From the Diaspora…DECAPITATED SLAVES, A BURIAL, JOHN WRAY AND THE EMANCIPATION OF SLAVERY IN GUYANA

Dec 02, 2012 News

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By Ralph Seeram
”Neither widow nor her friend was to allow to follow the coffin…..orders of his Excellency to detain them … (.which they will not follow)…. until the burial was over.” It was February 7, 1824 “at half past three therefore in the morning of the 7th, the two left the jail (prison) to meet the coffin at the graveside.”
“A free negro carrying a lantern went with them as it was quite dark. At four the head constable called for the corpse: the Rev. W. S. Austin who had dared to vindicate the character of the deceased, attended and read and read the service, and so somewhere in the burial ground of St. Phillip’s Church now stands the remains of the interred.”
The following day the government ordered the slaves to break and remove a fence and permanent head stone from the burial site.
Thus ended the last chapter in the Demerara slave rebellion, in 1823, but that burial was the beginning of the end for slavery in the British colonies. That secretive burial within 24 hours of his death was that of the Rev. John Smith. Smith was condemned to die for treason, resulting from the slave insurrection which occurred the August before.
He was framed and found guilty by a highly influenced planter’s and slave owner’s court, he was vindicated by the British Home office, but the news arrived in the colony a few days after his death. Smith was deprived of, among other things, medical attention and was treated even harsher than slaves. At an inquest into his death hours earlier, the medical doctor refused to sign his deposition as it was different from the answers he had given. The Government was trying to cover up the cause of his death.
The news of his death was the impetus that helped sway the British public opinion of slavery and gave momentum to abolitionists in the British Parliament. His death reinvigorated William Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists in parliament to push laws to abolish slavery. By the next decade the British abolished slavery.
Of course one cannot forget the work of the Rev. John Wray who, through his letters to the London Missionary Society, exposed the atrocities and cruelty meted out to slaves and to Missionaries like himself. In fact, he was told if he left Berbice to attend Rev. John Smith funeral, he himself would be imprisoned.
Today I doubt many Guyanese, young and old, know anything much about the Rev. John Smith, Rev. John Wray and Le Ressouvenir estate and their connection to the slave rebellion of 1823 leading to the abolition of slavery.
True some know dates like the Berbice slave rebellion and the 1823 insurrection, but I am sure they know very little details. I myself must confess I know more about American history than I know about Guyanese history in the 17th and 18th century. My education was based on textbooks written in the colonial era.
While I recall learning about Smith and Wray, it was pretty general. One was never told the gruesome details of slavery and the inhuman treatment meted out to them. It was this quest for Guyanese history that led me by way of the Internet to the book “The Life and Labours of John Wray, Pioneer Missionary in British Guyana”. Now here’s a book every Guyanese should read or taught in schools as part of Guyanese history.
The book is available on Amazon.com, but is available to read free on the Internet, as it is in public domain. It’s about 375 pages so naturally it would be difficult to cover in this article.
I am sure there are accounts of the events written by historians but the beauty of this historical account of slavery in Guyana, is that it was not written by any particular historian (who sometimes revise and rewrite history) but compiled from the actual letters, diaries from Wray, Smith, their wives and children, people who were actually there to witness or experience the events.
It was also based on reports to the London Missionary Society. This article is based mainly from information derived from the book.
As we return to the Demerara slave insurrection of 1823, we learn firsthand the brutal and inhuman methods used by the colonial forces to put down the rebellion. Over 200 slaves were killed, basically murdered. The rebellion was due to efforts by the Colonial Governor and slave owners suppressing news from British Government ameliorating the conditions of slavery, limiting their working hours, and abolishing flogging of women slaves etc.
The Governor refused to enforce the conditions but house slaves overheard whites speaking about it. The house slaves interpreted it as if freedom had come for the slaves, and this misinformation spread rapidly among the slaves leading to the uprising.
Retribution was swift and harsh by the colonial masters. “Not a single white soldier lost his life, yet shocking slaughter of the Negroes and a display of horrible brutality accompanied and followed these events”. “Many prisoners were wantonly shot by the militia for mere sport…Colonel Leahy stood on no ceremony as to trial……no less than twenty were put to death on his authority”.
Martial Law continued for five months….trials, flogging and execution were going on incessantly…17 prisoners were sentenced to lashes from 200 to 1000 lashes… Some given all at once”. Within a month forty seven were executed…several being hung in chains along the East Coast Road, others DECAPITATED AND HAD THEIR HEAD

STUCK ON POLES.
Because of the outcry from the British public reaction to the atrocities, fifty prisoners that were under sentence of death were spared.
The worst treatment was meted out to Quamina, the alleged leader of the insurrection, who was shot by a native Indian as a runaway. “His body as dragged to the front of Success estate, and there between two trees, he was gibbeted as a rebel, the corpse bound together with chains allowed to swing in the breeze for many months after, to the terror and disgust of every passerby”
One of the ironic things in this rebellion was that the Rev. John Smith made efforts to the relevant authorities that there was going to be trouble.
In Berbice, then a separate Colony, the Governor of Berbice asked the Rev. John Wray to break the news to the slaves, which resulted in a measure of peace among the slaves, but this did not go down well with the slave owners. One reaction by the white planters was to burn down his church, the Mission Chapel Church in New Amsterdam.
Rev Wray had his problems also. He was brought up on charges like Rev Smith, but was exonerated, yet attacks against him continued. Smith succeeded Wray at Le Ressouvenir; Wray moved to Sandvoort on the outskirts of New Amsterdam and started the Mission Chapel church.
He was not without problems; his children were assaulted and thrown into a trench while on their way to visit the sick at Winkle. The authorities even stopped him from using the Winkle bell used to remind slaves of church service (the bell was used as an alarm for the town of New Amsterdam. Whites frequently interrupted his services.) We are told that Berbice was then known as British Guiana before the merger of the three colonies.
There is so much to tell that cannot be written in this column. Why the slave owners hated missionaries like Smith and Wray? It was because they dared to teach the slaves to read and write. An educated slave apparently was a threat; missionaries were fined for teaching slaves at night. Trouble was the slaves worked long hours in the day and night was their only free time.
Every Guyanese, especially those in New Amsterdam, and in particular members of the Mission Chapel Church in New Amsterdam, should make it a must read book, which I said before, is available to read free online (Google, The Life and Labours of John Wray) or can be purchased at Amazon.com.
If the Mission Chapel Church in New Amsterdam does not have a copy of this book, I will be happy to donate a copy to the church.

Ralph Seeram can be reached at email: [email protected]

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