoners to a cell, and a fifth cell for Aboriginal people who were chained to an iron bar on the cell’s back wall. The building complex would have once been a bustle of activity, also housing a ‘retiring room’ for the magistrate and a visiting doctor, a school teacher’s quarters, a kitchen for preparing prisoners’ meals and a post office.