Where the Twain Meet

by Mary Gaunt

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.