This education also extended to the medical professions. Large estates had a white doctor and a black doctor, who treated the respective populations. The British author and slaveholder Monk Lewis made the economic arguments that I’ve given to Dr. Jones (whose first name may or may not be Martha…) about the importance of hospitals. Many of the black doctors were women in the tradition of midwives.
While Mrs. Whitten is a fictional character, she is based on a number of different free women of color in Antigua such as Anne Hart Gilbert and Elizabeth Hart Thwaites. There were not enough white women for every man who wanted to marry, which meant that women of mixed race were much more likely to be freed and married than in the United States. Even if not actually married, society silently accepted the necessity of mistresses in ways that would be unacceptable in England or the United States. Understand, however, that many of these women faced a choice between two horrible options: work in the fields or have relations with their captor. There were cases of love, but those should not be considered the rule or used to romanticize the realities of being an enslaved woman of color.
One of the other features of Antigua and many of the other islands in the Caribbean was the existence of Maroon populations. These were people who escaped slavery and established colonies on the islands. Periodically, these villages would be raided and the people gathered up and either resold or returned to the estates they had fled.
Picknee Town is based on the Maroons, combined with another historical fact. Antigua had an extremely low birthrate among the enslaved population. Papers from the time discuss the difficulties with “breeding stock” to try to figure out how to increase the number of live births. It does not seem to occur to most of the white slaveholders that malnutrition, overwork, and abuse might be contributing factors. Even so, in Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650–1838, Barbara Bush points out that the enslaved people on other islands faced similar hardships and did not have such a low birth rate. It’s possible that people were using abortifacients to keep from bringing children into these conditions, but it’s impossible to know for certain.
It would be nice to think that a Picknee Town existed, but I’m afraid that the reality was likely much, much grimmer.
Jane’s experience in childbirth was based on the A Treatise of Midwifery: Comprehending the Management of Female Complaints by Alexander Hamilton (1804) and An Essay on Natural Labours by Thomas Denman, M.D. (1786). It is harrowing reading and I do not recommend it. Suffice to say that in the real world, Jane would not have lived.
If you have an interest in learning more about Antigua and its neighboring islands, allow me to recommend the following books:
Anonymous. The Laws of the Island of Antigua: 1668–1804, Volume 2.
Beckles, Hilary McD. Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Women in Barbados.
Buckley, Roger Norman. Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795–1815.
Bush, Barbara. Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650–1838.
Craton, Michael. Empire, Enslavement and Freedom in the Caribbean.
Ferguson, Moira. Colonialism and Gender Relations from Mary Wollstonecraft to Jamaica Kincaid.
Handler, Jerome S. The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place.
Mintz, Sidney W. Caribbean Transformations.
Roberts, Justin. “Sunup to Sundown: Plantation Management Strategies and Slave Work Routines in Barbados, Jamaica and Virginia, 1776–1810.”
Schaw, Janet. Journal of a Lady of Quality.
Walvin, James. England, Slaves and Freedom, 1776–1838.
Glossary
GLAMOUR. This basically means magic. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the original meaning was “Magic, enchantment, spell” or “A magical or fictitious beauty attaching to any person or object; a delusive or alluring charm.” It was strongly associated with fairies in early England. In this alternate history of the Regency, glamour is a magic that can be worked by either men or women. It allows them to create illusions of light, scent, and sound. Glamour requires physical energy in much the same way running up a hill does.
GLAMURAL. A mural that is created using magic.
GLAMOURIST. A person who works with glamour.
BOUCLé TORSADéE. This is a twisted loop of glamour that is designed to carry sound or vision depending on the frequency of the spirals. In principle it is loosely related to the Archimedes’ screw. In the 1740s it was employed to create speaking tubes in some wealthy homes and those tubes took on the name of the glamour used to create them.