The Lazarus Curse (31 page)
Authors: Tessa Harris
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical
I
n 1783 a lobby group was formed by six Quakers to campaign against slavery. Four years later it had grown into the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. By the end of the eighteenth century public opinion was swinging in favor of the abolition movement in Great Britain. Thanks to the largely forgotten efforts of Granville Sharp and, more famously, William Wilberforce, the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807. While the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire, slavery itself was not actually outlawed until 1833.
Granville Sharp went on to campaign for worldwide abolition and was behind the plan to settle freed slaves from North America and the Caribbean in the territory of Sierra Leone, West Africa. The aptly named Freetown was its capital.
The scourge of slavery continues to this day. At a conservative estimate, the campaign group Free the Slaves puts the number of modern-day slaves, i.e., “People held against their will, forced to work and paid nothing,” at between 21 and 30 million globally.
magic man:
There are several contemporary accounts of this ritual. One of them comes from Stephen Fuller (1716–1808), who was the British agent on Jamaica. Matthew Lewis also produced an account in
The Journal of a residence among the negroes in the West Indies,
written between 1815 and 1817.
Maroons:
Escaped slaves in the West Indies. The word comes from the Spanish
cimarron,
meaning fugitive.
Obeah:
There seem to be several ways to write this, including Obi or Obia; its definition is a folk religion of African origin that uses the tradition of sorcery.
myal:
A form of an African religion.
conch shell:
Used by slaves either as a musical instrument or to sound an alarm.
branched calalue:
The herb, a member of the
Solanum
genus (possibly black nightshade,
Solanum nigrum
), was known to have high concentrations of the hallucinogens atropine and scopolamine.
bloody flux:
Now known as amoebic dysentery, this was one of the most lethal diseases that could break out aboard a ship.
Royal Society:
This learned society for science was founded in 1660.
yellow fever:
The disease, spread by mosquitoes, affected mainly those of European origin.
Brewer Street:
The school of the famous anatomist Dr. William Hunter was in neighboring Great Windmill Street, Soho, London.
The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus:
Published in 1774, this was a remarkable book, featuring engravings by Rymsdyk, which were modeled on Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches.
Monsieur Desnoues:
French physician Guillaume Desnoues (or Denoue) created very lifelike wax anatomical models in breach of medical ethics. These were displayed in London and Paris and proved extremely popular until his death in 1735.
drinking concoctions:
Many enslaved women chose to abort their fetuses by taking herbal potions.
Rousseau:
The French philosopher’s treatise,
The Social Contract,
published in 1762, helped inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe, especially in France, and arguably in America.
as cold a November:
The winter of 1783–84 was one of the coldest on record, and the River Thames froze over for a time. Some experts attribute the severity of the weather to the effect of the Laki fissure eruption in Iceland in June of 1783.
Coromantee:
Derived from the name of the Ghanaian coastal town Kormantse, the terms “Coromantins,” “Coromanti,” or “Kormantine” were also used as the English names given to Akan slaves from the Gold Coast or modern-day Ghana.
Ashanti:
A nation and ethnic group, also known as Asante, living mainly in Ghana and Ivory Coast. European slavers regarded them as the most warlike tribe.
Mansu:
The great slave market where Gold Coast Negroes were sold to Europeans.
a hat modeled on a ship:
Joseph Johnson was a London beggar, famous for his “ship” hat. His story appeared in
Vagabondiana, or anecdotes of mendicant wanderers,
printed in 1817.
Lord Mayor’s edict:
In 1731, black people were banned from taking up a trade, a law which led many into poverty.
yaws:
A neglected, and potentially disfiguring, tropical disease still prevalent in several tropical countries that affects the skin, cartilage, and bone.
Ob:
Or Oub, was the name of the royal serpent and oracle worshipped by some Africans.
Somerset House:
Built in 1775, this famous London building was home to the Navy Board, as well as the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of Antiquaries, and the Royal Society.
Endeavour:
HMS
Endeavour
first set sail for Australia and New Zealand in 1769.
Captain Cook:
Captain James Cook was killed in 1779 by Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific.
the Great Fogg:
For several weeks during the summer of 1783, a dry fog covered the eastern half of England and some of northern Europe, blocking out the sun and causing many respiratory diseases in livestock and humans.
Treaty of Paris:
Signed on September 3, 1783, the treaty ended the American War of Independence with Britain, but was not ratified until January 14 the following year.
Daniel Solander:
A Swedish naturalist and friend of Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied him on several expeditions.
Sydney Parkinson:
The artist employed by Sir Joseph Banks to accompany him on James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. He produced thousands of drawings, but died of dysentery before returning home.
the Lizard:
A peninsula in Cornwall, near the most southerly point of the British mainland.
Court of Chancery:
The Court of England and Wales that had responsibility for wards of court and lunatics.
caves in West Wycombe:
Known as the Hellfire Caves, they were excavated from an old quarry by Sir Francis Dashwood in the 1750s.
red coral:
This was believed to prevent hemorrhaging.
the purchase of slaves:
According to the eighteenth-century explorer John Atkins, “the Commanders, with their Surgeons (as skilled in the Choice of Slaves) attend the whole time on shore, where they purchase, in what they call a fair open Market.” Source:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/files/chapter-6-resistance-19110.pdf
how would the dead eat?
The famous physician and naturalist Hans Sloane observed in 1688 that at funerals some Africans threw “Rum and Victuals into their Graves, to serve them in the other world. Sometimes they bury it in gourds, at other times spill it on the Graves.”
Source:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/files/chapter-6-resistance-19110.pdf
cages over the graves:
Mortsafes.
Oxford Street:
Sophie von la Roche, a German visitor to London in 1786, wrote of fashionable Oxford Street: “First one passes a watchmaker’s, then a silk or fan store, now a silversmith’s, a china or glass shop.”
Blackheath Golf Club:
The first official golfing club in Great Britain, it was also a London meeting place for several slave traders and plantation owners.
The round was enjoyable enough:
The club’s first course consisted of just five holes on Blackheath itself, with three circuits, i.e., 15 holes, constituting a round.
Legal Quays:
The area known as Billingsgate on the south side of the City of London was where all imported cargoes had to be delivered for inspection and assessment by Customs Officers.
Pool of London:
The name given to the original Port of London on the Thames, which ran alongside the Tower of London.
Scuffle-Hunters, River Pirates:
Gangs operated in the Port of London, frequently stealing cargo from ships and quays. One estimate put the merchants’ losses at £500,000 a year, including 2 percent of all sugar imported.
tide waiter:
An official who checked boats coming into the Thames to ensure goods were not sold on the way to the Legal Quays for a tax-free profit.
Gravesend:
In 1782, the first customs house in the town, Whitehall Place, was built opposite the present Customs House to house tide waiters, who had previously been based at the port’s inns.
lighter:
A masted barge used for transporting goods to and from larger ships to port.
Black Loyalists:
Between April and November 1783, those slaves who fought for the British in the American War of Independence were given their freedom and evacuated. As well as coming to London, many went to Nova Scotia. Their names are recorded in
The Book of Negroes
.
Ebele:
An Igbo name, meaning mercy.
Sambo:
A common name given to African slaves by their white masters. In 1736, a young, dark-skinned cabin boy or slave known as Sambo was buried in a field near Overton, Lancashire.
Igbo:
An ethnic group of southeastern Nigeria.
Kew Gardens:
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, near London, were founded in 1759 in what was formerly Kew Park. George III improved the gardens, helped by Sir Joseph Banks.
a trained one:
According to papers belonging to a Liverpool merchant and slave trader, male slaves were fetching £40 each in 1772.
Hibiscus elatus:
Jamaica’s national tree.
image of a Negro man:
Several slave owners incorporated images of slaves on their crests. John Hawkins, the famous explorer, for example, was proud of the source of his wealth. His crest bears the image of an African in bondage.
larva of the botfly:
The botfly lives mainly in South America, although it is also found in Jamaica, but only the larvae of
Dermatobia hominis
will live in humans.
bridle:
An appalling instrument of torture designed to dig into the tongue so that the wearer had to remain silent, these were not confined to slaves, but to ordinary women, too, when it was called a scold’s bridle or “the branks.” Although not widely employed in the eighteenth century, the last reported use was in 1856 in Lancashire.