Abstract
This article centers what provision grounds meant to and for Afro-Jamaican apprentice laborers, and it details the complicated nature of customary rights, which were under attack after abolition in 1834. Although the apprentices’ provision grounds did not belong to them legally, they believed this land was theirs by customary right. Maintaining provision grounds allowed some apprentices to increase their capital and carve out autonomous spaces. For others, provision grounds led to familial and communal disputes over land rights. Furthermore, this study highlights rights lost and gained for apprentices after abolition and emphasizes how apprentice laborers sometimes exercised their newfound right to file complaints against overseers to secure their customary rights. By evaluating the factors that encouraged and discouraged the careful cultivation of one’s grounds during apprenticeship, this article also evaluates the role that these grounds played in the wider Afro-Jamaican community forged on pens and plantations.
On October 3, 1837, James Carter, a 24-year-old apprenticed laborer bound to Cardiff Hall, appeared before the commissioners of the court at Brown’s Town, St Ann’s Parish, Jamaica. Carter recounted his grievances with Joseph Osborne, the busha (overseer); Osbourne had threatened to take Carter’s provision grounds away from him.1 Carter stated, “I was working on a ground on the Catherine Warren side; my grandfather and grandmother used to work the same ground. Busha took away the ground after the provisions had grown some height; he went into the ground and pulled all the provisions, and made the watchman cut up with his cutlass what he did not pull up.”2 Carter’s claim that his grandparents had worked the same ground implied that he had inherited these provision grounds by customary right; thus, the grounds could not be taken from him.
On the following day, Joseph Osbourne testified in court and refuted Carter’s claim that he had inherited this plot of land from his grandparents: “About a year and a half ago, or probably more, the provision ground belonging to the house was nearly worn out. We have a run of land called ‘Catherine Warren,’ which had not been wrought probably for 30 years.” He selected a piece of land for the apprentices’ provision grounds, part of which the apprentices “felled,” and he marked the other part “so that none of the apprentices should go to it.” Osbourne did not clarify why he disallowed the apprentices from cultivating that “other part” except that it belonged to the plantation. Osbourne seemed frustrated with James Carter and about “nine or ten different families” because they had cultivated their grounds beyond the line of demarcation. Osbourne scolded the families for their “impropriety,” and several ceased tending to the land immediately. However, James Carter and another apprentice named John Edwards “continued to work that ground” and even “enlarged it,” angering Osbourne. Osbourne continued, Edwards “begged me to allow his provisions to remain until they were full, and he would take them out,” but Carter continued to tend to the grounds without any indication that he would leave once his crops had grown. According to Osbourne’s testimony, Carter went to the attorney and special magistrate to file a complaint against Osbourne for mistreatment, claiming that this land had belonged to his grandparents. Carter received “no redress” from the attorney and magistrate but was “censured by both.” The special magistrate’s failure to offer a clear solution implies that the question of land rights for apprentices was likely beyond the magistrate’s jurisdiction. To Osbourne’s dismay, Carter continued to “enlarge that ground,” so Osbourne took a watchman with him up the mountain and consequently ordered him once again to “take out his provisions” and abandon the grounds. Once again, Carter with defiance and determination “replanted the same ground” but gave it up after a while.3
The source containing these testimonies does not clarify why Carter eventually stopped cultivating the grounds that he strongly believed was his by customary right. However, this anecdote offers us insight into the apprentices’ determination to maintain control over provision grounds that had been passed down to them and that they believed they owned according to customary practice. It also exemplifies the impact of important gains for apprentices after abolition, including the ability to file complaints of abuse and mistreatment against planters and overseers. Apprentices also could now attempt to secure their customary rights by seeking counsel from the magistrates instead of relying solely on informal means of pressure. Yet this case shows that formal adjudication might have weakened the apprentices’ claims to customary rights. In this article, I detail the complex and delicate nature of apprentices’ “ownership” of their provision grounds and outline the ways in which the gradual stripping away of the apprenticed laborers’ customary rights revealed the fragility of such rights.
By centering what provision grounds meant for Afro-Jamaican apprentices’ labor and livelihoods, this article reveals the complicated nature of customary rights, which were under attack after abolition in 1834, as well as how the fragility of customary rights impacted apprenticed laborers’ quality of life. Using specific examples found in detailed accounts by British abolitionist travelers, reports from special magistrates, the “Minutes of Evidence at Brown’s Town, St. Ann” in 1837, and the findings from the 1838 Royal Commission found in the British Parliamentary Papers, this article centers an analysis of the role of provision grounds in the quotidian lives of Afro-Jamaican apprenticed laborers. Maintaining provision grounds allowed some apprenticed laborers to increase their capital and carve out spaces of freedom and autonomy. For others, provision grounds led to familial and communal disputes over land rights, even though the apprentices’ provision grounds did not legally belong to them. By evaluating the factors that encouraged and discouraged the careful cultivation of one’s provision grounds during the four-year apprenticeship period in Jamaica, this study demonstrates the complexity of Afro-Jamaicans’ sentiments toward their provision grounds as well as the role that these grounds played in the wider Afro-Jamaican community forged on plantations and pens.4
The Abolition Act of 1833 eradicated slavery in the British Caribbean colonies and ushered in a period of apprenticeship—a system devised to promote a smooth and peaceful transition from a society reliant on enslaved labor to one driven by waged labor.5 While the transition in August 1834 was mostly peaceful in Jamaica, it was anything but smooth, especially for apprentices themselves.6 They had to grapple with the fact that they were legally free but still bound by law to the plantation or pen on which they were previously enslaved. Although slavery as an institution was legally abolished, historians have often referred to this social state of apprenticeship as bonded freedom because laborers still had to endure brutal punishments, coercive labor practices, and a system of control, even after the termination of the institution of slavery.7
Apprenticeship was a short-lived labor system that was a part of the imperial government’s grand scheme to gradually unravel the socioeconomic and political dynamics that upheld the institution of slavery, while also aiming to maintain coercive labor practices and to subjugate Afro-Caribbean people. Though apprenticeship preceded full emancipation, it should not be viewed as a total continuum of legal slavery, due to the social dynamics that shifted after abolition in 1834. The advent of apprenticeship generated a need for new ways to maintain order and control on plantations and to pacify planters for their loss of “property”; thus, the imperial government allowed the colonial legislatures to implement a period of apprenticeship to immediately follow legal abolition. Stipendiary magistrates took over the role of judge and jury from the planters and overseers. This institutional apparatus kept violence at the center of discipline and punishment for the apprentices, while it also allowed apprentices to file complaints against their former enslavers when they were unfairly brutalized and against their fellow apprentices who might have infringed on their rights in some way.
Provision grounds were small plots of land, typically located in the upland regions of Jamaica, which enabled enslaved people and apprenticed laborers to grow produce to either supplement the rations received on the plantation or sell in the weekend markets for profit. Because the crops that these provision grounds would yield often supplemented enslaved people’s source of food, this land was essential to their survival before abolition in 1834 and emancipation in 1838. For more than 50 years before abolition, enslaved people in Jamaica had been accustomed to cultivating provision grounds and passing down these plots of land to their enslaved descendants. According to Sidney Mintz, this practice of acknowledging enslaved people’s customary rights to provision grounds was born out of the problem of insufficient food for the enslaved in the late eighteenth century (Mintz 1989:180–86; Mintz & Hall 2000:758–61). As Jamaican planters were faced with high costs of importing food to the colonies, many decided to allow the enslaved to tend to their own grounds—a practice underscored with the passage of a new provision in the Jamaica Slave Code of 1781.8 With what Roderick A. MacDonald described as the “de facto control of certain land on plantations,” the enslaved were able to create their own internal economy (MacDonald 1993:18).9
Although provision grounds did not legally belong to the enslaved, many felt that they “owned” the grounds which they used for their needs, and this sentiment remained during their apprenticeship. In an 1836 official report on the state of “negro apprenticeship,”10 the members of Parliament who served on the select committee often referred to Baillie and Shand’s 1832 report on the “condition and treatment” of the enslaved population in the Caribbean.11 This report included commentary on the role of provision grounds in the lives of the enslaved. Shand first claimed that the enslaved owned property, but he then seemed to contradict himself when he said: “they had their provision grounds, in the first place, which were considered as sacred, although not their immediate property, but the property of their master.”12 Shand clarified that “no one interfered with their ground,” yet legally, the provision grounds belonged to the plantation owners. Shand recognized that “there was nothing more sacred than the negro’s property.”13 The enslaved persons that Shand spoke with would often say to him, “What is my master’s is for me, but what is for me is not for my master.” According to Shand, this meant that they “have a right to their master’s property as well as their own, but that their masters had no right to theirs.”14
The reality that the land which apprentices called home belonged to their former masters often led to conflict between apprentices and overseers. William Burge, the agent for the island of Jamaica, echoed this sentiment in his comments on provision grounds. He stated that the “greatest difficulty is found in reconciling [the apprentices] to the removal” from their provision grounds. Most apprentices felt a strong connection to and a “great respect” for the land that they considered their own, separate from the plantation, so they typically resisted any suggestion of relinquishing their grounds back to the planters. Burge explained that he had once spoken with a proprietor Mr. Simon Taylor about the difficulty that he endured while trying to persuade those enslaved on his plantation to take new provision grounds. Taylor, as well as other owners, would sometimes offer money to the apprentices to entice them to move away from the land on which their families resided for generations.15 Burge implied that the new grounds would have yielded more returns for the enslaved. However, many apprentices did not trust the proprietors’ motives. The apprentices felt that the enslavers and overseers were attempting to reclaim the land which was now “theirs by customary practice” (Morgan 2012:459); thus, the apprentices sought to protect their grounds.
Afro-Jamaican apprenticed laborers also valued their provision grounds due to the grounds’ potential to provide food for their families and supply them with additional sustenance to sell in the Sunday markets. During apprenticeship, it was commonplace for Afro-Jamaicans on plantations to travel many miles from rural to urban areas to earn more money to support their families. While visiting different sugar and coffee plantations in St Andrew Parish in 1837, abolitionists Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey witnessed what they called “striking proofs … of the industry” of the apprentices: “As we went to our lodgings, which are nine miles from town, late in the evening, we met several parties of two or three men, women, and even children, coming down from the mountains with heavy loads of produce on their heads, from their own grounds for the Kingston market” (Sturge & Harvey 1838:176–77). Sturge and Harvey made note of the apprentices’ dedication to doing whatever necessary to reap the benefits of caring for their own grounds. They explained how “many come a distance of twenty, or even thirty miles, and pass the night in the open air on the road” carrying carrots, yams, cabbages and more to sell in the market (Sturge & Harvey 1838:177).
While tending to their grounds and gathering foodstuffs for sale in the market, the apprentices were able to spend time with their families because they chose to work their own plots of land. This land sometimes provided them with fortifications of freedom and independence from the brutality that they experienced while laboring for the benefit of the planter. Within the confines of their own grounds, they were their own masters.
Proprietors usually considered provision ground land to be “unsuitable” for the crop in question: sugar plantations were usually located in the lowland parts of Jamaica, while provision grounds were typically situated in the upland and mountainous regions. Therefore, an apprentice’s grounds could be located at a great distance, and in some cases could be more than ten miles away from the plantation.
As it regards provision grounds … the law of the Colony leaves this means of subsistence open to most of the practical abuses which it was the intention of the Imperial Legislature to prevent. For instance, it fixes neither their quantity, their quality, nor their distance from home, all of which particulars are referred to the discretion of the employer.
London Anti-Slavery Society 1838:9
The Anti-Slavery Society’s analysis of the barriers which apprentices faced to access their grounds after abolition further points to the limits imposed by policies relating to gradual emancipation. Colonial and imperial policies were still rife with prejudice under the guise of justice. Caribbean colonial governments’ efforts to promote gradual rather than immediate emancipation provided some formerly enslaved people with new arenas for seeking justice for mistreatment on plantations. We see this with the patrocinados bringing charges of neglect against patronos in the junta in Cuba; and in Jamaica, with apprenticed laborers submitting formal complaints to stipendiary magistrates. These socioeconomic transformations changed the landscape of resistance in apprenticeship-era Jamaica and paved the way for new avenues of justice and autonomy for apprentices. Furthermore, these changes coupled with the apprentices dealing with losing access to what they considered were their customary rights not only caused tension between apprentices and overseers, but it also sometimes led to intrafamilial and intracommunity disputes between apprenticed laborers. Oftentimes these conflicts reflected apprenticed laborers’ quest for survival, grappling with losses and gains under the new labor system of apprenticeship.
From the apprenticeship system in the British West Indies and Dutch Suriname, to the patronato in Cuba and the Mackau Laws in the French Antilles, colonial governments across the Caribbean region implemented coercive labor systems and practices under the guise of amelioration in the years that preceded full emancipation. These ameliorative and manipulative measures played a role in the gradual emancipation of the enslaved. In this article, I use Jamaica as a case study to shed light on the new terrain of struggle that formerly enslaved persons dealt with during the short-lived apprenticeship period. The apprenticed laborers’ struggles were partially a result of planters taking away allowances, and in turn, eliminating customary practices on some plantations. The gradual loss of apprentices’ customary rights provoked frustration in apprenticed communities. Conflicts on plantations involving the struggle over customary rights often spilled over insto apprentices’ ability and inability to cultivate their provision grounds and maintain access to land and capital, which was key to their survival.
In her work on gradual emancipation in Cuba, Rebecca Scott analyzed the sociopolitical dynamics of the disintegration of slavery in Cuba in the late nineteenth century. Scott found that acts of resistance as well as accommodation from the enslaved-turned-patrocinados helped accelerate gradual abolition in Cuba (Scott 1983:449–50).16 Scott demonstrated how the laws passed to gradually abolish slavery in Cuba inadvertently laid the foundation for a more rapid dismantling of the institution. The Spanish Cortes passed an 1880 law that established the patronato (an apprenticeship system in which patrocinados existed in a state between slavery and freedom). Over time, it became clear that these legal changes provided enslaved Cubans with “weapons” to challenge the enslavers’ authority and call out their abuses in court, leading some patrocinados to win their freedom years before the official abolition of slavery (Scott 1983:457–58, 465).
The legal structure of slavery in Cuba was dismantled “piece by piece” over the course of several decades that culminated in full emancipation in 1886 (Scott 1983:449), and the same is true for Jamaica; the imperial government endorsed policies that aided in the gradual abolition of slavery throughout the British colonies years before abolition in 1834 and emancipation in 1838. After many years of Parliament’s antislavery faction’s lobbying, along with growing unrest in the colonies, the British imperial government endorsed a policy of amelioration in 1823. This policy aimed to end cruel punishments for enslaved women; abolish the use of the whip; allow the enslaved to observe Sunday as a day of rest; and discontinue buying and selling slaves on Sunday.17 Amelioration ultimately did little to mitigate the plight of the enslaved; in fact, it was the 1831–32 slave revolt in Jamaica that served as more of a motivating factor for the imperial government to work toward abolition sooner rather than later.18
Parliament further created measures to bring about gradual, rather than immediate, emancipation in the Abolition Act of 1833. This Act stipulated the immediate emancipation of enslaved children under the age of six years and established a four- to six-year period of apprenticeship for all former slaves aged six and older, depending on their classification as either a domestic, skilled, or agricultural slave.19 This piece of legislation also made provisions for the imperial government to compensate the proprietors for the loss of their “property” in the immense sum of £ 20 million sterling (Hall 1953:142). Although the language in the abolition laws in Jamaica gestured to the idea that customary practices would be upheld under the apprenticeship system, a closer study of this period reveals that the practices to which the enslaved-turned-apprentices had grown accustomed were taken away during apprenticeship. Some planters seemed to strip the apprentices of their customary rights in an effort to contribute to the failure of the apprenticeship system and the abolition project. Others eliminated customary practices because they no longer had an interest in the long-term investment of apprenticed laborers, especially since the system of apprenticeship was originally set to end in 1840.
In addition to the legal changes that structured the nature of abolition and emancipation, I argue that a key part of the “disintegration” of slavery in Jamaica involved the gradual stripping away of customary rights during apprenticeship. The system of apprenticeship was established to foment a strategic transition from the British Empire’s reliance on enslaved labor to free wage labor. Apprenticeship also ushered in a new judicial system in which stipendiary magistrates acted as the intermediaries between planters and apprentices. This study shows that the changes to the judicial system mattered because it created new tools for formerly enslaved people to use as leverage in disputes with their peers as well as those in positions of power on plantations. Incorporating stipendiary magistrates into the social fold of plantation societies and positioning them as the enforcers of justice helped to shape a new terrain of resistance for apprenticed laborers in Jamaica. Additionally, the new structure of magistrates administering punishments (rather than the planters and overseers themselves) to planters as well as apprentices created new problems and potential lines of conflict for apprentices, especially planters threatening their customary rights.
Customary rights were sometimes defined in primary documents as “indulgences” and “allowances” that apprentices “enjoyed” during the period of legal slavery, such as elderly enslaved women taking care of infant children while the mothers worked in the field or receiving salt fish to supplement the food cultivated in the provision grounds. These customary practices were the norm in some Caribbean slave societies for many decades (Mintz & Hall 2000:758–72). Before 1781, this practice in Jamaica was not made compulsory by law; therefore, this shift paved the way for a long history and affinity that some apprentices in the 1830s had for their provision grounds. After changes to the Jamaica Slave Code in the 1780s, slaveowners had to provide those who were enslaved with clothing and give them holidays, such as Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide (but, citing security reasons, they were never permitted to celebrate two holidays consecutively). It is important to note that although these measures were laid out in the Jamaican code, these laws were rarely enforced, yet the “customary system of land transmission” became a mainstay on plantations in Jamaica (Besson 2002:30–31; Smith 1945:300).
Provision grounds were literal and metaphorical spaces of freedom and autonomy for many apprentices, a burden for some, and untenable land for others. For some freed Black laborers, maintaining their provision grounds allowed them to increase their capital and cultivate autonomous spaces. For others, the advent of the stipendiary magistrates’ authority to work as “intermediaries” between the interests of apprentices and overseers resulted in harsh punishments for the apprentices, such as having to endure being locked in dungeons or abuses in workhouses; sometimes these punishments had a far-reaching impact in terms of the apprentices’ level of engagement with their grounds.
The physical abuse they endured as well as the apprentices’ ability and inability to devote time to tend their grounds shaped their relationship with the plots of land. Building on historians who have highlighted practices of punishment and labor in postemancipation Jamaica, such as Douglas Hall and Diana Paton, I argue that conflict on pens and plantations not only led to harsh punishments, but also fomented an arena of dispute enabling apprentices to directly challenge the systems that plagued customary rights, such as access to water, food, and land (Hall 1953; Paton 2004).
1 Apprenticeship and Allowances
Historian Thomas Holt described the apprenticeship system as a “half-way covenant” (Holt 1992:56). The law in Jamaica required apprentices to work for the planters for 40.5 hours per week, and during a week’s working hours, planters and, according to Holt, apprentices were “to assume the respective statuses of employer and employee freely negotiating conditions of work and wage,” while planters were expected to continue providing “customary rations and indulgences”; yet apprentices continued to deal with mistreatment from those in authoritative positions (Holt 1992:56–57). Once the allotted work time of 40.5 hours was complete, the apprentices, in theory, were free to “negotiate” their own work and wages with their “master-employers.” Apprenticed laborers could either spend their time cultivating provisions to eat or to sell in the markets, or they could choose to labor for wages during their supposed “free” time (Holt 1992:55–56). “Negotiating” one’s labor was oftentimes quite difficult for the apprentices due to the Abolition Law requiring 40.5 of labor because the law did not specify the number of hours one had to work in a single day (Hall 1953:151). For apprentices interested in earning more wages, some planters solicited them to work beyond the stipulated work time, while many other apprenticed laborers preferred to cultivate their own provision grounds on Saturdays and sell their produce in the Sunday markets. Already required to work at least 40.5 hours for the planters, some apprentices did not want to labor on these plantations for extra hours when they might earn more money selling their own provisions in the local market (Hall 1953:144–45).
With over 300,000 individuals in Jamaica transitioning from enslaved to apprenticed laborers, the imperial government inevitably became what Diana Paton described as “both liberator and enforcer of labor discipline” with the establishment of the stipendiary magistrate system (Paton 2004: chapter 2). Before abolition and the advent of apprenticeship, the enforcer was primarily authoritarians on plantations, such as planters, overseers, and managers. But now, the state was heavily involved in punishments and even created a stipendiary magistrate system for apprentices and planters to submit complaints of abuse and mistreatment. This new addition to the colonial judicial system also provoked the promotion of what Jenny Jemmott called “family advocacy” (Jemmott 2015: chapter 2). Apprentices could now seek out magistrates to file complaints against anyone who threatened their lives and labor.
Despite the magistracy system paving the way for apprentices to name their abusers and call out mistreatment, planters and overseers were usually fined for wrongdoing, while the apprentices’ punishments typically involved physical and psychological violence: many were sent to workhouses, locked in dungeons, and forced to endure the treadmill and the whip. Some magistrates also tended to side with the planters’ perspectives leading to unequal treatment and corruption. Punishment in the form of violence was not “new” but the distributor of this violence had shifted from primarily planters and overseers to the colonial state by way of the stipendiary magistrates (Paton 2004: chapter 2). In sum, the apprentices were legally bound to the same plantations on which they were enslaved; they were not allowed to leave the plantation; and during apprenticeship, some planters stripped away their customary rights by withholding certain allowances.
Before the transition from slavery to apprenticeship in Jamaica, Lord Sligo, the governor of Jamaica, assured those who were enslaved that they would still have access to their provision grounds and other customary practices: “Your master must give you clothes, provision grounds, and medical attendance if you are sick. I hope that you will give him cheerfully and willingly the very small portion of your time which he is entitled to.”20 However, allowances were stripped away from apprentices almost as soon as Jamaica transitioned from slavery to apprenticeship on August 1, 1834. Writing on August 13, 1834, Lord Sligo reported about “petty disturbances” in some parishes after abolition: “as there have been several petty disturbances, attended with cases of punishment in St James’s, Westmoreland and St Elizabeth, in almost every instance caused either by the intemperate conduct of the overseers or exaction by the proprietors or managers. The mothers have been refused time to suckle their children, the usual old women as nurses have been withdrawn, the field cooks have been withdrawn, the paths leading from their huts to their provision grounds have been stopped.”21
On some plantations, overseers intentionally altered the practices to which the apprentices were accustomed before abolition. Although usual allowances to apprentices were never protected by law, the Marquis of Sligo wrote that ceasing the typical allowances was an “injudicious and unjust act” (Browne 1835:91). Allowances withheld included preventing an older enslaved woman from caring for infant children while their mothers worked in the fields; during the apprenticeship era, apprenticed mothers were forced to work all day with their children strapped to their backs, making it difficult for them to complete their tasks efficiently. In addition, some proprietors attempted to force women who had just given birth to “repay the time lost in child birth, under the plea that the offspring no longer belonged to the owner of the mother, and that he had a right, under all circumstances, to his forty hours and a half labour in the week” (Browne 1835:91–93). The planters even aimed to make apprentices “repay the time lost” while they tended to their sick loved ones, placing a burden on Afro-Jamaican families. Other abandoned customs central to the apprentices’ well-being included planters withholding medical assistance, clothing, cooks, salt fish, and corn, eliminating water carriers in the field, and reducing the number of watchmen on plantations who not only guarded the plantation but also the apprentices’ provision grounds.22 This article demonstrates how losing some of these customary rights and practices negatively impacted apprenticed communities in Jamaica.
Discontinuing essential practices contributed to disarray on several estates. While the proprietors claimed that they withheld these “indulgences” to run the estates more economically, this stance usually led to conflicts between overseers and apprentices and among the apprentices themselves. By highlighting the role of provision grounds and the apprentices’ struggle to maintain access to them after abolition, a discussion of allowances taken away from apprentices involves a deeper understanding of the unraveling of customary rights amid the gradual disintegration of the institution of slavery during the period of apprenticeship in Jamaica.
2 Provision Grounds “Are as Much to Them as the Great House and the Estate Are to Their Master”23
In Emancipation in the West Indies, a book published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, James A. Thome and J. Horace Kimball detailed their interactions with overseers, planters, magistrates, and apprenticed laborers during their 1837 trip to Jamaica, Antigua, and Barbados after abolition took effect on August 1, 1834. While specifically discussing provision grounds in Jamaica, they stated that the apprentices were “strongly attached to their houses and little furniture, and their provision grounds. These are as much to them as the great house and the estate are to their master” (Thome & Kimball 1837:357). Thome and Kimball also explained that the White colonists feared that the apprentices might flee the plantations after full freedom and abandon agricultural labor altogether. While proprietors and planters were preoccupied with the possibility that freedpeople might engage in a mass exodus from the plantation in favor of own-account labor elsewhere, some apprentices seemed to be more concerned with surviving their present condition in bonded freedom.
Apprentices lived lives filled with myriad hardships and hopes. In addition to the intensive labor that they were required to complete for their “master-employers,” they were also expected to “construct their own houses, make their own clothes, cultivate their provisions with their own hands … use oil of their own pressing for their lamps, and wicks prepared from cotton growing” (Sturge & Harvey 1838:177–78). Sturge and Harvey reflected on the labor of Afro-Jamaicans during their travels: “slaves, in every department, are so much excelled by free laborers” (Sturge & Harvey 1838:177; Holt 1992:55–56). Sturge and Harvey seemed to point to the irony that so many white colonists during that time often described the apprentices as “lazy” and inherently inferior, yet it was the previously enslaved laboring as apprentices by force who did most of the work in these colonies with “little division of labor” (Sturge & Harvey 1838:177–78).
During Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey’s travels to a small coffee plantation called Craig-Hill in St Andrew’s Parish, Sturge commented on a particular incident in which members of an apprenticed family were at odds over the ownership of their provision grounds. He described the woman who put forth a formal complaint to a magistrate as an “old woman” and “African” who was “eloquent in gesture and animation.” The elderly woman told the court that she had eight children, but “the best had gone before.” She then claimed that her own son sold his provision ground. This upset her greatly because, according to her, it was not his to sell. The woman explained that the provision ground was a joint property between them. She then revealed that her son had neglected and mistreated her during their disagreement over his decision to sell the land. The old woman’s son defended his actions by claiming that he sold his land to another apprentice so that he could buy medicine for his “ulcerated foot.” The evidence showed that there was no hospital and no medical attendant on the plantation. After hearing a similar case of neglect at Craig-Hill, the magistrate fined the estate five pounds, but he did not comment specifically on the woman’s complaint regarding her provision grounds. Sturge wrote that the son’s offense to his mother was “not cognizable by the court,” meaning that there was no clear resolution to this case (Sturge & Harvey 1838:175).
This familial dispute over land divulges the extent that some apprentices would go to protect their property as well as the harsh conditions that apprentices endured on plantations. Even if some apprentices did not have access to doctors, a hospital, or other important accommodations to help better their lives, some still had their provision grounds which had been passed down to them over generations. Recognizing the love that many apprentices had for these small parcels of land demonstrates the importance of land rights and the aspiration of landownership in apprentices’ lives. Land provided capital, and more capital led to more autonomy and power.
The elderly woman’s complaint to the magistrate further demonstrates her appreciation and need for the land that she believed was owned jointly with her son. The stipendiary magistrate assigned to Craig-Hill in Port Royal Parish24 in 1836, C. Hamilton, explained that the proximity of the Kingston market contributed to the apprentices’ strong desire to “devote their time to better purposes by cultivating their provision grounds for the supply of the Kingston market, which is very considerable.”25 Many apprenticed women in particular valued their access to the markets because they could engage in higgling and make a profit for themselves and their families (Palmie & Scarano 2011:11, 40). Without her provision grounds, the elderly woman’s livelihood beyond apprenticeship was threatened. Higgling could provide her with food for herself and her family as well as the ability to make profits that belonged to her alone. It is possible that the loss of her land meant the loss of her livelihood, leading to her anger and frustration with her son.
Higgling also permitted manumitted apprentices to accumulate profit for their household and supplement their family’s food. Rather than working for hire or tending to their grounds during their “free” time, a small group of apprentices chose to purchase their early release from apprenticeship, yet the question of maintaining access to their provision grounds persisted as some manumitted apprenticed laborers dealt with the permanent loss of their customary rights. While some manumitted apprentices were allowed to remain cultivating their grounds (and thus, participating in the markets), others were turned away from their provision grounds.26 Some chose to leave in favor of seeking out opportunities elsewhere. For those forced to leave, the loss of their “house, garden, provision grounds, medical assistance, and the portion of clothes” may have caused some strain in their early days of freedom.27
Sydney Lambert revealed in his letter dated September 30, 1836, that out of 4,400 apprentices in his district only three had been able to purchase their freedom.28 Despite this fact, he explains that more apprentices would purchase their early release if they could afford the high price for freedom. Others felt that it might be more beneficial to earn money working for hire as agricultural laborers. During the first quarter of 1837, Lambert stated that four more apprentices had bought their freedom and “of these, the whole have devoted themselves to the cultivation of provision grounds.”29 Albeit low in number, it does not diminish the important role that provision grounds continued to play for free laborers before the end of apprenticeship. Whether they chose to cultivate their grounds or work for hire, they still aimed to overcome the loss of their (albeit fragile) customary rights by engaging in the market system and working as higglers to further support themselves.
In a September 1836 letter describing the general condition of the apprentices in Petersfield, Port Royal Parish, Special Justice C. Hamilton wrote that he often witnessed apprentices transporting “immense loads of provisions taken to town on market days and for their own consumption.” He explained that he had only seen but “a few” apprentices who did not “work their grounds,” but who willingly worked the “grounds of other apprentices.”30 Though this notion seemed to puzzle Hamilton, when we consider the role of community for Afro-Jamaicans during the postslavery era, the idea of working the grounds of one’s neighbors rather than one’s own may point to specific circumstances that were difficult for some apprentices to overcome alone, such as infertile land or unexpected weather conditions. Considering the unforeseen struggles that Afro-Jamaicans faced, it becomes clearer that survival was central to the process of finding solutions to the quandaries that often troubled their lives.
The familial dispute over the ownership of the provision grounds between the elderly woman and her son relates directly to another customary practice that was challenged under apprenticeship—access to medical care. During the period of legal slavery, though the medical care offered was wanting, sometimes those who were enslaved were able to seek help from a “doctor-man” or “doctor-woman” who worked on plantations. During apprenticeship, some planters and overseers either completely halted the availability of medicine and doctors or they made it more difficult for apprenticed laborers to seek help for their sicknesses and injuries. Some magistrates reported that medical care was an allowance that some planters took away from apprentices, while others specifically noted that some proprietors forced apprenticed parents to work extra hours to pay for the medical care that their free children might have received.31 The elderly woman’s son’s desperation to earn money to purchase medicine for his foot points to the fact that the Craig-Hill apprentices did not have consistent access to a doctor that worked for the proprietor. During their travels, Sturge and Harvey commented on the filthiness of some hospitals located on plantations and the need for cleaner places of care for the apprentices (Sturge & Harvey 1838:175). Even if the plantation had an estate doctor or hospital, it was not guaranteed that the son in the Craig-Hill case would have received quality care for his ulcerated foot. Perhaps, due to the difficulties of completing an apprentice’s required tasks with an injured foot, the elderly woman’s son prioritized his health and healing more than the protection of the family’s provision grounds.
Some apprentices used the hospitals tactically on plantations to resist forced labor. While discussing the role of the hospital at a particular plantation with an overseer in Jamaica, Thome and Kimball wrote that one overseer told him that several apprentices tended to be sick all week in hospital, but by Friday, they are cured just in time to work their grounds and go to the Saturday and Sunday markets: “they get well all at once, and ask permission to go out” (Thome & Kimball 1839:279). However, once Monday morning comes, “they are sure to be sick again.” After hearing this piece of information, Thome and Kimball remarked that “the Antigua planters discovered the remedy for it, and doubtless [the overseer] will make the grand discovery in 1840” (Thome & Kimball 1839:279). Antigua was the only British Caribbean colony that initiated abolition without an apprenticeship period; therefore, enslaved Antiguans experienced full emancipation along with the abolition of slavery on August 1, 1834. Thome and Kimball recognized the apprentices’ desire for full freedom and autonomy over their own lives and labor. The fact that these apprentices were unwilling to work for the benefit of the planters but were eager to work for their own benefit on the weekends negates the common notion that apprentices were “lazy” and in need of coercion to make them labor.32 This example also shows us the importance of everyday acts of resistance and the role these played in some apprenticed laborers’ strategy to spend less time laboring for the benefit of their former owners and more time tactically carving out time for their own needs and desires.
Sturge and Harvey’s encounter with a group of apprentices on an unnamed estate in St Andrew’s Parish reflected the ways that the community of apprentices in some areas held each other accountable. They explained that a “fine interesting” group of apprentices “complained of their own accord, of one of their number, for not cultivating her own grounds.” This short anecdote gives insight into the value that some apprentices placed on their grounds; this land was sacred for many of them. The agitated apprentices, according to Sturge and Harvey, “admonished and threatened” the woman, possibly to embolden her to return to caring for her land once again (Sturge & Harvey 1838:180). The particulars of this encounter—such as the reasons why this woman chose to stop cultivating her grounds—are unknown, but the fact that the apprentices who worked alongside her took the time to tell Sturge and Harvey that the woman upset them by seemingly deserting her land shows contemporary readers that land was pivotal to the struggle for survival and full freedom.
The problem of provision grounds not yielding substantial sustenance to provide for the apprentices and their families was a typical issue noted in various stipendiary magistrates’ reports. Several magistrates wrote in their letters to the governor of Jamaica and the colonial secretary in London that some apprentices’ grounds did not provide them with enough food. Magistrate C. Hamilton of Port Royal claimed that the weather (droughts and heavy rainfall in different seasons) was often to blame for the apprentices dealing with a scarcity of food for their families. Some magistrates also placed blame on the apprentices themselves citing blatantly racist stereotypes of Afro-Jamaicans to account for their struggle with food insecurity.33
The distance from the plantation to the provision grounds often hindered the apprentices’ ability to devote ample time to cultivating their own grounds. In Special Justice C. Hawkins’s letter from Rio Bueno, Jamaica, he explained that the apprentices were expected to travel 15 to 20 miles from the plantation to their own grounds and work at least eight hours a day (Monday through Friday) on the plantation. Because their grounds were so far from the plantation, the apprentices lamented the time it took for them to travel back and forth: “the eight hour system hinders them from going [to their provision grounds], on Fridays; and by the time that they can go and return on the Saturdays, they lose the market on that day; and I believe that is in some measure the reason that the apprentices neglect their mountain grounds.”34 Other justices such as Trelawny’s Samuel Pryce also acknowledged that the time apprentices spent laboring on the plantation sometimes prevented them from being able to fully devote enough time to cultivating their grounds. The Trelawny apprentices under Pryce’s jurisdiction neglected their provision grounds specifically during the harvest because the proprietor asked them to work 16 hours a day to finish the work required. This left the apprentices without enough time to care for their own land. Despite this, because their labor exceeded the 40.5 hours per week, they were paid five shillings weekly for their extra labor.35
Provision grounds were essential to apprenticed parents, especially since many of them fed their free and apprenticed children from their grounds. Several special magistrates documented the fact that apprenticed parents relied on the yield from provision grounds to feed their children.36 This was especially the case on plantations where salt fish and other food, such as corn, were withheld. In light of the discontinued custom of receiving certain victuals to supplement their meals, there was even more strain on families dealing with food scarcity. E.D. Baynes wrote from Aylmer’s that “customary indulgences” were “withheld” “on most estates” in St John Parish.37 According to D. Ewart, the plantations under his jurisdiction in St Thomas in the East, near Morant Bay, “are entitled to all the indulgences that were usual during slavery”; this was made possible “by virtue of an agreement” that Ewart made with the planters in his district.38 Ewart’s phrasing suggest that some plantations were withholding allowances before he negotiated on behalf of apprentices.
Not all plantations withheld allowances for the apprentices, however. R. Cocking reported that “no indulgences” were “withheld” from the apprentices in the Windward District of St James nor were free children denied access to medical attendants when needed.39 Thomas Oliver wrote from Hertford on October 3, 1836 that the free children were in a “very good” state and “generally supported by their parents.”40 He also expressed that in exchange for four days’ extra labor on the plantation, free children were given allowances, such as clothing and medical attendance. Considering the evidence, it appears that the negative effects of disallowing customary rights for free children and their parents depended on how individual plantations were managed. But, how did apprenticed children deal with the changes under apprenticeship? The answer to this question is more difficult to glean from the sources since the magistrates were specifically requested to comment on the state of free children but were not directly asked to report on apprenticed children. Yet an account of a young, apprenticed boy’s grievances in the Brown’s Town “Minutes of Evidence” illustrates the difficulties apprenticed children faced when they were separated from their parents.
When children were bound to different plantations from their parents, it could present serious issues, particularly during apprenticeship. Because many plantations continued stripping the apprentices of their customary rights to food, water, and sometimes even access to provision grounds, free and apprenticed children were often impacted negatively, especially in terms of them receiving adequate nourishment. On October 2, 1837, a boy named John James appeared before the Commissioners of the court at Brown’s Town in St Ann’s Parish, Jamaica, to express his troubles with the overseer at Owen plantation. John James, a 12- or 13-year-old apprentice was forced to endure the toils of labor without his parents’ support. His father Robert James was bound to Mount Pleasant, and Eliza James, his mother, was “hired out” to Valley Minor, which was 23 miles from Owen.41 John James told the court that the overseer, Nesbett, had put the “iron collar round my neck … because I run away. I run away because I could not get any victuals at Owen; there is nobody there to give me any.”42 John James had made it a habit to run away when he suffered from hunger due to limited provisions at Owen. He typically sought after his mother at Valley Minor but would sometimes seek out his father’s “garden” at Mount Pleasant, presumably to look for food.43 John admitted that when he ran away, he usually went to Valley Minor but also to “stand all about in the pastures,” a point his mother supported in her testimony. Eliza James explained “John James runs away sometimes from Owen, and comes down to where I am … and sometimes he stops all about the bushes and pastures, and sometimes comes to me.”44 Eliza James also revealed that sometimes John James’s aunt who was also bound to Owen would try to feed him whenever possible but Eliza claimed that their aunt could “scarcely take care of herself,” demonstrating the dire situation at Owen plantation.45
John James’s admission that hunger typically provoked him to run away further underscores the indispensable nature of provision grounds during apprenticeship. Since he experienced hunger on multiple occasions, we could infer that Owen plantation might have been one of the plantations that continued to withhold some or all allowances. The court investigated this case due to the cruelty that Nesbett imposed on John James, a child apprentice. William Fleming, who was John James’s cousin and fellow apprentice at Owen, was sworn in as a witness in this case. Fleming stated that John had been “absent for six days, and was brought home to Owen by a constable.”46 Nesbett tied him to a tree, beat him, and then put a collar around his neck. Days went by, and John was forced to work with the collar on. The brutality did not cease: “he then ordered an old man, named Robert Campbell, to lock him up at nights in a dungeon; the boy was locked up Tuesday and Wednesday nights; I am sure of that … I went into the dungeon myself on Tuesday, and found it so wet that I could put my hand down and take up the wet dirt.”47 On top of enduring inhumane punishments for running away on a quest for provisions from his parents’ grounds, Fleming added emphasis to John James’s own defense that he was forced to run away due to hunger: “his aunt feeds him whenever he remains with the family, and he sleeps at her house. The overseer does not give him any fish, nor any food, nor does he give any person any time in the week to pay for feeding him.”48 Although John’s aunt did what she could for him, the overseer forbade John’s relatives from helping feed him when their provisions ran low. Fleming’s point about not being able to “give time” to “pay for feeding him” relates to John’s relatives’ inability to work extra hours on the plantation to pay for the customary right to fish or any other food given by the overseer.
To put this case into perspective, the commissioners investigated John James’s claims not because of the hunger he faced at Owen plantation or the negative impact of being so far away from his parents, but they scrutinized these claims because Nesbett, the overseer, broke the laws established after abolition. Overseers were no longer allowed to administer punishments to apprentices. If John James was to be punished for running away, it would have had to be mandated by the magistrate after he heard the overseer’s complaint about John James, and John himself knew this fact. Near the end of his testimony, he seemed to state with emphasis, “Captain T.H. Dillon, the special magistrate, sometimes comes to Owen, but I was never carried before him, nor was I ever ordered by him to be switched. Mr. Nesbett flogged me of his own free will.”49
R. Cocking, a special magistrate, wrote in an 1836 quarter ending report that many apprentices were lacking provisions and choosing to work additional jobs on other estates to earn more wages. He stated that the yams “have come in, but other descriptions of bread kind are scarce.”50 Cocking, along with several other magistrates, believed that the apprentices lacked food due to “the apprentices having neglected the seasons.”51 He does not offer any evidence or explanation for why the apprentices in his district might have chosen to neglect their provision grounds in favor of seeking employment elsewhere or how the apprentices might have helped each other endure periods of food insecurity. However, considering Cocking’s brief observations, we can make sense of some of the reasons why the apprentices may have neglected their lands by analyzing an issue that was emphasized repeatedly in the Parliamentary Papers—the problem of theft.
Increasing theft and destruction of provision grounds during apprenticeship relates directly to the stripping away of customary practices. On some plantations, overseers and managers altered the practices to which the apprentices were accustomed before abolition. During slavery, some of the enslaved, especially older enslaved men or younger enslaved boys, worked as “watchmen” on plantations and pens across the island. Watchmen were expected to guard the plantation as well as the provision grounds of the enslaved to protect the land from any threats, including thieves and wandering livestock that might destroy the apprentices’ crops.52 Historians have found that some proprietors wanted apprenticeship to fail in order to justify a push to reinstate the institution of slavery, which factored into their decisions to stop sending watchmen to guard the provision grounds.53 Without the necessary number of watchmen, coupled with countless apprentices facing insufficient food sources (especially in the parishes experiencing debilitating droughts and excessive rainfall), there was a rise in theft during apprenticeship. This issue negatively affected apprentices more than planters because plantation owners prioritized protecting their own land above the apprentices’ grounds. The former masters no longer had a long-term interest in the well-being of apprentices; they saw these laborers as bygone investments, and some demonstrated this sentiment through their willingness to forego customary practices, such as allowing apprenticed watchmen to guard the apprentices’ grounds just like many had done during the era of legal slavery.
By eliminating the customary practice of having members of the apprentice community working specifically to protect the provision grounds, the planters and overseers took away the key component that made provision grounds work for the apprentices’ benefit. Special magistrate H.S. Cooper wrote that the apprentices at Knollis estate in St Thomas in the Vale Parish had decided to seek out “work for hire” rather than cultivate their grounds. Many of the apprentices at Knollis had grown weary after they had used their “time and labour” to tend to the their grounds only to return one day after conducting unpaid labor on the plantation to find that cattle from a nearby field had trampled on their crops and “destroyed at one fell swoop the blooming prospect of plentiful returns, and with it the hope of being able to provide for themselves, their wives, and children.”54 After constantly traveling “several miles distant” for months during their “free time” to care for their grounds, the apprentices at Knollis felt that their hard work had been in “vain.”55
Withdrawing the watchmen from the apprentices’ grounds was both cruel and unwise. Cooper explained that though there were several factors that contributed to the “scarcity of provisions” for the apprentices in the Windward District of St Thomas in the Vale (such as the drought), he placed most of the blame on the “wanton and impolitic conduct of the managers” who had officially eliminated the role of the watchman on provision grounds.56 The older men who had previously worked as the watchmen had been forced to join the gangs on the plantations but “added nothing” to the gang’s productivity because they were either too old or too sickly. Moreover, without the watchmen, the apprentices were discouraged from cultivating their grounds due to the “probability” that they “would never reap.”57 Not only did the livestock threaten their provisions, but so did “runaways” and thieves.58 No longer having watchmen guarding the provision grounds on a consistent basis placed a strain on apprentices’ labor and livelihood, forcing them to grapple with the reality that, while conducting unpaid compulsory labor for the benefit of the planter and plantation, livestock could wander onto their grounds and destroy the produce that they were planning to either consume or to sell in the market. On the other hand, there was also a chance that other apprenticed laborers may have been stealing their provisions if the grounds were consistently left unguarded.
One consequence of rising theft on provision grounds was an increase in intracommunity quarrels. While there are examples of the community of apprentices coming together in times of need, there are also moments when the apprentices were at odds with each other, leading some of them to file complaints to the magistrate against their fellow apprentices. Samuel Pryce, writing from Trelawny Parish, and John Harris, from St Elizabeth, reported that apprentices’ complaints against authorities decreased as the complaints against other apprentices increased during the period of drought in 1837. The effects of the drought included famine and food scarcity. These issues coupled with the apprentices receiving very low wages for their extra labor on plantations caused widespread distress.59 Accusations of rogue apprentices “stealing corn, cutting canes to an amazing extent, the robbing of provision grounds and neglect of watch” appear in the reports of magistrates based in parishes across the island.60 To deal with the rising complaints from apprentices concerning the threats to their grounds, some magistrates, such as Henry Waddington from Portland Parish, punished apprentices for “trespassing on cane and provision grounds” and watchmen for neglecting their “charge.”61 In a letter to Governor Lionel Smith, special justices, William Ramsay, J. Richard Hill, and G. Ouseley Higgins, wrote that the “fear of famine” was not the only thing that “compel[led] the negro to become, first a trespasser, and then an avowed thief.”62 They believed that those engaging in the plunder of provision grounds were doing it out of “necessity.”63 Although some apprentices possibly robbed the provision grounds to safeguard their own survival, their choice to steal put a strain on other apprentices since they also struggled to survive the drought with meager rations from their grounds.
In a March 1837 letter to C.H. Darling, Samuel Pryce requested that the colonial legislature consider implementing a law to protect provision grounds from plunder and theft: “I respectfully submit to his Excellency the Governor the expediency of a more implicit law for the protection of the mountain grounds of the apprentices, which, in this parish, though abundant in quantity and quality, are, in most instances, very distant from the estates.”64 It is not clear if Lionel Smith, the governor, took Pryce’s recommendation seriously, but Pryce’s suggestion demonstrates the heightened importance of this issue in 1837.
The discord among apprentices involved the convergence of several unfortunate events, including the impact of losing their customary rights and dealing with the effects of the environment. Although John Harris, the special justice of the peace in Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth, pointed to the few who plundered the apprentices’ grounds, he also clarified in his report that “the body of the people are giving perfect satisfaction, and it would be a prejudiced mind who would refuse them this their due meed [sic] of praise.”65
While environmental phenomena such as heavy rains and droughts were major catalysts of the apprentices’ ongoing struggle with food scarcity and of the increase in the plunder of provision grounds, evidence from the magistrates’ quarterly reports and the apprentices themselves shows that withholding allowances exacerbated the problem with theft and scarcity. Walter Finlayson, a magistrate based in Montego Bay, wrote that some estates continued to “withhold entirely the former supplies of salt fish to the apprentices” and that some have “limited the number of cooks, nurses, and watchmen to provision grounds.”66 In the first few lines of his Narrative discussing the pitfalls of apprenticeship, James Williams stated, “massa give we no salt allowance, and no allowance at Christmas.”67 Apprentices relied heavily on salt fish as a supplement to the food they cultivated on their grounds; without this allowance in the midst of famine, many apprentices fell into a state of food insecurity, leading to increasing theft. Therefore, the planters and overseers’ actions had a major impact on the apprentices’ circumstances. If they had not stripped the apprentices of their customary rights, such as providing supplementary food sources and permitting the necessary number of watchmen to protect the apprentices’ grounds, the provision of such rights might have helped to mitigate the apprentices’ plight during the drought.
Those who continued to rely on the potential of their provision grounds dealt with obstacles that threatened to derail their source of additional income. Yet, we see from complaints made to magistrates that, despite the possibility of losing provisions to the effects of droughts, theft, or even familial disputes, many did not give up on the potential of their land. Considering the story of “Old George,” a sickly and elderly man who labored as a watchman at Southampton for many years, we see that sometimes relying on one’s community could be more impactful than depending on customary practices during times of distress.
On September 21, 1837, in St Ann’s Parish, Robert Grant, an apprentice at Southampton Pen, gave a sworn testimony at a Brown’s Town court hearing regarding the case of an old apprentice named George who worked as a watchman on the same pen. Robert explained that Old George had died two months prior in the “prentice yard.”68 Old George lived in “a hut by the road side, near the gate, about a quarter of a mile from the ‘prentice yard.”69 Before he passed away, apprentices who lived nearby had helped move Old George from his hut to the yard where his fellow apprentices dwelled, but unfortunately he died within half an hour. According to the apprentices of Southampton, Old George ate food from his own provision ground, but in the final two months of his life, he became increasingly weaker, which made it more difficult for him to properly tend to his land and have consistent access to nourishment.
While customary rights were more fraught than ever during the period of distress in 1837, the fate of Old George shows us that collective modes of care were just as essential to apprentices’ survival as access to customary rights on pens and plantations. As Old George suffered from an illness, he was unable to tend to his grounds; yet he did not suffer from hunger or isolation. Robert revealed that the “people from the house” (the house servants) did not offer to help George work his land, but when the apprentices saw him get gradually weaker, they began bringing him “cocoa and plantain, or anything to help him out.”70 Robert claimed that a lack of provisions led to George’s death, while other apprentices at Southampton believed his old age as well as a cut on his hand (which remained bothersome for over a year before his death) contributed to his rapid decline in health. Although the Southampton apprentices may not have helped George cultivate his land, many did notice his ill health and offered a helping hand by giving him soup, fruit, and more on various occasions. In fact, some house servants revealed before the court that they had given provisions to George countless times in the last year of his life.71
Old George’s unfortunate illness and death sparked much discussion from apprentices, overseers, and managers regarding whether enough was done to help Old George in his final few months of life. Southampton Pen’s proprietor, Charles Strachan, admitted that he did not know “by what means [Old George] was supported” and he was unaware of George’s illness until he “was informed of his death.”72 Strachan further stated in his testimony that although he had given Old George some rum once, he was “not in the habit of feeding him.”73 Despite inattention from the proprietor, Old George was still looked after during his final days by a community of apprentices who sought to comfort him in his suffering. Eleanor Angwin, a “very old” apprenticed woman at Southampton, testified that no one “had any spite against him.”74 In fact, when he would visit with the other apprentices around the “negro houses,” he would sometimes ask for something; and according to Eleanor, “they never allowed him to go away without giving.”75
Although Old George may not have had any close family members in his life, he still had a community of apprentices and servants who seemed to help him whenever possible. William Newby, a watchman at Alexandria Estate (a plantation near Southampton) often carried wood and water for George when his heath began failing.76 Ann Dodd, an “inmate” at Southampton House, sent corn flour, sugar, and rum to George about a week before his death after she heard from the “doctor-woman” that he was sickly.77 John Cover, a carpenter, noticed Old George was ill and gave him cocoa, herring, and “a little sugar and water” about three days before his demise.78 Francis Johnson, a free man who was once an apprentice at Southampton, saw George the night that he died. He informed the apprentices that George was in a bad way. They carried George back to the apprentice yard where he died a short while after, surrounded by those with whom he lived and labored beside for decades. After George passed away, Francis built a coffin for him.79 Old George may have lacked provisions in his last year of life due to the condition of his health, but he still had a community who rallied around him until his death.
Old George’s story shows the importance of apprentices’ collective quest for survival and autonomy. Although many apprentices seemed keen to secure their customary rights after abolition, access to these practices, such as maintaining provision grounds, was not always practical or possible for some apprentice laborers. Even though Old George was unable to work his grounds for supplementary provisions, several people, mainly apprentices, helped Old George in his final days by bringing him food from the house or their own grounds.
Access to land, an important component of the apprentices’ pursuit of survival, would remain central to the fate of apprentices-turned-freedpeople as wage laborers navigating a free society. Before the decision to end apprenticeship in August 1838 (two years early), evidence shows that apprentices began to worry about the fate of their provision grounds. According to special justice H. Bourne, many apprentices were anxious at the thought of losing their provision grounds as they inched towards 1840 (the presumed year of full emancipation). Bourne explained that many planters were “foolish as to warn the people that they would be turned off their grounds in 1840, and that those who bought their freedom before should instantly give up their houses and grounds, without even the three months’ notice,” a stipulation to which the law gestured, but did not “adequately secure.”80 Bourne revealed in his letter that those who managed the plantations were to blame for most apprentices having a “great disposition” “to purchase land for themselves, instead of working on their masters’ grounds” because the overseers continued to tell the apprentices that they would no longer be able to live on the land where they resided in the apprentice yard nor to cultivate their provision grounds after emancipation.81 Lord Glenelg, the colonial secretary of state, responded to Bourne’s observations concerning the planters’ and overseers’ stance on apprentices and their grounds on plantations in one of his letters to Governor Smith. Glenelg wrote, “This is an evil which ought to be much more dreaded on behalf of the planters than on behalf of the apprentices”; Glenelg’s statement seems to point to the fact that the apprentices’ pursuit of landownership apart from the control of planters would be a positive dynamic for apprentices, and a negative one for the planter class and the social structure of colonial Jamaica.82 Although Bourne claimed that the apprentices in his district desired landownership away from the plantation and from the watchful eye of plantation managers and overseers, this study of how apprentices engaged with their provision grounds shows that apprentices were not only interested in purchasing land for themselves due to the abuses and threats by overseers, but also, they already had an affinity for the land that they believed belonged to them by customary right during slavery and apprenticeship. Provision grounds, in some ways, allowed them to pursue autonomous living and own-account labor even before full emancipation, so it is not surprising that many would also aspire to own land after apprenticeship.
On August 1, 1838, apprenticeship ended two years earlier than originally planned, following an anti-apprenticeship campaign that was bolstered by the publication of James Williams’s A Narrative of Events in 1837. Increasing conflict between former enslavers and freedpeople during the first few years of full emancipation provoked freedpeople in Jamaica to seek a life beyond the plantation. The struggle over land and autonomy that inevitably ensued amid the gradual disintegration of the apprentices’ customary rights spilled over into the early postemancipation period with the “flight from the estates” and the rise of the “free villages” in Jamaica (C. Hall 1993; D. Hall 1978).
3 Conclusion
In Ties that Bind, historian Jenny M. Jemmott maintained that complaints to the magistrates became a central “focal point for family advocacy” for freed Afro-Jamaicans in postabolition Jamaica (Jemmott 2015: chapter 2). Voicing their concerns with working conditions, access to provision grounds, and labor disputes became the norm after abolition in 1834. “Black family activism” was an indicator of the importance of lasting family ties and communal bonds during the period of slavery and freedom. The introduction of increased access to the judicial system during apprenticeship made it possible for apprentices to use the system to disclose abuse, air their grievances, and tell their stories, demonstrating the gains made despite the loss of customary rights.
We have seen that the apprentices’ loss of their customary rights complicated the gains obtained after abolition and at the start of apprenticeship. Without consistent access to supplementary sources of food previously provided by the planters, apprentices found themselves in dire straits because heavy rains and droughts caused a scarcity of food from their own grounds. The allowances taken away from apprentices also involved the reduction of the number of watchmen, making their grounds even more vulnerable to thieves, who were sometimes their fellow apprentices who hoped to either eat the meager rations they stole or possibly sell them in the market for profit.
These critical moments of discord in the apprenticed community in many ways were by-products of the proprietors’ greed as well as their desire to see apprenticeship fail. The apprentices’ struggle after the period of legal slavery was another contributory factor. Yet, individual apprenticed laborers often remained dedicated to their provision grounds. Apprentice communities seemed to feel a responsibility to work their lands and to help their neighbors, friends, and acquaintances in their efforts to realize their hopes of a more meaningful and tangible independence. Moments of rupture in apprentice communities were also commonplace. We see moments of connection as well as conflict in the account of a community of apprentices scolding a fellow apprenticed woman for not tending to her grounds; and in the elderly woman’s grievances with her son, who had given up their provision grounds to satisfy his immediate medical needs. Owning land by customary right meant having access to more capital as well as the opportunity to convert their returns into profit via the internal marketing system, giving rise to more hopes and expectations of freedom for Afro-Jamaican apprentices.
Cultivating this land often exposed the hardships that apprentices had to endure. The land did not always yield the best crops or offer the most profitable produce to sell in the local markets; sometimes the land was just too far away from the plantations where they were bound, leading to involuntary neglect; and in other instances, apprentices made the decision to prioritize extra work on plantations above nurturing their own grounds. Land may have been an unpredictable commodity, but there is no doubt that it was most valuable to apprenticed laborers in postabolition Jamaica.
According to Sidney Mintz, the emergence of a free wage labor society after apprenticeship ended provoked freedpeople to seek out land due to its potential to provide them with capital. (Mintz 1989:155–58). I have shown that even after the end of legal slavery in 1834, land was a commodity held in high regard by apprentices due to its ability to provide Black families with sustenance, produce to sell for profits, and a space to call their own. More capital for apprenticed families also invited more possibilities to fulfill their hopes of a life apart from the plantation where they were once enslaved. Unfortunately, retaining their provision grounds would prove difficult after emancipation. After the abolition of apprenticeship in 1838, the planters began requiring freedpeople to pay exorbitant rent prices, which was one of the main factors that influenced the widespread “flight from the estates” that occurred throughout the British Caribbean colonies from 1838–42 (Farley 1953; Hall 1978; Paget 1964).
Although full freedom in 1838 brought with it more challenges for freedpeople to overcome, recognizing how provision grounds were often central to the apprentices’ well-being during the apprenticeship period sheds light on the struggles apprentices faced in a supposedly free society that still aimed to keep Afro-Jamaicans subservient. Despite the political maneuverings of the powers above, Afro-Jamaicans managed to cultivate their provision grounds or to seek out other forms of employment to benefit themselves and their families. In the confines of their provision grounds, many apprenticed laborers were indeed free from the demands of the plantation. Within the literal and metaphorical boundaries of their grounds, what was for the apprentices—land, freedom, and autonomy—was not for their masters but for them alone.
Acknowledgments
I would like to send a warm thank you to Dr. Lara Putnam for her guidance, feedback, and support as I worked on several drafts of this manuscript. I am also grateful for the questions and comments on an early version of this article from those who attended my presentation at the 2021 History Graduate Research Forum at the University of Pittsburgh. I further extend my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers, Dr. Rosemarijn Hoefte, and Gina Rozario for their comments, feedback, and suggestions throughout the writing and editing process. Lastly, I appreciate my family for their constant encouragement and support over the years as I continue pursuing my passion for this work.
Lionel Smith, the governor of Jamaica, commissioned this inquiry in 1837 to investigate the claims made by 16-year-old, apprenticed laborer James Williams in the pamphlet A Narrative of Events. This pamphlet was disseminated across Great Britain and throughout Jamaica and brought much-needed awareness to the brutalities that the apprentices experienced daily. The commissioners interviewed apprentices, proprietors, overseers, managers, and bookkeepers for weeks in an effort to corroborate James Williams’s claims. They eventually found that the claims made in Williams’s Narrative were factual. The testimonies found in the “Minutes of Evidence” at Brown’s Town revealed myriad hardships that apprenticed men, women, and children faced. The importance of land to apprentices was just one of many concerns that apprentices continued to mention briefly or discuss in detail in several interviews. This primary source material provides essential insight into the unique struggles that apprenticed laborers faced after abolition and under apprenticeship. It is important to note that the apprentices’ testimonies in the inquiry are not, as Diana Paton (2001: xli) wrote in the introduction to James Williams’s Narrative, “direct transcript[s] of what was said at the Commission of Inquiry.” I reference some of the apprentices’ testimonies in the commissioned court in this article to center the apprentices’ own experiences that were recorded and to extract meaning from their concerns regarding their provision grounds and relationships within their own communities.
British Parliamentary Papers [hereafter BPP], 1837, Part V, Enclosure 12 in No. 50, James Carter’s Case, p. 223.
BPP, 1837, Part V, Enclosure 12 in No. 50, James Carter’s Case, p. 223.
Pens were essentially livestock farms that were typically located near or alongside sugar plantations, and they often had just as many enslaved and apprenticed laborers as some of the smaller sugar plantations in Jamaica. Because pens provided livestock for sugar plantations and meat for the markets, they became what B.W. Higman called one of the “most important” independent sectors for the plantation economy during the period of slavery and apprenticeship in Jamaica. See Higman 2005 for more details.
Antigua chose not to implement the apprenticeship system, which meant that this island experienced full emancipation in 1834, rather than 1838 as in Jamaica. For more information on the postemancipation period in Antigua, see Lightfoot 2015.
I say “mostly peaceful” because there was a disturbance at Shaw Park in Jamaica a few days after abolition took effect. Also, for an account of how apprentices across the Anglophone Caribbean reacted to apprenticeship in the early months of the system, see Heuman 2023:231–35.
See the following works on apprenticeship: Burn 1937; Hall 1953:142–66; Heuman 2023:229–54; Green 1969, 1976; Nwulia 1978:89–101; and Paton 2004.
For more on the 1781 Jamaican Slave Code, see Smith 1945. He explained, “A new provision in the act of 1781 established in law the customary practice on the island that every master allot his slaves sufficient land for them to grow their necessary food and allow them sufficient time to cultivate their plot” (Smith 1945:299–300).
For more on the internal marketing system in Jamaica, see Besson 2002; MacDonald 1993; Mintz 1989; Mintz & Hall 2000; and Sweeney 2019.
Report from the Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship in the Colonies, Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 13 August 1836.
Evidence Upon Oath Touching the Condition and Treatment of the Negro Population of the British West India Colonies: Part I, Island of Jamaica, 1832, pp. 19–22.
Report from the Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship (quoted from Evidence Upon Oath, p. 258).
Quoted in Report from the Select Committee, p. 258; also found in Evidence Upon Oath, p. 32.
Report from the Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship, pp. 258–59.
Report from the Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship, p. 259.
See also Scott 2000 and de la Fuente 2007.
Substance of the Debate in the House of Commons on May 15, 1823, on a Motion for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, pp. 21–37.
This rebellion is also referred to as the “Christmas Rebellion” and the “Baptist War” in the historiography.
In several accounts in the Parliamentary Papers and various estate reports, the enslaved were usually labeled as “non-praedial” (domestic or skilled laborers) or “praedial” (agricultural laborers). Those classified as the former were required to work for four years as apprentices and the latter for six years. All the apprentices (both praedials and nonpraedials) gained full freedom when the apprenticeship system in Jamaica was terminated on August 1, 1838.
BPP, 1833–1835, Part II, Enclosure 6 in No. 43, To the Newly Made Apprentices of Jamaica, p. 43.
BPP, 1833–1835, Part I, No. 17, Extract of a Despatch from the Marquess of Sligo to Thomas Spring Rice (King’s House, St Jago de la Vega, August 13, 1834), p. 45.
Browne 1835:92; see also magistrates’ quarterly reports in BPP: Abolition of Slavery, Parts III–V, for countless references to the withholding of the allowances mentioned.
Thome & Kimball 1839:357.
In Sturge and Harvey’s travels, they stated that Craig-Hill was located in St Andrew’s Parish. In the Parliamentary Papers, references to Craig-Hill mention that it was located in Port Royal Parish. Considering the proximity of St Andrew and Port Royal, more than likely, these different sources are referencing the same plantation. If, by chance, there were two plantations sharing the same name, they were both close in proximity to the Kingston markets. So, the connections made here will still stand. Another indication that these sources are referencing the same plantation is the fact that Sturge and Harvey wrote that a court was assembled to hear the grievances of the Craig-Hill apprentices. Since Craig-Hill had fewer than 40 apprentices, the magistrates were not required to visit this plantation by law. However, the large number of complaints from apprentices at Craig-Hill forced the assemblage of a court to hear their grievances. Hamilton wrote his location as “Craig-Hill, Court House, Port Royal, 17 October 1836” in his report found in BPP, 1837, Part IV, p. 227.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Answer to Circular, C. Hamilton (Craig Hill, Court House, Port Royal, October 17, 1836), p. 228.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 24 in No. 567, Copy of Letter from R. Sydney Lambert to C.H. Darling (Southeast Division, St. Mary, December 31, 1836), p. 257.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 45 in No. 558, Copy of Letter from Edward Dacres Baynes to Sir Lionel Smith (Aylmer’s, St. John’s, October 13, 1836), p. 221.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 44 in No. 558, Copy of Letter from R. Sydney Lambert to C.H. Darling (Southeast Division, St. Mary, September 30, 1836), pp. 218–19. The wording in this source is a bit unclear. It is possible that Lambert might be implying that only three apprentices were manumitted in the past quarter, not the past few years.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 9 in No. 575, Copy of Letter from R. Sydney Lambert to C.H. Darling (Southeast Division, St. Mary, March 31, 1837), p. 319.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 50 in 558, Copy of a Letter from C. Hamilton, Esq., Special Justice to C.H. Darling, Esq. (Petersfield, Port Royal, September 30, 1836), p. 227.
See quarterly reports in BPP, 1837–38, Abolition of Slavery, Parts IV–V.
These claims were made constantly by planters, overseers, bookkeepers, and others on plantations. Some of their sentiments are found in Thome and Kimball’s Emancipation as well as Sturge and Harvey’s The West Indies.
Several magistrates wrote in letters addressed to Governor Lionel Smith that the apprentices continued to “complain” about the scarcity of food.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 41 in No. 558, Copy of Letter from C. Hawkins, Esq. Special Justice (Aberdeen, Rio Bueno, October 11, 1836), p. 214.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 48 in No. 558, Copy of a Letter from S. Pryce, Esq., Special Justice, to C.H. Darling, Esq. (Trelawny, Jamaica, October 10, 1836), p. 223.
See reports by the special magistrates in BPP, 1837–1838, Abolition of Slavery, Parts IV–V for several examples of plantations that withheld customary practices and those that did not.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 3 in No. 542, Letter from E.D. Baynes to the Marquis of Sligo, July 4, 1836, p. 125.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 9 in No. 558, Copy of Letter from D. Ewart to C.H. Darling (Morant Bay, October 5, 1836), p. 188.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 1 in No. 558, R. Cocking replies to Circular No. 63 (Downing Street, July 15, 1836), p. 183.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 2 in No. 558, Copy of Letter from Thomas M. Oliver to C.H. Darling (Hertford, October 3, 1836), p. 184.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, pp. 197–98.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 197.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 198.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 198.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 198.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 198.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 198.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 198.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 1 in No. 50, John James’s Case, Owen Plantation, p. 197.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, R. Cocking, Enclosure 8 in No. 558, Report of State of District for Quarter ending September 1836, p. 187.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, R. Cocking, Enclosure 8 in No. 558, Report of State of District for Quarter ending September 1836, p. 187.
In Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834, Higman (1995:175) explains that watchmen were expected to guard not just the plantation grounds, but also the kitchen gardens, pastures, orchards, and the provision grounds of the enslaved.
See Hall 1953. Also addressed in various letters from stipendiary magistrates found in BPP, 1837, Part IV.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 4 in No. 65, H.S. Cooper (Windward District of St Thomas in the Vale, July 25, 1837), pp. 282–83.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 4 in No. 65, H.S. Cooper (Windward District of St Thomas in the Vale, July 25, 1837), pp. 282–83.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 4 in No. 65, H.S. Cooper (Windward District of St Thomas in the Vale, July 25, 1837), pp. 282–83.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 4 in No. 65, H.S. Cooper (Windward District of St Thomas in the Vale, July 25, 1837), pp. 282–83.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 4 in No. 65, H.S. Cooper (Windward District of St Thomas in the Vale, July 25, 1837), pp. 282–83.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 35 in No. 65, S. Pryce to C.H. Darling (Trelawny, Jamaica, June 30, 1837), p. 301; BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 45 in No. 65, John Harris to C.H. Darling (Santa Cruz, St Elizabeth, July 4, 1837), p. 311.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 6 in No. 567, Copy of a Letter from James Kennet Dawson (Lower Clarendon, Jamaica, January 4, 1837), p. 246.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 46 in No. 558, Copy of a Letter from Henry Waddington to Sir Lionel Smith (Port Antonio, Portland, September 30, 1836), p. 222.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 52 in No. 558, Copy of a Letter from William Ramsay, J. Richard Hill and G. Ouseley Higgins to Sir Lionel Smith (Spanish Town, October 20, 1836), p. 230.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 52 in No. 558, Copy of a Letter from William Ramsay, J. Richard Hill and G. Ouseley Higgins to Sir Lionel Smith (Spanish Town, October 20, 1836), p. 230.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 22 in No. 575, Copy of a Letter from S. Pryce to C.H. Darling (Trelawny, Jamaica, March 31, 1837), p. 326.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 45 in No. 65, John Harris Report from Santa Cruz District (St Elizabeth, Jamaica, July 4, 1837), p. 311.
BPP, 1837, Part IV, Enclosure 25 in No. 558, Copy of a Report from Walter Finlayson to C.H. Darling (Montego Bay, October 4, 1836), p. 201.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 6 in No. 9, James Williams, A Narrative of Events Since the 1st of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica, p. 147.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Robert Grant, an Apprentice on Southampton; sworn, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Robert Grant, an Apprentice on Southampton; sworn, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Robert Grant, an Apprentice on Southampton; sworn, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Robert Grant, an Apprentice on Southampton; sworn, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Mr. Charles Strachan, Proprietor of Southampton; sworn, pp. 240–41, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Mr. Charles Strachan, Proprietor of Southampton; sworn, pp. 240–41, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Eleanor Angwin, a very old woman, an apprentice at Southampton; sworn, p. 243, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Eleanor Angwin, a very old woman, an apprentice at Southampton; sworn, p. 243, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, William Newby, p. 241, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Ann Dodd, p. 242, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, John Cover, p. 241, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Francis Johnson, p. 241, Enclosure 18 in No. 50—Cases of Old George, of Southampton, and Robert Ferguson, p. 241.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 46 in No. 65, Letter from H. Bourne (Grecian Regent, July 1, 1837), p. 314.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 46 in No. 65, Letter from H. Bourne (Grecian Regent, July 1, 1837), p. 314.
BPP, 1838, Part V, Enclosure 211 in No. 66, Copy of a Despatch from Lord Glenelg to Governor Sir Lionel Smith (Downing Street, February 9, 1838), p. 322.
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