Mary Prince - Biography

Biography

Mary Prince's parents were both slaves: her father (whose only given name was Prince) was a sawyer owned by David Trimmingham, and her mother a house-servant of Charles Myners. When Myners died in 1788, Mary Prince and her mother were sold as household servants to Captain Darrell, who gave Prince to his little granddaughter, Betsey Williams. At the age of 12, Mary was sold for £38 sterling (2009: £2,040) to Captain John Ingham, of Spanish Point, but never took easily to the indignities of her enslavement and she was often flogged. As a punishment, Mary was sold to another Bermudian, probably Robert Darrell, who sent her in 1806 to Grand Turk, which Bermudians had used seasonally for a century for the extraction of salt from the ocean. Salt was a pillar of the Bermudian economy, but could not easily be produced in Bermuda, where the only natural resource were the Bermuda cedars used for building ships. The industry was a cruel one, however, with the salt-rakers forced to endure exposure not only to the sun and heat, but also to the salt in the pans, which ate away at their uncovered legs.

Mary returned to Bermuda in 1810, but was sold to John Adams Wood in 1818 for $300, and sent to Antigua to be a domestic slave. She joined the Moravian Church and, in December 1826, she married Daniel James, a former slave who had bought his freedom and worked as a carpenter and cooper. For this impudence, she was severely beaten by her master.

In 1828 Wood and his family travelled to London, taking Prince with them as a servant. Although slavery was not legally recognised in Britain by this date and Prince was technically free to leave Wood's household, she had no means to support herself alone in England. Also, unless Wood formally gave her her freedom, she could not return to her husband in Antigua without being re-enslaved. She remained with the Wood household until they threw her out. She then took shelter with the Moravian church in Hatton Garden. Within a few weeks, she had taken employment with Thomas Pringle, an abolitionist writer, and Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society. Prince arranged for her narrative to be copied down by Susanna Strickland and it was published in 1831 as The History of Mary Prince. The publication caused a stir and led to two libel cases, at both of which Prince was called to testify.

Prince's life after her book was published is not known, nor is it clear whether she was ever able to return to the Caribbean as she wished. In 1829 Wood had refused either to manumit her or even allow her to be bought out of his control. His refusal meant that as long as slavery remained legal in Antigua, Prince could not return there to her husband and friends without reverting to slave status and putting herself again in Wood's power. She is known to have remained in England until at least 1833. 1833 was also the year that Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, intended to achieve a two-staged abolition of West Indian slavery by 1840. In fact, because of popular protests in the West Indies the abolition was legally completed two years early in 1838. If Prince was still alive and in sufficient health, she may then have returned as a free woman to her homeland.