= Mary_Prince =

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= Mary_Prince =
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Introduction
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Mary Prince (c. 1 October 1788 - after 1833) was the first black woman
to publish an autobiography of her experience as a slave, born in the
colony of Bermuda to an enslaved family of African descent. After
being sold a number
of times and being moved around the Caribbean, she was brought to
England as a servant in 1828, and later left her enslaver.

Prince was illiterate, but while she was living in London she dictated
her life story to Susanna Strickland, a young lady living in the home
of Thomas Pringle, secretary of the Society for the Mitigation and
Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions (aka
Anti-Slavery Society, 1823-1838). Strickland wrote down her slave
narrative which was published as 'The History of Mary Prince' in 1831,
the first account of the life of a Black enslaved woman to be
published in the United Kingdom. This first-hand description of the
brutalities of enslavement, published at a time when slavery was still
legal in Bermuda and British Caribbean colonies, had a galvanising
effect on the British anti-slavery movement. It was reprinted twice in
its first year.

Early life and education
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Mary Prince was born enslaved at Brackish Pond, Devonshire Parish,
Bermuda. Her father (whose only given name was Prince) was a sawyer
enslaved by David Trimmingham, and her mother a house-servant held by
Charles Myners. She had three younger brothers and two sisters, Hannah
and Dinah. When Myners died in 1788, Mary Prince, her mother and
siblings were sold as household servants to Captain George Darrell. He
gave Mary and her mother to his daughter, with Mary becoming the
companion servant of his young granddaughter, Betsey Williams.

At the age of 12, Mary was sold for £38 sterling (2021: ~£3,300;
~US$4,500) to Captain John Ingham, of Spanish Point. Her two sisters
were also sold that same day, all to different slave traders. Mary's
new enslaver and his wife were cruel and often lost their tempers, and
Mary and others were often severely flogged for minor offences.

Mary Prince was sold before 1803 at auction for £100 Bermudian
currency by Robert Darell. The Bermudians had used slaves seasonally
for a century for the extraction of salt from sea water. The
production of salt for export was a pillar of the Bermudian economy,
but the production was labour-intensive. Originally, raking had been
performed by whites due to the fear of enslaved people being seized by
Spanish and French raiders (enslaved persons were considered property,
and could be seized as such during hostilities). Blacks crewed the
Bermuda sloops that delivered the rakers to and from the Turks Islands
and delivered salt to markets in North America, engaging in maritime
activities while the whites raked. When the threats posed by the
Spanish and French in the region decreased; however, the enslaved
people were put to work in the salt pans.

As a child Mary worked in poor conditions in the salt ponds up to her
knees in water. Due to the nature of salt mining, Mary and others were
often forced to work up to 17 hours straight as owners of the ponds
were concerned that if the workers were gone for too long rain would
come and soil the salt. Generally, men were the salt rakers, forced to
work in the salt ponds, where they were exposed to the sun and heat,
as well as the salt in the pans, which ate away at their uncovered
legs. Women did the easier packaging of salt.

Mary Prince was returned to Bermuda in 1812, where Robert Darrell had
moved with his daughter. While here, she said in her account that she
was physically abused by Darrell and forced to bathe him under threat
of further beatings. Mary resisted Darrell's abuse on two occasions:
once, in defence of his daughter, whom he also beat; the second time,
defending herself from Darrell when he beat her for dropping kitchen
utensils. After this, she left his direct service and was hired out to
Cedar Hill for a time, where she earned money for her enslaver by
washing clothes.

In 1815, Mary was sold a fourth time because she wet the bed, to John
Adams Wood of Antigua for $300 (2021: ~£3,900; ~$5,300). She worked in
his household as a domestic slave, attending the bedchambers, nursing
a young child, and washing clothes. There she began to suffer from
rheumatism, which left her unable to work. When Adams Wood was
travelling, Mary earned money for herself by taking in washing and by
selling coffee, yams and other provisions to ships.

In Antigua, she joined the Moravian Church, where she also attended
classes and learned to read. She was baptised in the English church in
1817 and accepted for communion, but she was afraid to ask Adams Wood
for permission to attend. In December 1826 at Spring Garden Moravian
Church, Prince married Daniel James, a former enslaved man who had
bought his freedom by saving money from his work. He worked as a
carpenter and cooper. According to Mary, her floggings increased after
her marriage because Adams Wood and his wife did not want a free black
man living on their property.

Travel to England
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In 1828, Adams Wood and his family travelled to London, visiting and
arranging their son's education, and to bring their daughters home to
the islands. At her request, they took Mary Prince with them as a
servant. Although she had served the Woods for more than ten years,
they had increasing conflict in England. Four times Wood told her to
obey or leave. They gave her a letter that nominally gave her the
right to leave but suggested that no one should hire her.

After leaving the household, Prince took shelter with the Moravian
church in Hatton Garden. Within a few weeks, she started working
occasionally for Thomas Pringle, an abolitionist writer, and Secretary
to the Anti-Slavery Society, which offered assistance to black people
in need. Prince found work with the Forsyth household, but the couple
moved away from England in 1829. The Woods also left England in 1829
and returned with their daughter to Antigua. Pringle tried to arrange
to have Wood manumit Prince, so she would have legal freedom.

In 1829, Adams Wood refused either to manumit Mary Prince or allow her
to be purchased out of his control. His refusal to sell or free her
meant that as long as slavery remained legal in Antigua, Prince could
not return to her husband and friends without being re-enslaved and
submitting to Wood's power. After trying to arrange a compromise, the
Anti-Slavery Committee proposed to petition Parliament to grant
Prince's manumission, but did not succeed. At the same time, a bill
was introduced to free all enslaved people from the West Indies in
England whose enslavers had freely brought them there; it did not pass
but was an indication of growing anti-slavery sentiment.

In December 1829, Pringle hired Prince to work in his own household.
Encouraged by Pringle, Prince arranged for her life narrative to be
transcribed by Susanna Strickland, a writer better known under her
later married name as Susanna Moodie. Pringle served as editor, and
her book was published in 1831 as 'The History of Mary Prince.' The
book caused a commotion as it was the first account published in Great
Britain of a Black enslaved woman's life; at a time when anti-slavery
agitation was growing, her first person account touched many people.
In the first year, it sold out three printings.

Two libel cases arose out of it, and Prince was called to testify at
each.

She is known to have remained in England until at least 1833, when she
testified in the two Washington cases. That year, the Slavery
Abolition Act 1833 was passed, to be effective August 1834. In 1808,
Parliament had passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, which outlawed the
slave trade but not slavery itself. The 1833 law was intended to
achieve a two-staged abolition of West Indian slavery by 1840,
allowing the colonies time to transition their economies. Because of
popular protests in the West Indies among the freedmen, the colonies
legally completed abolition two years early in 1838.

''The History of Mary Prince''
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When Prince's book was published, slavery, though never legal in
England, was both legal and widespread throughout the British Empire.
There was considerable uncertainty about the political and economic
repercussions that might arise if the British government abolished
slavery in its overseas possessions, as the West Indian colonies
depended on it for labour to raise their lucrative commodity crop. 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 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 wrote of slavery with the authority of personal experience,
something her political opponents could never match.
She wrote:

I have been a slave myself--I know what slaves feel--I can tell by
myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man
that says slaves be quite happy in slavery--that they don't want to be
free--that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a
slave say so. I never heard a Buckra '(white)' man say so, till I
heard tell of it in England.

Her book had an immediate effect on public opinion and was published
in three impressions the first year. It generated controversy, and
James MacQueen, the editor of 'The Glasgow Courier', challenged its
accuracy by a lengthy letter in 'Blackwood's Magazine'. MacQueen was 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 the "despicable tool" of the anti-slavery clique, who had
incited her to malign her "generous and indulgent owners." He
attacked the character of the Pringle family, suggesting they were at
fault for accepting the slave in their household.

In 1833, Pringle sued MacQueen for libel, receiving damages of £5. Not
long afterwards, John Wood, Prince's enslaver, sued Pringle for libel,
holding him responsible as the editor of Prince's 'The History', and
saying the book generally misrepresented his character. Wood won his
case and was awarded £25 in damages. Prince was called to testify in
both these trials, but little is known of her life after this.

Anti-Slavery Society
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* The Anti-Slavery Society (1823-1838) was founded in the city of
London and ceased to exist by 1838 but is commonly referred to as the
London Anti-Slavery society.
* Although slave trading across the British Empire was banned through
the Slave Trade Act of 1807, no real change occurred from it, so
abolitionist groups such as the Anti-Slavery society began to form as
a result.
* The Anti-Slavery society was formed much after slave abolishment and
anti-slave groups were formed in London, but forming one strong group
that could have a louder voice was what the society was going for. The
society consisted of many groups like ones that rose from
transatlantic slave trade and local groups all with one common goal,
to abolish slavery as a whole. Many influential leaders supported this
movement in played a big role in getting people to come together such
as Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce.
* Public campaigns were held on the streets of London to rally more
people to believe in the movement, and they use pamphlets, speeches,
and publications, to show the general public how inhumane and wrong
slavery was.
* The society also got involved internationally, mostly with the
United States and other world powers and people that had a common
belief.
* The society was deeply rooted with Christian beliefs, but opinions
varied between older members and newer members. The older
abolitionists believed in the gradual shift from slavery to all people
being free which had great success. The younger crowd was more extreme
with their opinions however, they thought slavery was a sinful act and
needed to end immediately.
* Slavery was formally outlawed in England on 1 August 1834, but that
date did not really mark the end. Many other acts of enslavement
continued until the late 1830s and early 1840s, which is about when
the Anti-Slavery Society ceased to exist, showing how their acts
against slavery and putting out information such as the "Life of Mary
Prince" shifted the views on slavery in England significantly.

Legacy
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*On 26 October 2007, a commemorative plaque organised by the Nubian
Jak Community Trust was unveiled in Bloomsbury in London, where Mary
Prince once lived.
*Also in 2007, the Museum in Docklands opened a new gallery and
permanent exhibition entitled 'London, Sugar & Slavery', which
credits Prince as an author who "played a crucial role in the
abolition campaign".

Representations in other media
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*Prince is featured as the fictional love interest in the jazz opera
'Bridgetower - A Fable of 1807' (2007), by Julian Joseph with libretto
by Mike Phillips, about the 18th-century black violinist George
Bridgetower.
*In the UK and Republic of Ireland, and in parts of Europe and South
America, Prince was the subject of a Google Doodle on Monday 1 October
2018 to mark her 230th birthday.

See also
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*Denmark Vesey
*Ottobah Cugoano
*Olaudah Equiano
*Cesar Picton
*Charles Stuart (abolitionist)
*List of slaves
*List of abolitionists

Bibliography
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.
*[http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/digs/wwm97262/@Generic__BookView
'The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave'], F. Westley and A.
H. Davis (eds). 1831. . Online HTML edition, New York Public Library.
*'The History of Mary Prince'; many printed editions are available,
both in and out of print.
*Boos, Florence. 'Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women: The Hard
Way Up'. Palgrave, 2017. Chapter 3 is devoted to Mary Prince and
Elizabeth Storie.
*

External links
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*
*
*
*[https://www.maryprince.org/bermuda Maryprince.org, by Margôt
Maddison-MacFadyen]
*[http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/prince/menu.html '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,
at University of North Carolina.
*[https://www.spartacus-educational.com/SprinceM.htm Spartacus
Educational: Mary Prince.]
*[http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/bios/mary_prince.html "Mary
Prince"] , 100 Great Black Britons
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20111001003620/http://courses.coker.edu/ccuppett/courses/aas399/ppt/Mary%20Prince_files/frame.htm
Mary Prince Course], Coker College, Hartsville, South Carolina
*[https://tcmuseum.org/slavery/mary-prince// A Slave Account by Mary
Prince], Turks & Caicos Museum
*'Major Problems in American Women's History'. Fifth Edition Stamford,
Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Edited by Sharon Block at University of
California, Irvine and Ruth M. Alexander at Colorado State University
and Mary Beth Norton at Cornell University, p. 62.

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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Prince