FREEDOM FIGHTER

Mary Prince c1788–c1830s

Mary Prince’s narrative The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself

1 1 was a fierce anti slavery message which provided a compelling rebuke to the slavery apologists. It made her the first black British woman to call for immediate emancipation. The book was a cause celebre, one that arguably advanced the passing of the Slavery Emancipation Act in 1833.

The Bermudan-born Prince’s story is made even more remarkable by the fact that, at the time, enslaved men and women had practically no opportunity to share – let alone publish – their experiences. Consequently, when Prince wrote her History, she was voicing not only her own experiences of slavery, but those of the entire enslaved population in the Caribbean. 5he often spoke out bravely against the horrific treatment she endured, which included severe beatings and ʚoggings “from the whip, the rope, and the cowskin”.

Most enslaved workers had one or two owners in their lifetime; Prince, however, had five. 6his suggests that she had a strong will, which meant although she still experienced terrible violence at the hands of her owners, she had the courage to challenge their behaviour. “I have often wondered,” she wrote in her History, “how English people can go out into the West Indies and act in such a beastly manner. But when they go to the 9est|Indies, they forget God and all feelings of shame, I think, since they can do such things.”

Mary Prince travelled to England with her last owners, the Woods, in 1828, where she was exposed to the debates on slave emancipation taking place in parliament and the agitation this caused across the country. In London, the Woods’ continued monstrous treatment of Prince led her to leave them. She sought refuge in a Moravian missionary church in Hatton Garden and later with the Anti-Slavery Society, who, upon hearing her story, published it.

In the face of terrible odds, Prince refused to submit and constantly fought against extreme physical and psychological trauma and hardships. She provides an insight into how enslavement affected human beings, both the enslavers and the enslaved, and how the enslaved used their environment to have some control over their futures. Her History highlights not only the indignities and suffering of that terrible institution, but also ways in which the human spirit could triumph.