The Five of Coins, or the Five of Pentacles is not a card that is welcome in a spread. The Rider Waite is particularly bleak. It is one of the toughest cards in the deck. Two people walk through the icy wind and snow; both are destitute and living in poverty. One man is injured and on crutches, while the other is barefoot. When upright means to lose all faith, lose resources, lose a loveror lose both financial and emotional security.
By and large the stories of the female convicts who were transported to Australia have remained hidden and have not featured in the history books. Many prevailed and went on to reinvent themselves and become successful but others, like Ellen Miles lived in continual poverty.
In an article featured in The Conversation she is described as a child convict, goldfields pickpocket and vagrant. She lived until 90 and was constantly in and out of gaol and benevolent asylums, until she was too frail to escape the Ballarat institution where she died in 1916.
Ellen’s first appearance in the press had been in 1839: aged 11, she was charged at the Guildhall with passing a counterfeit half-crown to a shopkeeper in Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London. Mr Field, an inspector at the Mint, said that this child was “one of three sisters, all notorious utterers”.
Her story is filled with characters that could appear in a Charles Dickens novel.
Waltzing With Matilda's 