"To wed or not to wed?": the struggle to define Afro-Jamaican relationships, 1834-1838.

The 1753 Marriage Act can be considered as a first step in the struggle of the rising middle classes in Britain to impose their norm of marriage on the rest of society. (1) It specified that marriage could only take place with banns or a license and parental permission for minors, before witnesses and an authorized clergyman, and that the event should be recorded in a Marriage Register. (2) One of the main aims of the Act was to change the marital lives of the propertied classes. It not only tried to combat the tendency of children of good families to marry contrary to the wishes of their parents but also to protect rich heirs and heiresses from being seduced into a clandestine or runaway marriage with their social or economic inferiors. By the end of the eighteenth century, the propertied classes had come to accept the middle classes' norm of marriage, that is a fully legal and indissoluble marriage in which the couple lived under the same roof, was faithful, and occupied separate spheres and exercised distinct roles. After the turn of the century, they joined the middle classes in their efforts to extend this norm to the lower orders of society. (3) It was largely economic self-interest that underpinned this joint effort. The industrial middle class, for example, hoped that a rise in the marriage rate of the lower orders would lead to an increase in the population. The latter was deemed essential for the future of their economic enterprises as it guaranteed them not only a large supply of labour but also an increased demand for their products. Both groups also hoped that a more stable society would result from the lower classes' adoption of the middle-class marriage ideal. They believed that if the lower classes would make their unions legal and adopt the other attributes, in particular monogamy and the exercise of distinct gender roles, that there would follow a drastic reduction in those lower class vices which upset the stability of society, such as prostitution. (4)

Like so many other contemporary discourses, the discourse about marriage gradually found its way to the periphery, that is British colonial subjects were like their metropolitan counterparts encouraged to conform their relationships to the middle-class ideal. Hence efforts were made in the debate about slavery in the British Caribbean to measure the slaves' relational lives against the metropolitan ideal. (5) Contrary to slaves in the Antebellum south, slaves in the British Caribbean could legally marry, that is the slave laws recognised a marriage performed by an Anglican minister as 'valid in law.' This marriage far from resembled the reciprocal, legal and voluntary contract that couples signed in the metropolitan society. It not only lacked many of the rights and duties stipulated in the metropolitan contract but was also not performed in front of two witnesses. The most striking difference, however, was that a slave couple needed written permission from the owner or if he did not reside on the plantation, the overseer. This and the fact that they had to pay a small fee and undergo a detailed examination by the minister largely explain why so few slaves opted for what is generally referred to as a formal marriage. In Jamaica, for instance, the Anglican Church performed 3,600 marriages between 1808 and 1822 amidst a slave population of 330,000. Most slaves preferred a nonconformist marriage, which required only proof of having been baptised. The Moravians, for example, performed 189 marriages at three of their Jamaican stations between 1827 and 1834. (6)

Two of the main participants in the debate about slavery were keen to see an increase in slave marriages: abolitionists and absentee planters, that is those who owned plantations in the Caribbean but resided in Britain. Their arguments echoed those presented by the propertied and middle classes in the metropolitan society. The abolitionists, for example, were convinced that marriage would improve the slaves' moral behaviour and also prepare them for full freedom. They pointed out that it would inculcate in them virtues, such as soberness and industry, which were expected of inhabitants of free, capitalist societies. They were furthermore of the opinion that a slave marriage could only become "the source of all domestic comfort and social improvement" if it conformed to the metropolitan ideal. (7) Hence they strongly criticised the fact that although regarded as legal, formal slave marriages were not protected against dissolution. Not only could one of the partners abandon the marriage, a planter could also at any time separate a married couple by selling one of the partners. They also objected to the various plantation practices that prevented married couples from living under the same roof, being faithful, occupying separate spheres, and exercising distinct gender roles. For economic and practical reasons, absentee planters did not want to offer slaves the full version of the metropolitan ideal. They were of the opinion that a monogamous and permanent marriage that allowed the partners to carry out distinct gender roles but which was not necessarily legal or co-resident could achieve their aims of increasing the slave population and changing its habits so as to make it more hard-working and docile. (8)

With a few exceptions, resident planters did not favour slave marriage, especially the formal kind. Their attitude was largely informed by the connotation of marriage with freedom and equality. An Anglican marriage was the only legal contract that slaves could engage in. Like all social contracts, it presupposed a degree of individual autonomy and rights. Thus by exchanging obedience and protection, a formal marriage affirmed the slaves' individuality and humanity. (9) In doing so, it undermined the resident planters' project of increasing their wealth which was completely based on the idea that slaves were nothing but chattel and were fully under their control. It is not surprising then to find island legislatures, which were largely made up of resident planters, strongly objecting to the Imperial Government's repeated requests in the mid-1820s to adopt measures to increase the formal slave marriage rate, such as "exempting from future labour in the field, the mother of a given number of children born in wedlock." The Jamaican House of Assembly, for instance, only adopted a clause to increase the formal marriage rate after it had been dissolved by the Governor. The clause did little to increase the formal marriage rate as it did away with the marriage fee but kept firmly in place the most pressing obstacle to formal marriage: written permission. (10)

The 1831-32 slave revolt in Jamaica and the abolitionist campaign that followed it convinced the Imperial Government that emancipation could no longer be averted. It set up a Parliamentary Committee that inquired into the state of slavery and reported on the best way to free the slaves. It took, however, another massive abolitionist campaign before the Government passed the Abolition of Slavery Act (hereafter, Imperial Abolition Act) in August 1833. This Act, which was a mixture of various plans put forward between May and August by members of the Colonial Office and the Cabinet, set aside a special fund of [pounds sterling]20 million as compensation to the West India planters and stipulated that from August 1834 onwards all children under six would be free, while the other slaves would be apprenticed to their former masters for a period of four to six years, depending on whether they were domestics or field slaves. The Apprenticeship System had to ensure a peaceful transition from slavery to a free-labour economy. Based on the assumption that a desire for luxury could replace the work-or-starve incentive, the Act included provisions that had to make the ex-slaves discontent with a mere level of self-subsistence and expand their material aspirations. For example, it stipulated that ex-slaves would be free labourers for one-fourth of the week, during which time they could earn wages by selling their labour or work on their provision grounds, that is the half acre of land on which they grew most of their staple foods and which was usually located at some distance from the plantation. The administration of the System was given to a corps of Special Magistrates (hereafter, S.M.s), recruited from outside the planting class and paid by Great Britain. They were to stand between the planters and the apprentices and provide a basis for mutual confidence that would last beyond the period of Apprenticeship. (11) This administration met the wishes of the Colonial Office and the abolitionists. The former was eager to see that the colonies continued to enrich the mother country. The work of the S.M.s would enable the continuation of plantation production upon full freedom as they taught, mostly through punishments, apprentices to fulfil their labour duties and planters to become fair employers. The abolitionists hoped that by giving S.M.s. the weighty task of punishing apprentices who failed to carry out their duties, the Apprenticeship System would free the slaves from arbitrary, personal and physical dominion, while at the same time promoting their self-discipline, individual responsibility and human betterment. (12)

Considering that the framers of the Abolition Act aimed to turn the slaves into free-wage labourers and that they were exposed to a discourse of marriage which argued that society as a whole would be better off, economically and socially, if the working classes adopted the middle-class marriage ideal, one would expect the Abolition Act to contain provisions that would facilitate an increase in the formal marriage rate and enable apprentices to conform their relationships to the metropolitan, middle-class ideal. One would also expect similar provisions in the local abolition acts that the island legislatures had to draw up to give effect to the Abolition Act. The planters and other members in these legislatures, whose livelihoods depended not simply on the continuation of the plantation system after August 1834 but also on a sustained level of output, could considerably gain from an increase in marriages. As mentioned, the Apprenticeship System took away the planters' power to punish their workers. As a result, an incentive other than the whip had to be found to make apprentices work as hard as during slavery but one which also had to ensure that they would stay on the plantations as waged labourers upon full freedom in 1840. A marriage which lived up to the metropolitan ideal could help to instil such an incentive in the apprentices, mainly because it gave husbands and wives distinct roles. To live up to his role as the provider of the family, an apprenticed husband would, for example, use his one-fourth of the week to raise food on the provision grounds or hire himself out to obtain the money necessary to procure clothing and other items for his wife and children. (13)

This study concentrates on Jamaica, as contemporary assessments of the workings of the Apprenticeship System predominantly provided evidence relating to this island. (14) Its main aim is to determine whether the Imperial Government and the Jamaican planting class advocated the metropolitan marriage ideal. It tries to achieve this first of all by analysing those provisions in the Imperial and local Abolition Act that affected the ability of the apprentices to live up to the attributes of the ideal. And secondly, by examining not only the implementation of these provisions on the estates but also a number of legal and extra-legal practices adopted by planters after August 1834 that affected the relational lives of the apprentices. A further aim is to test a thesis put forward in the recent scholarship on the Apprenticeship System. By concentrating on the experiences of the apprentices rather than on the policymakers in the metropolitan society and the planters in the colonies, recent studies have argued that the Apprenticeship System was "slavery by another name." (15) This study tries to see whether Afro-Jamaicans experienced a deterioration in their conditions after August 1834 by comparing the ability of the slaves to live up to the metropolitan marriage ideal with that of the apprentices.

The study is divided into four parts. The first sketches the relational lives of the slaves. It indicates that both plantation practices and the slaves' African past led to unions which reflected only a few attributes of the metropolitan ideal. The second part analyses the Imperial and the local Abolition Act. The third part concentrates on the level of the plantations. It makes use of statements by apprentices to illustrate that planters did not always interpret the provisions in the local Abolition Act to the letter and that this as well as new work and punishment practices, made it difficult for apprentices to live up to the metropolitan ideal. In 1837, Governor Lionel Smith ordered S.M.s Daughtrey and Gordon to examine the conditions in the workhouse of St. Ann's. The S.M.s had to ascertain the truth regarding allegations of abuse in this workhouse made in a pamphlet published by the abolitionists, entitled 'A Narrative of Events since the First of August 1834' by James Williams (1837). (16) Although the statements of the fifty apprentices interviewed by Daughtrey and Gordon concentrate on the conditions in the workhouse, they do provide valuable information about life on the plantations. Another important source of information that the third part relies on are the quarterly reports that the S.M.s had to submit to the Governor and correspondence between the Governor and the Colonial Office. These indicate most clearly that the Colonial Office gradually tried to persuade the planting class to recognize the apprentices' right to conform their relations to the metropolitan ideal. The last part is a conclusion which tries to explain first of all why the Imperial Government and the Jamaican planting class did little to enable apprentices to live up to the metropolitan ideal and secondly, why in spite of all the rhetoric of rights and freedom, the Apprenticeship System ended up as a system that was not markedly different from slavery.

I

Following the example of Americans scholars of slavery, such as Herbert Gutman, historians of Caribbean slavery wrote in the 1970s and 1980s extensively on the nature of the slave family. Their studies concluded that family life was the norm for Caribbean slaves and that the nuclear household was the most common family type. Barry Higman, for instance, found that half of the couples on three Jamaican estates formed a nuclear unit, consisting of a man, a woman and their children, which was not necessarily a co-resident unit. (17) Higman concluded furthermore that few slave relationships were solemnized. As indicated in the foregoing, a blessing by an Anglican minister did not guarantee the stability of a slave marriage. Until 1827, a formally married couple could as easily be separated by sale as any other couple. That year, the House of Assembly adopted, as a result of pressure by the Imperial Government, an amendment to the slave law that stipulated that "families of slaves levied on are not to be separated." As it did not, as in some other colonies, prohibit the separation of husbands from wives by sale, gift or bequest, many slaves experienced in the years leading up to the Apprenticeship System the separation from their loved ones. In case one of the partners was sold to a distant plantation, the relationship usually broke up. (18)

It was, however, not only planter practices that led to the break-up of slave relationships. Slaves were of the opinion that if a couple did not get along, it was better to separate. Planter and historian Edward Long described in his The History of Jamaica (1774) a ceremony that slaves used to 'celebrate' a divorce. The cotta, that is the circular pad of plantation leaves used to carry things on the head, was cut in two with each party taking half. (19) The slaves' custom of easy divorce was a carry-over from Africa, facilitated by numerous plantation practices, including the practice of separation by sale. Although the slave community did not object to the breaking-up of relations, it did expect the partners, especially the women, to be faithful. (20)

The planters' practice of separating couples when in debt partly explains why between 30 and 50 per cent of all Jamaican slave couples did not co-reside. (21) This high rate of relationships across estates (hereafter, abroad relations) was also the result of slave customs and preferences. Many slave men preferred a partner who lived on another estate so that they would not have to witness their daily abuse, especially their flogging in a semi-naked state before a large congregation of slaves and estate officers. Unequal sex ratios on the estates furthermore forced some slave men and women to seek partners on neighbouring estates. This was especially the case in the years immediately preceding and following the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, when a plantation sex ratio of 118 slave men per 100 slave women was not uncommon. (22) Courtship and marriage rules in the slave community also led many slaves to look for a partner beyond their own plantation. The slave community, for example, not only forbade slaves to marry their siblings but also banned cousin-mating. (23) The numerous occasions for slaves to fall in love with somebody from a neighbouring estate, such as the Sunday market on which slaves from surrounding plantations sold their excess produce or the dances that were held in the slave quarters on Saturday night and during the Christmas holidays, also account for the high rate of abroad relations. Most abroad couples lived only a mile or two apart. They tried to see as much of each other as possible. To visit one another, they needed a ticket written by their owner or overseer, stating the time of departure, the destination and intended arrival back on the plantation. (24) Some planters and overseers were reluctant to give permission, especially if the slave in question was a male as the offspring of his abroad relation belonged to his partner's master. The majority, however, seldom refused to grant permission as they realised that such a course of action could trigger slave resistance. Evidence suggests that slaves in an abroad relation asked for a ticket to visit their loved ones during the weekend but that they visited them often clandestinely during the week. (25)

A small proportion of the relationships on the eve of the Apprenticeship System were mixed, that is they consisted of an enslaved and a free person. The latter was usually a free black or coloured person. There are no statistics available that indicate the extent of such mixed relations. It can be assumed, however, that their number increased in the two decades preceding the abolition of slavery, as natural increase and new legislation which made manumission cheaper and easier to obtain led to a significant increase in the freedmen population, from 7.4 per cent of the total population in 1810 to 10.6 in 1830. (26) The free partner usually desired to purchase his/her partner's freedom because they would then be able to obtain a fully legal marriage, that is a marriage similar to that of the white islanders, rather than the semi-legal marriage allowed under the slave law. (27) Few, however, achieved this aim as planters set very high prices for manumission. The prices were especially high for women because planters would not only lose their labour but also that of their children, as children took the status of the mother. (28) This, however, was not the only difficulty faced by free-enslaved couples. Planters also made it difficult for them to live under the same roof. While some simply forbade free persons to reside on their estates, others allowed them to live in their enslaved partner's hut in return for a high rent. (29)

Both pro-slavery writers and abolitionists suggested that many slave women, including those who had a long-term partner, had sexual relations with white men. The former suggested that most interracial sex was based on consent. They pointed out, for example, that many slave women were the concubines of overseers and bookkeepers. The abolitionists argued that interracial sexual encounters were based on force. In their fictive and non-fictive writings, they provided numerous, often very vivid, accounts of sexual abuse. Robert Badge, for instance, described in his novel Man As He Is (1792) the rape of a domestic slave woman by both her owner and his white servant and her subsequent suicide. Until the late 1980s, many scholars supported the abolitionists' account of interracial sex. (30) More recently, however, it has been argued that a substantial number of slave women actively sought a long-term relationship with a white man in the hope that it would give them material favours, better treatment and would enhance their own and their children's chances of freedom. (31) What has thus far not been disputed, however, is the extent of interracial sex in the island. The number of coloured slaves is usually presented as evidence. In 1817, for instance, 36,000 slaves were listed as coloured. As there were only 30,000 whites (predominantly men) on a total slave population of 300,000 at the time, it has been argued that there was a very high degree of sex across the racial boundaries. (32) Scholars furthermore agree upon the omni-presence of the threat of sexual abuse in slave women's lives. Sexual abuse could take various forms, ranging from bribing slave women into having sex to outright rape. Whatever form, sexual abuse placed an enormous strain on interslave relations. If slave men tried to defend their partner's virtue by attacking the abuser or by complaining about the abuse to the planter or overseer, they ran the risk of a severe punishment. Many planters and overseers did not hesitate to sell such a recalcitrant slave to a distant plantation. Slave men then who did not want to risk the break-up of their relationship had no choice but to endure their partner's abuse. They were furthermore often forced to raise the offspring of the forced sexual encounter which added further strain to the relationship.

Until 1826, Jamaican slave women were not protected against the more drastic forms of sexual abuse. In that year the House of Assembly introduced the death sentence for the rape of female slaves. (33) Its aim was not to reduce the extent of miscegenation in the island but to convince the Government and abolitionists at home that the Assembly was willing to ameliorate the condition of the slaves. (34) That not a single white Jamaican appeared in court on account of rape after 1826 should not be seen as an indication that the Act proved to be an effective means to discourage interracial sex. It reflects above all the complicated and lengthy process that slave women had to go through in order to have a white man convicted of rape--a process which offered not only a small chance of success but also involved the risk of corporal punishment if the complaint was proven ungrounded. (35)

Thus as a result of the provisions in the slave law and plantation practices as well as slave customs and preferences, slave relationships did not closely correspond to the metropolitan ideal. Most relationships were not legal or indissoluble and only half were co-resident. Furthermore, the partners did not occupy their 'proper' sphere. Able-bodied slave women spent most of their waking hours in the field or the planter's house rather than in their huts looking after their family's interests. This lack of gendered spheres, however, did not prevent slave or mixed couples from exercising distinct gender roles. While slave men cultivated the vegetable garden surrounding the hut, their partners sold the excess produce that they had together raised on their provision ground. Even those who did not live under the same roof tried to display this attribute. Most men took provisions, such as fish or yam, to their abroad partners, while they in return cooked them a nice dinner or mended their clothing. (36)

As for the attribute of monogamy, recent demographic studies have concluded that after the abolition of the slave trade, few slaves lived in polygamous unions. (37) The monogamy practised by many Jamaican slaves in the early part of the nineteenth century, however, differed from that in the metropolitan society. Their monogamy was a sequential monogamy, that is they did not spend their adult life in one but several successive relationships. (38) The slave community's acceptance of sequential monogamy, and also premarital sex, explains why so many slave women had their first child with one man and the rest of their children several years later with another man with whom they settled for the rest of their lives. (39) The following part will determine whether the Apprenticeship System aimed to prevent sequential monogamy and other 'irregular' features of slave relationships and enable the ex-slaves to acquire those attributes of the metropolitan marriage ideal that they partially or wholly lacked, such as legality and indissolubility.

II

In December 1833, the House of Assembly passed an act (hereafter, First Jamaica Act) which had to carry the Imperial Abolition Act into practical operation. Because the Colonial Office was so anxious to get the cooperation of the planting class in establishing a free-labour society, it approved of this Act in spite of 'various serious defects', such as a clause that allowed planters to imprison apprentices on their estates. It urged the Assembly to remedy such shortcomings by means of an Amending Act. The latter was passed in July 1834 and approved by Governor Sligo in January 1835. It corrected several of the 'defects' but also included provisions that further restricted the rights of the apprentices. The expiration of the Amending Act in December 1835 led to the revival of the First Jamaica Act. In November 1834, the Assembly passed a third Act which was disallowed by the Colonial Office on the grounds that it violated both the spirit and letter of the Abolition Act. It, for example, reintroduced a system of punishment specifically forbidden by the Imperial Abolition Act: the flogging of women. (40)

The Imperial and the local Abolition Act (that is the First Jamaica Act and the Amending Act) did not greatly enhance the apprentices' ability to legalise their relationships as they, like the slave laws, recognized only Anglican marriages as legal. They did, however, make Anglican marriages easier to obtain because they abolished the main obstacles: written permission, the fee and the detailed examination by the minister. (41) This had some effect, as a total of 1,724 Anglican marriages were performed in the first year of the Apprenticeship System. (42) In December 1836, the Assembly adopted a more radical measure to increase legal unions amongst apprentices: recognizing nonconformist marriages as legal. This was not triggered by the planters' economic self-interest but by pressure exerted on them by the Colonial Office. In November 1835, planter Henry Shirley introduced a bill in the Assembly to "enable the dissenting clergy to celebrate marriages." The bill was rejected on the grounds that the initiative for such a bill could only come from the Imperial Government and that it was detrimental to the interests of the Established Church in the island. The real motive behind the rejection, however, was the planters' fear of a drastic loss of control over their labour force. Shirley told the 1836 Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship in the Colonies (hereafter, 1836 Select Committee) that the bill was "considered to be one which would give the missionaries too much power over the negroes." (43)

The Assembly members who rejected Shirley's bill accused him of being "a great innovator on account of being in advance of the state of feeling in England." (44) Shirley had only moved to Jamaica in 1834. During the last year of his residence in the metropolitan society, he had been exposed to the burgeoning debate about the deficiencies of the 1753 Marriage Act. The Act was amended in 1822 and 1823 so as to prevent an option for divorce via failure to comply absolutely with the Marriage Act's provisions. (45) The public debate about marriage in the early 1830s, however, was not only concerned with the options to dissolve a marriage but also with the reluctance of many people to give up cohabitation. To facilitate an increase in the marriage rate, it was suggested that provisions should be made for civil marriage. (46) The public debate resulted in March 1836 in a new Marriage Act which allowed for both the civil registration of marriages and the legalisation of marriages performed in places of religious worship other than Anglican churches. (47)

It was not only the discussion surrounding this new act that led the Secretary State, Lord Glenelg, to ask the governors of the West India colonies to urge their legislatures to "promptly and diligently apply themselves to the work of maturing a liberal and comprehensive law." His request was also the result of a letter received from the Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, Mr. Beecham, which mentioned various social problems that had arisen after August 1834 as a result of the continuation of the old marriage laws in the islands. Glenelg was especially keen to see that the legislatures devise a Marriage Act that would legalise not only future but also past nonconformist marriages. To support his case, he first of all pointed out that only few apprentices had access to a formal marriage because there were not many Anglican ministers in the islands and their churches were located far away from the plantations. Secondly, he argued that the nonconformist missionaries were so trusted by the apprentices that they could persuade the apprentices to solemnize their unions and thus bestow "the most essential benefits on society at large." For Glenelg, then, the transformation of the islands from slave to free-labour societies depended heavily on the ability of the apprentices to legalise their relationships. (48)

The report of the 1836 Select Committee put further pressure on the Assembly. Supported by a review of the marriage laws in the islands by the barrister Richard Matthews, it called for a Marriage Act that would allow nonconformist missionaries to solemnize marriages and listed various social and economic advantages attached to such an act. It pointed out, for example, that it would legitimate offspring of nonconformist marriages and hence make them capable of inheriting their parents' property. This was seen as an important requisite for the transformation from a slave to a free-labour society because it would not only bind the children more closely to the land but also provide them with the assets necessary to expand their material aspiration. (49) It is doubtful whether such economic arguments persuaded the Assembly in December 1836 to pass a Marriage Act that went a step further than the Select Committee's recommendation, allowing also for the legalisation of past nonconformist marriages. (50) It is more likely that the Assembly gave in so as to avert a drastic intervention by the Imperial Government in other areas, such as that of the punishment of apprentices, which by this time had led to a huge rift between the Assembly and the Colonial Office. (51) There is no doubt, however, that the Assembly's opposition to the legalisation of nonconformist marriages stemmed from a fear of losing their hold over the apprentices because apprentices would be even more under the influence of the missionaries. The Assembly was also reluctant to pass a new Marriage Act because it implied an extension of the apprentices' legal rights which, of course, would undermine the planters' position of power in the island.

Clause 9 of the Imperial Abolition Act held out to apprentices in long-term relations the promise of both indissolubility and co-residence. It stipulated that employers could not pass on or transfer the services of an apprentice by "bargain or sale, writ, deed, conveyance, will or descent" if it meant that the apprentice in question would be separated from "his or her Wife or Husband." The First Jamaica Act adopted this clause without any changes. (52) It did not, however, fully protect couples residing on the same estate against separation as it did not contain a provision that allowed apprentices who as a result of a mistake by a S.M. had been separated, to seek redress. The Assembly could also have gone further in ensuring the co-residence of apprenticed couples, by including a provision that would have facilitated the reuniting of abroad couples. Economic and more practical motives explain why it did not. To allow for the co-residence of couples separated during slavery, planters would have had to buy or sell each other's apprentices or alternatively devise complicated exchange arrangements.

The local Abolition Act affected especially the ability of mixed, that is free-apprenticed, couples to live under the same roof. As mentioned, during slavery they were allowed to co-reside in return for a high rent. The Amending Act put an end to this practice. It stipulated that those whose apprenticeship was about to expire, would be given three months' notice to leave "land, dwelling or building" and that refusal to do so, would lead to their ejection by "any two justices as trespassers" and punishment "by a fine not exceeding 10 l., or by imprisonment not exceeding 30 days." (53) If allowed, the third Jamaica Act would have made co-residence even more of a crime for mixed couples. Under clause 5 of this Act, apprentices were to be given a six months' notice to leave the plantation and on the day when their term expired, the nearest S.M. had to literally remove them from the plantation. (54) The remark in this clause that planters would be "relieved from the further maintenance of such apprentices," suggests that the obstacle was driven by a concern about profits. When the three Acts were drawn up, planters regularly expressed the conviction that the Apprenticeship System would result in a 25 per cent decline in output, as apprentices would only work on the plantations three-fourth of the week. (55) It is not surprising then that the Assembly inserted various clauses that served, like the foregoing, to cut production costs. It also tried to sustain planters' profits by adopting clauses that allowed planters to extract extra labour from their workers. Clause 8 of the Amending Act, for example, made it possible to force apprentices who had feigned sickness to repay the time lost. (56) As Seymour Drescher has recently shown, the planters' fears were ungrounded. Although the output of Jamaican plantations fell, the compensation money and the 40 per cent increase in the price of sugar (the island's main crop) in the mid-1830s actually led to a rise in sugar profits. (57)

As mentioned, the First Jamaica Act dashed the hopes of those in abroad relations for co-residence. It also made it generally harder for these couples to spend time together. Clause 27 stipulated that apprentices found wandering beyond the limits of the plantation without a written permission from their owner or overseer would be punished as a 'vagabond'. This implied that those visiting their partner clandestinely risked the chance of being sent to the workhouse for a period of one to four weeks. (58) During slavery, punishment for a clandestine visit was far less drastic. A slave caught during a clandestine visit was regarded as a 'runaway' and brought before two Justices of the Peace, who could order either a severe flogging or confinement to hard labour for a period of up to three months. Hard labour, however, was only resorted to in the case of slaves who had absented themselves for several days or who had regularly been caught without a written permission. (59) Clause 39 also tried to limit clandestine visits, not only by stipulating a severe punishment for those apprehended but also by increasing the chances of getting caught. It allowed for the appointment of apprentices as special constables on the plantations who, under the direction of the owner or overseer, had to confine apprentices found 'loitering' on the plantation until the arrival of a S.M. for a period of up to 24 hours. (60)

Clauses 27 and 39 demonstrate most clearly that the Assembly interpreted the Imperial Abolition Act in such a way as to ensure that planters retained as much of their former power as possible, especially their punitive power. Clause 27 was based on the Draft Circular Order in Council, a guideline given by the Imperial Government to devise the local Abolition Act. The Assembly, however, interpreted the Draft very narrowly. It first of all substituted the word 'district' in the Draft for 'plantation', which meant that abroad couples who resided in the same district could not claim unlimited visiting rights. Secondly, it did not, as the Draft suggested, allow S.M.s to issue written permissions and hence increased the evil which it had set out to remedy: clandestine visits. (61)

Clause 39 was one of several adopted by the Assembly that aimed to undo clause 16 of the Abolition Act, which forbade planters to punish their apprentices "by whipping, beating or imprisonment." (62) Not surprisingly then that the Secretary of State found fault with this clause. He suggested in February 1834 that the Assembly consider an amendment that would make estate constables "independent of the authority of their masters, and limiting the power of imprisonment on estates." (63) The Amending Act did not take this suggestion on board, while the third Jamaica Act made only a slight alteration to the original clause in that it excluded from loiterers, "the wives of apprentices legally married." (64) The Assembly's reluctance to allow for the legalisation of nonconformist marriages, discussed earlier, suggests that this cannot be interpreted as a means adopted by the Assembly to encourage apprentices to legalise their unions. It was nothing more than an attempt to undo rumours in the metropolitan society that Jamaican planters were unwilling to make the Apprenticeship System a success by limiting as much as possible the rights of the apprentices.

The clauses in the Imperial and local Abolition Act that most affected the ability of couples to live up to the attribute of gendered spheres of authority and activity were those relating to manumission and punishment. Many male apprentices were eager to purchase their partner's freedom so as to enable them to retreat from field work and devote themselves to the concerns of the household. They used their one-fourth of the week to raise the money necessary by hiring themselves out or by working their provision grounds. (65) The Abolition Act tried to facilitate this process by allowing apprentices to purchase their own or somebody else's discharge from the Apprenticeship against the wishes of an employer. (66) The slave laws had only recognised 'voluntary manumission', that is a slave could only obtain his freedom if his owner allowed him (or somebody else) to purchase his freedom or provided for it in his will. (67) The Abolition Act left it to the colonial legislatures to devise an appropriate procedure to determine the purchase sum. The Assembly adopted a valuation procedure for 'involuntary manumissions' that closely mirrored the one used in cases of 'voluntary manumission' during slavery. It involved three valuators: one named by the claimant (the S.M.), one named by the defender (a local magistrate), and one who was supposed to have no interest in either party (another local magistrate). (68) This procedure worked against a fair valuation. Planters were keen to see a high value fixed as it would enable them to hold on to their labour force and hence prevent an even further decline in output. Considering that the two local magistrates were either planters or other members of the local elite whose interests were closely bound up with the continuation of the plantation economy, it is not surprising to find that they joined forces to overrule the low price demanded by the S.M. (69) The prices fixed were so high that very few male apprentices managed to secure their partner's freedom before the Apprenticeship System was abolished. (70) As for 'voluntary manumissions' during the Apprenticeship System, planters only granted this to old and infirm apprentices, that is those whose discharge would not significantly affect the output of their estates. The manumission practices devised by the Assembly then formed another obstacle for apprentices to conform their relations to the metropolitan ideal. They were dictated by economic interests and served to uphold the planters' position of power in the island by keeping the number of freedmen within limits.

As mentioned, only S.M.s had the authority to punish apprentices. The First Jamaica Act stated what punishments a S.M. could order for particular offences. For minor offences, such as "wilful absence for half a day or less," he could order extra labour for the owner in the apprentice's free time. In the case of more drastic offences, such as "insolence or insubordination," he could resort to a severe flogging (only in the case of male apprentices), solitary confinement in the workhouse for a period of up to ten days, and hard labour in the workhouse and/or penal gang. (71) The Amending Act added another punishment. Clause 22 allowed S.M.s to substitute the foregoing punishments by "any given number of hours of work on the treadmill in any house of correction." This clause aimed to give S.M.s an effective means to punish female apprentices, as the Abolition Act specifically forbade their "whipping or beating". (72) These punishments were more severe than those allowed during slavery. For example, under the 1827 Slave Law planters could, for any offence, send their slaves to the workhouse for a period of up to ten days. (73) A S.M. on the other hand, could send an apprentice to the workhouse for a period ranging from one week to three months. Planters, however, seldom sent troublesome slaves to the workhouse. The punishments that they ordered most were: flogging (they could give up to 39 lashes), solitary confinement and placement in the stocks. The Apprenticeship System then led to a different punishment regime in the island. This regime affected the quality of the apprentices' relationships far more than that during slavery, as it impinged upon the time that couples could spend together and prohibited them from exercising their distinct gender roles. For example, men who were sentenced to the workhouse could during that time not provide for their families. Women who were sent to this institution could not properly look after their children's needs. They could take nursing infants with them but had to leave their other children behind on the estate in the care of the father (if he resided on the same estate), grandparents and other relatives and friends.

Time in the workhouse also made it difficult for women to live up to another important attribute of the metropolitan ideal: monogamy. Workhouse officers bribed female inmates into having sex by, for example, promising them extra rations of bread or reducing their time on the treadmill. (74) This, however, was not the only form of sexual abuse that female apprentices experienced. Evidence suggests that the extent of forced interracial sex on the plantations did not decline after 1834. Augustus Beaumont, a proprietor and former member of the House of Assembly, told the 1836 Select Committee, for instance, that "the black woman was [still] looked on as the natural prey of the coarsest lust." (75) It was, however, not only planters and their white employees who sexually abused female apprentices but also men who were appointed to administer the Apprenticeship System. Benjamin McMahon, who worked on various estates in the years immediately preceding and following the Apprenticeship System, mentioned in his Jamaica Plantership (1839) that S.M. Carnaby had not only sent to the workhouse an apprentice who was pregnant with his child but had also raped a young girl during one of his routine visits to Williamsfield estate. (76) S.M.s reported a rapid increase in the number of rape cases that appeared before the grand jury after August 1834. (77) The increase should not be read, however, as an indication that this type of sexual abuse increased during the Apprenticeship System. It merely reflects the female apprentices' awareness of the change in their legal status. It seems that they believed that this change had been accompanied by a transformation of the judiciary and that their accusations would thus receive a more objective hearing than before 1834. This, however, was not the case. The judiciary continued to exist of amateur justices who exercised their duties very much in the same way as during slavery, that is they obstructed the course of justice and dismissed incriminating evidence against white Jamaicans. It is not known how many cases of alleged rape ended in conviction or acquittal. It is likely, however, that most cases, like those dealing with the physical abuse of female apprentices in the workhouse, ended in acquittal, especially if the accused was a planter or another member of the local elite. (78)

The foregoing examination of the legal provisions that had to give effect to the Apprenticeship System shows then that the Imperial Government did very little to enable apprenticed couples to live up to the metropolitan marriage ideal. The Abolition Act that it drew up and the guidelines that it gave to local legislatures only contained provisions that had to facilitate the indissolubility of apprenticed unions and make life easier for abroad couples. Only after a few years, did it undertake action to allow more couples to legalise their unions. The foregoing suggests, in other words, that the Imperial Government regarded the Apprenticeship System far less as a means to lay the foundation for an equal and just society than as a means to ensure the continuation of the plantation economy. The Jamaican planting class was even less inclined than the Imperial Government to make it possible for couples to acquire the attributes of the metropolitan ideal. It tried to limit as much as possible the few enabling provisions in the Imperial Abolition Act and devised a host of provisions that made it extremely hard for apprentices to follow the metropolitan ideal.

III

In theory, then, the Apprenticeship System put more obstacles in the way of couples who wanted to live up to the metropolitan marriage ideal than slavery did. Before we can conclude, however, that the Apprenticeship System was "slavery by another name," we have to examine how the above-mentioned legal provisions were implemented on the plantations. It has been suggested above that the manumission clause was interpreted to the letter because it benefited planters both economically and socially. Most clauses, however, were either ignored or only partially lived up to. The first part of this section addresses some violations of the clauses, while the remainder examines a number of work and punishment practices that were adopted on the plantations in the course of the Apprenticeship System. (79) Both had such drastic effects on the apprentices' ability to acquire the attributes of the metropolitan ideal and threatened the more general aims of the Imperial Abolition Act that the Governor and the Colonial Office felt forced to undertake action to undo or modify them.

Under clause 21 of the Amending Act, apprentices who were about to pay off the remainder of their Apprenticeship were given a three months' notice to vacate their dwellings. Some planters could not accept the decline in their power brought about by manumission and refused to grant the three months, which had been designed to enable the apprentice to arrange for alternative accommodation. Peter William Atkinson, an apprentice at Penshurst, was still working off the remainder of his Apprenticeship when out of sheer spite his employer, Mr Senior, demolished his hut. This act put great strain on his abroad marriage. Because his wife could no longer stay over, Atkinson was forced to use part of his free time travelling to and from her estate. This reduced the time he could spend on his provision ground and hence affected his role as provider. It is interesting to note that the demolition of the hut took place while S.M. Rawlinson was on the estate. (80) By turning a blind eye to what was happening, the S.M. allowed Mr. Senior to retain some of his punitive power.

Pretending that the third Act had not been rejected, many planters only allowed "wives of apprentices legally married" to visit their plantations without written permission. The 'loyal' apprentices who served as constables did not hesitate to confine these women so that they could be punished as vagabonds. This violation of the local Abolition Act infuriated Governor Sligo and Secretary of State, Lord Glenelg. In June 1835, they dismissed the planters' claim that it served as a means to increase the marriage rate and "promote the interests of morality." Both men argued that the marriage rate could only increase if apprentices were more exposed to religious instruction and if white islanders gave up their immoral practices, such as the sexual abuse of black women. They told the Assembly that because these requirements were not likely to be met in the near future, planters should treat long-term, stable relations as marriages and therefore allow "an apprentice to admit his concubine to his hut." (81) As this request had little effect, abolitionists and also a number of S.M.s called for an amendment of clause 27 of the First Jamaica Act to ensure that all abroad couples could spend more time together. (82) For various reasons, the Colonial Office refused to order the Assembly to do so. It instead issued a circular to S.M.s, stating that when faced with a case in which a long-term, stable couple was denied access to each other, they ought to rule in favour of the couple. (83)

The Colonial Office undertook similar, ineffective action with regard to the planters' strict interpretation of the manumission clause. As early as October 1835, S.M.s informed Governor Sligo about cases of overvaluation. S.M. Marlton, for example, told him that

  Eliza Lewis was very angry at the valuation, and told me I valued her
  too high purposely to prevent her from going free. I earnestly hope
  some law will be passed to protect the apprentices, for I am satisfied
  the magistrates are valuing in this quarter much higher than formerly
  on some combined opinion. (84)

Although Governor Sligo pointed this out to the Secretary of State soon thereafter, it was not until November 1837 that the Colonial Office tried to remedy the situation. This did not, as S.M. Marlton hoped, take the form of an Imperial Act. Instead, the Secretary of State asked the Assembly, via the Governor, to "adopt some equitable fixed principle for the value of apprentices desirous of purchasing their discharge." (85) Considering what they stood to lose economically and socially, it is not surprising that the Assembly refused Glenelg's request.

The foregoing violations of the local Abolition Act affected only mixed and abroad couples. The changes in work practices that planters adopted on their estates after 1834, on the other hand, affected all couples without distinction. They not only reduced the time that partners could spend together but also made it more difficult for them to exercise their conjugal roles. The local Abolition Act stipulated that field apprentices could work only 40 1/2 hours a week. The freedom that it gave planters to obtain these hours, implied that field workers did not experience a drastic improvement in their ability to live up to the metropolitan marriage ideal after August 1834. (86) Most planters decided to spread those hours over five days and set aside the Saturday for the repaying of labour for minor offences. (87) Field apprentices in both abroad and co-residing relations preferred the nine-hour system, which only a few planters adopted: nine hours on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, four and a half on Friday, and Friday afternoon for the repaying of labour. The nine-hour system allowed field apprentices in abroad relations more time to travel to and be with their loved ones and made it easier for field apprentices in co-residing unions to carry out their gender roles, such as cultivating the provision ground, marketing excess produce, and taking care of the children. (88)

Governor Sligo gradually began to voice his disapproval of the eight-hour system. (89) He was especially concerned about the use of the Saturday to repay labour. This was less triggered, however, by a concern about the male apprentices' ability to provide for their families than a concern about the advancement of morality in the island. He argued that the practice was a major obstacle to the apprentices' church attendance as those male apprentices who repaid labour on Saturday used the Sunday to cultivate their grounds. In the summer of 1836, Sligo undertook action to end the practice. He instructed S.M.s to ask planters who had adopted the eight-hour system to let their apprentices repay labour during the week "before turning out or after turning in." (90) As very few planters positively responded to such requests, Sligo's successor Lionel Smith, instructed by the Colonial Office, asked the Assembly in November 1837 to provide a "stronger definition of working time" in the local Abolition Act. (91)

The extent to which field apprentices could live up to the metropolitan ideal depended not only on the type of work system adopted on their plantation but also on the way in which the field labour force was organised. Task work could improve the quality of apprenticed relationships, especially if tasks were allocated on a weekly rather than a daily basis. If they worked hard enough, apprentices could finish the task by Thursday and thus have the whole Friday and weekend to visit loved ones or devote themselves to their domestic tasks. Most planters, however, continued to organise their field labour force into three gangs, each working a part of the field. The Colonial Office tried to encourage planters to adopt the task system not because it was concerned about the quality of the apprentices' relationships but because task work instilled in the apprentices the internal incentive to work hard and thus helped to transform them into hard-working, free-wage labourers. In December 1837, for example, it instructed S.M.s to "give all the encouragement ... to the system of task-work on mutual agreement of masters and apprentices." (92) Only a few planters were persuaded by the S.M.s. The majority held on to the gang system, justifying it with the argument that it benefited apprentices more than the task system. They mentioned, for instance, that during the rainy season apprentices would need more than 40 1/2 hours to complete a weekly task because rains caused frequent work stoppages. (93) The real reason why planters disapproved of task work is that it reduced their hold over the apprentices. Task labourers spent generally fewer of their waking hours in the presence of their employer and/or his officers than gang labourers and did not, like the latter, work under an ever-present driver, that is a male apprentice who had to ensure that there was no slacking and who reported apprentices who turned up late, were drunk or otherwise failed to fulfil their labour duties to the overseer.

While it was hard for field apprentices to live up to the metropolitan ideal, it was even harder for domestics, who compromised about 25 per cent of the total workforce. The local Abolition Act did not regulate their working hours. As their Apprenticeship was to end two years before field labourers, planters tried to squeeze as much labour out of them as possible, usually giving them Friday and Saturday off one week and only Sunday the next. Domestics had thus less time than field apprentices to carry out their domestic chores and spend time with their partner and children. (94) In addition, they faced a higher risk of separation. Partly as a means to combat a decline in plantation profits, many planters hired domestics out to other plantations or families in town. Many hired-out domestics were forced to live in as their new place of employment was located at a considerable distance. The practice of hiring out domestics then undid the promise of indissolubility held out in the First Jamaica Act. In most cases, the hiring out was illegal. Clause 51 of the First Jamaica Act allowed for private work contracts between planters and apprentices for a period of up to one year, provided they were sanctioned by a S.M. (95) The following statement by Eliza James suggests that the latter provision was not always adhered to:

   My master removed me; I told him I was willing to go; but when I
   found out the distance, and that it was so distressing for me to go
   and see my husband and two of my children whom I left at Valley
   Minor, I begged to be allowed to hire out to myself, which request
   was granted; I was not taken before the special magistrate that he
   might sanction my removal; no special magistrate ever asked me
   whether I was willing to go and live at Owen. (96)

In spite of the illegality of much hiring out and S.M. reports which mentioned the difficulties that living in domestics encountered in launching a complaint of ill-treatment with their S.M., the Governor and Colonial Office did not try to end the practice. (97) It is likely that their inaction stemmed from the fact that contrary to the eight-hour and the gang system, the hiring out of domestics affected only a minority of apprentices and did not endanger the long-term economic aims of the Apprenticeship System.

While some planters, like Eliza James, tried to retain their former social and economic status by avoiding S.M.s, others tried to achieve this aim by actively soliciting their help. Shortly after August 1834, S.M.s were faced with demands from planters that female apprentices pay back time lost in labour, nursing, and looking after sick children. The work was to be carried out during a number of weekends, which of course severely limited the women's ability to exercise their conjugal roles. As the local Abolition Act only allowed them to issue extra labour in the case of "wilful absence", "wilful negligence", "damaging property", "drunkenne's" and "refusing or neglecting any labour required," several S.M.s asked Governor Sligo in October 1835 how to deal with the planters' requests. (98) He informed them that "childbirth and its consequences" should be regarded as "sickness" and that therefore women could not be ordered to pay back time lost in labour and nursing. His remark that they ought to acknowledge claims to repay time lost in caring for a sick infant, demonstrates that during the first half of the Apprenticeship System, Sligo was more concerned about the rights of the planters than the rights of the apprentices. He argued that if S.M.s did not acknowledge this claim, female apprentices would soon find other occasions to evade "the just proportion of labour which it is their duty to give the master." (99) A comprehensive set of instructions for S.M.s, issued in January 1836, shows once more that Sligo gradually realised that Jamaican planters had no intention to make the Apprenticeship System a success. It ordered S.M.s to thoroughly assess the "reality and nature of the illness" of the child and only if they had sufficient evidence that a woman had used her child's illness as an 'excuse for idleness,' could they sentence her to pay back time. (100) The Colonial Office followed the Governor in his defence of the apprentices' rights. In 1837, it ordered Governor Smith to inform S.M.s that they had to "resist every demand upon the services of the mothers which shall have the effect of depriving them of the time or the opportunities requisite for the discharge of their necessary maternal duties." (101)

Planters or their officers tried even harder to persuade S.M.s to issue time in the workhouse for a number of minor offences. Nancy Webb, for example, appeared before S.M. Rawlinson for having verbally assaulted an estate constable. Rawlinson did not allow her to say anything in her defence. He only listened to the planter's representatives--the constable and the overseer--and sentenced her to the workhouse for seven days. This punishment made it extremely difficult for Nancy to look after the needs of her husband Jarvis and her seven, mostly very young, children. (102) The planters' demand for time in the workhouse reflects their inability to come to terms with the change in their social status. They demanded a punishment that was not at all in proportion to the offence and which also endangered their economic enterprises, both in the short and long term. The work required of workhouse inmates, especially the treadmill, was so hard that most apprentices were unable to work for several days upon their return to the plantation. Some were even so badly injured that they never regained their full labour capacity. Amelia Lawrence, for instance, told Daughtrey and Gordon: "I have pains all about my body since then, which I cannot get over, particularly those in the small of the back; my wrists and fingers are so hurt that they are swelled even now." (103) And the miscarriages that many women suffered as a result reduced the planters' future provision of labour. (104)

Equally affecting the ability of female apprentices to look after their husbands' and children's physical needs were the highly illegal punishments that planters or their officers meted out on the estates, such as confinement in the estate's dungeon. The First Jamaica Act stipulated that the estate dungeon could only be used for apprentices who had been sentenced to solitary confinement by the S.M and vagabonds for a period of up to 24 hours. Maria Henderson's statement suggests that planters often used the dungeon as an additional punishment, that is preceding that of the S.M.:

   The second constable, Cupid Williams, then took charge of us and
   carried us to the dungeon, where we were locked up; this was on
   Friday; we were let out next morning after breakfast; on the Thursday
   following, Mr. Rawlinson came up, and we were brought before him; he
   ordered me to fourteen days; hard labour in the house of correction,
   and Clemence Brodie, who had a young child, about three months old,
   he ordered to be locked up for ten nights in the dungeon. (105)

Most apprentices who were put in the dungeon, however, never faced a S.M. afterwards. Eliza Finlayson, for example, told Daughtrey and Gordon: 'I have been put in the dungeon often enough ... not by orders from the special magistrate but by master's own orders. I was only brought up one time before Mr. Rawlinson.' (106) Planters then managed to retain both indirectly (through persuading the S.M. to send apprentices to the workhouse) and directly a substantial part of their former punitive power. The drastic effects that this had on the relationships of apprentices can, amongst others, be deduced from Amaryllis Gale's statement. Amaryllis, a married woman and mother of ten, was locked up from Wednesday morning till Thursday morning for having taken the Monday off to care for her son-in-law, who resided on a nearby plantation. As she had insulted the overseer by saying upon her release that she would go to the S.M., she was locked up again on Friday night and released on Saturday. She was thereupon taken to the S.M. who was more willing to listen to her owner's arguments than hers and ordered another 24 hours of solitary confinement in the dungeon. Amaryllis' main worry during her spells of confinement was to ensure that her husband and her youngest children had enough to eat: "I told the constables who had charge of me that they must let me go to my house to give my children something, as they had not had anything to eat." The constables not only refused to entertain this request but also took her to the dungeon in such a way that her "petticoat was turned up and exposed [her] person in a most shocking manner." (107) The illegal punishment inflicted upon her made it thus extremely difficult for Amaryllis to be both a virtuous wife and a caring mother.

IV

Did the Apprenticeship System make it easier for couples to follow the metropolitan marriage ideal? The Imperial and local Abolition Act made some attributes of the ideal easier to attain. They allowed all couples to legalise their unions and also increased, through the provision for involuntary manumission, their ability to attain the attribute of distinct gender spheres and roles. As for the attribute of indissolubility, the Imperial and local Abolition Act brought this only within the reach of co-residing couples. Some couples also experienced an improvement in their ability to live up to the ideal as a result of changes in work practices that were adopted on their estates, such as the shift from a gang to a task system. These various gains, however, were outweighed by numerous losses that couples suffered after August 1834. Mixed couples, for instance, found it much harder than during slavery to live together as the free partner was forced to leave the plantation. Abroad couples suffered even more. They faced a drastic decline in the time that they could spend together as a result of more stringent controls over off-plantation visits, the practice of many planters to give only married apprentices a visiting permit, and the clause in the local Abolition Act that made 'illegal' off-plantation visits punishable with time in the workhouse. It was not just abroad couples that found it harder to live up to the metropolitan ideal because of changes in the punishment regime. All couples witnessed a decline in the time that they could spend together and their ability to carry out their gender roles as a result of the legal and illegal punishment practices adopted, such as time in the estate dungeon and repaying time lost in caring for a sick child. The punishment practices also affected the ability of couples to attain the attribute of monogamy as the most common form of female punishment--time in the workhouse--increased the risk of sexual abuse. In other words, while some couples found it easier to live up to the metropolitan ideal during the Apprenticeship System, the majority found it as hard as or even harder than under slavery.

In the foregoing, we have come across two arguments used by the planting class to justify the legal and illegal obstacles that they put in the way of apprenticed couples: they helped to increase the morality in the island and they safeguarded the rights granted to the apprentices under the Imperial Abolition Act. More commonly used, however, were two other arguments. First, that the apprentices were not yet capable of fulfilling the duties associated with the ideal. The Kingston Chronicle, a newspaper which represented the opinions of the planters, informed its readers that many of the couples who had married since August 1834 failed to display the attribute of monogamy: "Almost every black and brown man has a plurality of wives ... even the married Methodists are any thing but true to their vows." (108) The couples were also seen to be incapable of exercising their conjugal roles. The wives did not sufficiently look after their children's physical needs, allowing them "to consume away from disease," while the husbands spend their weekends idling rather than cultivating their grounds. (109) The second argument was that the obstacles helped to turn the apprentices into free-wage labourers. This was amongst others used to justify the narrow interpretation of clause 16 in the First Jamaica Act, which stipulated that apprentices were entitled to the same amount of food, clothing, shelter and medical care as during slavery. (110) While the majority of the planters simply refused to supply parents with the basic necessities for their free children, others offered them but only in return for extra labour. The owner of Cambridge estate, for example, offered his female apprentices food and medical care for their free children on the condition that they worked four and half hours extra a week. (111) It was argued that such schemes would teach apprentices an important lesson in free labour, namely that luxuries could only be obtained by additional effort. Planters indirectly argued that as workers in free-labour economies did not get free food, clothing and medical care for their children, apprentices should also not get them. (112) The women who signed up for such schemes did so in order to safeguard their children's physical needs. The extra hours of labour, however, restricted their ability to carry out another important gender role: looking after their children's emotional needs.

The real reason why planters prevented apprentices from living up to the metropolitan marriage ideal was a concern about their economic and social status. Several clauses in the local Abolition Act and plantation practices aimed to prevent a short-term decline in profits by either enabling the planters to obtain extra labour from their workers or by cutting their production costs, such as the clauses that allowed S.M.s to issue extra labour as punishment. There are indications, however, that the obstacles that planters put in the way of apprenticed couples were more informed by a concern about their social than economic status. First, there were practices, such as sending apprentices to the workhouse, which reduced rather than sustained short-term profits. Secondly, various clauses in the local Abolition Act and practices adopted, worked against the planters' long-term economic interests. The continuation of the gang system, for instance, failed to instil in the apprentices the internal labour incentive that would make them work hard upon full freedom when there would no longer be drivers and overseers in the field inflicting physical and others punishments for insufficient work. And spiteful practices, such as the refusal to grant permission to visit a non-married partner, led many apprentices to decide that upon full freedom they would either set themselves up as small farmers or seek employment elsewhere. The majority of the obstacles thus served to keep the old power relations in the island intact. They limited as much as possible the freedom bestowed on the apprentices under the Imperial Abolition Act and allowed planters to retain a large share of their former arbitrary and proprietary power.

Various factors explain why the Imperial Government did not do more to enable apprenticed couples to live up to all the attributes of the metropolitan marriage ideal. First, timing. As we have seen, the Imperial Government wanted apprenticed couples to legalise their unions. It was unable to insert a clause in the Imperial Abolition Act allowing nonconformist ministers to solemnize marriages, as it was custom for colonial laws to follow rather than precede those in the metropolitan society. Thus only after the Marriage Act was changed in the metropolitan society in 1836, could the Imperial Government ask the Assembly to consider a similar change to increase the marriage rate. Secondly, economic concerns. While the Imperial Government welcomed the initiative of male apprentices to purchase their partner's freedom so that they could devote themselves to their domestic concerns, it would never have considered including a provision in the Imperial Abolition Act enabling the withdrawal of all women to their proper sphere. As women made up 60 per cent of the total field labour force, such a provision would have drastically endangered the economic future of the plantations. (113) Thirdly, concerns about social stability. The Imperial Government wanted the transition from slavery to freedom to proceed as peacefully as possible. The exchange of apprentices between plantations to facilitate co-residence was seen as a destabilising factor. It would change the composition of the workforce on the plantations which in turn could lead to unnecessary friction between planters and apprentices as well as amongst apprentices. The Government therefore did not include in the Imperial Abolition Act a provision to re-unite abroad couples nor did it encourage the Assembly to include one in the local Abolition Act.

The main reason, however, why the Imperial Government did so little to enhance the domestic bliss of the apprentices, was its eagerness to obtain the co-operation of the planters in the execution of the Apprenticeship System. It therefore left out in the Abolition Act provisions which would have helped apprentices to conform to the metropolitan ideal and accepted a local Abolition Act which contained a number of 'defects' that negatively affected the quality of the apprentices' relations. We have seen that from 1836 onwards, the Governor and the Colonial Office became increasingly concerned about the obstacles that the planters put in the way of apprenticed couples. Their concern, however, was in most cases triggered more by an anxiety about the economic aims of the Apprenticeship System than by a sincere interest in the domestic lives of the apprentices. The attempts to undo or modify the obstacles took two forms: instructions to S.M.s and requests to the Assembly to amend the local Abolition Act. It was not until the publication of the report by Daughtrey and Gordon in October 1837, which revealed in addition to the most horrible conditions in the island's workhouses the continuation of many practices on the plantations forbidden under the Abolition Act, that the Imperial Government finally abandoned its attempts to woo the planting class into fulfilling its duties under the Abolition Act. In March 1838, it passed the Abolition of Slavery Amendment Bill which went some way towards alleviating the hardships faced by apprenticed couples. Amongst others, it empowered the Governor to regulate working hours, stated that apprentices no longer needed a pass to leave the plantation except during their employer's time and forbade S.M.s to punish female apprentices by placing them on the treadmill or in the penal gang. (114)

That the Apprenticeship System ended up as a system that was in various respects worse than slavery was not only the result of the Imperial Government's reluctance to impinge upon the privileges of the Assembly. Equally, if not more, important were the ingenious ways used by the Jamaican planters to undo the intentions of the Imperial Abolition Act. First, in their capacity as lawmakers they drew up a local Abolition Act which limited as much as possible the rights of the apprentices while safeguarding their own. Secondly, on their plantations they ignored or violated provisions in the local Abolition Act which still bestowed, in their opinion, too much freedom on the apprentices. They also appointed men as constables who they knew would readily apprehend apprentices without a visiting permit and follow their illegal orders, such as putting apprentices in the dungeon. And finally, they obtained the favours of the S.M.s. Amongst the 119 men who served in Jamaica, there were many, like Rawlinson, who were willing to turn a blind eye to the planters' or their officers' violations of the local Abolition Act or to honour their specific requests. (115)

This case-study then of an aspect of apprenticed life which has thus far been ignored in scholarship has provided an insight into the workings of the Apprenticeship System. (116) It has indicated that there existed a struggle between the local planting class and the Colonial Office to define the boundaries of the apprentices' freedom. Further research will have to provide a clearer picture of the dynamics between the two and engage with questions, such as whether the Colonial Office could and should have done more to prevent the Apprenticeship System from descending into a system that was nothing but "slavery by another name." It will also have to examine in detail the role that the other important actor in the construction of the Abolition Act--the abolitionists--played in this struggle. This study has not really engaged with the efforts that the abolitionists undertook to enable apprentices to conform to the metropolitan ideal, except for indicating that the Wesleyan Missionary Society played a decisive role in bringing about the act that legalised past and future nonconformist marriages in Jamaica. Throughout the Apprenticeship System, missionaries continued their efforts to persuade apprentices to legalise their long-term relations and attain the attributes of monogamy and indissolubility. (117) Throughout this study it has been assumed that apprentices wanted to model their relationships on the metropolitan ideal. The fact that the legal marriage rate did not drastically increase when the 1836 Marriage Act was implemented, suggests that they had a relationship ideal that was very different from the metropolitan ideal, though with elements of similarity. (118) The apprentice statements in the Daughtrey and Gordon report provide a starting point to examine the various attributes that made up the apprentices' relationship ideal. A study of this ideal can provide us with an insight into the ways in which the Apprenticeship System helped to lay the foundations for an Afro-Jamaican value system.

ENDNOTES

I am grateful to the anonymous readers for their comments and valuable suggestions for revising this article.

1. I use the plural 'middle classes' for the sake of clarity only, with an overall understanding of the various categories that class historians have use to describe the groups that occupied the middle rank of British society at the turn of the century.

2. D. Lemmings, "Marriage and the Law in the Eighteenth Century: Hardwick's Marriage Act of 1753," The Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (1996): 344-6.

3. This definition of the middle-class marriage norm is based on L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London, 1992). For the spread of the norm to first the propertied classes and then the lower groups in society, see J. R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600--to the present (Oxford, 1985), chapter 5.

4. Gillis, For Better, For Worse, chapter 4; J. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Marriage since 1800 (London, 1993), chapter 1. These perceived economic and social benefits were already expressed in the debate about the 1753 Marriage Act, see E. T. Bannet, "The Marriage Act of 1753: 'A Most Cruel Law for the Fair Sex'," Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 3 (1997): 235-41.

5. Chapter 7 in P. Linebaugh and M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000) demonstrates how the metropolitan discourses of class and religion found their way to the British slave colonies; were reworked there; and then transferred back to the metropole.

6. It was not until a radical revision of the slave laws in the mid-1820s that marriages solemnized by Anglican ministers were accepted as 'valid in law.' The Consolidated Slave Law, Passed the 22 December, 1826, Commencing on 1st May, 1827 with a Commentary (N.P., 1827), iv (hereafter cited as 1827 Slave law). Contemporary accounts, however, suggest that from the turn of the nineteenth century onwards, marriages performed by Anglican ministers were generally regarded as legal. The only returns of the formal marriages for the period of slavery are the "Return of Numbers of Marriages legally solemnized between Slaves" in the Parliamentary Papers (hereafter cited as PP) 1823, vol. XCIII, pp. 320-21. For Moravian and other nonconformist marriage rates, see B. W. Higman, Slave Populations in the Caribbean, 1807-1834 (Baltimore, 1984), p. 116.

7. W. Wilberforce, An Appeal to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire in Behalf of Its Negro Slaves in the West Indies (London, 1823), p. 19.

8. H. Altink, "Representations of Slave Women in Discourses of Slavery and Abolition, 1780-1838" (PhD Dissertation, University of Hull, 2002), chapter 5. By the end of the eighteenth century, about one-sixth of all sugar planters were absentees. Their numbers increased in the years leading up to the abolition of slavery. See S. J. Hurwitz and E. F. Hurwitz, Jamaica: A Historical Portrait (London, 1971), pp. 34-5.

9. As Carol Pateman has argued in her book The Sexual Contract (Stanford, 1994) marriage is a social contract which constitutes both freedom and domination: the partners voluntarily subject themselves to the state and the civil law and obtain protection in return for their obedience.

10. It was mainly abolitionist pressure that led the Imperial Government from 1823 onwards to demand that the legislatures adopt clauses in their slave laws that would increase the formal marriage rate. In 1824, it suggested that they adopt the incentives to marriage mentioned in the Order in Council for Trinidad, namely the abolition of the marriage fee and the recognition of nonconformist marriages as legal. PP 1824, vol. XXIV, p. 439; PP 1826-27, vol. XXV, pp. 61-4 and 179; PP 1828, vol. XXVII, p. 100.

11. R. Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London, 1988), pp. 451-8; P. D. Curtin, Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 1830-1865 (Cambridge, 1955), chapter 5; W.A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 132-3; and Hurwitz and Hurwitz, Jamaica, chapter 8.

12. T. C. Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain 1832-1938 (Baltimore, 1992), p. 53.

13. For a good overview of the construction of the Abolition Act, see W. L. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies (London, 1937), chapter 2. The Abolition Act laid down the principles of the Apprenticeship System which the local abolition acts had to carry into practical operation. The latter had to be done by taking into consideration the local conditions, which meant amongst others that the rights granted to slaves in the most recent slave law had to be incorporated. As the slave laws differed from island to island, the local abolition acts also varied greatly.

14. The 1836 Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship, for example, limited itself to the conditions in Jamaica. This committee was the result of abolitionist pressure. From 1835 onwards, reports circulated in the metropolitan society which suggested that apprentices faced numerous abuses by their employers and that S.M.s could not sufficiently administer the System because of planter resistance. These led the parliamentary leader of the Abolitionist Society, Thomas Buxton, to ask in February 1836 for a committee to inquire into the workings of the Apprenticeship System. The committee finished its report in August. For more information on the Committee, see Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, pp. 333-9.

15. See, for example, F. Cooper, T.C. Holt and R. J. Scott: Beyond Slavery; Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill, 2000); M. Sheller, Democracy after Slavery (Miami, 2000); S. Boa, "Experiences of Women Estate Workers during the Apprenticeship Period in St. Vincent, 1834-1838: The Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Women's History Review 10, no. 3 (2001): 381-407; H. Altink, "Slavery by Another Name: Apprenticed Women in Jamaican Workhouses in the Period 1834-8," Social History 26, no. 1 (2001): 40-59. The first studies on the Apprenticeship System appeared in the inter-war years. They concentrated mainly on the question how the System had come about and why it had come to a premature end in 1838. See, for example, W. L. Mathieson, British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823-1838 (London, 1926) and W.L Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship. After WWII, the Apprenticeship was mainly addressed in studies on the decline of the plantation system in the West Indies. See, for instance, Curtin, Two Jamaicas and Green, British Slave Emancipation. One of the first studies to examine the experiences of the apprentices was S. Wilmot, "Not 'Full Free': The Ex-Slaves and the Apprenticeship System in Jamaica, 1834-1838," Jamaica Journal 17 (1984): 2-10.

16. The narrative has been reprinted with an introduction by Diana Paton. D. Paton, ed., A Narrative of Events, since the first of August, 1834, by James Williams an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica. (Durham, 2001).

17. B. W. Higman, Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 156-73. Estate managers were careless in recording relationships. They listed, for instance, women with children who had partners on other estates under the heading 'mother-children family households'. Higman therefore used not only plantation lists to determine the character of the slave family on the three estates but also church records of slave marriages, partners, and baptisms. It is not surprising that historians who have only used plantation lists have arrived at the conclusion that the nuclear unit was the least and the mother-child union the most common form of slave household organization. See, for example, O. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (London, 1967), pp. 160-8.

18. 1827 Slave Law, p. 2; M. Craton, "Changing Patterns of Slave Families in the British West Indies," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10, no. 1 (1979): 17.

19. E. Long, The History of Jamaica; Or General Survey of the Ancient and Modern State of the Island with Reflections on Its Situations, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws and Government vol. 2 (London, 1970), p. 413. Abolitionists emphasised as much as pro-slavery writers the ease with which slaves divorced their partners. See, M. Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787-1834 (Urbana, 1982), p. 45.

20. B. Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650-1838 (London, 1990), pp. 97 and 100-1.

21. Higman's case study shows that married and unmarried couples were separated to the same extent and that the number of co-residential units increased as plantations expanded. Slave Populations, p. 369.

22. Ibid., p. 116 and Higman, Slave Population, p. 71. Especially plantations with a large African-born slave population experienced unequal sex ratios. This was largely the result of the make-up of the slave ships: three males to two females. After the abolition of the slave trade, the sex ratios gradually worked themselves out. In 1832, there were 94 slave men per 100 slave women in Jamaica.

23. Until the mid-1810s, the ban on sibling and cousin mating significantly reduced the pool of potential partners as it applied not only to real but also fictive siblings and cousins. Shipmates were regarded as brothers and sisters and their children as cousins. Higman, Slave Population, p. 73; and Curtin, Two Jamaicas, p. 26.

24. 1827 Slave Law, pp. 13-4. Slaves did not need a ticket to go to their plantation grounds, the market or church.

25. Considering their objections against abroad relations, it is not surprising that proslavery writers reported widely about clandestine meetings of abroad couples. See, for example, J. Foot, A Defence of the Planters in the West Indies Compromised in Four Arguments (London, 1792), pp. 96-7. Abolitionists, however, also suggested that clandestine visits were common. See, for instance, A. Thompson, Substance of the Speech Delivered at the Meeting of the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery on October 19, 1830 (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 7.

26. Higman, Slave Populations, pp. 77, 149 and 380-4. Coloureds dominated the freedmen population as coloured slaves were more often than black slaves granted manumission or given freedom after their master's death in recognition of paternity or special services.

27. Though the law discriminated in many respects against free blacks and coloureds, it did entitle them to the same marriage as white islanders. As long as one of the partners was enslaved, the legal status of the couple was decided by the slave law.

28. Manumission valuations increased after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 because planters tried to retain as much of their labour force as possible. The drop in sugar profits in the 1820s led to a further increase.

29. PP 1831-32, vol. XX, p. 18.

30. See, for example, R. Reddock, "Women and Slavery in the Caribbean: A Feminist Perspective," Latin American Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1985): 63-80.

31. For a recent interpretation of white-slave sexual intercourse, see B. Bush, "'Sable Venus', 'She Devil' or 'Drudge'?: British Slavery and the 'Fabulous fiction' of Black Women's Identities c. 1650-1838," Women's History Review. 9, no. 2 (2000): 761-89.

32. G. J. Heuman, Between Black and White: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica, 1792-1865 (Oxford, 1981), p. 7.

33. No other slave society in the New World provided adult slave women with legal protection against sexual abuse. In the slave states in North America, for instance, only slave girls were legally protected against rape. The sexual abuse of an adult slave woman in these states could only come to court if the claimant was the woman's owner and the defendant another white man. See, C. Clinton, "'Southern Dishonor': Flesh, Blood, Race, and Bondage," in C. Bleser, ed., In Joy and Sorrow: Women, Family and Marriage in the Victorian South 1830-1900 (New York, 1991), p. 65.

34. In 1823, as a result of abolitionist pressure, the Imperial Government asked local legislatures to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, by adopting a set of proposals which included amongst others a ban on female flogging. The Jamaican Assembly saw these proposals as a step towards emancipation and refused to enact them. It feared, however, that if it did not make some sort of gesture towards amelioration that the Imperial Government would force the proposals upon them. PP 1824, vol. XXIV, pp. 427 and 452.

35. A slave woman had to launch a complaint with a local justice. If he and two other justices were of the opinion, after an examination of her body and a brief interview, that the complaint was grounded, a so-called Council of Protection was formed consisting of the vestry and local justices. Its duty was to investigate the complaint by examining several witnesses and if necessary file a suit against the offender.

36. Planters allotted provision grounds to individuals. Couples, however, tended to join their plots and work the combination together. For more information on slave couples' gendered division of labour, see M. Morrissey, Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean (Lawrence, 1989), chapter 4. An insight into the gender roles of abroad couples can be gained from statements given in the investigation into the death of a slave child by drowning in February 1830. The mother testified that her son lived with his father on Mount Nelson. On the day of the drowning, she had visited the estate. She had left her child in the care of a slave woman called Margaret McDonald, while she had prepared her 'husband's supper'. P.R.O. CO 137/171, no. 3.

37. See, for instance, Higman, Slave Populations, pp. 364-73.

38. The investigation mentioned in footnote 32 suggests also the acceptance of sequential monogamy. The woman who drowned the child, Betsy Hope, had formerly lived with the boy's father. Pro-slavery writers suggested that slaves had a substantial number of partners in their life time. Statistical studies on the Caribbean slave family do not substantiate this claim. They suggest that very few slaves had more than three partners in their life time. See, for instance, Craton, "Changing Patterns", p. 12.

39. Ibid., p. 13.

40. This summary of the acts passed by the Assembly in 1833 and 1834 is based on "Observations on Jamaica Acts" by the lawyer John Jeremie in PP 1836, vol. XV, pp. 401-37. The 1836 Select Committee on Negro Apprenticeship ordered Jeremie to analyse the acts and provide suggestions on how they could be made to correspond more closely to the Abolition Act.

41. E. Eliot, Christian Responsibilities Arising out of the Recent Change in Our West India Colonies in Five Discourses, Four Preached in the West Indies, and One in England (London, 1836), p. 54.

42. Minutes of the House of Assembly, 15 December, 1835, P.R.O. CO 14/126. These are the only marriage statistics available for the Apprenticeship System. It is likely that this figure reflects a backlog in marriages and that the marriage rate for the following three years was much lower.

43. PP 1836, vol. XV, pp. 306-7.

44. Ibid., p. 306.

45. Lemmings, "Marriage and the Law," 360. The amendments aimed in particular to combat marriages of minors who did not have parental consent.

46. Considering the drastic nature of the changes, it is surprising that the 1836 Marriage Act has thus far not been subject of any scholarly study.

47. PP 1836, vol. L, pp. 403-13.

48. PP 1836, vol. XLVIII, p. 60.

49. PP 1836, vol. XV, pp. 641-8.

50. For various reasons, the Marriage Act did not come into effect until 1840. It was slightly amended so as to make it mirror more closely the metropolitan Marriage Act. It allowed, for example, for the appointment of marriage officers and the establishment of a marriage registry. G. W. Roberts, The Population of Jamaica (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 248-9.

51. For more information on this rift, see Altink, "Slavery by Another Name."

52. PP 1833, vol IV, p. 212; PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 422. The terms 'Wife' and 'Husband' in the clause referred to all those in long-term relationships, legally married or not.

53. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 422.

54. Ibid., p. 423.

55. S. Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford, 2002), p. 139.

56. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 421. Planters adopted a whole range of practices after August 1834 which also aimed to combat a decline in output and reduce production costs. They not only sent a number of domestics to the field but also apprentices who had been relieved from field labour during slavery, such as women with six or more children, midwives and watchmen. They furthermore ended the customary practice of weekly allowances of dried fish, rice, sugar, and flour and gifts for newborn babies.

57. The annual output of sugar (in tons) fell from 68,465 in 1824-33 to 54,225 during the Apprenticeship System. Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, p. 148.

58. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 414.

59. 1827 Slave Law, p. 14.

60. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 416.

61. Ibid., pp. 402 and 414.

62. PP 1833, vol. IV, p. 216.

63. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 425.

64. Ibid., pp. 424-5.

65. Various S.M.s mentioned this desire. See, for example, S.M. Edward Lyon's report in PP 1837, vol. LIII, p. 217.

66. PP 1833, vol. IV, p. 209.

67. 1827 Slave Law, pp. 21-4.

68. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 412.

69. In October 1835, Governor Sligo informed the Secretary of State about the number of defeats that S.M.s faced to place a fair value on the services of the apprentices, indirectly asking the latter to consider whether the Assembly should be asked to change the manumission procedure. PP 1835, vol. L, p. 431.

70. Statement of Facts Illustrating the Administration of the Abolition Law, and the Sufferings of the Negro Apprentices, in the Island of Jamaica (London, 1837), p. 14. The pamphlet mentioned the prices fixed for apprentices from one estate, which ranged from 60 to 90 pounds.

71. PP 1836, vol. XV, pp. 414-6. The clauses relating to extra labour in the First Jamaica Act violated the Abolition Act which stated that the amount of labour could not exceed the amount of time lost. An apprentice who had absented himself for half a day had to repay a whole day during the weekend. The clauses were clearly inspired by the planters' aim to sustain their output levels.

72. Ibid., p. 423. This amendment was mainly the result of pressure exerted by Governor Sligo on the House of Assembly. He convinced them that if no appropriate alternative was found to flogging, female apprentices would soon become extremely troublesome. His suggestion that the treadmill was the best alternative was informed by positive reports in the metropolitan society about the suitability of the treadmill to achieve the dual goal of punishment: suffering and reform. PP 1835, vol. L, p. 3. For information on the use of the treadmill in the metropolitan society, see R. McGowen, "The Well-Ordered Prison," in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practices of Punishment in Western Society, ed. N. Morris and D. J. Rotman (New York, 1995), pp. 85-97.

73. 1827 Slave Law, p. 12.

74. Although none of the witnesses mentioned rape, this possibility should not be ruled out. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, pp. 174-5,178, and 196. For more information on sexual abuse in the workhouse, see Altink, "Slavery by Another Name."

75. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 242.

76. B. M'Mahon, Jamaica Plantership (1839), pp. 120-1. S.M.s had to visit the plantations in their district every fortnight in order to hear complaints by both apprentices and estate personnel. The number of consensual interracial sexual relations did also not decline after August 1834. Various reports by S.M.s presented this as a major obstacle to create a more orderly society in Jamaica. They argued that few apprentices could be persuaded to marry if they saw the majority of white estate officers living 'in sin'. See, for example, PP 1835, vol. L, p. 153; PP 1836, vol. XLVIII, p. 140; PP 1837, vol. LIII, p. 253.

77. See, for example, PP 1837, vol. LIII, p. 235. The First Jamaica Act, then, incorporated the legal protection against rape afforded under the 1827 Slave Law. S.M.s presented the number of rape cases as evidence that Jamaican society was moving towards the orderly society envisioned by the abolitionists. They argued that women now reported rape because they were more concerned about their chastity than during slavery.

78. In his Jamaica under the Apprenticeship System (London, 1838), former Governor Sligo examined a number of court cases involving the excessive flogging of female workhouse inmates. He pointed out that many bills were thrown out by the grand jury on the basis of ungrounded evidence and that only lower-rank workhouse officers were convicted.

79. This section leaves aside those work and punishment practices which only marginally affected the quality of apprenticed relations and did not call forward action by S.M.s, the Governor or the Colonial Office.

80. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 179. The fact that Atkinson's hut was used for religious purposes lent extra weight to Mr. Senior's decision to destroy it.

81. PP 1835, vol. L, p. 236.

82. See, for example, the statement of John Jeremie before the 1836 Select Committee in PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 104 and the report of S.M. Edward Lyon in PP 1837, vol. LIII, p. 217.

83. Circular 13 June 1836, Jamaica Archives, Thomas Davies Special Magistrate, 4/47.

84. PP 1836, vol. XLVIII, p. 387.

85. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 336. This request seems to have been influenced by John Jeremie's analysis of the Jamaica Acts. Jeremie suggested that fairer valuations could only be achieved if local magistrates were excluded from the procedure and if the fee set, was similar to that of voluntary manumissions during slavery. See PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 412.

86. Considering that planters feared a 25 per cent decline in output, it is surprising that they did not adopt a 45-hour work week as they were entitled to under the Imperial Abolition Act. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 421; PP 1833, vol. IV, p. 210.

87. There were various other work systems in place besides the eight-hour and the nine-hour. The Daughtrey and Gordon report mentions for instance an estate where field apprentices were given Friday and Saturday off one week and Sunday the next. The plurality of work schemes was made possible by clauses 5 and 6 of the Amending Act, which allowed for 'private contracts.' These allowed planters also to exceed the fixed number of working hours.

88. Some provision grounds were located eight to ten miles from the plantation. Under the eight-hour system, apprentices could travel to such distant grounds on Friday afternoon and work it the whole of Saturday.

89. During his first year in office, Sligo was strongly in favour of the eight-hour system. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, p. 178.

90. PP 1837, vol. LIII, p. 109.

91. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 336. Sligo resigned in March 1836 over a dispute with the Colonial Office about the re-appointment of the controversial S.M. Palmer. This was the culmination of a number of incidents which had shaken Sligo's confidence in the support of the Colonial Office. Smith took up office in August 1836. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, pp. 312 and 320.

92. PP 1837-38. vol. XLIX, pp. 49, 72 and 22. This followed Governor Smith's request to planters in the spring of 1837 to draw up 'scales of labour', that is they had to divide all the work carried out on their plantations into individual or group tasks that could be completed in day or a week.

93. PP 1837, vol. LIII, pp. 194-7.

94. Paton, A Narrative of Events, 50.

95. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 419.

96. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 204. Eliza was able to stay on the plantation by paying her employer the 5s and 10d a week, he would have obtained from hiring her out.

97. See, for instance, S.M. Baynes' report in PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 312.

98. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 414.

99. PP 1836, vol. XLVIII, p. 138.

100. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 635.

101. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 328. Emphasis mine.

102. Ibid., p. 219. Nancy's employer was an absentee planter. Various other instances in addition to this and the demolition of Peter Atkinson's house brought to light by the Daughtrey and Gordon commission led Governor Smith to dismiss Rawlinson. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, p. 260.

103. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 174.

104. See, for example, the statement of Susan White in PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 177. The planters' lack of concern about the miscarriages suffered by women who had spent time in the workhouse should be seen within the light of the fact that children born after August 1834 were free and thus beyond their responsibility.

105. PP 1837-38, vol. XLIX, p. 186. Dissatisfied with the eight-hour system on their estate, both women had taken the Friday afternoon off.

106. Idem, p. 176.

107. Ibid., p. 213.

108. Kingston Chronicle, 7 September 1835. This newspaper, with 55 subscribers, represented a moderate but consistent opposition to the Apprenticeship System. See Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, p. 273.

109. Planter-friendly S.M.s. often cited such remarks in their reports. See, for example, PP 1837, vol. LIII, p. 252; PP 1836, vol. XLVIII, p. 232.

110. PP 1836, vol. XV, p. 413.

111. PP 1836, vol. XLVIII, p. 115. Contracts such as these were only legal if they were collective and sanctioned by a S.M. The majority of the apprentices refused to sign them as they interpreted them as a limitation of their children's freedom.

112. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, p. 176; Holt, Problem of Freedom, p. xxii.

113. R. B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies 1680-1834 (Cambridge, 1985), p. 241.

114. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, p. 355.

115. Initially only 33 S.M.s were allocated. They all came from the metropolitan society. The number, however, soon proved too small and local men were appointed so that the total number allocated was 63. It was not only locally-born S.M.s who befriended the planters. According to a witness before the Daughtrey and Gordon commission, Major Light, who had come from England in 1834, "ask busha [the owner, HA] what to do and busha told him what to write." See, Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship, p. 260.

116. Thus far most studies have concentrated on the experiences of women and the punishment regime, in particular the workhouse. The lack of a focus on relationships in the more recent studies is especially striking considering the emphasis placed on the family and household organisation in studies on slavery.

117. For more information on the abolitionist efforts, see Altink, "Representations of Slave Women", chapter 5. While scholars have examined the numerous letters and diaries by West Indian missionaries for the period of slavery, they have largely ignored this source for the Apprenticeship period.

118. The first reliable marriage statistics date from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the marriage rate stood at 4 per 1,000. Roberts, The Population of Jamaica, p. 228.

By Henrice Altink

University of Glamorgan

Pontypridd CF 37 1DL

United Kingdom