Life on the Plantations

Lesson Aims

• I can describe and explain various parts of what life was like on the plantation.

Think about everything that a slave would have experienced since being captured in Africa.

How do you think they felt when they arrived on the plantation

after being sold?

Arrival at the Plantation

• Immediately owners began to break in new slaves.

• They brutally forced Africans to adapt to new working and living conditions, learn a new language and take a new name.

• Many died or committed suicide.

• Others resisted and were punished.

Treatment

• Most slaves in the Caribbean, including women and children, worked on sugar plantations where conditions were very harsh.

• They were forced to work a 12-hour day and at harvest time work was almost non-stop.

• Slaves were subjected to severe discipline, torture, cruelty and sexual abuse.

Working the Fields

• Most slaves, including women and children (some as young as three or four) were field hands.

• Slaves were split into gangs.

• The First Gang of field workers tended to be the strongest slaves. They cleared and ploughed the land.

• Then holes 15cm deep were dug for plants, a backbreaking task for the line of slaves who moved slowly across the field with the of the overseers ready to lash at them. whips

Reorder the statements below to show the process from planting sugar cane to processing it in the mill.

• The cane was fertilised with animal manure.

• At harvest time the ripe sugar cane was cut and tied in bundles.

• A gang of thirty enslaved Africans using hoes could plant two acres in a day.

• The cane would be taken to mills by cart to be processed.

• Sugar was made by crushing the cane in the mill then boiling the juice in the boiling house.

• A gang of thirty enslaved Africans using hoes could plant two acres in a day.

• The cane was fertilised with animal manure.

• At harvest time the ripe sugar cane was cut and tied in bundles.

• The cane would be taken to mills by cart to be processed.

• Sugar was made by crushing the cane in the mill then boiling the juice in the boiling house.

Sugar

• Slaves often had fingers trapped and crushed in the giant rollers as they fed in the cane.

Work in the Boiler House

• Working in the sugar boiling house was very unpleasant.

• In the boilers, the scum that formed on top of the boiling syrup had to be ladled off, a tricky and dangerous job as it was so hot.

• The smell was like sickly manure and the heat was unbearable.

• Arms and legs swelled up in the hot, damp atmosphere and even the strongest slaves could not work in the boiling house for more than four hours.

• The mills and boiler houses were very inefficient so slaves had to work 12 hour days.

House Slaves

• Slaves were also required to work in the “big house”.

• Sometimes, this was a popular job as it meant working closely with the masters and afforded some slaves certain privileges.

• However, for many, it meant that they were treated more cruelly than if they had been field hands.

House Slaves

• Maids would have to get up at 4 a.m. to make sure the fires were lit and the kitchen put into action.

• A long day of cooking and cleaning would follow and they would have to work late into the evening because the people of the big house would have to be served dinner and then be cleaned up after.

Attitudes of Planters

Watch the following clips.

It helps you understand the attitudes white planters had towards their slaves.

Takes notes under the following headings:

• Who they thought made the best slaves

• Jobs done by house slaves

• Dangers for field slaves

• Lifestyles of planters

• Comparison of number of slaves vs number of whites (why might this worry the whites?)

• Arguments of planters FOR slavery

• Dangers faced by female slaves (house and field)

Quick Question!

Without looking at your notes, work with your partner to memorise the three main types of job a slave could

do on the plantation.

You have one minute.

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Think/Pair/Share

Do you think slaves would prefer to work on the fields, the boiler house or in the ‘big house’? Give a reason for your answer.

Share your ideas with a partner and be prepared to share your ideas with the rest of the class.

Questions

1. Out of all the jobs available to a slave, which one would you least like to work in? Give reasons for your answer.

2. What job would be less dangerous?

Living Conditions

• The slaves lived in flimsy huts that were draughty and cold in winter.

• They were fed only the cheapest food and meat was almost never eaten.

• Salt herrings from England often turned rotten before they arrived.

• On some plantations slave families were given small gardens to grow yams and vegetables and raise pigs and poultry.

Free Time

• Depending on the plantation owner, the slaves would be allowed to have some free time in the evening.

• They told stories, often about life in Africa.

• They sang songs and were sometimes allowed instruments.

Why do you think some plantation owners were suspicious of slaves who wanted to play drums?

Free Time

• However, plantation owners were suspicious of slaves who wanted to play drums – they thought they might be sending signals to slaves on other nearby plantations with plans to escape.

• The plantation owners were also suspicious of the African traditions and religions practised by slaves.

Free Time

• Many plantation owners tried to convert their slaves to Christianity and even allowed them to be baptised and attend church on Sundays.

• Slaves would sing songs in the evening and during the day to motivate them while working in the fields. These songs became known as negro spirituals.

Punishments

Source A

•What do you think has happened to this slave?

•Why do you think this has happened to him?

Source B

“A man of the name of Nowell… was in the habit of behaving brutally towards his wife, and one day went so far as to lock her in her room and confine her in chains. A Negro woman belonging to this man, touched with compassion for her unfortunate mistress, undertook privately to release her.

Nowell found it out and in order to punish her, obliged her to put her tongue through a hole in a board, to which he fastened it on the other side with a fork, and left her in that situation for some time. He afterwards cut out her tongue nearly by the root, of which she almost instantly died.”

Lord Seaforth, Governor of Barbados

Source C

Slaves who are marked for punishment are flogged in different ways…some are stretched outwith their bellies on the ground, with four negroes to hold them down, one at each hand and foot -in this posture the whip is applied to their backs. At other times their hands are fastened, by means of irons, to a kind of gallows. They are suspended there for a while…confined in this manner, they receive the lash. The whip generally takes out a piece of flesh at every stroke.

Reports from the Committee of the Honourable House of Assembly of Jamaica

Source D

Source F is made up of a number of picture sources. Can you identify how each item would be used?

The iron but it would have been used to mark African captives as belonging to a particular owner. Branding irons were sometimes used to mark all captives routinely during the trade, but more often were used to single out runaways to ensure their return if they should escape again.

• The nine cords or tails represent the nine lives of a cat and the whip also left marks like the scratches of a cat. On board ship the whip was kept in a bag, and the 'cat was let out of the bag' for a flogging.

• Plenty of room was needed to swing the whip without the tails getting caught, hence the saying 'no room to swing a cat'.

• This cat o'nine tails is made of leather, ivory and rope, and dates from the 18th or 19th century. Whips like this would have been used during the transatlantic slave trade by sailors to punish African captives on board ship.

Source E

• It was common for slaves to be branded with the initial letter of the master’s name and for heavy iron hooks to be hung around their necks.

• Heavy iron chains were added to these hooks for even the most minor of reasons.

• Iron muzzles and thumbscrews were also used on slaves. • I have seen a negro beaten till some of his bones were broken for

even letting a pot boil over.

Olaudah Equiano (a former slave who published his own life story in 1789)

Source G

"To people in Britain it must seem strange, that there should be a necessity for a law to punish [by] mutilating and dismembering their servants…I know two men, whose neighbours say positively that each of them have murdered scores of their own negroes…the wonder was not that they had buried so many, that they had any above ground. "

Anonymous Jamaican planter

Source F

• Participants of rebellions were often publicly killed ‘by progressive mutilation, slow burnings, breaking on the wheel.’ The wheel was a form of torture where bones were dislocated and the body pulled apart on a wheel.

www.discoveringbristol.org.uk

Punishments

• Some slaves tried to escape, but if caught they got no mercy from their owners, who would want to make an example of them.

• Terrible whippings and torture were common.

• Some slaves had their hands or feet cut off.

• Owners could also execute slaves who rebelled.

• On average slaves in the British West Indies survived for only seven years. By that time planters calculated they had made a return on their investment.

If you were a slave, do you think you would try to

escape, knowing the risks this involved?

How Fully Success Criteria

• You have two minutes to work with a partner to make a list of criteria a how fully answer must meet to get full marks.

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How Fully Success Criteria

1. Opening sentence ‘to a certain extent/quite fully’.

2. Three points from the source. ‘The source does mention….’ x3

3. Three points from recall. ‘“However the source fails to mention several key points about…’ Followed by ‘The source does not mention…’ x3

4. Begin each sentence saying “The source mentions” or “The source does not mention”

Source A

The enslaved people on West Indian plantations were forced to work long hours, especially when the cane was being harvested and processed. Some tried to escape but plantation owners kept detailed descriptions of their slaves which would be publicised if one escaped making eventual capture almost inevitable. Slave owners would provide an occasional barrel of salt fish but slaves relied heavily on food which they grew for themselves. If the weather was bad their crops could fail and they would face starvation.

How fully does Source A describe the hardships faced by enslaved people on the plantations? 6

Peer Marking

• Read your partner’s answer.

• Have they met all of the criteria?

Give them some feedback.

Tell them two things they have done well (two parts of the criteria they have met).

Tell them one thing that could make their answer even better (have they missed any of the criteria?)