Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/105

( 71 ) 10.Mr. Fitzmaurice mentions, among other instances of cruelty, that of dropping hot lead upon negroes, which he often saw practised by a planter of the name of Rushie, during his residence in Jamaica.

11.Mr. Hercules Ross, hearing one day, in Jamaica, from an inclosure [sic], the cries of some poor wretch under torture, he looked through, and saw a young female suspended by the wrists to a tree, swinging to and fro. Her toes could barely touch the ground, and her body was exceedingly agitated. The sight rather confounded him, as there was no whipping, and the master was just by seemingly motionless; but, on looking more attentively, he saw in his hand a stick of fire, which he held so as occasionally to touch her about her private parts as she swung. He continued this torture with unmoved countenance, until Mr. H. Ross, calling on him to desist, and throwing stones at him over the fence, stopped it.

12.Mr. Fitzmaurice once found Rushie, the Jamaica planter before mentioned, in the act of hanging a negro. Mr. Fitzmaurice begged leave to intercede, as he was doing an action that, in a few minutes, he would repent of. Rushie, upon this, being a passionate man, ordered him off his estate. Mr. Fitzmaurice accordingly went, but returned early the next morning, before Rushie was up, and going into the curing-house, beheld the same negro lying dead upon a board. It was notorious that Rushie had killed many of his negroes, and destroyed them so fast, that he was obliged to sell his estate.— Captain Ross says also, that there was a certain planter in the same island, who had hanged a negro on a post, close to his house, and in three years destroyed forty negroes, out of sixty, by severity. The rest of the conduct of this planter, as described by Captain Ross, was, after a debate, cancelled by the Committee of the House of Commons who took the evidence, as containing circumstances too horrible to be given to the world: and