1500-1799 | Executions | Jamaica | Slavery

2 OCTOBER

HUNG AND LEFT TO ROT FOR DRAWING A KNIFE ON A WHITE MAN

The estate house of a former sugar plantation in Jamaica –
Urban Walnut – CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

[ 2 October 1750 ]

On 2 October 1750, slave overseer Thomas Thistlewood, hired by the owner of the remote Vineyard Pen sugar plantation in Jamaica, noted in his diary that his employer ordered one of the slaves found guilty of drawing a knife on a white man, hung from a tree, his offending hand sliced off and his body left to rot as an example to the others.1

FOOTNOTE

  1. Thomas Thistlewood’s diary quoted in James Walvin, The Trader, The Owner, The Slave,  Jonathan Cape, London, 2007 p. 113.

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