Black people -- Jamaica; Jamaica; Slavery -- Jamaica
“A General List of Negroes on, and belonging to, Worthy Park Plantation,
taken the 1st January 1787.”
The page is divided into three columns, headed respectively, “Names,
Qualifications, and Conditions”; and underneath, “Quashie, Head
Carpenter, Able,” at the top of a long list that is never less than 340
and sometimes rises to 360 names. There were 6 Carpenters, numbering
among them Mulatto Aleck, and 2 learning; there were 2 Sawyers, 1 Joiner
and Cabinet Maker, 1 Blacksmith, Mulatto John, 1 Mason, Mulatto Billy,
and 1 learning, 3 Drivers, 1 man in the Garden who was marked Old and
Infirm, 5 Wain men, 3 Boilers, a Head mule man, and 138 others, ending
with children too young to be of any use.
The names are various, and do not differ very much from those of the
cattle numbered a few pages further on. Prussia, the Head mule man, is
Able, Minuith is Distemper'd, and eight Macs, beginning with MacDonald,
and ending with MacLean, are all Able. Nero is a field-labourer and
Able, and Don't Care, a wain man, is Able. Further on there is a steer
named Why Not? Waller, the Head boiler, is sickly, and Johnston, a
field-labourer, is subject to “Fitts.” Dryden is Able, but Elderly.
Punch and Bacchus are Elderly and Weakly, which seems wrong somehow, and
Ishmael is Infirm and a Runaway. Italy is Able, Spain is Distemper'd,
and Portugal is Weakly. Germany is Old and Weak. Quaco's Jumbo is
subject to Sores, and Creole Cuba's Cuffie is Weakly and a notorious
Runaway. Poor Pope is lame in one hand, and so is Homer, while Kent,
Duke, Guy, Prince, John, Morrice, and James, are “all of no use, being
too young.”
Then we come to the women. There are 141 of them, 64 Field Labourers,
44 of whom are Able. Grace is a Driver and Elderly, and Delia and
Dilligence are both Elderly. Baddo and Creole Betty are Old and Weakly,
Lilly is Elderly and Sickly. Little Dido is “Weakly & Runaway.” Woman is
Field Cook for the Small Gang, Silvia is Nurse to the young Children in
the Field. Luida's Nancy is “Superunuated.” Little Yabba is lame in
her hip, Chloe is Weakly and Worthless. Little Benebah is Runaway and
Worthless, Strumpet is Able, a Runaway--could one expect much from
a woman called by such a name?--and that Whore was also Runaway and
Worthless seems but a confirmation of the old saying about giving a dog
a bad name and hanging him. But Lady, too, is Runaway; perhaps she was
sickly and not equal to the work they expected of her. We may judge that
the writer who recorded those dead-and-gone black labourers was not a
lettered man, for he writes down Psyche, “Sychke.” But Psyche has always
been a difficulty. Miss Maxwell Hall on Kempshot Pen has a cow so named,
and periodically she goes through her cattle with her headman. She keeps
her list and he presents his. Psyche he had written “Sikey,” and the
young lady coming upon it among the “S's” murmured to herself:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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