An introduction to the plantation journals of the Prospect ... - Microform

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evidence indicate that Prospect was probably established around the time of the Treaty of Paris (1783): (1) Earnings from wartime victualling contracts may have financed Attlay’s purchase of the estate. (2) In February 1784, the sum of £40 was paid to Dugall McPherson for carrying out a survey of the property: a task usually undertaken early in the operating life of a plantation. (3) The first recorded crop was harvested in 1784 and it usually took between four and five seasons for a plantation to attain full production. (4) In April of 1784, forty-three slaves were purchased to supplement the 114 workers already present on the Prospect at the beginning of the year. 36 Understanding of Prospect’s topography must remain limited in the absence of either a detailed contemporary survey or data derived from archaeological fieldwork, but some deductions can be drawn from the size of the enslaved population and the quantity of sugar produced by the plantation. The estate’s labour force ranged from 141 to 162 workers during the years from 1785 until 1834, whereas output averaged 120 hogsheads per season between 1786 and 1790 (Tables 3 and 8). These statistics imply that, once fully established, Prospect probably had between 160 and 180 acres planted in cane, since ratios of one slave per acre and two acres per hogshead of sugar commonly described production on Jamaica’s sugar estates. These estimates in turn suggest that Prospect occupied somewhere in the region of 480 and 540 acres in total on the assumption (again derived from contemporary observations) that land was fairly equally divided between cane cultivation, woodland, and pasture or provisioning. 37 Whilst the scale of cultivation on Prospect appears small relative to other absentee owned properties, it may have been close to the average prevailing in Jamaica’s sugar sector as a whole. A sample of estates surveyed between 1750 and 1839 suggests that the mean size of sugar estates (including woodland, provisions, and pasture) lay in the region of c.1,060 acres. Plantations located near the coast and established during the 1770s or early 1780s can be expected to have been smaller than this average figure, since mean size increased over time. 38 Two contemporary estimates of the average size of slave populations on the island’s sugar estates exist: Edward Long gave a figure of 144 slaves in 1774, while Bryan Edwards suggested 181 slaves was typical in 1789. In comparison, Jamaica’s accounts produce returns for 1832 (prepared largely for estates owned by nonresidents), record a higher average of 223 slaves per property. 39 Prospect thus fell somewhere between the minimum efficient scale required to repay investment in a central crushing mill and distilling equipment, and a threshold size of around 200 slaves that marked the point where a sugar plantation became large enough to support a planter and his family in Britain. 40 The scale of cultivation 7
on the estate heightens, rather than diminishes, the significance of its records as an historical source. A labour force of between 140 and 160 was still sufficient to render the plantation one of the largest production units in the pre-industrial world. Furthermore, a significant proportion of Jamaica’s enslaved experienced life and work on agricultural units of similar scale. The slave registration returns for 1832 indicate that no less than 25.6 percent of the colony’s un-free population lived on holdings that ranged in size from 101 to 200 slaves, whereas in Portland the corresponding figure was 36.2 percent. 41 Surviving sources consist primarily of the correspondence and accounts prepared by overseers and attorneys for British based proprietors of larger estates. This evidence over-represents the bigger properties because as size increased so too did the probability that a plantation would be absentee owned. A valuable exception to this general rule is provided by the journals and ledgers of Prospect Estate. Indeed, if Long’s and Edward’s observations are accurate, Prospect could even be considered an ‘average’ Jamaican sugar plantation in terms of its scale. 42 Plantation journals often give an illusory impression of completeness and exactitude. 43 The manuscript volumes of Prospect share this characteristic: they list the enslaved workers at regular intervals, provide annual accounts of births and deaths, and record how the labour force was divided into smaller gangs, or work groups, in order to accomplish specific tasks during the crop season. It must be emphasised, however, that the conventions adopted by the overseers and bookkeepers in compiling these records are nowhere stated clearly and the accuracy of the entries is also difficult to ascertain. In consequence, the evidence must be handled carefully by researchers. An example of the kind of problem contained within the journals is provided by the ‘net-purchases’ column in Table 3, which presents estimates of Prospect’s enslaved population. The annual listings are not always consistent with the statements of slave increase and decrease recorded in the records. One frequently finds that there are more or less enslaved workers on the property at the beginning of the calendar year than the accounts imply. The discrepancies partly arise from sales, purchases, manumissions, and runaways that are not consistently enumerated in the surviving sources. It must also be emphasised that Prospect was not the only property owned by the Attlays and that transfers of slaves to and from Dirty Pit pen, for example, were possible during the 1780s. Similarly, the influence of Thomas Oakeley’s plantations in Portland parish must also be reckoned with early in the nineteenth century (and possibly earlier). 44 Another significant deficiency in the records is that the journals fail to record all vital events occurring on Prospect. The omissions are probably most serious in the case of still-born babies and children dying a few days after birth. One interesting entry records that Jamina (a boy) and Peggy were born on 5 and 7 December 1792, but that both children died after only eight days of life. On some plantations, it is known that overseers were instructed only to record the births and deaths of children surviving for longer than a week. 45 The reference to these two babies suggests that Prospect’s managers may have followed a similar practice. Whilst specific entries 8
Page 1 and 2: An Introduction to the Plantation J
Page 3 and 4: © Simon D. Smith, 2004 ISBN 10: 1-
Page 5 and 6: Prior to their relocation to the Ma
Page 7 and 8: Stephen Oakeley Attlay Sr., like hi
Page 9: located five miles from Ashbury. A
Page 13 and 14: collective task to perform; in the
Page 15 and 16: Table 1 An Inventory of the Manuscr
Page 17 and 18: Table 3 The Enslaved Population of
Page 19 and 20: 1 Jan 1784 Table 5 Demographic Prof
Page 21 and 22: Tables 7a and 7b Work Allocation in
Page 23 and 24: Crop Season Table 8 Crop Invoices f
Page 25 and 26: (Wakefield, 2002), also available f
Page 27 and 28: 32 Craton, Invisible Man, 39. 33 Ba

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