A native of Kingston, Jamaica.
Showing the hardships he underwent and the sufferings he endured in having both legs amputated.
HULL:
W. HOWE, PRINTER.”
It is embellished with a portrait of a black man, which has evidently been in its time a comic “nigger” of the Jim-Crow tobacco-paper kind, as is evidenced by the traces of a tobacco-pipe, which has been unskilfully erased.
The “Book” itself is concocted from an affidavit made by Edward Albert before “P. Mackinlay, Esq., one of Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the country (so it is printed) of Lanark.”
I have seen the affidavit, and it is almost identical with the statement in the “book,” excepting in the matter of grammar, which has rather suffered on its road to Mr. Howe, the printer.
The following will give an idea of the matter of which it is composed:—
“In February, 1851, I engaged to serve as cook on board the barque Madeira, of Glasgow, Captain J. Douglas, on her voyage from Glasgow to California, thence to China, and thence home to a port of discharge in the United Kingdom. I signed articles, and delivered up my register-ticket as a British seaman, as required by law. I entered the service on board the said vessel, under the said engagement, and sailed with that vessel on the 18th of February, 1851. I discharged my duty as cook on board the said vessel, from the date of its having left the Clyde, until June the same year, in which month the vessel rounded Cape Horne, at that time my legs became frost bitten, and I became in consequence unfit for duty.
“In the course of the next day after my limbs became affected, the master of the vessel, and mate, took me to the ship’s oven, in order, as they said, to cure me; the oven was hot at the time, a fowl that was roasting therein having been removed in order to make room for my feet, which was put into the oven; in consequence of the treatment, my feet burst through the intense swelling, and mortification ensued.
“The vessel called, six weeks after, at Valpariso, and I was there taken to an hospital, where I remained five months and a half. Both my legs were amputated three inches below my knees soon after I went to the hospital at Valpariso. I asked my master for my wages due to me, for my service on board the vessel, and demanded my register-ticket; when the captain told me I should not recover, that the vessel could not wait for me, and that I was a dead man, and that he could not discharge a dead man; and that he also said, that as I had no friends there to get my money, he would only put a little money into the hands of the consul, which would be applied in burying me. On being discharged from the hospital I called on the consul, and was informed by him that master had not left any money.