The following is takes from the book “A History of Antigua” by Brian Dyde (with permission from Barbara Arrindell who holds the copyright.) Pages 147-149.
At the time of the episcopal visit the slaves were under the supervision of two white overseers, ‘one of them a German’, who lived near the castle in ‘a more modern formal farm-house looking building.’ Fed on an endless supply of fresh meat, fish and poultry, cooked and served by a host of servants, with unlimited access to the more attractive female slaves, they had very little to do except to look busy when the manager was around.
John James lived with his family in the castle, where his wife – much to the annoyance of John Osborn, the attorney who looked after all the Codrington estates – felt she required no less than eighteen slaves to act as the family’s personal servants. Two overseers on the spot, and a manager who spent a great deal of time off the island, were hardly enough to supervise the work of more than 400 slaves, to regulate their lives in anything but the most titular fashion, or even to impose a strict discipline.
By this time the island ‘worked’ – that is, produced the salvaged cargoes and the foodstuffs, livestock and other produce for the Codrington estates in Antigua – only because the slaves themselves knew what was wanted, and knew how to do it better than any £80-a-year white drifter who happened to fetch up as an overseer for a year or two. They also knew only too well that, compared with their contemporaries on the Antiguan estates, they were on to a good thing.
‘There are but two white men with myself on the Island, and I frequently leave my Wife & Daughters there without a fastening to the House’, James informed Bethell-Codrington in September 1824: The greater part of the Negroes on Barbuda would lay down their lives to serve me … We haul the seine as often as they like; sometimes 3 or 4 days together with fish are plenty. They have occasionally wild hog and goat meat. Many of them have their own Nets, and scarcely does one of your Vessels go to Antigua without a quantity of Fowls, and salt Fish to sell, and in good season an immense quantity of Potatoes.
Many of them have 10 to 11 acres of land in cultivation the produce of which of course is their own attempts to change this situation were made after James died in August 1826 and John Winter, who until then had managed one of the Antigua estates, was sent to take his place.
By trying as a new broom to impose a stricter discipline and get more work out of the slaves he quickly succeeded in upsetting a community which had led a reasonably contented existence under his predecessor for over twenty years. With only two overseers to back him up he achieved very little other than to provoke widespread recalcitrance, and the correspondence which ensued between him, his superior John Osborn in Antigua, and Bethell-Codrington in England is littered with references to the poor morale and indiscipline of the slaves.
That these troubles were not all-consuming though is borne out in a report Winter sent to England in the middle of 1831, in which Bethell-Codrington was informed that he now had over 500 slaves on the island, an increase of 104 in less than seven years, and that out of the total twenty-eight of them had an average age of seventy-four: ‘One man who has seventy children and grandchildren, and who is more healthy than I and takes a great deal of exercise, he is reputed to be ninety years old.’ Longevity and procreation on this scale had a lot to do with the placid and stress-free existence which most of the slaves managed to lead in spite of Winter’s efforts to ruin it, assisted by the way in which he ordered their non-working hours. ‘The reason why your slaves here increase more than almost any other Island is easily accounted for’, he told Bethell-Codrington in April 1833: They all Live in one Village immediately around my dwelling. They are obliged all to be at home at nights, no drinking, singing or dancing allowed – only during the Xtmas Holidays.
The Women are nearly three to two Men, the latter as soon as they arrive at the stage of Maturity nearly all get Married, the Women being in great Measure prevented from prostituting themselves and injuring their Constitutions by bad practices, bring forth strong healthy athletic children, which are taken every care of … We do not lose one infant in twenty births. It is possible that such a high birth-rate may also have been in some part inspired by the example set by the Anglican missionaries who had been active on the island from soon after Bishop William Coleridge paid his visit in 1825.
The first catechist sent to begin instructing the children in the rudiments of Christianity was a Mr Groot, appointed at a salary ‘pretty well adequate for his support in that place’ of £50 a year. Whether adequate or not it did not keep him or his immediate successors in Barbuda very long, as Winter told the proprietor in 1831: The Bishop … placed a catechist here to instruct the children … instead of shewing the people a good example he is setting them a very bad one, by forming a connection with one of your slaves. [I] have thought it proper he should be removed immediately [as] this is the third and all disgraced themselves.
It is hardly surprising, given the moral failings of such men, the circulation of rumours connected with emancipation, and his own abrasive supervision, that a year later the general discontent turned into a state of insubordination which Winter termed a mutiny. Although this was prevented from turning into anything very serious by sending to Antigua for troops, the slaves remained so aggrieved and apprehensive that in September 1833 Bethell-Codrington sent them an open letter in which he attempted to explain the effect emancipation would have on their condition.
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