Plantation Letters

Disclaimer: This post includes descriptions of the violent and harsh conditions faced by enslaved people. Historical documents using racist terms to describe enslaved people are displayed. 

The postal service facilitated communication between Britain and the Caribbean as the number of British-owned plantations grew.

The Postal Museum houses a collection of dozens of letters that travelled across the Atlantic on-board packet ships. The letters were sent from plantation managers in Jamaica to plantation owners in Britain. They were sent from the early to mid 1800s, spanning pre and post abolition of transatlantic slavery within the British Empire. 

Mail delivery operations between Britain and the Caribbean enabled plantation owners to profit from the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, while living thousands of miles away from the horrors of slavery. 

Plantation Business

A plantation was a large farm which grew produce such as sugar, cotton or tobacco. Here enslaved men, women and children were forced to work long hours for no money. Through enslaving these people, Britain built wealth and power becoming the biggest empire in the world. 

Many plantations in Jamaica grew sugar cane, which was harvested and processed by enslaved people. Sugar was shipped to Britain and consumed by the British public. The letters in our collection are predominantly concerned with business; the process of producing sugar. Weather had a huge impact on the success of sugar cane crops, and the correspondence often praises or bemoans rain on the island.  

The seasons have been favourable at Lucky Valley for the last ten days, previously the weather was dry, the canes have not suffered, and the prospect for next years crop continues good

 

(Letter from J.A. Miller to Henry Long, 1833, PH98/03)

The letters often ignore the experiences of enslaved people, who were held captive on the plantations.  

Many of the letters include the abbreviation ‘Hhds’, which means ‘hogsheads’, a metric for measuring sugar. The term comes from the hogshead barrel that protected the sugar on its sea voyage to Britain.  

Movement of Mail

The majority of packet ships were privately owned vessels, contracted to move the mail. These ships relied on wind power to cross the Atlantic, which, along with many dangers at sea, made them unreliable. Often important letters or documents were sent in duplicate, in case they were lost. 

These letters predate envelopes. Instead, the letter was folded and the address written on the outside. The name of the ship the letter travelled on was often written on the front. 

The Recipients

Most of the letters in The Postal Museum collection relate to two families: the Longs and the FitzHerberts. Sir Henry FitzHerbert 3rd Baronet inherited three plantations in Jamaica from his uncle, William Philip Perrin. These were run by his attorneys whilst Sir Henry lived a privileged life in Britain. The letters refer to Sir Henry visiting his plantations, although many British plantation owners never travelled to the Caribbean. This 1826 letter describes one of Sir Henry’s visits: 

[Lewis] Gordon married a daughter of John Smith the cooper her mother was Elizabeth Perrin who purchase [sic] her Manumission when you visited Blue Mountain she then was House Cook she and John Smith after living together near thirty years was married last November

 

(Letter from Sarah Lewsey, the wife of his attorney, to Sir Henry FitzHerbert, 1828, PH96/05)

The letters to the Long family also reveal how plantations passed down through family lines. Most of the letters in the collection are addressed to Edward Beeston Long or his son Henry Lawes Long, but two early examples show one of Edward’s plantations was previously owned by Susannah Dickson, his cousin.  

Documents frequently accompanied the letters. Below is an example of a table showing the number of enslaved men and women who were born or died on the Perrins Estate in 1825. On the opposite side of the document the same information is collected for livestock, highlighting how enslaved people were treated as possessions, not human beings.  

Against the Grain

These letters, though written through the colonial lens of the enslaver, offer a way of understanding the lives of enslaved people by ‘reading against the grain’. But how do you do it? 

1. Think about who wrote the record, why, and what else was happening at the time.
2. Remember, most records leave out the experiences and memories of enslaved people.
3. Imagine who and what has been left out.
4. Try to put the people excluded from the records at the centre of the story.

Applying the against the grain technique to the following extract shows how much more can be learnt. 

‘I am happy to hear you was pleased with our negroes good behaviour at Xmas’

 

Reading against the grain > This tells us of how the enslaved African people were seen as property and were expected to accept their lives without complaint. 

‘you are perfectly right I wonder we have not yet had an open Rebellion – I served our cloth on the 26th the people thanked me but in that next year they hoped I will give them more. I told them I could make no promise but I could tell them that if sugar did not sell better next year that their master would have to sell half of them to pay Taxes, this of course put a stop to the demand’   

 

Reading against the grain > The plantation manager believes he received sincere gratitude for the cloth, but when the amount is questioned, he quickly exerts his power by threatening to illegally sell and separate the enslaved people. 

‘and one woman of the name Nancy Brown threw up her cap in the air but I had the lady seized and confined in the dark Hole’ 

 

(Letter from Charles Lewsey to Sir Henry FitzHerbert, 1826, PH(L)03/35a) 

Reading against the grain > Nancy Brown demonstrated bravery in standing up to the threat. The violent response to Nancy’s resistance shows the manager’s fear of losing control. 

The letters casually discuss the brutal violence inflicted on enslaved people or completely ignore the harsh conditions, instead focusing on the pursuit of profit.  Through reading these letters against the grain, it is possible to surface stories of enslaved peoples’ survival and resistance. 

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Sources: 

• UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery