Mutilation of Slaves

Want to take the time to honor thought today. No sex, no politics – just a little history. Just an exhibition on how serious I take scholarship and dialetical rumination. And why I am so vehement in desire to expect others to as well. Tomorrow, on September 1st in 1773, Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London, England. It was the FIRST volume of poetry by an African-American poet to be published. And talking about being prodigal or a polymath, she was 20 when the book was published. So hats off to you scholar, to endure and create when sold off into slavery as a child from the Senegambia region of West Africa. So in honor of this, i'm gonna post something I wrote in 1998 that served as a chapter in the world encyclopedia of Slavery © 1999. Called The Mutilation of Slaves.

Based on history, it is evident that the institution of slavery was never humane. Although some historians like Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman argue that white slave masters treated their slaves with respect and kindness, the truth is slavery itself was a horrible act. Thus, it was not unusual punishment of inclusive mutilation.

The mutilation of slaves was often implemented under the guise of punishment, or for the purposes of doing things for the slaves’ personal well being. Punishment through mutilation is also well recorded. Punishment was moreso acts of brutality than acts of rehabilitation. The record shows for example, in the case of Captain Phillipe Loit, that a common practice was to break the teeth of female slaves considered to be recalcitrant.1 Other accounts show that mutilation was no different than death. For many ship captains on the middle passage, on e means of trying to prevent slaves from jumping ship was to recapture them and behead them in front of other slaves.2

Examples of the latter have been documented to have occurred on the middle passage where ship captains would make use of a tool called speculum oris, an instrument shaped like a pair of scissors with serrated blades that was forced in the mouths of captives who refused to eat.3 On the sugar plantations in the West Indies, due to tiring work hours, slaves who were caught falling asleep in the mill, were used as examples and would consequently have to sacrifice a limb to show other slaves the dangers of falling asleep on the job.4 Slaves were also placed in metal cast iron weights or boots in which it was not unusual for them to lose an appendage. Such practices were not nearly as horrendous as other acts practiced by slave and plantation owners. In Grenada, slaves were taken to open forums for punishment in which mutilation was not out of the ordinary. One female slave taken to St. George’s, Grenada in 1789 was supposed to have her finger removed as punishment. However, she was suspended from a crane and her thighs, breast, and back split open. In Jamaica, it was not extraordinary for female slaves to have their skin peeled off from heel to back and breast to waist.5 Another account in 1692 notes a freed slave whose master and mistress had cut off her ears.6

Moses Roper, who had lived as a slave in the Carolinas and Georgia recalls in her narrative of her master pouring tar on her head an face and setting her on fire, and following up this action by placing the fingers of her hand in a vice and removing her fingernails and having another man smash her toes with sledge hammer.7 Other tools of mutilation included the thumb screw and pickets, the latter being used so extensively in Jamaica that the weight of standing on them more than likely resulted in the mortification of feet.8 Accounts also indicate the use of nails being inserted or hammered into body parts such as appendages and ears and hammers to knock out teeth. Slaves who accidentally touched whites had their hands or the body part used in the touching cut off. Breaking legs in piecemeal fashions, removing sensory organs and castration were just additional means for masters to get their point of control across to captives.

The events that were used to justify acts of maiming and mutilation covered a broad range of activities. Frederick Douglass in his Narrative recants of looking at a person in the wrong way, saying certain words, a simple mistake, and not to mention running away, could result in permanent injury or death for slaves.9 Mutilation of slaves was so bad that in French colonies, Louis XIV published a Code Noir to curtail cruelty to Africans.

Since slaves in America and the new world were under the complete control of their masters, it was difficult to gauge the true extent of mutilation practices. Moreover, U.S. slave codes were developed and put in place in all slave states to maintain and enhance this absolute control and justify the power of whites to treat Africans as they willed. Consequently, the slave patrols created to enforce the codes often employed mutilation to deal with slaves who were considered to be breaking the law.

In closing, the system of slavery was an inhuman institution in which descendants of European ancestry maintained control over slaves through beliefs and brutish actions against slaves. Although practiced by Africans, the Chinese, and Arabs, slavery as expedited by Europeans was replete with atrocities that often resulted in the mutilation of slaves. This may be why many have noted that the slavery practiced in the Americas was unlike slavery instituted in prior civilizations. vote

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1 Robert L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business, 1979, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), 100.

2 W.O. Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, ancient and modern, 1860, (Columbus, Ohio: H.Miller), 131.

3 Nigel Tattersfield, the Forgotten Trade: Comprising the Log of the Daniel and Henry of 1700 and accounts of the slave trade from the minor ports of England, 1698-1725, 1991 (London: Jonathan Cape), 142.

4 W.O. Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, ancient and modern, 1860, (Columbus, Ohio: H.Miller), 144.

5 W.O. Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, ancient and modern, 1860, (Columbus, Ohio: H.Miller), 150.

6 Winthrop Jordan, The white man’s burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States, (London: Oxford), 1974, 62.

7 Moses Roper, Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, 1837, (London).

8 W.O. Blake, The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, ancient and modern, 1860, (Columbus, Ohio:H.

9 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 3^rdLeeds). English Edition, 1846.