Mary Prince was a Bermudian

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

 woman, born into slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 in Brackish Pond, now known as Devonshire Marsh, in Devonshire Parish, Bermuda

Devonshire Parish, Bermuda

-Location:It is located in the centre of the territory, close to the junction between the main part of the main island and the peninsula containing the capital, Hamilton, and Pembroke Parish . To the northeast, it is joined to Smith's Parish, and to the southwest it borders Paget Parish. As with...

. Her autobiography, 'The History of Mary Prince',(1831) was the first account of the life of a black woman to be published in the United Kingdom. A first-hand description of the brutalities of enslavement, released at a time when slavery was still legal in British Caribbean colonies, it had a galvanizing effect on the anti-slavery movement.

Biography

Prince's parents were both slaves: her father (whose only given name was Prince) was a sawyer

Sawyer

Sawyer is an occupational term referring to someone who saws wood. One such job was the now-archaic occupation of someone who cut lumber to length for the consumer market, a task now done by end users or at lumber and home improvement stores...

 owned by David Trimmingham, and her mother a house-servant of Charles Myners. When Myners died in 1788, Mary Prince and her mother were sold as household servants to Captain Darrell, who gave Prince to his little granddaughter, Betsey Williams. When she was 12, Prince was sold for £38 sterling (2009: £) to Captain John Ingham, of Spanish Point

Spanish Point, Bermuda

Spanish Point is a prominent headland in Bermuda, located in Pembroke Parish five kilometres to the northwest of the capital Hamilton. It forms the eastern coast at the entrance to the Great Sound....

, but never took easily to the indignities of her enslavement and she was often flogged. As a punishment, Prince was sold to another Bermudian, probably Robert Darrell, who sent her in 1806 to Grand Turk

Turks and Caicos Islands

The Turks and Caicos Islands are a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union consisting of two groups of tropical islands in the Caribbean, the larger Caicos Islands and the smaller Turks Islands, known for tourism and as an offshore financial centre.The Turks and...

, which Bermudians had used seasonally for a century for the extraction of salt

Salt

In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...

 from the ocean. Salt was a pillar of the Bermudian economy, but could not easily be produced in Bermuda

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

, where the only natural resource were the Bermuda cedars

Juniperus bermudiana

Juniperus bermudiana is a species of juniper endemic to Bermuda. This species is most commonly known as Bermuda cedar although, like most "cedars" it is not a true cedar ; a more botanically accurate name would be Bermuda juniper, but this term is extremely rare.It is an evergreen tree growing up...

 used for building ships. The industry was a cruel one, however, with the salt-rakers forced to endure exposure not only to the sun and heat, but also to the salt in the pans, which ate away at their uncovered legs.

Mary returned to Bermuda in 1810, but was sold to John Adams Wood in 1818 for $300, and sent to Antigua

Antigua

Antigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...

 to be a domestic slave. She joined the Moravian Church and, in December 1826, she married Daniel James, a former slave who had bought his freedom and worked as a carpenter

Carpenter

A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....

 and cooper

Cooper (profession)

Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads...

. For this impudence, she was severely beaten by her master.

In 1828 Wood and his family travelled to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, taking Prince with them as a servant. Although slavery was illegal in Britain by this date and Prince was technically free to leave Wood's household, she had no means to support herself alone in England. Also, unless Wood formally gave her her freedom, she could not return to her husband in Antigua without being re-enslaved. She remained with the Wood household until they threw her out. She then took shelter with the Moravian church in Hatton Garden

Hatton Garden

Hatton Garden is a street and area near Holborn in London, England. It is most famous for being London’s jewellery quarter and centre of the UK diamond trade, but the area is also now home to a diverse range of media and creative businesses....

. Within a few weeks, she had taken employment with Thomas Pringle

Thomas Pringle

Thomas Pringle was a Scottish writer, poet and abolitionist, known as the father of South African Poetry, the first successful English language poet and author to describe South Africa's scenery, native peoples, and living conditions.Born at Blaiklaw , four miles south of Kelso in Roxburghshire he...

, an abolitionist writer, and Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society

Anti-Slavery Society

The Anti-Slavery Society or A.S.S. was the everyday name of two different British organizations.The first was founded in 1823 and was committed to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Its official name was the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the...

. Prince arranged for her narrative to be copied down by Susanna Strickland and it was published in 1831 as The History of Mary Prince. The publication caused a stir and led to two libel cases, at both of which Prince was called to testify.

Prince's life after her book was published is not known, nor is it clear whether she was ever able to return to the Caribbean as she wished. In 1829 Wood had refused either to manumit her or even allow her to be bought out of his control. His refusal meant that as long as slavery remained legal in Antigua, Prince could not return there to her husband and friends without reverting to slave status and putting herself again in Wood's power. She is known to have remained in England until at least 1833. 1833 was also the year that Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, intended to achieve a two-staged abolition of West Indian slavery by 1840. In fact, because of popular protests in the West Indies the abolition was legally completed two years early in 1838. If Prince was still alive and in sufficient health, she may then have returned as a free woman to her homeland.

The Book and its Aftermath

Although when Prince's book was published slavery was no longer recognized as legal in Britain itself, it had not been ended in the colonies. There was still considerable uncertainty about the political and economic repercussions that might arise if Britain imposed an end to slavery throughout the empire. As a personal account the book contributed to the debate in a manner different from reasoned analysis or statistical arguments. Its tone was direct and authentic and its simple but vivid prose contrasted with the more laboured literary style of the day. An example is Prince's description of first being sold away from her mother at a young age:

'It was night when I reached my new home. The house was large, and built at the bottom of a very high hill; but I could not see much of it that night. I saw too much of it afterwards. The stones and the timber were the best things in it; they were not so hard as the hearts of the owners.'

Prince moreover spoke of slavery with the authority of personal experience, something her political opponents could never match.

As her book had an immediate effect on public opinion it soon became the subject of controversy, and its accuracy was strongly challenged in Blackwood's Magazine by James MacQueen, a defender of white West Indian interests and vigorous critic of the anti-slavery movement. He depicted Prince as a woman of low morals who had been merely the 'despicable tool' of the anti-slavery clique, who had incited her to malign her generous and indulgent owners. He also insinuated there must be something wrong with the Pringle family if it could accept such a morally-degraded person into its household. Pringle thereupon sued and received damages of £5. In return John Wood also sued Pringle for libel, claiming the book generally misrepresented his character, and after winning his case was awarded £25 in damages.

External links

• The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. Related by Herself. With a Supplement by the Editor. London: Published by F. Westley and A. H. Davis, 1831.
• Spartacus Net: Mary Prince.
• 100 Great Black Britons: Mary Prince.
• University of California, Santa Barbara: The History of Mary Prince.
• Coker College, Hartsville, SC, USA: Mary Prince Course.
• Turks & Caicos Museum: A Slave Account by Mary Prince.