Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 2 (of 2): A full account of the colony and its inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present dayLanaghan, Mrs.
History
Antigua and the Antiguans, Volume 2 (of 2): A full account of the colony and its inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present day
Lanaghan, Mrs.
Antigua -- Description and travel; Antigua -- History
About twenty years ago, a woman of the name of Betsey, belonging
to a highly respectable family, had a dispute with her mistress.
With the feeling of revenge burning at her heart, she carried her
complaint to a friend, who advised her to consult an Obeah man,
and get him to give her _something_. Not having an opportunity of
going herself, or else not wishful of being known, she sent an
old woman of the name of Jenny, an _attachée_ of the yard, to
obtain the deadly potion, the mysterious _something_, as the
negroes generally termed it. The old woman accordingly visited an
Obeah man of the name of John, who gave her a liquid which was to
be administered to her mistress in some of her nourishment, and
which he said would kill her in one minute. This obtained by
Betsey, who, like most of her tribe, was the slave of her
passions, she resolved to lose no time in carrying her plan of
revenge into execution; accordingly, she handed it to the butler,
with whom, it appears, she had formed a _liaison_, and who was
concerned with her in her plot, with injunctions to put it into
whatever liquid her mistress might order. By some means or the
other, a suspicion that all was not right was raised; certain
circumstances were inquired into, and the result was that Betsey
and her accomplices were tried and executed. Old Jenny, the
messenger employed in their dealings with the Obeah man, was
sentenced to work in the street-gang for a certain period. From
her statement at her trial, that the Obeah man, John, told her
the draught would kill her mistress in “one minute,” she ever
after obtained that cognomen from the negroes about the streets.
In the year 1820-30, another murder was committed, the details of
which are as follows:—A person of the name of Brown was living as
overseer upon an estate called Big Deurs, now in possession of
Messrs. Manning and Anderdon. The negroes upon this property had
been for a long time in the habit of pilfering, and in many
instances Mr. Brown had discovered the offenders, which caused
him to be disliked, and determined one among them, more
heartless, perhaps, than the rest, to undertake his destruction.
On Christmas day, Mr. Brown rode to La Roche’s, a neighbouring
estate, and upon his return in the evening, between the hours of
six and seven, he met with his untimely death.
The slave to whom Mr. Brown had rendered himself particularly
obnoxious was named Cambridge, and this man had long lain in wait
for an opportunity of completing his crime, and for the purpose
had sharpened an old copper skimmer, (used in boiling sugar,)
which he thought would prove an effective weapon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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