Taylor saw enslaved people as little other than units of production but understood the necessity of enforcing routines that were conducive to efficient and sustained work. Here he talks about the value of having a medical doctor resident at Arcedeckne’s Golden Grove estate and critiques the practices of the white overseers who superintended the daily management of estates, many of whom used their position to find work for their own ‘jobbing’ gangs of slaves and to claim large bonuses to their salaries for producing large crops in the short-term, while subjecting enslaved people to such abuses that the estate was unable to keep up the output.
[…] I am glad you approve of my having let the doctor have the house, and you will be very wrong again ever to let an overseer have any land from you but for a specified number of years. Buying of more negroes is certainly the way not to have jobbing, but it is ruin to buy negroes to have them immediately killed and worked to death to aggrandise an overseer’s name by saying he made such and such a crop for a year or two, and then for the estate to fall off and the real strength gone to the devil, as for words or writing it is only whistling to the wind. I assure you your negroes are not what you have a right to expect or what they ought to be and there is no probability at present of any that may be put on thriving, it is very easy to destroy a good gang of negroes but very difficult to raise one and requires a great deal more pains than has been or will be taken of them, the first thing to be done for new negroes is to get them plenty of provisions to let them make grounds and build houses and to be easily worked untill they are seasoned but to work them immediately hard only breakes [sic] their hearts. […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/28, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 26 November 1781)
Category Archives: Kingston
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 28 August 1781
Taylor’s callous disregard for enslaved people as anything other than commodities and units of labour is evident in his reaction to the effects of the storm at Arcedeckne’s Golden Grove estate, which he managed as Arcedeckne’s attorney. The shocking human cost of the hurricane is nevertheless apparent, although Taylor conflates this with a diatribe about the various hardships that Jamaican planters are facing as a result of the war, including high sugar duties and a lack of security for transporting produce and supplies around coast of the island. We can only imagine the feelings (or motivations?) of those enslaved people ‘carried off’ by ‘Spanish pickeroons’ raiding the Jamaican coast or of those they left behind on Taylor and Arcedeckne’s plantations.
[…] I did apprehend that there would have been orders come down to have sent up some provisions to Golden Grove by this time, tho’ I do not see any, and the negroes were crying out very much before I came down, and I saw their negroe grounds exceedingly damaged and little or no ground provisions, as I before wrote you, your negroes were but very weakly and not in a condition to make the crops that you had a right to expect from the numbers you have put on the estate. There is a large Guinea man at present in but from the extreme scarcity of provisions it would be the height of imprudence to buy negroes to put on the estate untill there is something for them to eat, and besides the times are so very precarious a person must be afraid to risque any part of his capital but what he cannot help in the West Indies where our foes are so potent, the minds of people much disatisfied [sic] and growing more and more so daily from the new duty on sugar and the contrivances of the refiners should the latter take place we must throw up our estates and remove our negroes to some other government where we may be able to make a shift to live and not to be held in Egyptian bondage. Our fleet is sailed our admiral is retired to his mountain to plant cabbage and potatoes, and our governor to his estate, while the Spanish pickeroons are dayly committing ravages on our coasts and no such thing as any vessell attempting to scour the coast about fourteen days ago they took two negroes belonging to me who were fishing close off our reef, and three days after landed at the east end and carried off two negroes belonging to me, three to you and four to Duckenfield Hall, the carelessness of our commanders is scarce believable and except they are removed and some more careful ones sent it will not be in our power next year to ship our produce. Your Irish provisions are at last arrived and to be delivered at Morant Bay, it is intolerable there is more risque to carry them from Morant Bay or Port Morant than to bring them from England or Ireland to Morant Bay. […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/21, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 28 August 1781)
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 26 June 1781
The increase in the duty on sugar came in the budget of March 1781. A duty that had been a little under 6s 4d per hundredweight in 1776 now rose to over 11s 8d. The Prime Minister, Lord North, explained that the new tax was necessary because of the expenses of the war, which compelled government to look for a reliable means of raising a large amount of revenue for the Treasury. Taylor was incensed and, associating the duty with the other ill effects of the war, began to predict the economic decline of the British West Indies.
[…] I by no manner of means expected the new duty of 4/6 on sugar, I thought the calamity of the hurricane would have softened their hearts a little, and that they never could think of taxing people whom they looked upon to be objects of charity and as such had given charity to. In regard to Lord Norths assertion that it would be a productive tax, it certainly will be so and productive of the ruin of the old estates & persons in the island and of the ruin of the people at home who have lent money on them on bonds and mortgages, that the consumer will pay the tax I do not believe, for if they go on in the manner they are, there will be no body at home who will be able to buy sugar, and consequently no consumption, indeed all the merchants now complain that the price of sugars has very much lessened the consumption. If we are the most favoured subjects God help the rest, for we have neither protection nor nothing else, our vessells taken daily before our eyes, not less than three last week coming with sugars from Plantain Garden River to Port Morant the same thing happening daily while the admiral [Sir Peter Parker] is digging potatoes & planting cabbages in Ligunea [sic] mountains, the vessells that ought to protect the trade lying rotting and having their bottoms eat out at Port Royal for want of heaving them down and the whole squadron going home but one line of Battle Ship namely the Ramalies left to protect this island, if this is protection it is very poor indeed. If this Island should be once lost, they never will again get it and will feel it Essentially it has been a very good milk cow for them but they will drain us too dry by & by and either France or Spain would be very glad to get it […] I am very sorry to hear that Russia is also become our enemy, things are strangely altered indeed from what they used to be, formerly the words were England could never do but with her colonies they were looked upon to be her main support. […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/12, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 26 June 1781)
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 8 April 1781
Jamaica was prone to natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and droughts. The 1780s witnessed a succession of hurricanes. These, mixed with other factors, such as the scarcity of food provisions as a result of the American Revolutionary War, led to ill-health and starvation among enslaved people in Jamaica. Here, Taylor recounts to Chaloner Arcedeckne the effects of a storm that hit the western end of the island during 1781, noting that Arcedeckne’s sugar plantation, Golden Grove, and Taylor’s neighbouring plantation, Holland, escaped its worst effects.
[…] we at the east end of the island were truly happy in escaping the fury of it. I believe no place felt it so violent as Barbadoes and the west end of this island, several of the Windward Islands felt nothing of it, nor did Hispaniola suffer. Mr Long writes me Parliament has given £40000 to the sufferers in this island besides that there will be a large subscription which I am glad of, for they are in a dreadfull situation, indeed we are so all over the island, from the excessive drougth [sic] we have had which has created a very great scarcity indeed, and if we do not very soon gett rain, we shall certainly have a famine every where, the mountains are as much burned up as the low lands and sea coast, and our prospect is really horrid as there is but little flour or any other but salt provisions in the country and no place to gett them from but England or Ireland. you will be lucky if the 20 blls of flour your ordered arrive safe. You at Golden Grove and I at Holland felt little or nothing of the storm. […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/4, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 8 April 1781)
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 8 April 1781
What began as a fairly small conflict between Britain and the rebellious colonists of Massachusetts had, by 1781, escalated to become a global war between Britain and her traditional Catholic rivals, France and Spain. With the entry of the Dutch into the war, Britain found herself facing an even more formidable hostile alliance, a war ‘against all the world’, as Taylor puts it here. His letter to Chaloner Arcedeckne illustrates the impact of disease in the Caribbean upon the troops sent there from Europe and the anxieties provoked as events appeared to go increasingly against the British.
[…] There were no more men sent to the main land most of those that came here have died, particularly of McCormick’s regiment, who are all dead, they brought the goal disorder with them from England, indeed there never was known as much sickness and mortality in this island, as has happened within these last 12 months prodigious numbers of the inhabitants have died. I am not surprised at your wishing to hear from this island from the accts the Berwick brought in you have heard them allready they are disagreeable enough. […] our large fleet last year did nothing in the world, and we have an Admiral here that does as little. God knows we shall want every ship we have at home this summer, but I am in hopes that the number of Dutch ships carried into England and the surprise of Statia [Eustatius] will have such an effect on the Dutch, especially the Amsterdam men, that to gett them back again they will join us against France for it will be impossible for us to fight against all the world, tho the Dutch I am confident cannot fitt out a large fleet of heavy men of warr, yet what they have, joined to those of France and Spain, will give such a superiory [sic] over us as we shall not be able to withstand them, neither do I think we have naval stores among us to support the warr against them all, neither have we men sufficient to do it. Except our enemies quarrell among themselves and some unforseen act of providence interposes I think we must be an undone nation […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/4, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 8 April 1781)
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 8 April 1781
Taylor’s complaints about British policies towards the colonies began in earnest during 1781. Until that time, his letters had contained little critical commentary on the duties laid by parliament on colonial trade or the attitudes of British government ministers towards the West Indian colonies. This changed as sharp increases to the sugar duties were imposed.
[…] If the Parliament lays 5/ p ct. additional duty on sugar, or the refiners are allowed to use foreign sugars, we shall be all undone and forced to throw up our estates, and then the revenue of that commodity will be effectually lost, we that have estates must keep them on, but those will be no more settled, and as the present ones grow old and require more labour, the lands will be turned to the cultivation of corn or to raising provisions for we shall be unable to purchase any, and must endeavour to make our own cloaths and live within ourselves, the high duties formerly laid on indigo has had that effect, and if they increase the duties on sugar, the same causes will produce similar effects on that article altho the additional duty on rum is not yett felt it will be if ever we have a peace again. […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/4, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 8 April 1781)
Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, 12 February 1781
Taylor acted as a local proxy (or ‘attorney’ in eighteenth-century Jamaican parlance) for plantation owners living in England, acting on their behalf and managing their sugar estates/ One such absentee was his friend, Chaloner Arcedeckne, who owned the Golden Grove sugar estate in St Thomas in the East. Here, Taylor informs Arcedeckne about the sugars he has shipped from the plantation to the metropolitan market in an excerpt that reveals aspects of the work of an attorney and some of the complexities of shipping and marketing sugar.
[…] I hope the sugars will all arrive safe and to a good market, if I am able will inform you what we shall ship p the next fleet so that you may have time to insure and I would have given you advice of the 40 additional Hhds p. the pallas and the ten p. Chigish had I know it but a push was made for them & [Captain] Thompson would have been disapointed had the sugar not been made after having lain at Port morant Six Months. Mr Bourke has sent me Bills of exchange lading for ten hdds of sugar to Glasgow to be applyed to pay off part of the interst on Robt Arcedeckne’s bonds to your mother I have not been in Spanish Town these ten weeks so cannot say how your aunt is. Messrs Longs wrote me they were to have sent me the proceedings in Mr Cowells Bill by a capt Mr Fadrean but I do not find he is arrived. As rum sold very well I have ordered some to town to be sold to ease the press of bills to be drawn on you, it has encountered a very good market. […]
(Vanneck-Arc/3A/1781/1, Simon Taylor to Chaloner Arcedeckne, Kingston, 12 February 1781)