An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

To­ba­go is a bit dif­fer­ent from Trinidad, in that its slaves had no sig­nif­i­cant French her­itage and thus were sub­ject­ed to the bru­tal­i­ties of British plan­toc­ra­cy.Where­as slave trad­ing in Trinidad was large­ly on a peer-to-peer ba­sis, To­ba­go is known to have had a slave auc­tion at Mar­ket Square in Scar­bor­ough, where hap­less vic­tims of the flesh trade were hawked to planters like cat­tle.To­ba­go al­so dif­fers from Trinidad in that un­like the lat­ter which on­ly count­ed one in­sur­rec­tion (bare­ly af­ter the end of slav­ery in 1837) and one still­born plot in La Cue­sa val­ley, To­ba­go had sev­er­al vi­o­lent slave re­bel­lions, in 1770, 1771 and 1774. This may have had the ef­fect of mak­ing slav­ery con­di­tions in that is­land all the harsh­er.

Still, there were some gen­er­al sim­i­lar­i­ties in the con­di­tions of slav­ery in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which were, un­til 1889, sep­a­rate ter­ri­to­ries. Sug­ar was the dom­i­nant force in both economies, al­though Trinidad al­so pro­duced a fair amount of co­coa and oth­er crops like cot­ton. Shel­ter was gen­er­al­ly al­lo­cat­ed in a se­ries of huts on the es­tate. These were con­struct­ed in the cheap­est man­ner pos­si­ble, of tapia or wo­ven bam­boo walls with cane trash or carat thatch roofs.At least one pre-eman­ci­pa­tion vil­lage is be­lieved to have sur­vived in­to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry at Bourg Con­go, which was on the lands of the La Paix Es­tate in Chatham. Bourg Con­go is now an aban­doned place, with the last per­son who re­mem­bered it as a set­tle­ment dy­ing just a few years ago.Food was of­ten bad and in scanty sup­ply. Planters were re­quired to pro­vide a stip­u­lat­ed ra­tion of dry pro­vi­sions, but this var­ied con­sid­er­ably. It gen­er­al­ly con­sist­ed of a few pounds of corn­meal or flour with a bit of salt­ed meat or fish. This was halved for women and chil­dren.

The whole was doled out on Sat­ur­days and ex­pect­ed to last an en­tire week. It was poor stuff for days of su­per­hu­man labour but could be sup­ple­ment­ed by gar­den­ing on es­tates which cared to spare a bit of waste­land for kitchen gar­dens. This pro­duce was the prop­er­ty of the slave who could sell it and earn enough to buy man­u­mis­sion.Ma­jor Ca­pa­dose re­count­ed of To­ba­go in 1833: "Long be­fore eman­ci­pa­tion the ne­gros had the ex­clu­sive right of the sale of ground pro­vi­sions; name­ly, yams, tan­niers, sweet pota­toes, cas­sa­va; and they had that mo­nop­oly be­cause no oth­er peo­ple would cul­ti­vate them in To­ba­go, and con­se­quent­ly they af­fixed what price they pleased. The leg­is­la­ture in vain tried to con­trol them in that re­spect; even whilst slaves they an­swered the De­cree of the House of As­sem­bly, af­fix­ing a tar­iff, by with­hold­ing the sup­plies, and the mar­kets were des­ti­tute of the nec­es­sary com­modi­ties till the de­cree was re­scind­ed."

A lib­er­al (in the barest sense of the word) slave own­er might re­gale his slaves for Christ­mas with a few ex­tra bar­rels of flour, some fresh meat from a butchered pig and a few gal­lons of rum.

Cloth­ing al­lowances were sim­i­lar­ly mea­gre. Twice a year the men were to re­ceive a cloth jack­et, shirt, hat and pair of trousers and the women a coarse skirt, woollen wrap­per, pet­ti­coats and a hand­ker­chief. Chil­dren had no al­lo­ca­tion and were clothed in the castoffs of their par­ents. Those who tend­ed gar­dens and sold pro­duce could buy lengths of bright cot­ton print and head­ker­chiefs, which evolved in­to a sig­na­ture Mar­tini­quan style.

The Ame­lio­ra­tion Act of 1823 passed in the British Par­lia­ment was sup­posed in the­o­ry to pro­vide a le­gal frame­work for the treat­ment of slaves and in­clud­ed such clemen­cies as the ban­ning of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment for fe­males, recog­nis­ing the rights of slaves to per­son­al prop­er­ty and, most im­por­tant­ly, the dis­trict mag­is­trate could is­sue li­cences for the mar­riage of slaves. For­mer­ly, an own­er had the right to de­ny a slave his free­dom.The Ame­lio­ra­tion Act made this il­le­gal and more­over re­moved an op­pres­sive tax which had for­mer­ly ex­ist­ed that had to be paid by the slave who wished to pur­chase man­u­mis­sion. This leg­is­la­tion was of­ten ig­nored but paved the way for the even­tu­al end of a sys­tem of bondage which is a blot on hu­man his­to­ry.The pro­vi­sions of the act saw the in­tro­duc­tion of a salaried of­fi­cer called the Pro­tec­tor of Slaves. This man, who was sup­posed to en­sure that slave­own­ers ad­hered to the law, was a cor­rupt per­son­age and thus saw fit to ig­nore his du­ties. The of­fice of the Pro­tec­tor in Trinidad was on Ed­ward Street in Port-of-Spain.