Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/107

( 73 ) while after found him in one of his huts, fast asleep, in the day time, and shot him through the body. The negro jumping up, said, "What, you kill me asleep;" and dropped dead immediately. The overseer took off his head, and carried it to the owner. Mr. Woolrich knew another instance in the same island. A planter, offended with his waiting man, a mulatto, stepped suddenly to his gun, on which the man ran off, but his master shot him through the head with a single ball.

The part which the very women take in these punishments.

From the above accounts, there are no less than sixteen sorts of extraordinary punishments, which the imagination has invented in the moments or passion and caprice. It is much to be lamented, that there are others in the evidence not yet mentioned. But as it is necessary to insert a new head, under which will be explained the concern which the very women take, both in the ordinary and extraordinary punishments of the slaves, and as some of the latter not yet mentioned are inseparably connected with it, it was thought proper to cite them under this new division rather than continue them under the old.

It will appear extraordinary to the reader, that many women, living in the colonies, should not only order, and often superintend, but sometimes actually inflict with their own hands some severe punishments upon their slaves, and that these should not always be women of a low order, but frequently of respectability and rank.

In the instance of whipping, mentioned by General Tottenham, (p. 63) we find the order for it given by the wife of a planter, whom the General was visiting, though the husband had declined it on his part. A lady is represented by Mr. Cook as having her domestics flogged every Monday morning. Capt. Cooke represents a woman of respectable condition as sending her servant to K