MIA > Archive > Tim Hector
Fan the Flame, Outlet, 17 December 1996, online here.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
I promised some friends of mine that I would write an article about ... guess what? ... women! And in particular women in Antigua. This is about as good a time as any. Because recently I have had to go back over the history of Antigua to seek to explain a few things to myself, like “insularity” and what I call our “insensibility to injustice.”
In the course of this exercise of looking back into the past I came across one completely overwhelming fact. And it is about women. Women in Antigua, then and now.
The startling fact is this. About 30 per cent of all households in Antigua are headed by women today. The single mother as head of the family (mater familias) has become a matter of great concern.
As usual conservatives consider it a matter of the most serious social retrogression. To them it is proof of the collapse of the nuclear family. Further it is evidence of the collapse or the assault on “family values”, that new American fad, which seeks to stigmatise black people in the main as being incapable of “family” – the nuclear family, man & wife with children. Apparently, this is a mainly white preserve, symbol white rectitude and other values.
Now it did surprise me, as I hope it will surprise you, that of all families living in Antigua in 1746, 34 percent of all such families were headed by females – white females, if you please. 250 years ago, the white female head of family was a fact of life in Antigua. And at an even higher percentage then, than now!
As a matter of fact, fact mind you, a list of families drawn up by the Governor then, shows that of 701 families occupying St. John’s, some 240 were headed by women – white women, of course, since slaves did not have either household or family.
Of these households headed by women, in Antigua, in 1753, for which year, we have precise data, 63 percent contained only one child, 21 per cent two children and 4 per cent three children. It follows then, that 11 per cent of white female headed households in 1753 contained, more than three children.
Naturally, you would expect that I tried to ascertain how many of these white female headed households in Antigua had children in them, for more than one father. The historical record is as blank as a stone-wall. I had to leave the matter there.
What is beyond doubt, is that small female-headed households were commonplace in Antigua in 1753, as was the case in many of the Leeward Islands.
Mindie Lazarus Black, in a remarkable book on Antigua entitled Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters had this to say on the subject:
“Female headed households were ‘normal’ in the sense that they were commonplace in mid eighteenth century St. John’s, as they were elsewhere in the Leeward Islands.”
Then we get from the same source this:
“Life in the [white] common order yielded a significant number of women who headed their households. It generated as well a new category of persons who legislators situated legally: free people of colour. Initially they included [white] women and their racially mixed children, slaves freed by their masters or by act of assembly in reward for special deeds, and Carib and Arawak Indians.”
So it seems clear, that these white headed households did include racially mixed children, of white mother, with black father or Carib and Arawak father. The percentages of such white female headed families with racially mixed children are unknown, and therefore we have to leave that matter there too. It will probably never be known. But what is here being laid to rest, is the idea that the female headed family was a by-product or end product of slavery. It, female-headed household was established here in Antigua by white women. Indeed, several of these white female headed families kept slaves. In 1755 in Antigua there was a law passed which read as follows: “An Act for the Ease and Relief of Many Poor and Indigent Women, Who Have Large Families and Whose Sole Support Depends on a Few Slaves Only.”
You can imagine how startled I was when I came across that! White women who owned a few slaves, who were still described as “Poor and Indigent”. If these white women slave owners were “poor and indigent” what then of the slaves they themselves owned?! They must have been poorer than poor.
Look upon it now with contemporary eyes. In 1755 the white Antiguan male legislators passed a law providing tax support for poor white women who “had large families.” 250 years later, black women, who head large families have been given no such support by black legislators! Why so? The question demands an answer. Why 250 years ago white legislators provided support for white women who headed large families, and why now 250 years later black legislators have not provided support, by way of relief, to black women who head large families? Why? I am not going to answer the question. I leave you, dear reader, to answer that particular question. You are more than competent to do so.
History is of little value, if the past does not consciously inform the present. It will always unconsciously do so. But if history does not consciously inform the present, then such a people are wandering aimlessly in the wilderness.
Let me at once declare an interest in this subject. So, that you, dear reader, can see where my subjective views are coming from in relation to objective historical facts.
I am the very proud product of a mother, Mable Hector, who also fathered me. I never knew my father, not even by photograph. My mother undertook the enterprise – and she treated it as such – of raising me, her only child. She would not have succeeded without the support of her sisters, my aunts. There was no State support. I shudder to think what befalls children of single female parent, who have no support system as I had.
Observation has informed me that modern Antiguan women solve that almost insoluble problem through harsh necessity. Namely, get another child by another man, whom they hope will stay but who invariably does not, and then hope that the financial support of each father would make it easier for the two children and mother. This social fact of life here recurs like a recurring decimal.
It has been shown, not least in an OECS report on education that in Antigua, single mothers, who work a “shift” system, mainly in hotels, their children repeat classes, and end up as school drop-outs. I always remind myself that I could have been one such. Lucky me to have escaped it. There but for the Grace of God go I.
I wonder though in between bouts of anger and resignation how this glaring social problem could be left untackled, for so long, with utter indifference from ruling male legislators. There I shall leave that too, for now. Back to the past.
In 1765, however, white male legislators, passed a law providing support a for white mother who headed families. The law exempted white women from certain taxes if they owned fewer than then (10) slaves “upon whom they depended for their living.” A white single mother was allowed to have 9 slaves on whom she depended for her living, and was still provided with tax relief! 241 years ago, to be precise.
It is obvious that most of the women who headed families here in the eighteenth century were former indentured servants. While others may have been recent arrivals here, who supported themselves with domestic work and petty trading.
The great Caribbean historian the late Elsa Goveia wrote that in the Leeward Islands there were “poor whites of low status” remember Antigua was a very status conscious society, and the law was used to rigidly determine status. So then there were these poor whites in Antigua then, in the 18th century, and Elsa Goveia noted that “they were chiefly engaged in the huckstering and victualling trades”. Victualling we may describe as providing cooked meals.
I cannot help but feel that Professor Elsa Goveia was being most polite in her observations, if not tongue in cheek humour. For in 1790 one Dr Adair, who lived here, had observed that “the poor [white] women of this class were of light virtue and the men mostly petty thieves.” The suggestion is clear that some of these poor white women “of light virtue”, were, in fact, prostitutes. Perhaps not a few of these white women who headed households were mistresses of white married men. And maybe even secret mistresses of black slaves. Contraception was known then I remind. One such practice was for the woman to jump up and down after intercourse to make sure that all semen drained out! Do not ask me how well it worked!
In the trial of King Court in 1736, for his planned rebellion here, one slave on trial for conspiring with King Court to overthrow the colonial government and make themselves “Masters of the island” was recorded in the Court records as having “much more money than slaves are usually Master of”. Another slave on trial with King Court, it was said in the Court record “was also very kindly used by his Master being admitted for his own advantage to take Negroe Apprentices and to make all the Profits he could of his own, and their Labour, paying his Master, only a monthly sum far short of his usual Earnings; so that he too was generally master of much money.” The Antiguan planters were greatly upset that a few of these 18th century slaves had “much money”, with which they could buy “victuals” and of course ... other things, normally forbidden.
I am not trying to make a point just about white prostitution in Antigua from early. That is not a point worth making too seriously.
My point is that even way back then, free white women found it difficult to live here, except with “light virtue” to use a neat euphemism.
The other point is that even in the halcyon days of sugar before slavery was abolished, this white female headed, poor household was a normal fact of life in Antigua, but the social and financial support then, was better than it is now.
For slaves, life was harsh and harsher still for slave women. Slave men, in Antigua, were the ones likely to hold non-agricultural and less arduous labour. Women had to take the full brunt. From age 14 or 15 every slave woman, like the men, were assigned a plot. The women was expected to produce no less than a man! Gender, differences in strength seemed to be of no account. Slave women bore the full weight of field work, while they were excluded from the factory and other skilled work.
On top of that, Slave women had to compete with poor white women as hucksters. And naturally, (or if you prefer with your contemporary eyes “unnaturally”) the law took the side of the poor white women against black slave women. So it is that black slave women could not sell sugar, cotton, rum, molasses or ginger without written permission. These were left, in the main, for poor white women. Please note how specific these white minority, and therefore, discriminatory laws were. They determined where black women could live and could not live, when they could be out of doors, and when they could not, who they could be seen with and whom they could not. Their sub-humanity was enforced by law.
There are some curious things in Antiguan history. It is obvious that the small minority white population lived in mortal dread of the enslaved majority. They used the law to build a rampart, an unbreachable rampart of protection around them, rich or poor, but white nevertheless. For example, slave owners were compelled by law to maintain certain proportions to slaves on the sugar estates. In 1692, for example, every white man possessing ten slaves had to keep one white indentured servant in his service. After 1716, each man who had 15 slaves had to furnish one white man for militia duty and one additional white recruit for every twenty slaves thereafter. A bill of 1740 declared that each planter must provide one white man or two white women for every 30 slaves owned. Failure to comply carried a fine of forty pounds sterling. Quite a high fine, you will note.
Then there was a bill of 1767 entitled “An Act for the Encouragement of, and Maintaining White Women Servants and preserving and increasing the Number of White Inhabitants in this Island.” It stated frankly and clearly that the bills of 1716, 1740 and 1755 to encourage immigration did not produce the “good effects hoped for. Our numbers of white people having rather decreased than otherwise, which has been chiefly occasioned by Women not being allowed to pass and reckon as Servants.” The Antiguan law makers of 1767 also complained that “too many (white) overseers and agricultural servants remained celibate their Wives being deemed as Burthens upon such plantations.”
I laughed my head off when I read that. Celibate in plantation society? Never happen. It was obvious that the white overseers were getting “it” from the small gang to the slave women, and consequently neglected their white wives, who they came to see as “burthens upon the plantations.” The white overseers bore no responsibility, paternal or financial, or both, for the offspring of their black couplings. The off-spring of such unions – the coloured – were discriminated against the whites, even when freed. They, in turn, discriminated against blacks.
But slave women were always the backbone of resistance in this and other Caribbean territories. Slave women made more complaints in the Courts than men. And slave women outnumbered men as offenders under Slave Laws.
In a Report on slaves in Guiana, the so-called protector of slaves in 1826 had this to say:
“There is no question as far as has come within my reach of observation as to the difficulty of managing the women and they [the slave women] are irritating and insolent to a degree – often instigated by the men – to take advantage of the exemption from stripes and in town do little or nothing.”
It was, in the main, slave women who led the everyday resistance to slavery, now hidden now open, when it reached the stage of open rebellion, they often allowed the men to lead recognising gender differences in strength, I suppose.
Even today it is still the female descendants of our slave ancestors, who still lead the day-to-day agitation on the ground calling for resistance to this or that wrong. Maybe roles have changed. In that now, it is women who instigate the men, but men lead. Whichever way it goes, the resistance of black women, to an unequal and unfree society has been continuous and on-going. They, of course, are twice oppressed, as worker and as woman. Their emancipation is bound up, with a Caribbean nation in a new democracy.
Last updated on 9 February 2022