Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/103

( 69 ) 4.Captain Cook being an [sic] a visit to General Frere at an estate of his in Barbadoes, and riding one morning with the General and two other officers, they saw near a house, upon a dunghill, a naked negro nearly suspended, by strings from his elbows backwards, to the bough of a tree, with his feet barely upon the ground, and an iron weight round his neck, at least, to appearance of 141b. weight: and thus without one creature near him, or apparently near the house, was this wretch left exposed to the noon-day sun. Returning, a few hours later, they found him still in the same state, and would have released him, but for the advice of General Frere, who had an estate in the neighbourhood. The gentlemen, through disgust, shortened their visit, and returned the next morning.

5.Lieutenant Davison and Mr. Woolrich mention the thumb-screw, and Mr. Woolrich, Captain Ross, Mr. Clappeson, and Dr, Harrison, mention the picket, as instruments of punishment. A negro man, in Jamaica, says Dr. Harrison, was put on the picket so long as to cause a mortification of his foot and hand, on suspicion of robbing his master, a publick officer, of a sum of money, which it afterwards appeared, the master had taken himself. Yet the master was privy to the punishment, and the slave had no compensation. He was punished by order of the master, who did not then chuse [sic] to make it known that he himself had made use of the money.

6.Jeffreys, Captain Ross, M. Terry, and Coor, mention the cutting off of ears, as another species of punishment. The last gentleman gives the following instance in Jamaica. One of the house-girls having broken a plate, or spilt [sic] a cup of tea, the doctor, (with whom Mr. Coor boarded) nailed her ear to a post. Mr. Coor remonstrated with him in vain. They went to bed, and left her there. In the morning she was gone, having torn the head of the nail through her ear. She was soon brought back, and when Mr. Coor came to breakfast, he found she had been very severely whipped by the doctor, who in his fury, clipped both her ears off close to her head,