Dispossessed Lives. Marisa J. Fuentes
said Cage is always to be kept in sufficient repair, at the public charge of this Island.”152 By this edict it appears the gaol was primarily reserved for white criminals and debtors representing the segregation between slaves and whites and reinforcing the special category in which the enslaved were held. In 1762, “An Act to impower the Justices of the Peace at their respective Quarter Sessions, to appoint Constables for the Several Parishes of this Island; and also for the appointment of Watches to be in the respective Towns of this Island” was passed.153 It authorized the justices of the peace to divide the town into districts and appoint “twenty-eight Watch-men, who with the Constable of the night to be deemed as two men, shall watch every night within the said [Bridgetown], from the hour of nine o’clock at night, till five o’clock the next morning.”154 The Justices directed each Watch-man to be armed and a Cage built, “and stocks kept in good order.”155 This law created a vast system of surveillance throughout the town and seems to suggest that in addition to the main Cage near the main bridge in the eastern region, many Cages would be built one in each district. Although there are no surviving records that referred to the actual existence of multiple Cages throughout the town, these edicts expose a careful plan of confinement and control aimed at enslaved people.156
Enslaved women like Jane who ran away for thirty days or more and were caught would have likely been held in the Cage until their trial and execution.157 Such occurrences were not rare. Prior to the 1750s, if a woman “absented” herself above thirty days, the law directed conviction and execution following her capture. For instance, on 27 October 1702, George Sharpe Esq. submitted a petition to the Barbados Council for the value of “a Negro Wooman of his, who was Executed for running away and absenting herself from her Masters Service for about one whole Yeare.”158 Execution records for the course of the eighteenth century reveal that enslaved men and women were condemned for running away as late at 1759.159 In later years, likely due to the impending abolition of the slave trade to and from Africa rather than humanitarian concerns, colonial authorities changed the terms by which runaways would be punished in the latter eighteenth century.160 But the Cage(s) and other sites of punishment remained the literal and symbolic material of colonial power and the consolidation of white supremacy into the nineteenth century.
The Cage’s deadly conditions proved distressing not only to the slaves confined within but an affront to the respectability of the residents of Bridgetown into the nineteenth-century who complained of it as “disgusting to Humanity and at first view disgraceful to the Age in which we live,” and as a “Nuisance to its Neighborhood.”161 In 1810, an enslaved man died while being held in the Cage and the Assembly and Bridgetown magistrates investigated the causes of his death.162 The construction of the main Cage purported to hold no more than twelve persons, yet, as the Barbados Minutes of Assembly reported, “[in] this wretched and miserable hole, shocking to relate, eighty-five persons have been confined at one time. If they lay down at all, they must have lain tier upon tier, at least four deep.”163 Similar to conditions of the Middle Passage, the confining spaces of an urban slave environment served not simply to hold fugitives in captivity but to symbolically reinforce the legal status of chattel and the disposability of black life. The Barbados Council met in the middle of December 1810 to hear the investigations by the Assembly and Bridgetown magistrates and to consider requests to remove the Cage, “as far as can be … from the principal & public Streets of the Town.”164 The Assembly, magistrates and Council ultimately agreed that the fatal conditions of the Cage stemmed from two main issues. First, the enslaved suffered from insufficient provisions because the keeper of the Cage took a third of their allotted daily corn in exchanged for providing them with meals and water.165 Additionally, Bridgetown slave owners, or “proprietors” of slaves confined their slaves for punishment which was an, “illuse, the Cage being intended for the Confinement only of runaway and disorderly Slaves,” the latter of which were taken from the streets and held overnight.166 Consequently, the residents’ concerns were not resolved for seven years A deed poll of 1818, contesting the ownership and transfer of the land upon which the Cage stood, describes the site as still located within the “most public and populous street in the town” and reports the “Cage unwholesome to the slaves confined therein.”167 It was in 1818 that the Barbados government acquiesced to the white residents and moved the cage to the Pierhead (Molehead) until it was finally eradicated in 1838 after Emancipation in the British Caribbean.168
However, despite the threat of “unwholesome” conditions, it is evident from the records that some women were repeatedly confined within this prison. If captured and confined in the Cage, the enslaved were stripped of clothing by the guards and their owners in order to identify them by the scars on their bodies. Descriptions of burns and whip marks brought them out of hiding and into public exposure: the private concealed black female body made public and legible. In October 1787, two enslaved women, Molly and Bessey, ran away from their owners in the southeast part of the island. Bessey, “has frequently been taken up and confined in the Cage,” according to her owner Elizabeth Pollard.169 On December 20, 1788, Jonathan Perkins also advertised for the return of four enslaved women. Ambah was fifty years old, African born, and “[had] lost the forefinger from her left hand.”170 Ambah disappeared with two of her daughters, Quasheba (thirty) and Betty (thirteen). All were said to be “so well known in and about Bridgetown (where they lived for many years) as to require no further description: [they were] perfectly well known to Mr. Gooding, of the Cage and his attendants.”171 Others fought their way out in order to escape the suffocating environment. On 25 October 1788, The Barbados Mercury reported that “fourteen of the negroes confined in the Public Cage in this town made their escape; having filed the lock from the bolt to which it was fastened, they opened the door and got out.”172 Risking further punishment, including death, the enslaved confined in Bridgetown’s Cage sometimes made desperate efforts to break free.
Enslaved women who ran away did so at great risk to themselves. Even if they managed to avoid capture, they risked manipulation by people who sought to exploit their dangerous situation. Some no doubt worried about the fate of children or family members left behind. Those who ran with their children had to find ways to feed and shelter them. And of course, if caught, they would be immediately confined and possibly sentenced to death.173 The threats of capture and punishment made fugitivity a fraught choice. The repetition in the advertisements of women who ran from the far corners of the island to town reflects their understanding of Bridgetown as a possible hiding place. Some had relatives and friends in the town and may have had knowledge of networks along the way. But even fugitive women without such ties or knowledge may have viewed urban spaces as offering the best chance of hiding in plain sight among the large enslaved and free black population.
These urban spaces also demonstrated the control of the authorities to impose their will on slave owners, since owners lost valuable property when police or magistrates chose to charge one of their slaves with a crime. With no legal defense to oppose mistreatment, enslaved people remained at the mercy of their owners’ ability to argue for their innocence. Occasionally slave owners successfully managed to overturn death sentences for their condemned slaves. However, if the Council overturned a conviction, the enslaved were rarely released without punishment. Most often, like Grigg, their sentences were reduced from death to multiple whippings at symbolic and hyper-visible sites. For example, on 16 February 1748, Christopher Moe submitted a petition “to Reverse the Sentence of Death against a Negro Man called Somers” to the Court of Errors presided over by the Governor and Council,
Whereupon the Errors assigned by the Petitioner for Reversing the said sentence were Confessed by the Solicitor for the Prosecution Robert Leader … And thereupon [His Excellency] & all the Council were pleased to alter the said [Judgment] of Death; & to order that the said Negro Man Somers receive 13 Lashes before the Custom House; 13 in the Market Place; & 13 before Eldridge’s Tavern before he is Discharged.174
Although the case was dismissed, a public example was made of Somers and he did not escape punishment. Indeed, the authorities retained their ability to make a spectacle of Somers’s tortured body. The records do not indicate the crime for which Somers was accused of or if the confession of errors by the prosecutor exonerated