The court-house of Mandeville is visible from my window, and to-day the petty cases of a large surrounding district are being tried. I have enquired what are the offences which generally come before the magistrates on these occasions. I was told from trustworthy sources that murder is most rare amongst the blacks, the cases tried being mostly petty larceny, property, or commercial disputes. Local squabbles are often settled by a clergyman, or dissenting minister, before being brought into court.
I asked if there were many cases of matrimonial ill-treatment or quarrelling, and was met by the reply, “They don’t marry here.” Unfortunately this is largely a fact, and constitutes a great blemish on the character of the Jamaican black. When one hears, however, the question discussed, one can hardly blame a hard-working negro woman (and most of them are that) for refusing to marry if the practical result of marriage, as it affects her, is that sooner or later she will have to keep her husband as well as her children.
Persons who have had experience with these women tell me that the instinct of maternity is the strongest they have—to them childlessness is a reproach. When they do marry they are generally faithful, but the lot which a black woman dreads more than any other is that of being a deserted wife. “Me get tired of him, sah, and he get tired of me,” is a very natural excuse when the parson endeavours to legalise the bond. We know such things as husbands and wives getting tired of each other occur in our own land; the negress voices what many a white woman feels. In considering this subject—for, like the poor, it is ever with you in these parts—one must bear in mind that in slavery times the blacks were herded together like cattle on the estates. Enthusiastic reformers forget that it may take generations to eradicate their hereditary promiscuity of life.
Nobody who sees these women stride along, often walking twenty miles to the nearest market town, with baskets on their heads weighing occasionally upwards of a hundred pounds, could think them lazy, especially when one knows how poor are the weekly returns for their merchandise, which consists chiefly of home-grown yams, sweet potatoes, oranges and bananas.
An American told me he was going to Kingston by the electric tram. Beside him sat a well-dressed negro, wearing a silver watch and chain. A black woman, carrying an enormous basket heavily filled on her head, ran alongside the tram, which had slowed down. The two were talking, the man from the tram, she from the road.
“Is that your wife?” he asked the man in surprise.
“Yes, sah! dat my wife, sah,” replied he.
“You lazy fellow, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” exclaimed the American indignantly. “Why don’t you let your wife ride and you walk?” he further blurted out.
“Please, sah, the women, sah, ’bout here be so kind, sah!” apologetically explained the negro in an injured voice.
This episode sufficiently illustrates the conditions of the division of labour amongst a large proportion of the emancipated Jamaican population. The Moravians have large settlements in the island as well as other dissenting bodies; but where all work together for the spiritual good of the race whom Providence has permitted to flourish and multiply in these islands it would be a work of supererogation for me to criticise their methods.