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Charles
Douglas, living 1786
100 years ago,
a Burns enthusiast and traveller wrote the following, which appeared in
the Burns Chronicle of 1903.
WHEN in Jamaica during the early part of this year I visited Port
Antonio, where Burns had engaged to go to during his dark days in 1786. I
was the guest of a Scotsman from the Clyde district, who is one of the
managing staff of the United Fruit Company, the gigantic trust which
controls the fruit trade from the West Indies and Central America to the
Eastern States of America.
Among other places, he took me a very rough
ride to a house belonging to him on the hill overlooking Port Antonio,
which commanded a magnificent view of the fine harbour and the Caribbean
Sea on one hand, and of the Blue Mountain range on the other. This was
Springbank, to which, it is understood, Burns was coming out in 1786. By
this is meant that it was the site of the Great House (the name given in
those days to the residence of the planter), and it might be any of the
properties belonging to the planter that Burns would be coming to. The
original house was there until the great hurricane in 1880. The
foundations are still to be seen, and the present house extends over part
of them only. Judging from the foundations, the original house must have
been a large and substantial one, as, indeed, a planter's in those days
was likely to be.
My Scottish host, the present proprietor of this
house, referred me to a half coloured man in the village named Aubrey
Steele Hoyes, a grandson of John Steele, who was apparently proprietor of
Springbank in succession to Charles Douglas, the planter whom Burns
engaged to come out to. Hoyes showed me various documents of Steele's,
among others an interesting general sketch of parish tax and parish road
rolls for the parish of Portland (in which Port Antonio is) in 1809,
showing that for taxation purposes slaves in those days were put very much
on the level of beasts of burden. For parish tax the 7688 slaves in the
parish were assessed at 2s. 9d. each, and the stock at is. 6d. each. At
Kingston I referred, along with Mr. Frank Cundall, secretary of the
Institute of Jamaica, to the Jamaica Almanacs. The issue for 1811 is the
first giving a list of properties, and in this list John Steele is given
as proprietor of Springbank, owning 65 slaves and 28 stock, the largest
owner in the parish having 454 slaves. The editor of the Daily Gleaner, at
Kingston, who is a Scotsman, showed me data collected by him in connection
with the matter.
Mr. Charles Douglas, to whom Burns engaged himself
through his brother,
Dr. Patrick
Douglas, of Ayr, was the owner of at
least two sugar properties in the parish of Portland viz., Ayr Mount and
Nightingale Grove. The former was the principal estate, and lay about
three miles from Port Antonio. The Great House commanded a beautiful view,
and, although some details of scenery have since changed, the general
aspect remains as it was then. The works, of course, are in ruin. The
fields of cane have vanished, and instead there are the cultivations of
small settlers, with thatched cottages embowered among fruit trees, but
the outline of forest and field, the wealth of vegetation, the brilliancy
of colour characteristic of this wet parish have never altered. The Rio
Grande, the most romantic of Jamaica streams, still winds quietly along
after its wild descent from the Blue Mountains, whose lofty ranges tower
immediately behind. The estate now comprises only 4o acres, which are
divided among one family of Negroes. Nightingale Grove was further inland,
and has now become merged in Golden Vale, the largest banana plantation in
the country. The soil of both properties is extremely fertile, and in Burns's time must have yielded golden crops of canes. Port Antonio was the
shipping place, and counted only some 3o houses. There were about 100
other settlements of various kinds, but the sugar estates were the chief
centres of industry, and were in themselves small villages. Of these not
one now remains.
Mr. Douglas appears to have personally managed his
estates, which were well looked after, and were well stocked with cattle
and slaves. He was one of four superintendents of the Maroon Negro towns
established in the island. That under his direction was Moore Town, built
on an almost inaccessible ridge of the Blue Mountains, and for his
services he was paid £200 per annum. This was the only public office he
held, so far as contemporary records show. Burns had signed a contract to
serve as a bookkeeper for a term of three years at a salary of £30, with
board and lodgings free. It is questionable, according to this informant,
whether he realised the exact nature of the work he would be required to
do. A bookkeeper then, as now, did not keep books; his duties were to
supervise labour in the field and in the boiling and still houses. On all
estates there were three gangs in the fields, one consisting of men,
another of women, and the third of children. These toiled from sunrise to
sunset, and often at night when the moon shone full. It was the duty of
the bookkeeper to follow them and superintend their work in all weathers,
and to make them fulfil their apportioned tasks by the free use of the
whip.
The Slave Act enforced in 1786, not only legalised this
practice, but sanctioned the infliction of terrible penalties for the most
trivial offences, mutilations, dismemberment, branding, &c. Bookkeepers
were not expected to marry, and were often forbidden to do so, but were
encouraged to take "housekeepers " from amongst the slave women. They
lived, as a rule, in comfortless barracks exposed to the malarious
influences so common around sugar works, and totally devoid of the
refinement most of them were accustomed to in Scotland. The death
registers of the colony indicate that 90 per cent. of the young white men
who went out as employees on estates succumbed to the effects of
imprudence and intemperate living. After the first shock of contact they
were able to lose the fine sense of moral responsibility acquired in their
Scottish homes, and were tempted to spend their scanty leisure time in low
debauchery. It may be concluded that if Burns had fully realised the
nature of his prospective work he would never have agreed to place himself
under the tyranny of a system so degrading.
The editor of the Daily
Telegraph, of Kingston, also a Scotsman, had the official records at
Spanish Town searched by Mr. Judah, one of the officials there, as to the
various Douglasses living in the island in 1786, and furnished me with the
following resultant data :-
First Charles Douglas, in Portland,
owned property in that parish from 1777 to 1799. He had several estates,
amongst which were Finches of 160 acres and Nightingale Grove of 300
acres. In December, 1785, he purchased a Negro slave named Andrew from
Mrs. Janet Colt of Leitch Hill, in the county of Perth. Scotland. (This
was the Douglas to whom Burns had arranged to go.) In his will, dated
February 15, 1815, he states:? All the residue and remainder of my estate,
real, personal, and mixed, wherever found, I give and bequeath to my
beloved niece, Janet Douglas (now Mrs. Boswell), the daughter of my
brother Patrick Douglas, Esquire, of Garallan, in the shire of Ayr, in
North Britain, to her and to her lawful heirs for ever."
Second
Charles Graham Douglas, of St. John (now St. Catherine), who died about
the year 1823. He was a person of colour, and was apparently possessed of
a good deal of property.
Third - Charles Douglas, of the parish of Vere,
gentleman, whose will is dated 1842. He mentions his father, William
Douglas, and his mother, Janet Douglas, of the town of Falkirk, Scotland,
to each of whom he bequeathed ,£100, also £100 to his sister, Anne Miller,
of the town of Elgin, Scotland, and a similar amount to another sister,
Margaret Lawson, of the town of Falkirk. It will be seen from Wallace's
edition of " Chambers's Life of Burns" that Janet Douglas (niece of No.
1), who succeeded her father, Dr. Patrick Douglas, in Garallan, married
fir. Hamilton Boswell, of Knockroom, collector of taxes for Ayrshire, and
that Mr. Hamilton Douglas Boswell, great grandson of Dr. Patrick Douglas,
succeeded later as proprietor of Garallan.
Mr. Liddel, of the
Surveyor?General's office at Kingston, in Jamaica, showed me a map dated
1804, which gives a property of Douglas's near Golden Vale, in the parish
of Portland. This would be Nightingale Grove, which was absorbed in Golden
Vale. A map of 1876 shows Ayr Mount of 50 acres overlooking Rio Grande
Valley and Port Antonio. There is also an estate in the neighbourhood
called Douglas Mount.
Burns in one of his letters mentions that he was
to have gone to Savannah la Mar, on the south coast of Jamaica, but that
some Jamaican friends informed him it would cost £50 to send him from
there overland to Port Antonio, and it was then arranged for him to wait
for a vessel direct to the latter I port. This fortunate delay, as is well
known, led to his not going at all. A visitor to Jamaica finds it
difficult to believe that it would have cost anything like £50 to
transport Burns from Savannah la Mar to Port Antonio even in the days in
question. Dr. Gillies, of Seabank, Kingston, formerly a minister, now a D.
D., and who is probably the oldest white residenter in the island, having
been connected with it for about 50 years, with whom I discussed the
matter, yeas also of this opinion. Even if the £5o were in currency, which
would be somewhat less, he considered the amount stated was out of the
question.
It might be interesting to speculate what would have been the
result had Burns gone to Jamaica. Would he have been dragged down by the
degrading associations of a bookkeeper's life, or would he have risen
superior to his surroundings The natural situation of the estate, as has
been indicated, is unusually fine, the views of mountain, river, and sea
being magnificent. This would no doubt have quickened Burns's inborn love
of nature, and would have stimulated his genius in that direction.
It is somewhat sad for the visitor from Britain to find on reaching Port
Antonio that from Springbank, Burns's intended destination, then an
exclusively British preserve, he now sees everywhere evidences of the
encroachment of Americans. The Stars and Stripes are flying from most of
the steamers which frequent the beautiful harbour ; the only hotel is
American, and it is filled with American tourists; the port is surrounded
by American plantations; and the district is practically controlled by an
American company. How little could this have been foreseen in the time of
Burns ! - Glasgow Herald.
Note: Contributed: I am pretty
sure that Charles Douglas of Portland is the gentleman in question. He
resigned from his position of Superintendent of the Moore Town Maroons
1804 - I think in that resignation which I will soon locate, he said that
he has been superintendent for about 20 years and the damp, lack of proper
housing and arthritis was getting the better of him. Ayr and Nightingale
Grove were both in the Rio Grande valley and as it says NG was absorbed
into Golden Vale.
Douglas is regarded a quite distinguished for he
spoke fluently, the Maroon language Kramanti (a sort of Twi of Ghana) and
on meeting with the Maroons, rose to greet them while shaking hands - was
a man who understood that the quality of a man's character was more
significant that his raiment.
See also:
Douglases and the slave trade
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