An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

It is no se­cret that the im­mense­ly di­verse eth­nic pot­pour­ri of Trinidad's his­to­ry has pro­duced the most beau­ti­ful women in the world. Al­most every white man of sub­stance had his coloured mis­tress in days of yore. The fa­bled at­trac­tion of the mu­lat­to woman had its ef­fect on the fear­some Sir Thomas Pic­ton, who ruled with an iron hand as the first British gov­er­nor from 1797-1803. Pic­ton sent forth pimps to search out a mis­tress.

They came across Roset­ta Smith, a free coloured belle who was mar­ried and who lust­ed af­ter pow­er and wealth. She was per­suad­ed to leave her hus­band to share the bed of the most pow­er­ful man in the colony.

As is the para­dox of most tyrants, Pic­ton was com­plete­ly bazodee over Roset­ta. In or­der to give her a per­son­al in­come, he played Trinidad's na­tion­al game of bobol and award­ed her the lu­cra­tive fire­wood-sup­ply con­tract for the en­camped British reg­i­ment.

With this, Roset­ta was able to ac­quire a res­i­dence, which she trans­formed in­to a high-class bor­del­lo where the most in­flu­en­tial men of the colony (se­nior mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, rich planters, mer­chants etc) would seek plea­sures. This was of­ten to be their bane, how­ev­er, since Roset­ta bribed every one of her fe­male "friends" to ex­tract per­son­al se­crets from the rav­ished men on their per­son­al as­sets as well as their opin­ions of Gov­er­nor Pic­ton.

Roset­ta be­came the La­dy Gov­er­nor in all but name. She would vis­it well-to-do pris­on­ers in the gaol which stood near Ma­rine Square and elic­it bribes from them to have their sen­tences light­ened. She would whisk mag­nif­i­cent­ly in­to all the stores and make off with what­ev­er mer­chan­dise tick­led her fan­cy–no charge, of course, for the Gov­er­nor's "La­dy."

One Scots­man dared to protest, send­ing Roset­ta in a huff to her man, who had the mer­chant dragged be­fore him to be in­car­cer­at­ed, say­ing:"You are a pret­ty fel­low, a damned in­so­lent Ja­co­bite ras­cal. I'll make an ex­am­ple of you to show the ras­cals I gov­ern that I will be obeyed."

Twice a week, Roset­ta held a lev­ee at her per­son­al cham­bers where syco­phants and pe­ti­tion­ers for favour flocked thick­ly. There were those whose sense of ho­n­our did not al­low them to grov­el to Roset­ta, and among these were the Wid­ow Grif­fith and her two young daugh­ters. Roset­ta made them an "of­fer" to buy their house on Queen Street, and when the wid­ow re­fused, the res­i­dence was bar­ri­cad­ed by sol­diers, thus con­fin­ing the oc­cu­pants to house ar­rest.

They were even de­prived of food and wa­ter, be­ing sur­rep­ti­tious­ly aid­ed by a gen­tle­man neigh­bour who smug­gled in small pro­vi­sions through a back win­dow un­til the sol­diers dis­cov­ered his guile and en­camped in the back­yard too.

Af­ter two days of com­plete siege, Mrs Grif­fith sold the house to Roset­ta for a mere pit­tance. Pic­ton was re­called to Eng­land in 1803 and Roset­ta mar­ried a re­spectable coloured man and raised the two chil­dren she had by the Gov­er­nor. She died in rel­a­tive ob­scu­ri­ty, but her de­scen­dants still ex­ist in Trinidad in sev­er­al present-day fam­i­lies.