Representations of Slave Women in Discourses on Slavery and Abolition, 1780–1838 RRT0263Z_C000.inddT0263Z_C000.indd i 44/23/2007/23/2007 99:17:34:17:34 AAMM Routledge Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures EDITED BY GAD HEUMAN 1. Abolition and Its Aftermath in Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa Indian Ocean Africa and Asia edited by Suzanne Miers and Martin A. edited by Gwyn Campbell Klein 2. Resisting Bondage in Indian Classical Slavery Ocean Africa and Asia edited by M. I. Finley edited by Edward Alpers, Gwyn Campbell and Michael Salman Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery 3. Representations of Slave Women The Mobilisation of Public Opinion against in Discourses on Slavery and the Slave Trade, 1787–1807 Abolition, 1780–1838 J. R. Oldfield Henrice Altink Routes to Slavery Previous titles to appear in Studies in Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Transatlantic Slave Trade Cultures include edited by David Eltis and David Richardson The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia edited by Gwyn Campbell Representing the Body of the Slave edited by Thomas Wiedemann and Jane Gardner Rethinking the African Diaspora The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil edited by Kristin Mann and Edna G. Bay After Slavery Emancipation and its Discontents Edited by Howard Temperley From Slavery to Emancipation in the Atlantic World edited by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood RRT0263Z_C000.inddT0263Z_C000.indd iiii 44/23/2007/23/2007 99:17:52:17:52 AAMM Representations of Slave Women in Discourses on Slavery and Abolition, 1780–1838 Henrice Altink I~ ~?io~:!;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK RT0263Z_C000.indd iii 4/23/2007 9:17:52 AM First published 2007 by Routledge Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2007 Taylor & Francis. ISBN-13: 978-0-415-35026-6 (hbk) The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Altink, Henrice. Representations of slave women in discourses on slavery and abolition, 1780-1838 / Henrice Altink. p. cm. -- (Routledge studies in slave and post-slave societies and cultures ; 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-415-35026-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Women slaves--Jamaica--History. 2. Slavery--Jamaica--History. I. Title. HT1096.A748 2007 306.3’62082097292--dc22 2006033882 Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge-ny.com RRT0263Z_C000.inddT0263Z_C000.indd iivv 44/23/2007/23/2007 99:17:52:17:52 AAMM Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 Belly women: Slave women’s childbirth practices 11 2 Pickeniny mummas: Slave women’s childrearing practices 39 3 Deviant and dangerous: Slave women’s sexuality 65 4 Till death do us part: Slave wives and slave husbands 91 5 The indecency of the lash 129 6 Slavery by another name 147 Conclusion 169 Notes 177 Bibliography 237 Index 253 RRT0263Z_C000a.inddT0263Z_C000a.indd v 55/3/2007/3/2007 22:55:57:55:57 PPMM RRT0263Z_C000a.inddT0263Z_C000a.indd vvii 55/3/2007/3/2007 22:56:48:56:48 PPMM Introduction But sir, the whole slave system with respect to women in our West India colonies is abominable, and must excite horror and disgust in every well-regulated mind. They are considered as beings created solely to gratify the avarice or the brutal appetites of their masters — indeed, never treated as women, except for some vile purpose. (James Losh, speech in the Guildhall at Newcastle, 31 March 1824)1 British abolitionism emerged as a mass movement in the late 1780s. The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was set up in 1787 by Quak- ers, evangelical Christians and other supporters of social reform, which presented petitions and parliamentary motions against the slave trade. It was not until 1807, however, that it achieved its aim of a legal prohibition of the slave trade to the British colonies. In the years following, the anti- slavery movement regularly called upon the government to enforce British abolition of the slave trade and encourage other nations to withdraw from the trade. It also introduced a bill in 1815 to assess the impact of the aboli- tion of the slave trade on the slave populations in the Caribbean by means of a Central Register of slaves. Although the bill was not passed, it encour- aged most colonial legislatures to pass slave registration acts of their own. Antislavery advocates assumed that these acts and the abolition of the slave trade in itself would encourage slaveholders to adopt ameliorative prac- tices, such as reducing the working hours of the slaves and allowing them to attend missionary churches. Such practices, it was argued, would improve the slaves’ physical wellbeing and enhance their moral condition to such an extent that they would become capable of full freedom. By the early 1820s, the returns of the slave registers and other evidence showed that the slave populations in the British Caribbean were declining and that the slaves’ moral condition had far from improved. As a result, several antislavery activists set up the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823, which aimed to bring about the gradual emancipation of the slaves through ameliorative legislation. By May 1830, however, the Society realized that RRT0263Z_C000b.inddT0263Z_C000b.indd 1 44/17/2007/17/2007 99:39:02:39:02 AAMM 2 Introduction colonial legislatures, which were mainly made up of planters, were unwill- ing to implement ameliorative measures and dedicated itself to immedi- ate freedom. Two years later, Thomas Buxton, the parliamentary leader of the abolitionists, introduced a resolution that would commit the govern- ment to immediate emancipation. The resolution was voted down but as a compromise it was agreed that a parliamentary committee would be set up to consider the best way of abolishing slavery. The Select Committee on the Extinction of Slavery throughout the British Dominions (hereafter, 1832 Select Committee) listened to 33 witnesses and published a report in August 1832 which failed to reach a conclusion. When the King’s speech on February 1833 did not mention emancipation, abolitionists launched their most far-reaching campaign. Some 5,000 petitions were presented to Parliament and numerous pamphlets depicting the horrors of slavery were published. This agitation along with various other factors led Parliament to pass the Abolition of Slavery Act (hereafter, 1833 Abolition Act) which stipulated that from August 1834 onwards all children under six would be free, that the other slaves would be apprenticed part-time to their former master for a period of four to six years depending on whether they were house or fi eld slaves, and that planters would be given 20 million pounds to compensate for their future loss of labour. When abolitionists learned from 1835 onwards that planters abused apprenticeship, they launched a national campaign for the ending of the system. Largely as a result of this campaign, apprenticeship was prematurely abolished in 1838.2 The reformer and philanthropist James Losh was not the only anti slavery advocate who conveyed the horrors of slavery through the treatment of slave women. Supporters of both gradual and immediate abolition focussed in their writings and speeches on the harm done to the enslaved female body. They pointed out that slave women had to endure sexual abuse and also excessive physical punishments, even when they were pregnant. This was a most effective means to arouse audiences because this treatment was diametrically opposed to the gender order of the metropolitan society,3 which assumed that women were the gentler sex in need of male protec- tion. To effectively counter antislavery attacks, proslavery advocates had thus little choice but to address the working and living conditions of slave women. Writing a year after the launch of the abolitionist campaign for emancipation, James McQueen, a metropolitan-based defender of slavery, published a pamphlet entitled The West India Colonies (1824) in which he argued that ‘women who are bearing children are most carefully and tenderly treated. From the third month of pregnancy, they are exempted from labour, a proper midwife and nurse are appointed to attend them at the time of delivery, and a medical man is within call, in case of necessity.’4 It was, however, not only antislavery attacks that led proslavery advocates to centralize slave women in their writings but also various socio-economic factors that threatened the viability of the plantation system, including the natural decrease of the slave population and the growth of the free(d) popu- RRT0263Z_C000b.inddT0263Z_C000b.indd 2 44/17/2007/17/2007 99:39:06:39:06 AAMM Introduction 3 lation. The former factor largely accounts for the dominance of the slave mother in early proslavery writings, while the latter explains the centrality of the naturally promiscuous slave woman in proslavery writings published after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Images of slave women, then, were central to what Catherine Hall has called ‘the war of representation’; that is, the struggle to depict the truth about the system of slavery in the British Caribbean. Various people other than planters and committed abolitionists played a prominent role in this ‘war’, which took place in many sites in both the metropole and the colonies.5 This study examines textual representations of Jamaican slave women in three contexts — motherhood, intimate relationships, and work — in a wide range of materials produced by pro- and antislavery advo- cates from the 1780s till 1838.6 It fi rst of all aims to show how both sides represented slave women to their audiences and explain why they created their negative and positive images of Jamaican slave women.