The Newgate Calendar and Its Condemnation of the Slave Trade
Publications bearing the title The Newgate Calendar first appeared in the mid-18th century. These volumes were primarily compilations of “Last Dying Speeches” from condemned criminals, alongside brief biographies of notorious outlaws like Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, and Robin Hood. In the 1820s, however, two lawyers, Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin, compiled a comprehensive edition that expanded the original material with new entries and more detailed accounts.
Surprisingly little is documented about Knapp and Baldwin themselves—no personal letters, diaries, or manuscripts survive beyond their work on the Calendar. Yet their strong opposition to the slave trade shines through clearly in an 1811 case they highlighted, where their moral outrage against those who trafficked in human lives is unsparing. While this particular injustice received some measure of retribution—as did another incident in colonial Australia—countless others escaped punishment entirely.
The following excerpt comes from the fourth volume of The Newgate Calendar.
As this case unfolded in one of Britain’s West Indian colonies, we offer no apology for including it here—especially since it allows denouncing that vile commerce, the SLAVE TRADE, which, to Europe’s eternal shame, persists despite England’s prolonged crusade for its end.
No true human—no genuine Englishman—can fail to ache for the tormented African, torn from his homeland and the bonds of family and friendship. The agony of parting from a friend, parent, spouse, or child stings far worse than the slaver’s chains or lash; it is a torment of the spirit that no words can fully capture. This scene needs no embellishment to horrify, for reality outstrips even the artist’s or poet’s darkest imaginings.
Let us shift from Africa’s shores, where rum is exchanged for blood in pacts between the earth’s foulest villains—a slave-ship captain and a savage king—to the West Indian islands. There, the unlettered Black, who differs from us only in circumstance and hue, endures treatment at the hands of English-descended men (some born in England itself) that defies belief. We draw not from sentiment but from stark facts in official dispatches to Lord Liverpool from Governor Elliot, later presented to a House of Commons committee. We focus on the sworn testimony of Nevis’s deputy secretary, corroborated by others and detailing the barbarities of the merciless Huggins. This examination occurred before the Nevis Assembly.
John Burke, Jr., deputy secretary of the island, under oath, testified that on Tuesday, January 23, 1810, he stood in the street across from Rev. William Green’s residence when he spied Edward Huggins, Sr., Esq., and his sons Edward and Peter Thomas, riding past with a group of enslaved Africans toward the public market. From there came the crack of cart-whips. Approaching, Burke saw Huggins Sr. overseeing two drivers as they lashed a man named Yellow Quashy. Retreating to Dr. Crosse’s gallery to observe, Burke timed the beating at about 15 minutes and, moved by its ferocity, tallied the strokes on subsequent victims, anticipating public outcry.
He heard George Abbot proclaim at Dr. Crosse’s steps that the first man had taken 365 lashes. Huggins Sr. then ordered: 115 lashes on one man; 65 on another; 47 on a third; 165 on the fourth; 212 on the fifth; 181 on the sixth; 59 on the seventh; 187 on the eighth; 110 on a woman; 58 on another; 97 on a third; 212 on the fourth; 291 on the fifth (a young woman savagely whipped); 83 on the sixth; 49 on the seventh; 68 on the eighth; 89 on the ninth; and 56 on the tenth. All were wielded by skilled whippers, with sons Edward Jr. and Peter present. Dr. Cassin attended partway, witnessing 242 lashes on one man—he’d been summoned by Huggins Sr. Others present at Dr. Crosse’s included Edward Harris, Esq., Peter Butler, and Dr. Crosse; Joseph Nicholson, Joseph Laurence, and William Keeper watched the entirety.
JOHN BURKE, Jr.
Sworn before me, January 31, 1810, at the Secretary’s Office—
WILLIAM LAURENCE.
When one female slave died from her injuries, Huggins faced indictment but was acquitted. J.W. Tobin fired off a fiery letter to the governor, decrying a rigged jury and the verdict’s outrage among the upright. To our government’s credit, Lord Liverpool’s reply to the governor, after condemning the outrage, stated:
I am commanded by His Royal Highness the Prince Regent to direct that you remove from office any magistrate who witnessed this punishment without intervening. He can envision no greater proof of the Virgin Islands’ council and assembly’s loyalty to their sovereign—or their commitment to British honor—than vigorous efforts to ease the plight of these wretched souls, whose servile state demands our utmost safeguard.
Now consider unimpeachable testimony from Dr. George Pinckard, inspector-general of hospitals and Bloomsbury Dispensary physician, in his Notes on the West Indies. These events transpired on an English estate in Demerara, where he was posted.
Two wretched Africans, a man and woman, fled the Lancaster plantation under brutal duress but were soon recaptured. Their manager, whose tyranny had driven them away, exacted revenge with feral savagery.
Arming two burly drivers with the stoutest whips, he marched the quaking pair at dawn to a secluded spot, beyond earshot of overseers. Binding the man first, he directed hundreds of lashes until the victim, freed and faltering, collapsed—only for the fiend to club him with a whip’s butt, killing him outright at his feet. Unsated, the brute then secured the naked woman beside her husband’s corpse and ordered the gore-soaked whips to deliver hundreds more, nearly ending her too.
Returning from hospital rounds, I rushed to verify these horrors in the sick-house. The sight confirmed them: the mangled woman lay nude on filthy planks, her lacerations from loins to thighs untreated save for a bough to swat flies, clutched in her weakening hand by a compassionate slave. Beside her sprawled her husband’s warm, chained cadaver, its neck collared like a beast’s. Her flesh was one vast wound; across lay another victim, flogged a fortnight prior into a throbbing ulcer from buttocks to back.
Days later, the estate attorney visited Lancaster amid talk of the manager’s cruelty and its harm to owners. We queried colonial penalties for such barbarism, hoping for dismissal. He smirked, dismissing our naivety as novice folly toward slavery’s realities. He viewed the murder with the killer’s indifference, chuckling at prosecuting whites for “deserving” slave discipline. To our query on dismissal: “Absolutely not—if he’d earned it, he’d have been lashed dead ages ago.” He explained laws capped single offenses at 39 lashes (a mere fine for excess), allowing hundreds more unchecked, even under the governor’s gaze.
Pinckard notes slaves’ widespread faith in posthumous return to Africa, spurring suicides that owners desperately thwart. Yet his eyewitness accounts of two funerals reveal planters’ “humanity” and slaves’ “bliss” in stark irony: raucous celebrations, not grief, as comrades danced and sang behind the “liberated” corpse, envying its escape and yearning for their own swift deaths as keys to freedom.
Slave auctions wrought havoc through family rifts, an overlooked scourge. One mother’s ordeal at sale with her son and daughters exemplifies it:
Her dread of parting—children from her, or each other—exceeded fancy’s grasp. As bidders neared, the sobbing young huddled closer; the frantic mother prostrated herself, kissing feet, clutching legs, then drawing her brood tight. Kneeling, hands clasped, she beseeched with eyes that might pierce Caligula’s heart: in slavery’s doom, spare the added agony of severance.
Though Pinckard dined intimately with planters, witnessing their virtues and vices, and loath to condemn unjustly, his exhaustive observations yield no defense of the trade. Instead, page after page piles fresh indictments, bolstering abolitionists’ case.
Humiliatingly, despotic regimes often spare slaves harsher fates than “free” ones. Roman magistrates ignored pleas until imperial edicts punished tyrants and freed bondsmen. In republics, officials’ scant power—and frequent slaveholding—breeds neglect; under autocrats, unchecked passions yield swift, visceral reprisals unbound by statute.
Thus, French and Spanish colonies generally treated slaves more kindly than Britain’s—a blush-worthy truth, with rare exceptions. For contrast, behold republican America, where “liberty” masks torments rivaling any despot’s.
John Parrish, a Philadelphia Quaker and native son, wrote in his 1800 pamphlet (Kimber, Conrad & Co.):
A domestic U.S. slave trade rivals West Indian cruelties. Hardened dealers dispatch agents across states to buy or seize numbers, sundering kin—husbands from wives, parents from children—their anguish ignored. Chained like cattle (shackles chafing sores), they trudge in coffles with less pity than beasts.
Jails, meant for lawbreakers, warehouse this “cargo” with magisterial winks; nocturnal marches muffle cries, thwarting rescues from kidnappings. Others cram garrets or cellars until quotas fill, then board hidden ships for Virginia markets like Petersburg, or trek to unknown fates.
How tragic that such an abomination festers in liberty’s boast? In 1803, awaiting Maryland’s legislature, I knew a Baltimore-river vessel loaded with slaves—a routine on those waters, Delaware’s, and beyond. Free Blacks’ testimony against whites goes unheeded, shielding impunity. Fugitive laws reclaim escapees from southern sales, denying redress; God alone consoles them. Meanwhile, murderous fugitives roam free, perverting justice.
Murders surface years later: Britain’s Goree governor, for fatal illegal whipping, hanged decades on. In America? Blacks whipped or slain draw scant judicial note. Near Snow Hill, Maryland, a sold man returned, accused of theft, lynched sans trial—like a cur—and forgotten.
Jefferson wisely noted: master-slave bonds breed “boisterous passions” in one, “degrading submission” in the other. Recent suicides—drownings, throat-slittings in Delaware jail or Philadelphia streets—prefer death to kin-severing exile. Escapees turn desperate: Maryland eastern-shore captives slew traders Henry Spiers and Joshua Butts (state-treasury backed) in Virginia transit; prisoners hanged.
In North Carolina, an outlawed Black, shot and woods-abandoned, prompted my inn-stop pursuers to fetch a cart. Another: head severed, bagged for $200 reward, spiked at a Virginia ironworks—for a wifely visit sans leave. Crawford recounts a South Carolina live-gibbetting, buzzards pecking eyes; another Charleston stake-burning amid elite gawkers, crying “Not guilty!” A Maryland judge sold 13 slaves, including a man’s wife, mid-oyster run; his 20-year fidelity plea was denied.
In Sussex County, Delaware, April 1805, one Black suspended a boy, rail-weighted, beat him fatal, night-buried him. Exhumed, coroner ruled murder—his third hushed kill. The innocent lad had taken leather (his son confessed). Killer fled.
An American Daily Advertiser tour reports 600 eastern Maryland Blacks coffled south in six months by “Georgia men.” Agents advertise boldly, snatching mid-meal or chore, binding for ships. Kidnappings fill holds. Elites urge “thinning” Blacks at any cost; debtors sell suddenly, chaining off unseen, sparking runaways—like a Maryland couple abandoning their babe in terror. I met them iron-coupled, beast-herded by brutes; 60 more traversed Pennsylvania, women scarce suckling through fetters.
Emancipation critics cite jailed free Blacks’ thefts? They ape white examples. “Thievish” stigma stems from lot, not innate vice: sans property rights, why honor others’? Laws demand mutual rights, or they’re brute force, not conscience. Religious bans bind masters too; slaves justly reclaim from total takers, as from slayers. Homer knew: slavery halves manhood. (Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia)
These wretches, West Indian or American, trade like livestock—gambled at cards, bartered for beasts or land. Auctioned in lots, hauled from birthplaces; masters’ deaths scatter them with herds. Witness this ad from Washington’s birthplace town:
North Carolina, Oct. 29, 1795. Ten Dollars’ Reward for my negro-man Moses, run off post-villainy at 4 a.m.; or fivefold for proof of his killing, no questions. —W. SKINNER. (A liberty-championing general!)To auction: Mann Page estate—160 negroes (7 carpenters, 3 smiths, 2 millers, etc.), horses, mules, cattle, sheep, utensils, 1,000 corn barrels. Credit to $20+; cash under.
Extracts from fresher accounts could fill tomes with fresh African agonies, but suffice: with Cowper, cry,
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To fan me when I sleep, and tremble when I wake,
For all that human sinews, bought and sold,
Have you ever earned.
Odd that Christ’s meek followers wield such whips; odder still, self-interest blinds them—trials prove free laborers triple slaves’ output, wages outpacing lashes. Yet planters cling, Nature’s edict be damned: most toil for bread worldwide, and freed West Indians would outwork bondsmen, halving costs sans upkeep.
Commerce’s blight grips proprietors: slaves bought, slaves kept—till principal and interest repaid. They scorn abolition’s distant boons, favoring the whip over reform. Our own vices sustain it: taverns guzzle rum, pipes puff tobacco—slavery’s lifeblood. The fop snorting snuff, the miss sugaring tea, waste slave-sweat (oft blood-tinged) in frivolity. Worse, the poor’s rum-tabacco drains starves health, morals, purse—yet abstinence could starve the trade.
Vain pleas: we’ll devour Indies’ yield, taskmasters lash on; the slave reproaches, per the poet:
THE NEGRO’S COMPLAINT
Forced from home and all its pleasures,
Afric’s coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger’s treasures,
O’er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slaves they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England’s rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit Nature’s claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
Why did all-creating Nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters, iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards;
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?
Hark! he answers!—wild tornadoes,
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Africa’s sons should undergo,
Fixed their tyrant’s habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer—No!
By our blood in Afric wasted,
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart;
All sustained by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart;
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthy of regard, and stronger
Than the color of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!
—COWPER.
These grim vignettes culminate in Hodge’s fate: for slave-torments, the executioner claimed him, whites pitying, Blacks cursing. Hon. Arthur William Hodge, Tortola planter and councilor, stood trial for murdering his slave Prosper.
Pleading not guilty, evidence opened with free woman of color Pareen Georges, who laundered at Hodge’s estate. Prosper sought her aid for six shillings—a mango theft fine—or face flogging. Her three shillings failed; he endured over 100 lashes for an hour, then tree-bound next day till voiceless, head lolling. Chained five days in a sick-house (companions fled, freeing him), he hid in quarters, dying putrid; maggots crawled wounds, his flogged back flayed white.
White manager Stephen M’Keogh saw Prosper post-beating—finger-deep gashes, fly-swarmed days before death. Hodge had boasted: estate work done, or whip-cracks sufficed.
Counsel impugned witnesses via character probes, unearthing worse: Georges swore Hodge scalded cook Margaret fatally with boiling water.
Pre-deliberation, Hodge addressed jurors:
Gentlemen, however vilely portrayed—or you deem me—I draw solace from true faith. All err; I too. I own cruelty to many slaves, but God witnesses my innocence in Prosper’s death. The colony craves my blood; I yield it.
Verdict: Guilty. Six more like charges loomed.
Till his May 8, 1811, hanging, Hodge avowed Prosper’s innocence, admitting general harshness (his jury “guilt” gloss) from runaways’ neglect-fueled deaths. He blamed gang insubordination for rigor, denying murderous intent.
Governor Elliot forwarded trial depositions to Liverpool; Robertson suspected Hodge of five slave murders. Elliot detailed proceedings: petit jury majority mercy-pleaded (judges demurred). Martial law and militia mobilized pre-execution averted riots amid “anarchy”—Elliot’s presence quelled partisan furies.
This trial unveils West Indian cruelty’s zenith. Parliament or Crown must intervene, curbing stains on Britain’s name. If assemblies falter, they’re unfit; the metropole must reclaim protective reins long lax.
Notes:
- Edenton Gazette ad: Skinner, American general and liberty zealot, offered a kill-bounty on runaway Moses.
- No mother’s rival, Black women’s devotion—what inferno for such sales?
- I once saw a grocer unpack a year-old Black infant, smothered in sugar—buried silent, while he peddled the tainted hoard.