I can hardly say it too often--in reading about the slaves and their
sufferings we must remember that past ages had different standards,
and that, although undoubtedly the slaves suffered horribly it was the
custom of the times, and other people suffered as well. Even at the
beginning of this century, coming to England from a land where the
working man could always make enough to keep himself in decency and
comfort, I was shocked and horrified at the condition of the poorer
classes in the great cities of England. In London, in Liverpool, in the
Five Towns, and more particularly in Sheffield, was I dismayed at the
low standard of the working man or woman. It seemed to me they were
slaves in a bitter cold and cheerless country, and as far as I could
see, for I had my living to earn and no time to investigate, they had no
hope of bettering their condition.
And my Australian eyes were not the only ones that saw the people so.
E. Nesbit, who writes so charmingly, once wrote a story in which the
children, either by means of a magic carpet or a reanimated phoenix,
brought back Queen Semiramis to visit the earth and took her for a ride
on top of an omnibus through the London streets.
“How badly you keep your slaves?” said the Queen.
“Oh, there are no slaves in England,” said the children. I quote from
memory but this is the gist of the story.
“Stuff and nonsense, children!” said the Queen. “Don't tell me! Think I
don't know a slave when I see him!”
E. Nesbit is quite right. We cannot see fairly and in their true colours
the things to which use has deadened our sensibilities. It must have
seemed quite natural for the planters of Jamaica to be pleased when a
slave ship arrived. The news would go round at once, and as the
ships were not very big they came to ports that only a coaster visits
nowadays. To Kingston, of course, to Montego Bay, but they also went to
Savanna la Mar and to Black River and other places that dream idly in
the sunshine now and get their stores by motor boats and schooners.
Probably the planter grumbled and growled and said the stench of such a
ship was enough to knock you down, and that he hated the job, but he
had to have hands, and in a way he enjoyed the outing and the gathering
together of his own kind. No one, I think, for one moment thought of the
sufferings of the slaves; they grumbled, as men do nowadays because a
pig-stye smells. Occasionally a farmer, wiser than the rest, declares
the swine should be kept clean, but one and all, grumblers and wise
men, are sure they need bacon. And so it was with the sale of the black
cattle.
They were savages. Occasionally, perhaps, a highly bred and educated
man from the north might be mixed up with them, but as a rule the slaves
imported were the merest barbarians. It is no good thinking they were
anything else. It is true enough what the advocates of slavery always
maintained, that through their enslaving they did get a glimpse of
better things. An Ashanti woman with her shaven head and a cloth wrapped
round her middle, beating fu-fu, is certainly not as far advanced in
the social scale as the milkmaid clambering down the steep hillside to
Montego Bay and saving her pennies to buy herself smart clothes in which
to go to church. But it is also certain that the men who imported her
forbears were thinking only of their own convenience.
There was a tremendous cleaning up on board on arrival; salt water was
aplenty, and the slaves were doctored, their sores were attended to,
and they were given palm oil and coconut oil with which to anoint
themselves. They must have been thankful to come out of their cramped
quarters and bask on deck in the sunshine, but they must have feared.
One historian has left it on record that the planters who came down to
buy had often celebrated the arrival and were so gloriously drunk that
the scramble for the goods was disgraceful and the unfortunate Helots
must have thought they had fallen into the hands of cannibals and were
to be despatched forthwith.
The planters, when they were able, visited the ships to see the new
importations and decide for which they should bid at the coming sale,
but in later times the slaves were taken straight to the vendue master
and sold in the public slave market. There used to be a large slave
market at Montego Bay, quite close to the water, so that the merchandise
might be rowed ashore, and the gentlemen from Success and Contentment
and Retrieve, from Iron Shore and Retirement and True Friendship--thus
they name plantations in Jamaica--came crowding to fill up the gaps in
their hands, to buy Madam a serving wench, or young master a boy to wait
upon him.
They stood there in rows, naked savages, men and women with clean
cloths round their loins, and boys and girls stark. Their shackles had
generally been struck off because a quiet and peaceable slave was more
valued than one who had to be kept in restraint. There were shade trees
growing round the marketplace, and the sun flickered down through their
leaves and made patterns on the shapely dark bodies, and the buyers
examined them exactly as they would have examined a horse or a cow they
wanted to buy.
The buyers had certain preferences. In spite of an evil reputation, “the
Koromantyns,” says Bryan Edwards, “are distinguished from all others
by firmness both of body and mind, a ferociousness of disposition; but
withal, activity, courage, and stubbornness,” and this, while it made
them dangerous, made them good labourers. The Papams or Whidahs,
those who came from the coasts between Accra and all along by Keta
and Togoland and Dahomey, “are accounted most docile.” The Eboes from
Calabar and the swamps round the mouths of the Niger “were valued the
least, being feeble, timid, despairing creatures, who not infrequently
used to commit suicide in their dejection,” which perhaps was not
surprising if they could not work and knew what they had to expect if
they did not.
The people from the Gaboon country, at the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea,
were said to be invariably ill-disposed, and lastly, those from the
Congo and farther south from the coasts of Angola, though counted less
robust than the other negroes, were more handy as mechanics, and more
trustworthy. So the gentlemen, crowding to the sales, had some idea of
the quality of the goods they had come to buy.
The value of a slave increased as the years went on. In 1689, I believe,
a slave could be bought for £7, but of course £7 was a great deal more
money then than it is now. Then a good negro rose to £20. In 1750 a
planter writes, “Bought ten negroes at £50 each”--which, Edwards says,
was the common price in 1791; boys and girls cost from £40 to £45,
while an infant was worth £5. After that they rose in value rapidly, and
before Edwards had finished his history in his estimate of the expenses
of a sugar plantation, he values the negroes at £70 apiece; while
in 1832, just before the Emancipation, when the planters expected
compensation for the loss of their labour, the value of a slave
sometimes rose as high as £110 per man.
Because of the perquisites of the officers, only the healthy slaves were
offered for sale at first, but the sick, injured, and weakly were by no
means wasted. Indeed, even in those hard-bitten times, the disposal of
the sickly slaves was often considered a scandal. They were generally
bought up by speculators who sometimes tended them, sometimes did not,
simply made what they could out of them. If the lot of the healthy
slaves was hard, that of the newly arrived and sickly was terrible, till
death released them from their sufferings. And in every ship we may be
sure there were sick.
I do not find any record of slave risings on the arrival of the ships.
It seems as if the black men, dazed and frightened, unaccustomed to
their new surroundings, submitted quietly enough. It was not until they
were on the estates, had time to look round them, had hoes and knives
and machetes put into their hands, that they realised the comparative
weakness of the whites, and the chance they had of freedom. They might
be met any day, a band of stalwart black savages clad only in loin
cloths, the women, apart with their babies seated on their hips, leading
older children by the hand, marching along the white roads, clambering
up the steep mountain paths to the estate that was to be their
destination, with a white man on horseback following slowly, and one, or
two, or three black drivers, according to the number of the new slaves,
with whips, old slaves who could be trusted, marshalling them. Sometimes
they sang, and always they went better to some sort of music, but I do
not think they were often very rebellious. The first bitterness of the
enslavement had passed. Here was solid ground beneath their feet again,
a companion they were accustomed to, beside them, pleasant sunshine
and a cooling breeze, and it might be worth their while to see what the
future held for them.
Arrived at the estate, the newcomers were very often handed over
individually to some slave accustomed to the plantation, who showed them
the ropes, and possibly heard tales of the country from which he had
been torn long ago.
They were practically dumb these first comers. They did not understand
the language; even the old hands only grasped the words of command, and
though they thoroughly understood the uses to which a knife might be
put, a hoe they would certainly regard as a woman's implement.
Of course their masters took no heed of that, any more than they
considered the slave's feelings when they made over a fierce Ashanti or
Mendi warrior to a mild Joloff, or gave a Mandingo from the north, who
was likely to be a Mohammedan and might even be able to read and write
Arabic, into the charge of an Eboe, who was a savage pure and simple,
and probably remained a savage after years of plantation labour. To do
them justice, I expect these gentlemen from Amity, or Rose Hall, or
Good Hope, had about as much idea of the map of Africa as I have of the
contour of the Antarctic Continent--less very likely; and that these
people were separated as widely by the countries of their birth as they
themselves were from England, never occurred to them. I don't suppose
they would have bothered if it had. But certain differences were forced
upon them. And for the proper working of their plantations, they
must needs take note of those differences. As a rule, they were not
intentionally cruel, but they regarded the slaves as chattels.
There is a story told by Bryan Edwards, to illustrate the superior pluck
of the Koromantyns, but it also shows us the standing of a slave very
well indeed:--
“A gentleman of my acquaintance who had purchased at the same time ten
Koromantyn boys, and the like number of Eboes, the eldest of the whole
apparently not more than thirteen years of age--caused them all to be
collected and brought before him in my presence to be marked on the
breast. This operation is performed by heating a small silver brand,
composed of one or two letters, in the flame of spirits of wine, and
applying it to the skin which is previously anointed with sweet oil.
The application is instantaneous and the pain momentary.” So Mr Bryan
Edwards but he was in no danger from a branding iron. “Nevertheless,
it may be easily supposed that the apparatus must have a frightful
appearance to a child. Accordingly, when the first boy, who happened to
be one of the Eboes, and the stoutest of the whole, was led forward to
receive the mark, he screamed dreadfully, while his companions of
the same nation manifested strong emotions of sympathetic terror. The
gentleman stopped his hand. But the Koromantyn boys, laughing aloud,
and immediately coming forward of their own accord, offered their bosoms
undauntedly to the brand, and receiving its impression without flinching
in the least, snapped their fingers in exultation over the poor Eboes.”
The natives of Africa are often much worse marked than any small silver
brand could mark them merely by way of ornament, and many a time do
we see white men who have submitted to the more painful operation of
tattooing merely for--well, when I'm put to it I really don't know why a
white man allows himself to be tattooed.
You will find it said that the majority of people were good to their
slaves, that it was their interest to be good to them. True, but
unfortunately we have only to look round us to see how often nowadays
a horse, or indeed any helpless creature dependent upon some careless
man's good-will, is ill-used, even though ultimately that ill-usage
means a loss to the owner. And so it was in Jamaica: a man did the best
he could for his slaves, his favourites were pampered, but when it came
to a pinch the slaves suffered. There was a terrible famine in Jamaica
in the latter half of the eighteenth century; England had decreed that
there should be no trade with her revolted colonies, supplies were
therefore more restricted than they need have been, and it is recorded
that the slaves died by thousands. Again and again we are told how, even
in normal times, the slave spent his midday rest hour either in the
bush picking berries and wild fruits with which to supplement his scanty
fare, or else in searching the rubbish heap at the planters' door
for gnawed bones which were ground small and boiled down to get what
sustenance there was in them. No one troubled about a slave; some men
would get a reputation for ill-treating their slaves, but no one thought
of interfering.
Besides, as I have remarked before, the pens and estates were so
isolated. Anything might have happened to a slave on one of those
estates, and it would have been long before rumour carried the tale to
the next estate.
And there was another side of the picture, the side at which the planter
looked, especially when he thought of bringing a wife to his lonely
Great House set high on a hill-top or a jutting rock. He was surrounded
by some hundreds of these alien people, dumbly resentful of their
condition--he didn't put it like that--ill-conditioned ruffians he
probably called them, and he never knew when the worst might not
influence the rest. And they were armed with machetes and knives and
hoes and spades, for purposes of agriculture certainly, but agricultural
implements make excellent weapons of offence in the hands of a fierce
Timini or Krobo warrior. “He travels the fastest who travels alone,” as
Kipling sings, and many a man thanked God he had no wife or children.
He took to himself one of the dark women, and in later times there were
the mulattoes and quadroons to be had for the choosing.
We can easily see why the presence of a white woman was resented upon
an estate. If the owner chose to live with some brown or yellow girl he
naturally objected to his underlings choosing a mode of life which would
be a reproach to him, and if he brought out a wife all those who had no
wives felt that Madam exercised an undue espionage over their mode of
life.
“In my drive this morning met several of the unfortunate half black
progeny of some of our staff,” writes Lady Nugent, “all in fine muslin
lace, &c., with wreaths of flowers in their hats. What ruin for these
worse than thoughtless, young men.” If she wrote thus, she probably
did not refrain from comment at the time, and doubtless her comment was
resented.
“Soon after my arrival,” writes Matthew Lewis, “I asked my attorney” (an
attorney in Jamaica is the man who manages the estate for an absentee
owner) “whether a clever-looking woman who seemed to have great
authority in the house belonged to me.”
“'No, she was a free woman.'
“'Was she in my service then?'
“'No, she was not in my service; I began to grow impatient.
“'But what does she do at Cornwall? Of what use is she in the house?'
“'Why, sir, as to use, of great use, sir'; and then, after a pause,
added in a lower voice, 'It is the custom, sir, for unmarried men to
have housekeepers, and Nancy is mine.'”
Lewis wrote in the second decade of the nineteenth century a little
after Lady Nugent, and putting all these little stories together, we get
a complete picture of the Jamaican estate as it must have been for close
on two hundred years.
The black people, naked at first and later clad in rags, lived in a
little village some distance from the Great House where dwelt their
master, and the bond between them was the woman he took from amongst
them for his convenience. The villages were of palm-thatched houses with
walls of swish or of wattle, and were very often surrounded by a wall,
for if the owner valued his privacy so did the dweller in the village,
and presently around them grew up a grove of trees planted by the negro
sometimes by design, sometimes by accident; there were coconut palms and
naseberries, tall leafy trees, and by the beginning of the nineteenth
century, thanks to Bligh and Marshall, breadfruit and mango trees, the
handsomest trees, perhaps, that bear fruit, and there were oranges and
lemons with their fragrant blossoms.
“I never witnessed on the stage a scene,” says Lewis, “so picturesque
as a negro village.... If I were to decide according to my own taste I
should infinitely have preferred their habitations to my own. Each house
is surrounded by a separate garden, and the whole village is intersected
by lanes bordered with all kinds of sweet-smelling and flowering
plants.” Certainly he was fortunate. The villages on his estate must
have been model ones. I have been up and down the land and I have never
seen a negro village that in my eyes did not badly need cleaning up.
There is no reason why the houses should not be delightful, but they are
not. In those old days, the days long before Lewis, they were a danger,
of course. Of sanitation there was none. Even now about a peasant's
house in Jamaica there is often an unpleasant smell from the rotting
waste that is scattered around; then it must have been much worse, but
what could you expect, when the masters themselves regarded bad smells
and rotting waste as all in the day's work? In the old slave-trading
castles on the Guinea Coast there was always a well in the courtyard,
a very necessary precaution, surrounded as the traders were by hostile
tribes, but they also buried their dead in the courtyard and it never
seems to have occurred to them that by such a practice they might
possibly be arranging for a constant supply of graves. Sloane, I
think it is, puts it on paper that, but for the John Crows--a small
vulture--he does not think the towns in Jamaica would have been
habitable.
The fields where the slaves grew cassava and yams and chochos and cocos
were usually at some distance from the village, “on the mountain,” which
meant the rougher and more stony hill ground at a distance from the
Great House. According to custom one acre of ground was planted for
every five negroes, and they were allowed to work on it one day a week.
And very gradually, the descendants of the naked savages who had been
brought so unwillingly came to feel that they belonged to the land--it
was their country. It was said that all the outbreaks were led by the
newly-imported slaves, and that the Creoles, those born in the colony,
were contented enough. They had many wrongs, but undoubtedly they loved
the place of their birth, and felt deeply being sent away or sold. They
pitied, as from a higher plane, the book-keeper who had to go. It
is curious to learn that when a white underling was dismissed, the
gangs--these slaves who must stay whether they liked it or not--would
sing:
“Massa turn poor buckra away ho!
But Massa can't turn poor neger away oh!”
We see that they _must_ have looked at their position from a different
view-point from that we naturally take now.
I have read through two or three books of records of such estates as
Worthy Park and Rose Hall, and in them the slaves are enumerated in
exactly the same fashion as the cattle on the next page. The Worthy Park
book I found specially interesting. It was an old brown leather-covered
book, 18 inches long by 1 foot broad, and round it clung--or so it
seemed to me--an unrestful emanation, as if the men who wrote in it were
discontented and found life a vexatious thing.
This slave book begins--and the beginning is written in a very clear
clerkly hand; I expect my grandmother would have placed the writer's
status exactly--with a description of the lands, 3150 acres, held by the
original owner of Worthy Park, John Price, Esq., of Penzance, England;
he was an absentee owner, and there is no record in the book of his
ever having visited his estate. George Doubt was the superintendent,
and lived at the Great House; but whether it was he who made those first
entries, there is no means of knowing. He certainly did not make
them all, for the handwriting varies, and there were no less than six
overseers in the five years, the book records, between 1787 and 1792.
And the ink and the paper reflect credit on the makers, for though
browned with time the writing is perfectly legible, and the pages are
stout still.
Once the limits of the estate are laid down, we come to the stock upon
it--the negroes, the mules, the horses, the oxen; and every quarter
returns were made to the Vestry of the Parish. This, I think, because a
tax of 6d. a head had to be paid upon every slave; and for the safety
of the public a certain number of white men had to be kept, capable of
bearing arms.
The white men were always changing, with the exception of George Doubt,
so I conclude either that that superintendent was a hard man, or that
John Price, comfortable in his English home, drove him hard; for even
for those times the pay seems to have been poor. What Doubt got I do
not know, but the overseer got £200 a year, and of course his board and
lodging; the surgeon got £140 per annum; the book-keeper and distiller
£50 per annum, and the ordinary book-keepers £30 per annum each. It was
no catch to be a book-keeper in those days. As a rule he had nothing
to do with books, but he did all the little jobs that could not be
entrusted to the slaves. He served out the corn for the feeding of
the fowls, kept count of the rats that were killed, and went into the
cane-fields with the negro drivers. He had to be out in the fields so
early that his breakfast was sent out to him.
A negro wench, complained a long-suffering young man, brought him his
breakfast--a bottle of cold coffee, two herrings, and a couple of boiled
plantains stuck on a fork. It does not sound luxurious, and £30 a year
did not hold out much hope of bettering himself.
Among the stock the negroes come before the cattle, and are described in
much the same language.
“A General List of Negroes on, and belonging to, Worthy Park Plantation,
taken the 1st January 1787.”
The page is divided into three columns, headed respectively, “Names,
Qualifications, and Conditions”; and underneath, “Quashie, Head
Carpenter, Able,” at the top of a long list that is never less than 340
and sometimes rises to 360 names. There were 6 Carpenters, numbering
among them Mulatto Aleck, and 2 learning; there were 2 Sawyers, 1 Joiner
and Cabinet Maker, 1 Blacksmith, Mulatto John, 1 Mason, Mulatto Billy,
and 1 learning, 3 Drivers, 1 man in the Garden who was marked Old and
Infirm, 5 Wain men, 3 Boilers, a Head mule man, and 138 others, ending
with children too young to be of any use.
The names are various, and do not differ very much from those of the
cattle numbered a few pages further on. Prussia, the Head mule man, is
Able, Minuith is Distemper'd, and eight Macs, beginning with MacDonald,
and ending with MacLean, are all Able. Nero is a field-labourer and
Able, and Don't Care, a wain man, is Able. Further on there is a steer
named Why Not? Waller, the Head boiler, is sickly, and Johnston, a
field-labourer, is subject to “Fitts.” Dryden is Able, but Elderly.
Punch and Bacchus are Elderly and Weakly, which seems wrong somehow, and
Ishmael is Infirm and a Runaway. Italy is Able, Spain is Distemper'd,
and Portugal is Weakly. Germany is Old and Weak. Quaco's Jumbo is
subject to Sores, and Creole Cuba's Cuffie is Weakly and a notorious
Runaway. Poor Pope is lame in one hand, and so is Homer, while Kent,
Duke, Guy, Prince, John, Morrice, and James, are “all of no use, being
too young.”
Then we come to the women. There are 141 of them, 64 Field Labourers,
44 of whom are Able. Grace is a Driver and Elderly, and Delia and
Dilligence are both Elderly. Baddo and Creole Betty are Old and Weakly,
Lilly is Elderly and Sickly. Little Dido is “Weakly & Runaway.” Woman is
Field Cook for the Small Gang, Silvia is Nurse to the young Children in
the Field. Luida's Nancy is “Superunuated.” Little Yabba is lame in
her hip, Chloe is Weakly and Worthless. Little Benebah is Runaway and
Worthless, Strumpet is Able, a Runaway--could one expect much from
a woman called by such a name?--and that Whore was also Runaway and
Worthless seems but a confirmation of the old saying about giving a dog
a bad name and hanging him. But Lady, too, is Runaway; perhaps she was
sickly and not equal to the work they expected of her. We may judge that
the writer who recorded those dead-and-gone black labourers was not a
lettered man, for he writes down Psyche, “Sychke.” But Psyche has always
been a difficulty. Miss Maxwell Hall on Kempshot Pen has a cow so named,
and periodically she goes through her cattle with her headman. She keeps
her list and he presents his. Psyche he had written “Sikey,” and the
young lady coming upon it among the “S's” murmured to herself:--
“Psyche, yes, 'p,' of course.” He was an observant man, and the next
time the list was presented to her Psyche had been written “Spikey”!
Perhaps the overseer did not do so badly with “Syclike.”
Little Abba, a field cook, has lost one hand. Apparently they did not
trouble much about the field-labourer's food, hardly more than they did
about the book-keeper's. Simbry is Elderly and a Gandy, which appears to
have been a midwife. Poor Pallas is weakly. Sicily, old and weakly, cuts
grass for the stables; Abbas Moll, Invalid, “Sores,” washes the bags.
I hope they weren't used for anything important. Olive is blind, and no
less than thirteen are “superunuated,” while twenty-eight, among them
Behaviour, Friendship, and Phebas, are “of no use, being very young.”
Later on, “Little Friendship's” death of fever and a sore throat is
recorded. Here, too, are Quadroon Kitty, Quadroon Molly, and Quadroon
Bessy, nearer the white man than the black but still slaves.
George Doubt expended his negroes freely.... Thirty negroes, fifteen men
and fifteen women, were bought on the 2nd March 1787. They were “late
the property of Mr Alex. Stanhope dec'd, bo't of Edward Brailsford,
Esq.” Why the difference in the titles I don't know. They were all
marked “Able” when they were bought, but in 1789 the men are reduced to
thirteen, and Toby, who was a Mason, is now old and infirm; England, a
sawyer, is old and infirm; Roger, a field negro, is now “little worth”;
Dick is sickly and Cæsar is Able, but evidently he did not like Worthy
Park, for he is always running away. Prince, now in the overseer's
stables, is of little worth; Cuffic is dead and York is now represented
by a little child.
And of the women, Flora is sickly and Delia is dead, and there is a
sinister entry against Fidelia--“Died, reduced by lying in the bushes.”
Why did Fidelia leave her home and lie in the bushes till she was so
reduced she died?
But it is just the same tale with the older hands. I would condemn
slavery on the Worthy Park slave book alone; and Worthy Park had not the
bad reputation Bose Hall had, yet Quashie, who opens the book as able in
two years, is old and infirm; Mulatto Aleck is infirm. Mulatto George,
then able, is now subject to sores and “Bone ach.” Minuith has now
become Minute, and from being a carpenter has become a watchman, which
means he is good for nothing else. Joan's Cudjoe, the Head sawyer, has
against him “Rheumatism,” and Darby, the Head Driver, formerly Able, is
now “Ruptur'd.” Guy's Quashie and Creole Scotland are now both elderly.
Pool and Waller the Boilers are sent to the field sometimes, a
bitter come-down for them, and are both elderly and infirm. Nero has
elephantiasis, Dryden is now cutting grass, M'herson is weakly, M'Clean
is asthmatic, Don't Care is infirm, Juba's Quashie is dead. Perhaps the
new overseer was a harder man, for I noticed that Quaco's Jumbo, who
was originally described as “Weakly and a Runaway,” is now “Able but a
Skulker.”
Philip, who was “Able,” is now “infirm,” and Pope, who only has one
hand, is now “Able and Ill-dispos'd,” and no mention is made of an
infirmity which certainly must severely handicap a slave.
And so it goes on. Villian is “Subject to Fits,” and Solomon is “subject
to Bone ach,” a long list which makes us feel for the weary men and
women who must turn out into the field at the blowing of the conch
shell.
If you have any imagination at all there are many little pathetic
histories in a slave book.
There was Dolly on Worthy Park Estate, entered in 1787 as in the
overseer's house. She had a baby, Mulatto Patty, in all probability the
daughter of the overseer. If she was he goes away and leaves her a
slave on the plantation, for she is entered every year to the end of the
record as “healthy, but too young to work.” Work is all that is expected
of the white man's daughter. Poor little Patty! Her mother's two next
children are presumably black, as their colour is not mentioned, which
it would have been had they had any white blood in their veins; and
presently poor Dolly is a field-labourer again, fallen from her high
estate. For in Jamaica the house-servant ranks high in the social scale.
That is why, I think, that the house-servants in Jamaica generally wear
a handkerchief over their heads. The white bondservants did so because
it was the custom of the time, and the black woman promoted from the
field put a kerchief over her head and wore it as a sign of her higher
social standing. The custom is dying hard, and it is a pity it should
die at all, for the negro woman's hair is not her strong point and it is
better covered.
Then Fogo, also in the overseer's house, had a boy named Charles Dale,
and Charles Dale is the blacksmith upon the estate, but there is no
record of little Charles being freed. In truth the father never counted.
In a record of forty births on Worthy Park never once is he mentioned.
The births are put down on one side of the page as “Increase of the
Negroes,” and the baby is only mentioned because he is an asset, as he
takes turn with the notice that so many negroes have been bought. On the
other side of the page is invariably “Increase of Stock,” kept on
exactly the same lines.
In the Rose Hall slave books, thirty years later in date, the births
are put casually among the daily occurrences, just as the runaways are
mentioned, or the fact that a certain runaway “Cæsar” or “Arabella”
is “brought home.” And, perhaps, in the whole pitiful list in all the
books, the only entry that looks well is that Betty Madge on Worthy Park
has many young children and does not work.
The last man who makes entries in this book is rather fond of a gentle
reproach. I don't like him, and I don't think the negroes could have
liked him either, though I only judge by the handwriting and his brief
remarks.
“Pheba Girl,” for instance, is “Able but a sad skulker,” and Lady is a
“sad runaway.” Psyche has become “Sickie” and is sickly, and Belinda,
who two years ago was a child, is now in the field. Poor little girl!
Her life of labour has begun. It gave me great satisfaction to find that
Congo Betty, who in the beginning was entered as “Able but a Runaway,”
in 1789 ran away for good, apparently, for when the book closed she had
not returned, having been absent for over two years. I hope she had not
died, but was happy and comfortable in the hills. Perhaps she joined the
Maroons, but I fear me not even her own people were likely to be kind to
an elderly woman.
Others ran away, but they came back, poor things. Cæsar and Lady and
Villian and Mary and October ran away all at one time. No mention is
ever made of their return, but they did come back, for later they are
served with clothing, and are mentioned in the lists of negroes on the
estate. Man is a gregarious animal, and, I suppose, these poor things,
skulking in the woods and mountains, missed their fellows, and so they
dared the stocks and the lock-up and the stripes, which were sure to be
their portion when they did come back. Lady came back once, for in June
1788 she had a baby girl. In January 1791 she is among the invalids and
superannuated. But life among the sick evidently did not suit her--it
probably was no bed of roses--for in the following September she left
her three-years-old Diana and ran away, and when the book closed three
months later she was still away.
Though, apparently, they superannuated the slaves very young, we may
be very sure they did not superannuate them before they were actually
obliged, so that we find they were old and useless when they should
have been in their prime. A slave had no proper stimulus to labour. As a
rule, he was assured of enough to eat when he was too old to labour, and
practically he had little more at any stage of his career.
The deaths, of course, came in under “Decrease of Negroes,” and they
died so often of “Old Age,” poor things, that I wonder what constituted
“Old Age” in those days. But sometimes they died of “yaws,” and “a
consumption,” and “Pluresy.” Sometimes the children died of “Worm
fever,” of “Locked Jaw,” “of Fever and Sore Throat,” “of Cold and Sore
Throat,” and Little Prince was drowned. One of the men named Dick has my
sincerest sympathy. He is bought from Brailsford as “Able,” a couple of
years later he is “sickly,” then he has “Bone ach,” and finally on the
1st April 1791 he is entered as “Died of a sudden death,” which is
crossed out, and “an Asthma” put instead. He evidently struggled in
agonising fashion at intervals, till at length his heart gave out and he
was at peace.
And one of the sad untold stories of the book lies behind the entry on
the 24th January 1791: “By Hang'd himself in the woods, one of the new
negro men bought of Bainford.” He had been bought on the 5th of the same
month, and he waited hopelessly, or perhaps hoping, nineteen days, and
then he ended it, because for a slave there was no future to which it
was worth looking forward. He is entered in the book as remorselessly
and as carefully as the steer Hymen who “broke his neck in the Penn.”
Very occasionally does the decrease of the slaves come from the slaves
being freed. But once or twice it does. In the year 1787 Mulatto Nelly
and Quadroon Kitty and Quadroon Bessy were “manu-mized,” and Mulatto
Nelly is sent away. Perhaps the father desired to cut off from his
little daughters all slave influence, even that of their mother; for I
presume Nelly was their mother. And I wonder were the little girls the
daughters of Mr Doubt, for really it does not look as if the other men
could afford to free their children.
They do not give us an inventory of the furniture of the Great House,
but in the overseer's house most things are set down when the book
opens. In the hall, in addition to tables and chairs and a “Beaufett,”
they had six silver tablespoons and five silver teaspoons, five cups and
saucers, fifteen wine-glasses, four tumblers, and one wine decanter. In
the overseer's room he had a mahogany bed and a small mahogany bed, and,
of course, a feather bed--every room except the hall had one of these
luxuries. In August in Jamaica! With the shutters close for fear of
the slaves!! In the Great House at the Hyde the bedrooms were strangely
small and confined when compared with the hall out of which they opened,
and I said so once to the doctor. He laughed. He knew his old-time
Jamaica.
“The men who built in those times,” said he, “didn't worry about
bedrooms. The dining-hall was the thing! They sat there and drank rum
punch till--well, till it didn't matter whether they slept under the
table or were bundled out into the garden!”
But even if they were, shall we say “merry,” at Worthy Park, I think the
feather beds must have been aggravating things.
The overseer kept in his room, too, the brands with which they marked
the slaves--at least such, I suppose, were one silver mark L.P. and one
silver stamp L.P. He had a “Sett of Gold Weights and Scales”--I presume
for weighing gold, and not made of the precious metal, though where they
got the gold to weigh I do not know; and there was a keg of gunpowder
and thirty-three gun flints, kept there, I suppose, to be under his eye.
The doctor was not of much consequence, if we may judge of the
furnishing of the “Doctor's Chamber.” It had only a “common bed” and
little else except the linen chest, in which there were fifteen pairs
of fine sheets which strikes me as lavish in contrast to the paucity
of everything else. There were eleven fine pillow-cases, one pair
of Osnaburg sheets, two pillow-cases of the same stuff, two fine
tablecloths, to be used on gala days I expect, and seven Osnaburg
tablecloths. But there were only three Osnaburg towels, so that I am
not surprised at the next entry, “1 Jack towel & the other cut for hand
towels.” Seven glass cloths might be managed with, I suppose, but why
enter “1 do. useless and 2 useless sideboard cloths”?
It is evident that in July 1791 something happened to the ruling power
on Worthy Park, for another inventory is taken of the household goods
and slaves, and one, Arthur McKenzie, who is not otherwise mentioned,
remarks in a thin straggling hand: “N.B.--By the sundries found in
and about the works, the written account is very eroneous,” (so he is
pleased to spell the word), “in particular speaking Table linen, Glass,
Mugs, Cups, Musquito Netts, &c., &c.--Arthur McKenzie.”
Then underneath, “Was obliged to purchase Sheeting” (oh, how careless
they must have been with those sheets), “Tablecloaths & Butter, Candles,
and send 3/4 of the Soap sent to the Great House for the Works; buy also
knives, forks, spoons & send 6 silver spoons from the 18 at the Great
House.--1st August '91.”
I don't wonder at his having to purchase knives, for the “Boy's Pantry”
was certainly scantily furnished except in the matter of “Wash hand
basons” of which there were ten, but four were sent to the Great House.
There were “9 Earthen Dishes and 6 shallow plates, 1 Tureen, 8 Pewter
dishes and only 3 new knives and 3 new forks, 3 old knives and four
useless,” so it rather looks as if once the overseer and a couple of
book-keepers had been provided with a knife and fork apiece, the rest
of the company, and there must have been some occasionally, had to eat
their food with their fingers.
In the “Dry Store” they had all sorts of things. Notice Posts, though
considering not half a dozen people on the estate could read, I wonder
what they wanted notice posts for. They had “Shovels and Broad Axes,
Bullet Moulds, Old Bayonets, Negro Hatts and Iron Crows.” The Herring
Store did not contain herrings, at least when the inventory was taken,
but had four large empty oil jars, half a barrel of turpentine, alum,
roach alum, whatever that may be, and lamp-black. These do not seem to
be exactly in their right place in the herring store, but Thomas Kitson
examined the inventory and found it correct.
They did use a great many barrels of herrings, for the _Betsey_, Captain
Laurie from London, and the _Diana_, Captain Thomas Seaward from Cork,
brought out their stores, Osnaburg and baize and “Negro hatts” and check
from London, and salt beef and pork and herrings, to say nothing of
tallow and candles and soap from Cork. That they should need to bring
fish to an island where the sea teems with it, and beef and pork to
a place where the cattle and swine would run wild and multiply in the
woods if they were left to themselves, is a curious commentary on the
wasteful fashion in which the country was managed.
Again and again it is entered that the herrings served out were bad or
“mash'd,” but I am afraid the slaves got them all the same. Possibly
they did not consider that bad herrings constituted cruelty to a slave.
The pork and beef were for the white men, and a great deal of the
unappetising stuff they seem to have eaten. In one year the Diana
brought out 15 barrels of beef and 70 barrels of herrings, 4 firkins of
butter and 6 kegs of tallow; yet they bought 2 1/2 barrels of beef from
Kingston, 2 kegs of tallow and 5 firkins of butter. That they should
have bought in the same year a cask and two-thirds of a tierce of
codfish, and 4 barrels of American herrings is not so surprising
considering the disparity between the negroes and the white men who at
most numbered seven. In three months they served out to the slaves 20
barrels of herrings.
There is an echo of the famine that struck the island in 1786 when
15,000 slaves died of starvation, for in 1790 they bought for the use of
the slaves 11,800 lbs. of cocos, that is a root not unlike a yam, 1400
lbs. of yams, and 500 plantains, which last, I suppose, were stems of
plantains, as 500 plantains would not have gone far. Worthy Park had a
“mountain” like many other estates, for often the cattle are entered as
having died of “Poverty and Meagreness on the mountain,” or as falling
into the sink hole on the “mountain,” and presumably the slaves had
grounds there where they grew provisions, but as in famines of a later
date, the yams failed, and there were no heads to plant for the new crop
which may possibly account for the large number of cocos bought.
Once a year the negroes were served out “cloath-ing.” An ordinary man or
woman got 6 yards of Osnaburg, 3 yards of baize, and 1 “hatt,” but the
principal men and women got a little more. Lucretia serving at the Great
House once got 12 yards of Osnaburg, and most of the tradesmen, the
carpenters and the sawyers and blacksmiths, got 10 yards and sometimes 6
yards of check as well.
“The negro women,” says Lesley, writing as late as the middle of the
eighteenth century, “go many of them quite naked. They do not know what
shame is, and are surprised at an European's bashfulness, who perhaps
turns his head aside at the sight.... Their Masters give them a kind
of petticoat, but they do not care to wear it. In the towns they are
obliged to do it, and some of them there go neat enough; but these are
the favourites of young Squires who keep them for a certain use.”
They must have been a forlorn and ragged crew of savages the
book-keepers saw out into the fields every morning at daybreak. They
evidently made them work in the hot and glaring sunshine, holeing for
canes, cutting canes, and carting manure on their heads, this last a job
much hated, and the whites never remembered, if they ever knew, that
no black man or woman works of his own free will in the glare of the
tropical sun. On the Gold Coast I have heard the people going out into
the fields long before daylight, but I have never seen men or women
working hard during the midday hours. This is only common sense, and
possibly much of the sickness that decimated the slaves was due to this
cause. There is a record of one humanitarian who discovered that it
would be well to provide nurses for the infants. Every woman had to go
back to field work a fortnight after her baby was born. She must needs
take the child, and so great was the heat that sometimes the mother when
she had time to attend to it found that the little one on her back was
dead!
And yet these slave-owners desired children very much and they deplored
the deaths as so much money gone from their pockets, just as man
now-a-days regrets when his calf or his foal dies. They grumble very
much because the slaves do not increase as they think they ought. They
gave no thought to morals, and anybody might father a woman's child.
But considering all things I think they grumbled unreasonably. No wild
animals increase rapidly in captivity, but in five years there were
forty children born on Worthy Park, that is nearly 23 per thousand--not
so very bad considering that the rate for London in the year 1919 among
a free people was 24.8. But this was discounted by the number of deaths
in infancy. Matthew Lewis tells of the ravages of tetanus among the
newly born on his estate in the beginning of the last century, and
neither he nor any one else had an idea of the cause or how it might be
prevented.
The midwife, the “Garundee,” told him that till after the ninth day they
had no hope of the newborn babies. It was, had she but known it, a sad
commentary on her own want of cleanliness.
The children of the white men had perhaps a better chance of being
reared than those of the slaves, because the women who lived with them
had an easier time. Their children were slaves like the others, but
it was the custom not to put them to field work; the boys they made
artisans and the girls were trained as house-servants, and Lewis says
the other slaves paid them a certain deference, always honouring the
girls with the title of “Miss.”
“My mulatto housemaid,” says he, “is always called 'Miss Polly' by her
fellow-servant Phillis.”
The last entry in the Worthy Park slave book with George Doubt as
Superintendent--I feel as if I knew George Doubt--was on the 28th June
1791. Then apparently something happened, and Arthur M'Kenzie made his
moan about the careless way in which the inventory was taken. When the
returns for the last quarter 1791 are sent in to the Vestry there is
quite a new departure. The “White People” are headed by Pose Price,
Esq., and the Rev. John Venicomb bracketed together as having arrived on
the 1st December, and we immediately imagine the son of the proprietor
accompanied by his bear leader. But there is a still greater departure
from the usual run of things on the 23rd of the same month when Edward
Phelps and Sussannah Phelps are set down. So that the very last entry of
white people in the book mentions a woman!
Was it all worth while? Even after I have read the whole very carefully.
I am not in a position to judge. Only it seems to me the expenses were
very great. Not only was there the upkeep of these people, but they were
always buying new negroes and in addition to that quite a considerable
sum was paid out to negroes hired--slave gangs--to do the jobs for which
those on the estate had neither strength nor time.
Occasionally we get the returns. In January 1790 James Fraser, one of
the six overseers, certifies that the crop returns are 248 hogsheads,
that is 124 tons of sugar, and 85 puncheons of rum. Set that against the
510 tons of sugar and 301 puncheons of rum which Mr Fred Clarke gives
me as the returns from the same estate in the year of our Lord 1920.
Of course to compare exactly, I should have the wages returns of the
present day, the cost of improved machinery and various other things,
but looking at it from the point of view of an outsider it certainly
looks as if it were not worth it.
Very, very slowly we move towards perfection, but we do move. Perhaps
one hundred and thirty years hence, some writer will read of 1921 with
as much wonder as I read in this old slave book of a day that is done.