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Women who played a role in the emancipation movement in Jamaica West indies and elsewhere, The untold stories.
http://www.geni.com/projects/Jamaican-Planters
http://www.geni.com/projects/Jamaica-Out-Of-many-One-People
Rebel women
women played non-military, supportive roles. Strategic manoeuvring was assigned to the women: supplying water; acting as guides to provision grounds; helping to guard captives; poisoning; acting as look-outs; even as go between in the final stage of the rebellion. It was Colonel Gardiner's wife, for example, who was sent to approach the British lieutenant to inform him that Gardiner, Sam Sharpe's military commander, wanted to give himself up, once he could negotiate terms for his life. On livestock farms involved in the rebellion, women cooked food for the bands of rebels who stopped there for revictualling purposes. To what extent were women involved in the dismantlement of the slave system?
Women were very much involved in the dismantlement of the slave system and were either enslaved or missionaries. They both played huge parts in the dismantlement of the slave system.
The enslaved women rarely rebelled with physical violence; they rebelled in the following ways. They would use their menstrual cycle as an excuse to be pardoned from work. Mothers would practice weaning, meaning that they would carry nursing their children longer than needed. In 1824, a law was passed that women were not to be flogged, therefore, women took advantage of this and became rowdy and rude to overseers and drivers. Domestic female slaves would slip poison into their master’s food and were familiar with herbs and spices involved in voodoo.
in 1823 that it was a notorious fact that female slaves more often deserved punishment than male, for they used to great effect "that powerful instrument of attack and defence, their tongue." The Commandant was resisting the proposal made at the time by the British Government that the whip should be abolished as a form of punishment for slaves: he felt that only flogging could control their sharp tongues and hot tempers.
•1517: Spaniards bring first African slaves to West Indies sugar cane plantations - Slavery in America: Sugar and Slavery – Molasses to Rum to Slaves •1619: First African slaves arrive in , a mid-Atlantic English colony – World Book: The Slave Trade in Colonial America
Slave women's specialty was to prolong to the maximum, the period they spent as nursing mothers. A slave mother with a suckling infant was by law given extra food allowances and was customarily allowed to turn out to work an hour later, and to leave an hour earlier than other slaves: her baby accompanied her to the field, was tended under the trees by an elderly "nana", and she took regular intervals off from her labours to feed her infant. It became a practice throughout the West Indies for slave women to take an extraordinarily long time to wean their babies: breast feeding among blacks, as a number of witnesses testified to the British One of the crucial factors which eventually helped to put an end to black bondage in the British Caribbean in 1838 was the fact that slavery, as a system of labour, became more and more expensive: it was expensive, because it was unproductive: it was impossible to get maximum work output from forced labour. An important element in this low productivity was the unwillingness of the slave woman to work for the master.
a little fierce young devil of a Miss Whauncia flew at his throat, and endeavoured to strangle him: the agent was obliged to be called in, and, at length, this petticoat rebellion was subdued, and everything went on as usual." (M. G. Lewis: 1834 p. 139). http://www.questia.com/read/104900768?title=1%3a%20The%20African%20...
Women were also involved in the military vanguard in the Jamaican 1832 Rebellion. Many women helped organise rebellions, one of them being Nanny Grigg from the
1816 Barbadian Rebellion led by Bussa. She would encourage the enslaved population to rebel and one of her quotes are, “They were all damn fools to work, for that she would not, as freedom they were sure to get.” The enslaved women also escaped slavery to develop maroon villages. A perfect example would be Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons. She is now celebrated by Jamaica as a national heroine. 1816 Barbadian Rebellion led by Bussa. She would encourage the enslaved population to rebel and one of her quotes are, “They were all damn fools to work, for that she would not, as freedom they were sure to get.” The enslaved women also escaped slavery to develop maroon villages. A perfect example would be Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons. She is now celebrated by Jamaica as a national heroine Women also earned a reputation for being “the more unmanageable element of the work force,” said by Robert Dirks. It is said that women fought harder for freedom as their lives were more affected than the enslaved men, meaning they faced humiliation bJamaican planter,
William Ricketts, of Canaan estate in the parish of Westmoreland, wrote about the care and encouragement which he personally gave to the women who bore children: oth public and private as they were also sexually exploited by planters and overseers. This led to women murdering their “attackers”, committing suicide and to run away.
A Jamaican planter, Matthew Lewis, describes the manufacture of sugar on his Cornwall estate in 1815,
On the 27th October 1831, a female slave, ironically named "Industry" was brought up by her master before the magistrates of Port Royal, Jamaica, for "refusing to work and setting a bad example to other negroes on the property by her contumacious conduct." She was sentenced to two weeks' hard labour in the workhouse. There is no means of knowing whether her confinement was successful
On the 27th October 1831, a female slave, ironically named "Industry" was brought up by her master before the magistrates of Port Royal, Jamaica, for "refusing to work and setting a bad example to other negroes on the property by her contumacious conduct." She was sentenced to two weeks' hard labour in the workhouse. There is no means of knowing whether her confinement was successful in reforming her habits. Matthew Lewis, Dr for example, take fullest advantage of her menstrual processes for absenting herself from work.
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/The-Extent-To-Which-Women-Were/61511...
http://www.questia.com/read/104900768?title=1%3a%20The%20African%20...
the only major uprising on Barbados, which took place in 1816, was formented by a woman
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/allwoman/12276_-Petticoat-...
Nanny http://aes.iupui.edu/rwise/NoteofMonth/matthew_patayFebruary2004Jam...
, Susan, Whaunica Betty, Chrissey, Hago, Juba, Marina, Phibbah (his concubine for 33 years) story of slave owner Thomas Thistlewood, from Lincolnshire
http://www.itzcaribbean.com/history_jamaica_queen_nanny.php
Notes
Post also in plantations--Vineyard Pen, Breadnut Island Pen and Egypt sugar plantation during the years 1751-1786
books
http://womenshistorynetwork.org/blog/?tag=elsa-goveia Women Field Workers in Jamaica During Slavery by Lucille Mathurin Mair
Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. Mary Prince was born in Brackish Pond, Bermuda in 1788. As a child, she was sold to a master
http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/bios/mary_prince.html
http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/specialevents/ach2010/goveia.htm
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=5882e110-b8d4-4e4...