The Sugar Barons (74 page)
24. Jamaica: Rich and Poor
he was worth nearly £3,000 at the time of his death: Burnard, | |
some 35 worth more than £1500. Walvin, | |
he only got three or four hours’ sleep out of 24: Moreton, | |
‘a dull, cheerless, drudging life’: Stewart, | |
‘Crakka Juba’: TD, 5 February 1758. | |
Patrick May, was said to be ‘in his house all day, drunk’: ibid., 23 May 1763. | |
‘Yesterday afternoon John Groves like a madman amongst the Negroes’: ibid., 6 January 1761. | |
Ten per cent of those who held wealth owned two thirds of the island’s total: Burnard, | |
from 17 shillings per hundred weight in 1733 to 43 shillings in 1747: Deerr, | |
By 1750, nearly half of the sugar imported into the UK came from Jamaica, which also had the most productive mills: Hall, | |
‘not only the richest but the most considerable colony at this time under the government of Great Britain’: Browne, | |
worth between 20 and 30 times as much as the same man in Britain or North America: Burnard, | |
In 1774, per capita wealth in England was around £42; in Jamaica for a white man it was more than £1,000. Brown, | |
in Jamaica the average sugar plantation in 1750 had some 200: Burnard, | |
‘While we have so profitable a mine above ground’: Deerr, | |
owning about the same again, spread across 12 of Jamaica’s parishes: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 40. | |
‘frequently Lyes with Black women’: Craton and Walvin, | |
‘rich a man as William Beckford, for possessions but in debt’: TD, 1 September 1757. | |
‘High Living’: John Fuller to Rose Fuller, 10 August 1733, Crossley and Saville, | |
‘Mary Johnson Rose of J’ca a free mulatto woman formerly my housekeeper’: | |
‘Abundance of Business’: Leslie, | |
was rich enough to be lending money to Richard Beckford: Crossley and Saville, | |
‘surprising to see the number of Coaches and Chariots which are perpetually plying’: Leslie, | |
Dresden ruffles, silver buckles and expensive belts and swords: J. Arch. Inventories, Book 36, 1756: Thomas Thompson, | |
‘and appear with as good a Grace’: Leslie, | |
‘extraordinary good Actors’: ibid., 27. | |
‘the noblest and best edifice of the kind’: Long, | |
‘suffered to decay’: ibid., 2:3. | |
some 1,200 free blacks or mulattoes: ibid., 2:103. | |
‘incredible number of … grog shops’: Moreton, | |
‘The People seem all sickly’: Leslie, | |
153 pregnancies, which produced 121 live births Burnard, | |
‘An Account of negroes and Stock dead’: William Mackinen to Redwood, 24 March 1757, LNHA. | |
‘One, two, tree’: Renny, | |
the proportionate, few whites died at an even greater rate: Burnard, ‘“The Countrie Continues Sicklie”’, 71. | |
20 per cent of the town’s population dying every year: ibid., 53. | |
‘great charnel house’: ibid., 50. | |
‘Creolians … seldom live to be above five and thirty years’: Buisseret, | |
compared to two million in the Thirteen Colonies: O’Shaughnessy, | |
in the same time the population of some of the North American colonies had increased tenfold: Burnard: ‘A Failed Settler Society’, 64. | |
‘They console themselves, however, that they can enjoy more of the real existence here in one hour’: Long, | |
‘keep late hours at night: lounges a-bed in the morning’: ibid., 1:375. | |
as much alcohol per white as was consumed per capita in the United States in 1974: Burnard, ‘A Failed Settler Society’, 68. | |
‘the appearance of being ten years older than they really are’: Waller, | |
he had lost to disease two wives and 16 children out of 21: Samuel Martin to Charles Baldwin 22 Feb. 1776 BL Add. MSS 41351, fol. 65. | |
‘anarchic individualism’ of the West Indies: Burnard, ‘A Failed Settler Society’, 72. | |
‘The frequent occurrence’ of death: quoted in Brown, | |
of the 136 who had arrived on a ship 16 months earlier, 122 were dead: TD, 26 April 1759. | |
‘No Sett of Men are more unconcerned at [death’s] Approach’: Leslie, | |
‘lack of public spirit’: Long, | |
dwarfing the number of boys from North America by a factor of about seven: O’Shaughnessy, | |
preferring ‘gaming’ to ‘the Belles Letteres’: Leslie, | |
‘carried no Gods with them’, going instead into ‘the wilderness of mere materialism’: J. R. Seeley, quoted in Beckles, | |
‘have built in those islands as if we were but passing visitors’: Froude, | |
‘animates their industry and alleviates their misfortune’: Edwards, | |
‘incessantly sigh for a return’: quoted in O’Shaughnessy, | |
One third of Jamaican plantation owners were absentees by the 1740s, two thirds by 1800: ibid., 4–5. | |
In St Kitts, half the property was owned by absentees in 1745: Pitman, |
25. The Sugar Lobby
Herald | |
‘Sugar, sugar, hey? – all | |
trebled between 1700 and 1740, and had doubled again by 1770: Sheridan, | |
as invented by Rebecca Price: Shephard, | |
‘Sugar is so generally in use’: Long, | |
12 to 16 pounds of sugar be used with every pound of tea: Sheridan, | |
willing to accept factory discipline in order to afford their luxury stimulants: Davis, | |
‘Among the lower orders … industry can only be found’: Sheridan, | |
importing more than twice the amount as much more populous France: O’Shaughnessy, | |
British livelihoods in the West Indies colonies depended on it: | |
‘their rum is excellent of which they consume large quantities’: Sheridan, | |
rum imports into England and Wales had risen to two million gallons: ibid., 347–8. | |
‘a constant Mine whence Britain draws prodigious Riches’: Leslie, | |
‘necessary appendage to our present refined manner of living’: Browne, | |
‘the principal cause of the rapid motion which now agitates the universe’: Williams, | |
‘that excited the indignation of every honest man who became acquainted with the transaction’: Cundall, | |
Francis owned lands in Hampshire and Surrey, as well as a house in Albermarle Street London: Sheridan, ‘Planter and Historian’, 41. | |
‘there were scarcely ten miles together throughout the country’: Sheridan, | |
stocked with the best furniture, objects and paintings that money could buy: Alexander, | |
‘where expense has reached its utmost limits in furniture and ornaments’: Warner, | |
‘with the appearance of immense riches, almost too tawdrily exhibited’: Climenson, | |
‘there was no such thing as a borough to be had now’: Sheridan, | |
‘West Indians’, able to ‘turn the balance on which side they please’: quoted in Penson, | |
‘West Indies vastly outweigh us of the Northern Colonies’: Franklin to Collinson, 30 April 1764, quoted in Beer, | |
his ‘intelligent and perfect’ ‘comprehension of its essential interest’: Long, | |
‘which he could not parry’: Cumberland, | |
‘hence somewhat out of place in City epicurism’: Redding, | |
‘He is of a very agreeable disposition, but begins already to think of being master of a great fortune’: Lees-Milne, | |
such as that of 1758 against French slave forts in Africa: Hotblack, | |
‘great guns fired out at sea’: TD, 16 February 1757. | |
‘plundered Mr Thos. White’s house’: ibid., 7 December 1762. | |
only 3,000 men still in action out of an original force of nearly 15,000: Rodger, | |
several prisoners had been taken by their cruisers four times in less than two months: Stout, | |
‘sewed in the hinder part of his britches or drawers’: ibid., 17. | |
‘a lawless set of smugglers’: Beer, | |
‘illegal and most pernicious trade’: Taylor and Pringle, | |
‘the large supplies they have lately received from their good friends the New England flag of truce vessels’: Stout, | |
he was taken to Williamsburg: JCBL, Obadiah Brown Records, Series IV, Maritime records, Sub-Series F: Brigantine | |
In fact the | |
‘they Looked on me as an Enemy and Trator to my Country’: letter of 26 August 1758, JCBL, Obadiah Brown Records, Series IV, Maritime records, Sub-Series F: Brigantine |
