Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/166

( 132 ) board or bass mat. The infant, for the first eight days, is never put to the mother's breast, but given to a woman out of the field, who nurses it, and who probably has a child two, three, or four months old: and here Mr. Coor submits it to medical men what effect the milk of a woman hardly wrought and badly fed would have on a tender infant. They mostly die convulsed about the eighth day. This want of care is the more lamentable, because, if they survive the eighth day, they mostly do well. What convinces him farther it is for want of care, is, because, where they have warm houses, kind treatment, and the child set to the mother's' breast, he very seldom knew any die.

Most of the negro-houses, says Fitzmaurice, are open to the weather, being wattled withoutplaister [sic]. They sleep on a board on the ground, near the fire, and after it goes out, they suffer from cold and damp. This causes many disorders, especially to lying-in women, who lose more children by this than any other cause, as they generally die of the locked jaw.

6.The Dean of Middleham says, it struck him, to speak generally, that negro mothers commonly went into the field too early after their delivery, taking their children with them; that the milk of the mother became feverish with labour, and the heat of the sun was too powerful for the child, which was commonly exposed in a basket, and, in rainy weather, unsheltered. The same is confirmed by others.

These continuing an increase impossible.

It is evident then, if the above be the general practice in the Colonies; if the slaves are over-wrought and hastily and severely punishied; if promiscuous intercourse be allowed; if the women are oppressed durring [sic] their pregnancy; if, while lying-in, they and their infants are so much exposed to damp and cold in their houses, that many of the latter perish: and if, after delivery, they are too soon hurried, with their surviving infants, into the field, it is evident, we repeat, that they cannot possibly, in general, increase: but that some