U, 
 
 -n^o^ 
 
 ^ V 
 
 
 *-s 
 
 
 
 ^-^^x, 
 
 < 
 ^'^ 
 
 
 
 .-i-'^ V 
 
 
 
 "°- /^>;^^\. ^°^♦^i>- /^>^^\ .^ -i 
 
 <J> ' » « . . .^ 
 
 
.V 
 
 ^o- 
 
 o 
 
 p.-' 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 <<>, t'?^ 
 
 I- V 
 
 
 
 
 &\%.>^\'^ 
 
 v-^^ 
 
 V.'i'^ ; 
 
 ^^-v. il 
 
 
 •^^ c^"" ^^-^mC' t<. A^ ^'^^f/K^. '^^^ c-^' * 
 
 
 
 . "0^<=>■ 
 
 
 
 0^ oo_:°^.'^o. 
 
 
 
 ^:;^v 
 
 
 • • s •« ' 
 
 V.^'^ ;j 
 
 
 
 < o 
 
 i. 
 
 
 ^-^9^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 v-^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .c.^ ^^. 
 
 » .A^-V 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/jamaicaslaveplanOOphil 
 
■-^ 
 
iO ^ 
 
 <U€-'i^-dj<J^/'>K^ iH^C^^ 
 
 A JAMAICA SLAVE 
 PLANTATION 
 
 ULRICH B. PHILLIPS 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE 
 
 VOL. XIX., NO. 3 APRIL, 1914 
 

 F- 
 
[Reprinte< troin Thk American Historical Review VdI. XIX., No. 3, Apr., 1914.] 
 
 A JAMAICA SLAVE PLANTATION 
 
 When Lord Chesterfield endeavored in 1767 to buy his son a 
 seat in Parhament, he learned " that there was no such thing as a 
 borough to be had now, for that the rich East and West Indians had 
 secured them all at the rate of three thousand pounds at least". 
 The nabobs from the Antilles were rivalling those from India ^ in 
 their display. The sugar islands were the most cherished of the' 
 imperial possessions, and the sugar estates were the greatest and most 
 famous industrial enterprises in the world. Bulky descriptions of 
 the West Indian regime, of an excellence never attained by the ac- 
 counts of the continental colonies, found sale in large editions, and 
 few were the moneyed men of England who felt no stir at the 
 rumors of Jamaica planters' profits. But Jamaica's heyday was 
 already waning, for her soils were becoming depleted and sugar 
 prices had fallen. Of the three chief waiters on Jamaica in the 
 later eighteenth century, Long, Edwards, and Beckford, the two last 
 illustrated in their own lives the extremes of planters' fortunes. 
 Edwards was one of the nabobs who sat in the British House of 
 Commons, but Beckford wrote his Descriptive Account of Jamaica 
 in the Fleet prison where he lay in 1790, an insolvent debtor at the 
 end of a planting career. These general works have left little to be 
 desired except the intimate details w-hich might be drawn only from 
 the routine working of individual plantations. Records of this kind 
 are of course exceedingly few; but we are not wholly bereft. 
 
 Rose Price, Esquire, was the manager of Worthy Park plan- 
 tation and its outlying properties in St. John's parish, Jamaica, 
 belonging to " Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great 
 Britain Esquire"; and Rose Price had an eye to the edification of 
 posterity. Seeing that " the Books of Estates are the only Records 
 by which future Generations can inform themselves of the manage- 
 ment of Plantations ", he set down directions in detail for the making 
 and preservation of elaborate accounts of current operations. The 
 special books for the sugar mill, the rum distillery, the commissary, 
 and the field-labor routine, which he ordered kept, have apparently 
 been lost ; but the " great plantation book " for the years from 1792 
 to 1796 inclusive has survived and come to my hands. This com- 
 prises yearly inventories, records of the increase and decrease of 
 slaves and draught animals, vestry returns, salary lists, vouchers, 
 
 (543) 
 
544 U. B. Phillips ; 
 
 crop summaries, and accounts of the receipt and distribution of im- 
 plements, clothing, food-stuffs, and other supplies.^ 
 
 This plantation, which in its organization and experience appears 
 to have been fully typical of the estates of the largest scale, lay near 
 the centre of the island, perhaps twenty miles from the sea, on the 
 rugged southern slope of the mountain chain. One of its depend- 
 encies was Spring Garden " cattle pen ", lying higher on a near-by 
 mountainside and serving as a place of recuperation for slaves and 
 cattle as well as yielding a few oxen and some food-stuffs for the 
 plantation. The other was Mickleton, presumably a farmstead used as 
 a relay station for the teams hau;ling sugar and rum to Port Henderson, 
 where they were embarked for Kingston on the way to market at 
 London. The plantation itself probably contained several thousand 
 acres, of which about 560 were in sugar-cane, several score in guinea- 
 grass for grazing, and a few in plantain and cocoa groves, while the 
 rest was in woodland with occasional clearings where the negro 
 families cultivated their own food crops in their hours of release 
 from gang labor. 
 
 A cane field was not ripe for its first harvest (the " plant cane ") 
 until the second winter after its planting. When the stalks were then 
 cut, new shoots ("rattoons") would spring up from the old roots 
 and yield a diminished second crop the next winter, and so on for 
 several years more, the output steadily growing smaller. After the 
 fourth crop, according to the routine on Worthy Park, the field was 
 planted anew. Thus in any year, while 560 acres were in constant 
 cultivation, about one-fifth of the fields were freshly planted and 
 four-fifths were harvested. 
 
 The slaves on the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, 
 of whom 150 constituted the main field gangs; thirty-four were 
 artificers and gang foremen ; forty were watchmen, gardeners, and 
 cattle tenders ; thirteen were in the hospital corps ; twenty-two were 
 on the domestic staff ; twenty-four girls and boys made up the " grass 
 gang " ; thirty-nine were young children ; and thirty-three were in- 
 valids and superannuated. From the absence of indications that any 
 of these were freshly imported Africans it may be assumed that all 
 were seasoned negroes. The draught animals comprised eighty 
 mules and one hundred and forty oxen. The stock of slaves was 
 
 1 1 am not acquainted with the history of this document beyond the fact that 
 it came into my possession through an auction sale in New York a few years ago. 
 The book, which measures twelve by eight inches, contains about five hundred 
 pages of brittle paper, similar in texture to the modern product of wood-pulp, 
 though with a somewhat oily quality. The accounts which fill the volume were 
 made in excellent form. A few of the pages which were ruled into columns are 
 now completely split into strips, however, and a number of others are more or 
 less broken. 
 
A Jamaica Slave Playilation 545 
 
 not adequate for the full routine of the plantation, for in this year 
 " jobbing gangs " from the outside were employed at a cost of f 1832, 
 reckoned probabl}" in Jamaica currency which stood at thirty per 
 cent, discount. The jobbing contracts were recorded at rates from 
 2S.6d. to 3.y. per laborer per day. 
 
 During the year the proprietor began to make great additions to 
 his working force, with a view apparently to dispensing with the 
 services of jobbing gangs. In March he bought ten new Africans, 
 five men and five women ; and in October ninety more, comprising 
 twenty-five men, twenty-seven women, sixteen boys, sixteen girls, 
 and six children, all new Congoes. In 1793 he added eighty-one 
 more, fifty-one males and thirty females, part Congoes and part 
 Coromantees, and nearly all of them about eighteen to twenty 
 \ears old. 
 
 The advice of experienced planters was entirely opposed to such 
 a proceeding as this. Edward Long, for example, had written : 
 
 The introduction of too many recruits at once has sometimes proved 
 fatal to them. It is very evident, that a small number can be much easier 
 and better provided for, lodged, fed, and taken care of, than a multitude. 
 The planter therefore, who buys only eight or ten at a time, will in the 
 end derive more advantage from them, than the planter who buys thirty ; 
 for, by the greater leisure and attention in his power to bestow upon 
 them, he will greatly lessen the ordinary chances against their life, and 
 the sooner prepare them for an effectual course of labour. The com- 
 parison, indeed, founded upon fact and observation, is, that, at the end 
 of three years, the former may possibly have lost one fifth, but the other 
 will most probably have lost one half, of their respective numbers. - 
 
 All of the island authorities who wrote on the subject endorsed 
 these precepts, but the Worthy Park administration was nothing 
 daunted thereby. Thirty new huts were built ; special cooks and 
 nurses were detailed for the service of the new negroes ; and quanti- 
 ties of special food-stuffs were bought — yams, plantains, flour, fresh 
 and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues, hearts, and bellies ; but 
 it is not surprising to find that the next outlay for equipment was 
 for a large new hospital in 1794, costing £341 for building its brick 
 walls alone. The emergency became pressing. Some of the new- 
 comers, as was common in such case, developed yaws, a chronic and 
 contagious African disease of the blood and skin closely akin to 
 syphilis. These had to be lodged in an isolation hospital tended by 
 a special nurse and cook, and worked, when worked at all, in a sep- 
 arate gang under a separate foreman. But yaws was a trifle as 
 compared with dysentery — the " bloody flux " as it was then called. 
 Pleurisy, pneumonia, fever, and dropsy had also to be reckoned with. 
 
 2 Long, The History of Jamaica (London, i744). H- 435- 
 
546 U. B. Phillips 
 
 About fifty of the new negroes were quartered for several years in 
 a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the work for even 
 the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park. 
 
 One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another the next year. 
 With the spring of 1794 the period of heavy mortality began. Two 
 pages of the record for this year are broken and partly missing, 
 "rom the pages and fragments remaining it may be gathered that the 
 total of the year's deaths was fifty-two (thirty-seven males and 
 fifteen females) of which at least thirty-one were new negroes. One 
 of the new women died in child-bed, one of the men died of a brain 
 disorder, one of a paralytic stroke, and two were thought to have 
 killed themselves. Virtually all the other deaths of newcomers were 
 due to dysentery. By 1795 this disease was no longer epidemic. In 
 that year the total of deaths was twenty-three, including at least five 
 new negroes, two of these dying from dirt-eating,^ one from yaws, 
 and two from ulcers. The three years of the seasoning period were 
 now ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still 
 alive. This loss was perhaps less than was usual in such cases; but 
 it demonstrates the strength of shock involved in the transplantation 
 from Africa, even after the severities of the "middle passage" had 
 been survived, and after the most debilitated negroes had been culled 
 out at the ports. In 1796 the new negroes were no longer dis- 
 criminated in the mortality record. The total of deaths for the year 
 was twenty-three, of which eight were from old age and decline, 
 seven from dropsy, two each from fever, dysentery, and poison, one 
 from consumption, and one from yaws. The outlay for jobbing 
 gangs declined to ^1374 in 1793 and to ^506 in 1794. It rose to ^632 
 in 1795. but disappeared in the final year of the record. 
 
 3 Of the " fatal habit of eating dirt ", Thomas Roughley, who on his title-page 
 described himself as " nearly twenty years a sugar planter in Jamaica ", wrote in 
 his Planter s Guide (London, 1823, pp. 118-120) : " Nothing is more horribly dis- 
 gusting, nothing more to be dreaded, nothing exhibiting a more heart-rending, 
 ghastly spectacle, than a negro child possessed of this malady. Such is the craving 
 appetite for this abominable custom that few, either children or adults, can be 
 broken of it when once they begin to taste and swallow its insidious, slow poison. 
 For if by incessant care, watchfulness, or keeping them about the dwelling house, 
 giving them abundance of the best nourishing food, stomachic medicines, and kind 
 treatment, it is possible to counteract the effects and habit of it for some time, 
 the creature will be found wistfully and irresistibly to steal an opportunity of 
 procuring and swallowing the deadly substance. The symptoms arising from it 
 are a shortness of breathing, almost perpetual languor, irregular throbbing, weak 
 pulse, a horrid cadaverous aspect, the lips and whites of the eyes a deadly pale 
 (the sure signs of malady in the negro), the tongue thickly covered with scurf, 
 violent palpitation of the heart, inordinate swelled belly, the legs and arms re- 
 duced in size and muscle, the whole appearance of the body becomes a dirty 
 yellow, the flesh a quivering, pellucid jelly. The creature sinks into total indiffer- 
 ence, insensible to everything around it, till death at last declares his victory in 
 its dissolution." 
 
A Jamaica Slave Planfaiio7i 547 
 
 The list of slaves made at the beginning of 1794 is the only one 
 in which full data are preserved as to ages, colors, health, and occu- 
 pations. The ages given were of course in many cases mere approx- 
 imations. The "great house negroes" head the list, fourteen in 
 number. Four of these were " housekeepers ", of whom two were 
 forty-year-old women of " sambo " color, i. e., between mulatto and 
 black, and the other two were mulatto girls of nineteen and eight 
 years. There were three waiting boys, twenty, nineteen, and ten 
 years old, one of them black and two mulatto. Susannah, black, 
 fifty-five years old, and Joanny, sambo, twenty-six, were washer- 
 women; Penzance, black, fifty, was the cook; Spain, forty-five but 
 not able-bodied, and Old Lucy, sixty, both black, were gardeners ; 
 and Old Tom, black, fifty, had the task of carrying grass. Quadroon 
 Lizette, who had been hired out for several years to Peter Douglas, 
 the owner of a jobbing gang, was manumitted during this year. 
 
 The slaves listed at the overseer's house, forty-two in number, 
 included domestic servants, the hospital corps, and a group in in- 
 dustrial pursuits. Fanny, twenty-seven, mulatto, Harodine, twenty- 
 four, sambo, and Sychie, black, sixty, who was troubled with the 
 bone ache, were housekeepers ; Peggy and Sally, mulatto girls of 
 thirteen and fourteen, were " simstresses " ; Jenny, forty-one, black, 
 and Nancy, nineteen, mulatto, were washerwomen ; Esther, thirty- 
 five, black, was cook; and Harry, twenty-one, John, fifteen, and 
 Richmond, fourteen, all black, were waiting boys. In the nursing 
 and industrial groups all were black except one mulatto boy of ten 
 years, a hog tender. Will Morris, the " black doctor ", headed the 
 hospital corps; Henrietta, sixty, was midwife; Dolly, thirty-six, and 
 Sally, twenty-eight, were hospital nurses ; Douglas, sixty, Grace, 
 sixty, Emma, forty-five, and Blind Olive, thirty, tended the new 
 negroes ; Cimbrie, sixty-five. Old IVTolly, sixty, and Old Beneba were 
 in charge of young children ; and Old Sylvia, sixty, was field nurse 
 for the suckling children of the women in the gangs. Abba, forty, 
 who had lost a hand, and Flora were cooks to the " big gang ", and 
 Bessey, forty, cook to the second gang. Prince, thirty-five, who had 
 elephantiasis, was a groom ; Yellow's Cuba and Peg's Nancy, both 
 sixty, had charge of the poultry house'; Dontcare, forty, and Solo- 
 mon, twenty-three, the one ruptured and the other " distempered ", 
 were hog tenders, along with Robert the mulatto boy above men- 
 tioned ; Ouashy Prapra and Abba's Moll, sixty-five and sixty, 
 mended pads ; and Quamina, forty, and six others, sixty to sixty- 
 five, gathered grass and hog feed. 
 
 Next are listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, ranging 
 from twenty-seven to seventy-five years in age, and all black but the 
 
 AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XIX. — 36 
 
y 
 
 548 U. B. Fhillips 
 
 mulatto foreman. Only six were described as able-bodied. Among 
 the disabilities mentioned were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lame- 
 ness, partial blindness, distemper, weakliness, and cocobees. The 
 number in this night-watch was apparently not unusual. When the 
 cane crop was green it might be severely damaged by the invasion of 
 hungry cattle, and when it approached maturity a spark might set 
 the fields into conflagration. A law of Barbados, in precaution 
 against fire, prohibited the smoking of tobacco on paths bordering 
 cane-fields. 
 
 A considerable number of the negroes already mentioned were in 
 such condition that little work could be required of them. Those 
 .completely laid off were nine superannuated, two men and seven 
 women ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old ; four invalids, 
 fourteen to thirty-five years old ; and three women relieved of work, 
 as by law required, for having reared six children each. 
 
 Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be 
 fit for field work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, 
 though mostly youthful and healthy, were described as not fit for 
 the field. There were eleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, 
 two blacksmiths, three masons, and twelve cattlemen, each squad 
 with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers. The tradesmen 
 were all in early manhood or middle age except Old Quashy, the 
 head carpenter, Old England, a sawyer, and Poole, Teckford, and 
 Boot Cudjoe, cattlemen, who were from sixty to sixty-five, and 
 Reeves and Little Sam, cattle boys, of fifteen and fourteen years. 
 
 The two ratcatchers followed an essential trade. Beckford wrote 
 in his account of sugar-cane culture: 
 
 The rats are very great enemies to this plant, but particularly in pro- 
 portion to its advance to ripeness. It will hardly be credited how very 
 numerous these reptiles are in the Island of Jamaica, and what destruc- 
 tion, especially if the canes be lodged [i. e., fallen to the ground], they 
 annually commit upon a plantation : in a not less proportion do they injure 
 the crops than a diminution of five hogsheads of sugar in every hundred, 
 without adding much in proportion, by those that are tainted, to the 
 increase of rum. Many and unremitting endeavours are daily put in prac- 
 tice for their extirpation. . . . Great numbers are taken off by poison 
 immediately after the crop, and when their natural food is apparently 
 ex'hausted ; many are killed by dogs ; and prodigious quantities destroyed 
 by the negroes in the fields, when the canes are cut; and such innumer- 
 able proportions by the watchmen who are dispersed over the different 
 parts of the plantation, to protect them from general trespass, and the 
 particular destruction of these animals, that I was informed by a man of 
 observation and veracity, that upon the estate of which, as overseer, he 
 had charge, not less than nine and thirty thousand were caught by the 
 latter, and, if I remember right, in the short space of five or six months.* 
 
 * Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica (London, 1790), 
 I- 55. 56. 
 
A Ja})iaica Slave Plantation 549 
 
 In the "weeding gang", a sort of industrial kindergarten in 
 which most of the children from five to eight years old were kept, 
 as much for control as for achievement, there were twenty pick- 
 aninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as " driveress ", who had borne 
 and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine children were too 
 young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. 
 Two of these children, Joanney's Henry Richards, quadroon, and 
 Joaniiey's Valentina, w-hose color is not stated, were manumitted 
 in 1795. 
 
 Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and in- 
 cluding Blossom the infant daughter of one of the women, com- 
 prised the Spring Garden squad. Nearly all of these were twenty 
 or twenty-one years old. The men included Washington, Franklin, 
 Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume, and Sheridan ; the 
 women. Spring, Summer, July, Bash full, Virtue, Frolic, Gamesome, 
 Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle, and Cowslip. Seventeen of the 
 number died within the year. 
 
 The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 
 sixty-four men from nineteen to sixty years old and seventy-three 
 w^omen of from nineteen to fifty years, though but four of the 
 women and nine of the men, including Quashy, sixty, the " head 
 driver " or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included 
 Douglas Cufifee, forty, " head home wainman ", May, twenty-three, 
 "head road wainman" and ploughman, McGregor, forty, head 
 muleman, McPherson, forty, McAllister, forty, and France, twenty- 
 five, distillers, Tim's Cubena, forty, boiler, McDonald and McKein, 
 each forty-five, sugar potters, and Raphael and Forest, each twenty- 
 five, " sugar guards " for the wagons carrying the crop to port. All 
 members of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied, and 
 black. It was this battalion of the stalwart, armed with hoes and 
 "bills" (sugar knives), whose work would "make or break" the 
 proprietor. A considerable number in the gang were new negroes, 
 but only seven of the whole died in this year of heaviest mortality. 
 
 The " second gang ", employed in a somewhat lighter routine 
 under Sharper, fifty, as foreman, comprised forty women, and 
 twenty-seven men ranging from fifteen to sixty years old, all black. 
 While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four were 
 ulcerated, one was " inclined to be bloated ", one was " very weak ", 
 and Pheba was "healthy but worthless". Eleven of this gatjidied 
 within the year. j^ 
 
 Finally, in the third or " small gang", for yet lighter woffe under 
 Baddy as driveress with Old Robin, sixty, as assistant, were listed 
 sixty-eight boys and girls, all black, mostly between twelve and 
 
550 U. B. Phillips 
 
 fifteen years old, but including Mutton, eighteen, and Cyrus, six. 
 Cyrus and the few others below the normal age may have been 
 allowed to join this gang for the companionship of brothers or sis- 
 ters, or some of them may have been among Baddy's own four 
 children. Five of the gang died within the year. 
 
 Among the 528 slaves all told — 284 males and 244 females — 
 seventy-four, equally divided between the sexes, were fifty years 
 old and upwards. If the number of the new negroes, virtually all 
 of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtracted from the gross, 
 it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reached the half 
 century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is a 
 good showing of longevity. 
 
 About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits 
 of childbearing. The births entered in the chronological record 
 averaged nine per year for the five years covered. This was hardly 
 half as many as might have been expected under favorable condi- 
 tions. Rose Price entered special note in 1795 of the number of 
 children each woman had borne during her life, the number of these 
 living at the time this record was made, and the number of miscar- 
 riages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 
 345; of children then Hving 159; of miscarriages seventy-five. Old 
 Quasheba and Betty Madge each had borne fifteen children ; and 
 sixteen other women had borne from six to eleven each. On the 
 other hand, seventeen women of thirty years and upwards had had 
 no children and no miscarriages. It cannot be said whether or not 
 these barren women had husbands, for matings were listed in the 
 record only in connection with the births of children. 
 
 The childbearing records of the women past middle age ran 
 higher than those of the younger ones, to a somewhat surprising 
 degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had been more favor- 
 able at an earlier period, when the owner and his family may possibly 
 have been resident there. The fact that more than half of the 
 children whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the 
 record comports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy 
 infant mortality. ° With births so infrequent and infant deaths so 
 many it may well appear that the notorious failure of the island- 
 bred stock to maintain its own numbers was not due to the working 
 of the slaves to death. 
 
 5 Sir Warner Bryan, attorney-general of Grenada, said, " It is generally 
 remarked that H the children die under 2 years, and most of that Yz the first 9 
 days, from the jaw-fall." Abridgment of the Minutes of Evidence taken before a 
 Committee of the Whole House [o»] the Slave Trade, No. 2. (London, 1790), 
 p. 48. Mr. John Castle, long a surgeon in Grenada, testified before the same 
 committee that generally one-third of the negro children died in the first month 
 of their lives, and that few of the imported women bore children. Ibid., p. 80. 
 
A Jamaica Slave Plantation 551 
 
 The poor care of the young children ma\- be attributed largely to 
 the absence of a white mistress, an absence characteristic of the 
 Jamaica plantations. The only white woman mentioned in the 
 parish returns of this estate was Susannah Phelps, doubtless the 
 wife of Edward Phelps who drew no salary but received a yearly 
 food allowance " for saving deficiency ", and who probably lived not 
 on Worthy Park but at ]\Iickleton. 
 
 In addition to Rose Price, who was not salaried 'but who may 
 have received a manager's commission of six per cent, upon gross 
 crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the colon} , the administra- 
 tive staff of white men on Worthy Park comprised an overseer at 
 i200, later £300 a year, and four bookkeepers at £50 to f6o. There 
 was also a white carpenter at £120, and a white ploughman at £56. 
 The overseer was changed three times during the time of the record, 
 and die bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The bache- 
 lor staff were most probably responsible for the mulatto and quad- 
 roon offspring and were doubtless responsible also for the occasional 
 manumission of women and children. In 1795 and perhaps in other 
 years the plantation had a contract for medical attendance by " J. 
 Quier and G. Clark " at the rate of £140 per year. 
 
 There is no true summer and winter in Jamaica, but a wet and 
 a dry season instead — the former extending generally from May to 
 November, the latter from December to April. The sugar-cane got 
 its growth during the rains ; it ripened and was harvested during the 
 drought. If things went well the harvest, or "grinding", began in 
 January. All available hands were provided with bills and sent to the 
 fields to cut the stalks and trim off their leaves and tops. The 
 tainted canes were laid aside for the distillery ; the sound ones were 
 sent at once to the mill. On the steepest hillsides the crop had often- 
 times to be carried on the heads of the negroes or on the backs of 
 mules to points which the carts could reach. 
 
 The mill consisted merely of three cylinders, two of them set 
 against the third, turned by wind, water, or cattle. The canes, tied 
 into small bundles for better compression, were given a double 
 squeezing while passing through the mill. The juice expressed 
 found its way through a trough into the " boiling house " while the 
 "" mill trash " or " megass "" was carted off to sheds and left to dry 
 for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills. 
 
 In the boiling house the cane-juice flowed first into ?!large recep- 
 
 « 
 
 tacle, the clarifier, where by treatment with lime and moderate heat 
 it was separated from its grosser impurities. The juice then passed 
 into the first copper, where evaporation by boiling began. This 
 
 8 In Louisiana this is called " bagasse ". 
 
552 U. B. Phillips 
 
 vessel on Worthy Park was of such a size that in 1795 one of the 
 negroes fell in while it was full of boiling liquor and died ten days 
 after his scalding. After further evaporation in smaller coppers the 
 juice, now reduced to a syrup, was ladled into a final copper, the 
 teache, for a last boiling and concentration ; and when the product 
 of the teache was ready for crystallization it was carried to the 
 " curing house ". 
 
 The mill, unless it were a most exceptional one for the time, ex- 
 pressed barely two-thirds of the juice from the canes ; the clarifier 
 was not supplemented by filters; the coppers were wasteful of labor 
 and fuel. But if the apparatus and processes thus far were crude 
 by comparison with modern standards, the curing process was 
 primitive by any standard whatever. The curing-house was merely 
 a roof above, a timber framework on the main level, and a great 
 shallow sloping vat at the bottom. The syrup from the teache 
 was potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and 
 was allowed to cool with too great rapidity and with occasional 
 stirrings which are said by modern critics to have hindered more 
 than they helped the crystallization. Most of the sugar stayed in 
 the hogsheads, while the mother liquor, molasses, still carrying some 
 of the sugar, trickled through perforations in the hogshead bottoms 
 into the vat below. When the hogsheads were full of the crudely 
 cured, moist, and impure " muscovado " sugar they were headed up 
 and sent to port. The molasses was carried to vats in the distillery 
 where with yeast and water added it fermented and when passed 
 twice through the distilling process yielded rum.''' 
 
 The grinding season, extending from January to spring or sum- 
 mer according to the speed of harvesting, was the tiijie of heaviest 
 labor on the plantations. If the rains came before the reaping was 
 ended the work became increasingly severe, particularly for the 
 draught animals, which must haul their loads over the muddy fields 
 and roads. On Worthy Park the grinding was ended in May in 
 some years ; in others it extended to July, x 
 
 As soon as the harvest was ended preparations were begun for 
 replanting the fields from which the crop of third rattoons had just 
 been taken. The chief operation in this was the opening of broad 
 furrows or " cane holes " about six feet apart. Five ploughs were 
 
 7 This description of mill equipment and methods is drawn from eighteenth- 
 century writings. Slightly improved apparatus introduced in the early nineteenth 
 century was described in Thomas Roughley, The Jamaica Planter's Guide. As to 
 sugar-cane cultivation and labor control, the general wdrks already mentioned 
 were supplemented by Clement Caines in his Letters on the Cultivation of the 
 Otahiete Cane (London, 1801), and by an anonymous "Professional Planter" in 
 his Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the 
 Sugar Colonies (London, 1803). 
 
A Jamaica Slave Plantation 553 
 
 mentioned in the Worthy Park inventories, but only three plough- 
 men were listed, one hired white and two negro slaves. Some of 
 the hillside fields were doubtless too rough for convenient plough- 
 ing, and the heat of the climate prevented the use of teams for such 
 heavy work for more than a few hours daily ; but the lack of thrift 
 and enterprise was doubtless even more influential. The smallness 
 of the area planted each year demonstrates that the hoe was by far 
 the main reliance. After the cane holes were made and manure 
 spread, four canes were laid side by side continuously in each fur- 
 row, and a shallow covering of earth was drawn over them. ^This 
 completed the planting process. 
 
 The holing and the planting occupied the major part of the " big 
 gang" for most of the summer and fall. Meanwhile the wagons 
 were hauling the sugar and rum to port, and the second and third 
 gangs, with occasional assistance from the first, were cleaning the 
 grass and weeds from the fields of growing cane and stripping the 
 dry leaves from the stalks and drawing earth to the roots. With 
 the return of the dry season cordwood must be cut in the mountains 
 and brought to the boiling house to supplement the megass, and the 
 roads and the works must be put in order for the stress of the coming 
 harvest. Then came Christmas when oxen were slaughtered for the 
 negroes and a feast was made and rules relaxed for a week of cele- 
 bration by Christians and pagans alike. 
 
 Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the " drivers " 
 or gang foremen. Each of these had for example a " doubled milled 
 cloth coloured great coat" costing wshd. and a "fine bound hat 
 with girdle and buckle" costing los.^d. As a more direct and fre- 
 quent stimulus a quart of rum was served weekly to each of three ^ 
 drivers, three carpenters, four boilers, two he-id cattlemen, two head 
 mulemen, the " stoke-hole boatswain ", and the black doctor, and to 
 the foremen respectively of the sawyers, coopers, blacksmiths, watch- 
 men, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the head home wain- 
 man, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field nurse. 
 These allowances totalled about three hundred gallons yearly. But 
 a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at 
 Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were re- 
 corded of " rum used for the negroes on the estate ". Upon the 
 birth of each child the mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver 
 dollar. 4^ 
 
 No records of whippings appear to have been kept, nor of crimes 
 or misdemeanors except absconding. In the list of deaths for 1793, 
 however, it was noted that Roman was shot and killed by a watch- 
 
554 U. B. Phillips 
 
 man on a neighboring estate while stealing provisions from the negro 
 grounds. 
 
 The runaway slaves who were in hiding at the end of each 
 quarter were usually listed in a quarterly report to the parish author- 
 ities. In 1792 none were reported until the end of the year when it 
 was stated that two were out, a man and a woman, the names not 
 given. In March, 1793, these had returned, but Greenwich, May, 
 and Beneba's Cuffee, men, and the woman called Strumpet had run 
 off. The June report for this year is missing. In September, 
 Greenwich, May, and Strumpet had returned, and Boot Cudjoe, 
 Nero, Spring Garden Ouaw, Toney, and Abba's Moll had taken 
 flight. In December Toney and Quaw had returned. London and 
 Rumbold, a twelve-year-old boy, had now fled, but they came back 
 within the next quarter. In the early months of 1794 Sam, October, 
 Pilot, and Christian Grace had brief outings, and in the second 
 quarter Ann and Prince ; and Cesar and Rhino now added their 
 names to the list of the long-term runaways. In the third quarter 
 Pulteney and Rippon, and in the fourth Dickie, made brief escapes, 
 while Ann made a second and longer flight. Early in 1795 three 
 runaways, veterans in a double sense for each was sixty years old, 
 came back whether willingly or as captives. They were Sam a field 
 hand, Boot Cudjoe a cattleman, and Abba's Moll, whose task was 
 the mending of pads. Fletcher, Billy Scott, and Spring Garden Roger 
 now took flight, and Ouaw for a second time. In February Billy 
 Scott, along with Moses and Hester who were attempting escape, 
 were taken up and lodged in a public v;orkhouse and sent back to 
 the estate when claimed, at an expense of £4.11.9.4^^. In May 
 i2..6s.2.y2d. was paid to the supervisor of the workhouse at Spanish 
 Town as jail fees for Beneba's Cuffee ; but his name continued to 
 appear in the plantation list of runaways. Perhaps he promptly 
 departed again. In the second quarter the long-absconding Cesar 
 was also returned, and Spring Garden Tom took flight. 
 
 The recaptured absconders were now put into a special " vaga- 
 bond gang " for better surveillance. This comprised Billy Scott, 
 reduced from the capacity of mason and sugar guard ; Oxford who 
 as head cooper had enjoyed a weekly quart of rum but had appar- 
 ently betrayed a special trust ; Cesar who had followed the sawyer's 
 trade ; and Moll and Rumbold, and the following whose names had 
 not appeared in the quarterly lists : McLean, Green, Bob, Damsel, 
 Polly, and the young boys Little Sam and Mulatto Robert. The 
 gang was so wretchedly assorted for industrial purposes that it was 
 probably not long before it was disbanded and its members dis- 
 tributed to more proper tasks. 
 
A Jamaica Slave Plantation 555 
 
 In the runaway list for the third quarter of 1795 three new 
 names appear— Frank, Reilly, and Rennals. In November Appea 
 fled, and Toney went upon a second truancy. Toney returned in 
 January, 1796, and left for the third time the next month. About 
 this time Sam, Strumpet, and Prince began second outings, but 
 returned in the spring along with Beneba's Cuffee. Rightwell and 
 Rosey now took short flights, and in November Sam took a third 
 leave which again proved a brief one. In February, 1797, Quadroon 
 Charles ran oft', and Rumbold for the second time. At the end of 
 the next month, when the last of the runaway lists in this record 
 was made, these two were still out. along with Nero who had fled 
 in 1793, Fletcher and Appea in 1795, and Toney in 1796. Of these 
 Fletcher was a distempered watchman forty-five years old, and the 
 others were members of the big gang, forty-five, thirty, and sixty 
 years old respectively. Obviously the impulse to run away was not 
 confined to either sex nor to any age or class. The fugitives were 
 utterly miscellaneous and their flights were apparently not organized 
 but sporadic. 
 
 These conclusions if extended into a generalization to cover the 
 whole island would appear to be borne out by an analvsis of the 
 notices of runaway slaves published by the workhouse officials in 
 the newspapers. Throughout the year 1803, for which I have pro- 
 cured these statistics from a file of the Royal Gazette of Kineston,^ 
 the number of runaways taken into custody each week was fairly 
 constant; and no group of slaves appears over-represented. Of the 
 grand total of 1721 runaways advertised as in custody, 187 were 
 merely stated to be negroes without further classification, 426 were 
 " Creoles ", {. c, native Jamaicans ; and the neighboring islands had 
 scattering representations. Sixty per cent. (1046) were of African 
 birth. Of these loi were Mandingoes from Senegambia and the 
 upper Niger; sixty were Chambas from the region since known as 
 Liberia; seventy were Coromantees from the Gold Coast; thirty- 
 three were Nagoes and twenty-four Pawpaws from the Slave Coast 
 (Dahomey) ; and one hundred and eighty-five were Eboes and 
 ninety-seven Mocoes from the Bight of Benin. All of the fore- 
 going were from regions north of the equator. From the southern 
 tropic there were one hundred and eighty-five Congoes. one hundred 
 and sixty-five Mungolas, and ninety-four Angolas. The remaining 
 thirty were scattering and mostly from places wliich I have not 
 been able to identify in niaflSj^ old or new. Onl}- one, a Gaza, was 
 positively from the east coasB^bl" Africa. 
 
 8 A file for 1803 is preserved in tlie Charleston Library, Charleston, S. C. 
 The tabulation here used was generously made for me by Dr. Charles S. Boucher 
 of the University of Michigan. 
 
556 U. B. Phillips 
 
 The Congoes and Coromantees, the tribal stocks with which 
 Worthy Park was chiefly concerned, were as wide apart in their 
 characteristics as negro nature permitted. The former were noted 
 for lightness of heart, mildness of temper, and dullness of intellect. 
 Of the latter Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward 
 Islands, wrote in 1701 to the British Board of Trade: 
 
 The Corramantes ... are not only the best and most faithful of our 
 slaves, but are really all born Heroes. There is a difference between them 
 and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible for your Lordships to 
 conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that nation, intrepid to 
 the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to be cut to pieces with- 
 out a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind master, but impla- 
 cably revengeful when ill-treated. My Father, who had studied the 
 genius and temper of all kinds of negroes 45 years with a very nice 
 observation, would say, Noe man deserved a Corramante that would not 
 treat him like a Friend rather than a Slave.'' 
 
 Bryan Edwards endorsed the staunchness and industry of the Coro- 
 mantees, but attributed to them the plotting of the serious Jamaica 
 revolt of 1760. 
 
 A large proportion of the fugitive slaves in custody were de- 
 scribed as bearing brands on their breasts or shoulders. It is not 
 surprising to find in a Worthy Park inventory " i silver mark LP 
 for negroes ". Edwards wrote that a friend of his who had bought 
 a parcel of young Ebo and Coromantee boys told him that at the 
 branding, 
 
 when the first boy, who happened to be one of the Eboes, and the stout- 
 est 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 stopt 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, snapt their fingers 
 in exultation over the poor Eboes.i° 
 
 The prevalence of unusually cruel customs among the tribes of the 
 Gold Coast'' may account in part for the fortitude of the Coro- 
 mantees. 
 
 Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, dry goods, drugs, 
 and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroes and salt 
 pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Staves and heading were 
 procured locally, but hoops were imported. Corn was cultivated 
 
 Q Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1701. 
 
 pp. 720-721. 
 
 10 Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the 
 West Indies (Philadelphia, 1806), II. 275, 276. 
 
 11 Cf. A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West 
 Africa (London, 1887), chap. XI. 
 
A Jamaica Slave Plantation 557 
 
 between the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and 
 some guinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised 
 their own yams and other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry 
 as well. Plantains were, likely to be plentiful, and the island abounded 
 in edible land crabs. 
 
 Every October cloth was issued, at the rate of seven yards of 
 osnaburgs, three of checks, and three of baize for each adult, and 
 proportionately for children. The first was to be made into coats, 
 trousers, and frocks, the second into shirts and waists, the third into 
 bedclothes. The cutting and sewing were done in the cabins. A hat 
 and a cap were also issued to each slave old enough to go to the field, 
 and a clasp-knife to each one above the age of the third gang. The 
 slaves' feet were not pinched by shoes. 
 
 The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English 
 supplies about iiooo, not including such extra outlays as that of 
 £1355 in 1793 for new stills, worms, and coppers. Local expendi- 
 tures were probably reckoned in currency. Converted into sterling, 
 the salary list amounted to about £500, and the local outlay for 
 medical services, wharfage, and petty supplies came to a like amount. 
 Taxes, manager's commissions, and the depreciation of apparatus 
 must have amounted collectively to £800. The net death-loss of 
 slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of new negroes, 
 averaged about two and a quarter per cent. ; that of the mules and 
 oxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 
 1796 when the plantation, with 470 slaves, was operating with no 
 outside help, these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases 
 if the scale of output was to be maintained, amounted to about £900. 
 Thus a total of £3000 sterling is reached as the average current ex- 
 pense in years when no mishaps occurred. 
 
 The crops during the years of the record averaged 311 hogsheads 
 of sugar, sixteen hundredweight each, worth in the island about £15 
 sterling per hogshead, ^^ and 133 puncheons of rum, no gallons each, 
 worth about £10 per puncheon. The value of the average crop was 
 thus about £6000, and the net earnings of the establishment not above 
 £30CXD. The investment in slaves, mules, and oxen was about £28,- 
 000, and that in land, buildings, and equipment, according to the 
 general reckoning of the island authorities, reached a similar sum." 
 The net earnings in good years were thus barely more than five per 
 
 12 Owing to bad seasons, the crop on Worthy Park in 1796 fell to 268 hogs- 
 heads; but the shortness of the crop at large caused an exceptional rise in sugar 
 prices, which kept plantation earnings that year at least as high as the normal. 
 
 13 In the dearth of original data on Jamaica prices of land, slaves, and 
 produce, I have depended mainly on Bryan Edwards (vol. III., book V., chapter 3), 
 after checking up his figures as far as has been practicable. 
 
558 U. B. Phillips 
 
 cent, on the investment ; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, 
 fires, epidemics, and mutinies would lead conservative investors to 
 reckon the safe expectations considerably lower. A mere pestilence 
 which carried ofif about sixty mules and two hundred oxen on 
 Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than a year's earnings. 
 Bryan Edwards^* gave statistics showing that between 1772 and 
 1791 more than one-third of the 767 sugar plantations in Jamaica 
 had gone through bankruptcy, fifty-five had been abandoned, and 
 forty-seven new ones established. It was generally agreed that, 
 within the limits of efficient operation, the larger a plantation was, 
 the better its prospect for net earnings. But though Worthy Park 
 had more than twice the number of slaves that the average planta- 
 tion employed, it was barely paying its way. 
 
 Ulrich B. Phillips. 
 
 14 Edwards, vol. I., book II., appendix 2. 
 
 iKD iia 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 ! 
 
^^ ^^^^^z '^^ V '^ 
 
 
 /.i^."-o ,.-^\.^^;\ co^c^.,•^-o .-^\.^-\ 
 
 'bV" 
 
 
 4 o 
 
 ^^•^^ 
 
 5^ ' A^-^^ 
 
 
 -^^^ %« 
 
 [TV ^ 
 
 C 
 
 (•\/\ "^%^.- .*% •^" /•% '■■^: /% 
 
 * "" /.-^i-X .c''.>;^?;i-> /y-'- 
 
 
 
 <^^ 
 
 '^0 
 
 Ho<. 
 
 
 J. -y 
 
 -n^o^ 
 
 V ^ Wf / N- -o^'>^-^0^' ^^^^'^f^/^ "o^'^^'^'*/ 
 
 
 
 

 0- • '" "-- 
 
 .-1°^ 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 : .f%. W»--" ^^^"->. '• 
 
 3s? -^i. 
 
 . <3 » <^^ o " " ° ^ <f 
 
 ■r O iJ^ • 
 
 
 •^ 
 
 
 
 •: '^-..^^ ^mM-. ^< 
 
iil^ 
 
 ■'■■■;:■' -*•' u ',;■■« I' 'i'^' '.'•'' 'Mf^r.t 
 
 ^mi'f«m 
 
 :)\mim9 
 
 :m 
 
 i«f;ii)^ 
 
 !""f|?Jw 
 
 
 ''^'wm 
 
 "' ■ 1 
 
 
 II- 
 
 :;'(. 
 
 
 IS\ 
 
 •f.'. 
 
 II ■ 
 
 ..u..".>i: '■'•<';'•,(•:> "^ri({iwl.{fl 
 
 : ■":r!Mi!i;;r;;iT!.i!'.';:!ii''''*' 
 i.r.;i!:i:S!!iiHi Lfi i 111! 
 
 'i)!'!:!!«ji(fi;»; 
 
 
 UH