Sugar in the Blood (27 page)

Juggling the finances of a plantation was a truly onerous business and many planters were perpetually in debt. In part this was because a sugar estate required a substantial initial investment before they could even get up and running; then if anything went wrong, such as a hurricane or a war or a poor crop, the estate owner was forced to hand his property back to his financiers. Indeed, this was how the Burke family had got into the sugar business in the first place. The solution for Robert Cooper was to be careful with his expenditure, curb his debts, and aggressively pursue money owed to him. It seems that he excelled at this diligent administrative work; he had a reputation as a prudent and skilful manager and he ended his career a great deal richer than when he started.

At its most productive, Burkes’ annual crop yielded eighty large hogsheads and around 100,000 pounds of sugar. But the plantation also produced vats of molasses, rum, vegetables and butter. The most valuable asset that a slave owner had, however, was his human stock, and Robert Cooper’s record keeping on them was meticulous. His ledger included the name, sex and date of birth of all the plantation’s slaves, and documented whether the individual was born on the plantation or purchased elsewhere. It listed how much the slave cost and when he or she was purchased; whether the slave worked in a domestic or field capacity; and it specified the slave’s occupation. If any slaves were sold, the register showed their price, the date of the transaction and the name of the purchaser. For the contemporary observer, these slave ledgers
are some of the most disturbing reminders of the slave system: human lives and suffering reduced to notations in an account book like objects or livestock.

Yet many planters argued that their relationship to their workforce was that of a father to his family, that they acted
in loco parentis
to their enslaved “children,” protecting their welfare and teaching them good habits, in particular “
submission to the state, in which it pleased God to place them.” In the American South, for example, some masters insisted on being addressed as “father” or “Big Pappy,” and described their slaves as “sons and daughters.” The Caribbean planters in turn frequently referred to “their people,” with all the attendant associations of possessiveness and care.

And indeed, planters were theoretically responsible for their slaves from cradle to grave. On any given day at Burkes, Robert Cooper was besieged by a seemingly endless series of requests and duties in his official capacity as head of the plantation. There were babies to be named, for example. But even well-meaning planters often did not think to consult the parents in such matters. Matthew Lewis, for example, decreed that a child on his plantation should be named Wellington, “
after the greatest Captain that the world could produce,” supremely unconcerned that the bemused parents probably had no idea who this “hero” was.

Robert Cooper presided over any ritual designed to welcome the newborn. Formal baptisms were not sanctioned by most planters, since many slaves mistakenly believed that it was a step to freedom, but more informal blessings were common. One planter described such an occasion: “
The ceremony was performed with perfect gravity and propriety by all parties … I read a couple of prayers, marked the forehead of the children with the sign of the cross and instead of the concluding prayer, I substituted a wish that God would bless them and make them live to be as good servants to me as I prayed to make me a kind massa to them.”

The slaves’ material needs were also supposed to be met by their owner. The law required Robert Cooper to dispense an annual quota of clothing, which came in the form of a length of linen to make into work clothes as well as a cap and jacket for every man, and a bonnet and a petticoat for each woman. He was also responsible for ordering essential
condiments like salt, and rations of guinea corn, salt fish and dried peas which supplemented what the slaves grew in their allotments. He occasionally dispensed rum to warm them up on rainy and cool days, as a way to keep them going in the long days during harvest and as a reward on official holidays and feast days. Historians estimated that the annual costs for each slave varied from £1 to £4. But their rations were often cut and, for large periods over the history of slavery, the enslaved population suffered extreme malnutrition.

Robert Cooper organized the slaves’ timetables, scheduling their daily work in the fields and factory as well as their free time, which was usually every Sunday and every other Saturday, when they were expected to care for their allotments. He would also decide whether to grant permission for them to indulge in their few leisure activities, such as holding a dance. The slaves also needed Robert Cooper’s authorization to leave the plantation or to carry out other extracurricular activities like the buying and selling of vegetables, livestock and trinkets, which was one of the only ways they had of generating the funds they might use to free themselves.

The planter was also responsible for his slaves’ health. Every Monday morning, Robert Cooper (or Mary, since some planters delegated this task to their wives) walked over to the hospital (or “sickhouse” as the slaves preferred to call it), where they surveyed a line of men and women claiming to be suffering from numerous complaints. It was his duty to examine them and decide who was genuinely ill and who was simply malingering. The planters’ behaviour towards their slaves’ bodies was often shockingly intrusive. Some would examine their slaves’ private parts and note their peculiarities, personally applying poultices as well as removing their tapeworms.

Robert Cooper employed a doctor to visit the hospital weekly and treat ill slaves. If the physician was required to do any unusual or extra work—for example, performing an amputation—he expected to be paid extra. He also charged more for treating white patients, since he gave them more careful attention. But there was no way to check a physician’s qualifications once they had arrived in the colonies, and many of them were quacks whose remedies—purges, poultices, bloodletting and enemas—were more dangerous than efficacious. Kenneth Kiple, a leading authority on West Indian medical history, wrote that
“
the slaves would probably have been better off with their own practitioners, for white medicine in the West Indies was, to put it charitably, of low quality.”

As Robert Cooper was expected to be there at the beginning of the slaves’ lives, so he was expected to be there at the end. As slaves aged beyond their capacity to work, the planter was expected to feed, clothe and maintain them until their death, and then ensure a proper burial.

But all these obligations were, in reality, optional. While planters endlessly lamented the burden of having to care for their slaves, the truth was that many of them consistently failed to live up to that “sacred obligation.” For example, they were often less than scrupulous in caring for young babies. In the early years of slavery, before there was any interest in maintaining slave numbers through natural increase, many planters saw children as a nuisance and were known to dash their heads against walls lest their mothers become distracted from work. In direct response to the abolitionist pressure and the anticipated end of the slave trade, the Barbadian planters had by the 1790s adopted amelioration measures or pro-natalist policies to increase childbirth on the plantations. But planters often neglected the maintenance of the slave quarters and failed to provide the slaves with clothing; hence the frequent observations of visitors to the islands of “half naked slaves dressed only in rags.” In times of scarcity the first group to suffer was the slaves, whose limited rations were cut to the bone in order that the planter’s table remain as lavish as ever.

Many also reneged on that final and most sombre duty: the care of the elderly and the dying. Some planters simply threw ageing slaves off the plantation, leaving them to spend their last days begging on the streets in the capital. One Jamaican planter flouted this convention in particularly brutal style. “
It was his constant practice,” wrote a neighbour:

An army officer stationed in Barbados reported a similar case:

When Robert Cooper wasn’t working there were relatively few distractions. The literature then available in the colonies tended to be of poor quality. Bookshops were rare and their stock tended to be potboilers with racy plots and limited literary merit. Though the island was well served for newspapers, they were often rather thin affairs, printed on coarse paper and designed to impart practical information rather than fulfil any intellectual considerations. The foreign news was lifted directly from the English papers, while the other editorial content focused primarily on the misdeeds of local politicians, described in lurid and vitriolic terms. The rest of the pages were dominated by advertisements selling horses or bolts of cloth and, of course, slaves: “
To be sold a mulatto man, a compleat taylor and sadler, understands a butler’s place very well, is a capital groom and can drive a carriage; also two healthy young girls, all the same property and sold for no fault whatever.”

Plantation life also tended to be isolated and insular. The indifferent quality of the roads of that era meant that travel was nowhere near as quick and easy as it is today. Time too passed at a different pace. The fastest of all expeditions took place at a gallop and most were taken at the stately trot of a phaeton or buggy, so any journey, even on such a small island, was a serious undertaking. Like most planters, therefore, Robert Cooper lived in relative seclusion, passing the days alone with his family, a handful of white employees and his slaves. The “loneliness
of plantation life” was a recognized syndrome throughout the sugar islands, as a letter written by one depressed planter to his brother in France demonstrates: “nowhere does the
time pass more slowly or with so much suffering.”

What cultural events that did occur—plays, recitals and dance performances—were concentrated in the capital, Bridgetown, or in bigger towns like Oistins or Speightstown. But for Creoles like Robert Cooper their popularity was eclipsed by the decadent and debauched distractions available in these urban centres. As in George Ashby’s day, Bridgetown was one of the Caribbean’s most lively locations. Soldiers, sailors and sundry other visitors flocked to its bars, brothels and taverns, where hundreds of ravishing black and mulatto women were dedicated to the art of giving pleasure to the visitors. Alongside the prostitution and drunkenness, they brawled and sometimes duelled. Gambling was widespread and they bet on everything: cock-fights and dogs and especially cards, and there were legendary tales of daughters sold into marriage or entire plantations changing hands during a single night at the tables.

Otherwise, Robert Cooper devoted his leisure time to pursuits that were also typical of his caste. He became a member of the Christ Church Vestry, the organization that controlled local affairs. Since it was an elected position chosen by local grandees, his inclusion was a mark of his growing visibility among the local planter community. Robert Cooper also became passionately involved with the local militia. Founded in the 1630s, this region-wide organization was designed to protect the colonies against both slave revolts and external invasion. Every free man between the ages of sixteen and sixty was expected to serve; only clergymen were exempt. But its role was more than martial. Becoming a member of the militia was a rite of passage for the island’s young men, and one’s ability to rise up through its ranks was a badge of social status. Favouritism was rife and strings were aggressively pulled to advance militia careers. Robert Cooper, who had joined the Christ Church branch of the organization in his youth, tenaciously climbed the ranks until he reached the top echelons of its hierarchy alongside the island’s most prominent planters. At their regular monthly meetings, where they drilled and practised their marksmanship, Robert Cooper made some of his closest friendships and his most important contacts.

Occasionally, too, the Ashbys hosted or were invited to lunches, picnics, suppers or trips to the races. There were balls at Government House where guests danced to the accompaniment of a slave orchestra or strolled over torch-lit lawns, taking refreshments and watching fireworks. If these entertainments were inevitably sumptuously catered and set in beautiful tropical surroundings, they were also boring. For the Creole community was not famous for its interest in cultural or intellectual affairs. Indeed the “Creole repugnance for learning” was legendary and the phrase “as ignorant as a Creole” was widely repeated during this era. One visitor who was subjected to a planter’s monologue on sugar—the boilers and bagasse (the fibrous matter left after the juice has been pressed out of the cane), the state of the market and the impact of the weather—feared she would faint with boredom. Despite its pretensions, Barbados was like all the Caribbean colonies, a maledominated laager whose crude manners and paucity of conversation led one traveller to conclude: “
It is a sad society that of the Creoles.”

These negative characterizations inevitably annoyed the local whites greatly. While planters like Robert Cooper saw themselves as businessmen attempting to make a living in dangerous and precarious circumstances, at the same time they realized that visitors observed their society with a mixture of morbid curiosity and revulsion; and that these hostile perceptions would be seized upon by the abolitionists. They also knew that these scornful outsiders would return to “civilization,” ready to bemoan the white islanders’ lack of refinement and the corruption brought on by their proximity to heathens. Over time, therefore, the Creoles turned in on themselves, protecting their traditions and growing ever more clannish. Feeling profoundly misunderstood by outsiders, the community became fiercely independent, pugnacious, even a bit paranoid. And indeed, their way of life would prove to be unsustainable, for the times were irrevocably changing.