Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/113

( 79 ) helpless is called in the islands (Captain Wilson and Captain Lloyd) "Giving them free."

As a proof how little the life of an old slave is regarded in the West Indies, we may make the following extract from the evidence of Mr. Coor. Once when he was dining with an overseer, an old woman who had run away a few days, was brought home, with her hands tied behind. After dinner, the overseer, with the clerk, named Bakewell, took the woman, thus tied, to the hot-house, a place for the sick, and where the stocks are in one of the rooms. Mr. Coor went to work in the mill, about one hundred yards off, and hearing a most distressful cry from that house, he asked his men, who and what it was. They said they thought it was old Quafheba. About five o'clock the noise ceased, and about the time he was leaving work, Bakewell came to him, apparently in great spirits, and said, "Well, Mr. Coor, Old Quafheba is dead. We took her to the stocks-room; the overseer threw a rope over the beam; I was Jack Ketch, and hauled her up, till her feet were off the ground. The overseer locked the door, and took the key with him, till my return just now, with a slave for the stocks, when I found her dead," Mr. Coor said, "You have killed her, I heard her cry all the afternoon." He answered, "D—n her for an old b—h, she was good for nothing; what signifies killing such an old woman as her." Mr. Coor said, "Bakewell, you shock me," and left him. The next morning his men told him, they had helped to bury her.

But it appears that the aged are not the only persons whose fate is to be commiserated, when they become of no value; for people in youth, if disabled, are abandoned to equal misery. General Tottenham, about three weeks before the hurricane, saw a youth, about nineteen, walking in the streets, in a most deplorable situation, ''entirely naked, and with an iron collar about his neck, with five long projecting spikes. His body, before and behind, his breech, belly, and thighs, were almost cut to pieces, and with running sores all over them, and you might put''