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.