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The paged version of this document contained the following header content in the margin: Incidents on the Passage
which, some afterwards contrived to unloose the lashing, so that two actually threw themselves into the sea, and were lost; another was caught when about three parts overboard.
All the above incidents, described as to have happened on the Middle Passage, are amply corroborated by the other evidences. The slaves lie on the bare boards, says surgeon Wilson. They are frequently bruised, and the prominent parts of the body excoriated, adds the same gentleman, as also Trotter and Newton. Their being linked together, their quarrelling, and the difficulty of getting to their tubs, are additionally mentioned by Hall and Newton. They have been seen by Morley wallowing in their blood and excrement. Claxton, Ellison, and Hall describe them as refusing sustenance, and compelled to eat by the whip. Morley has seen the pannekin dashed against their teeth, and the rice held in their mouths, to make them swallow it, till they were almost strangled, and they have even been thumbscrewed [1] with this view in the ships of Town and Millar.
The man also, says the former, stolen at Galenas River, (p. 8.) refused to eat, and persisted till he died.
A woman, says the latter, who was brought on board, refused sustenance, neither would she speak. She was then ordered the thumb-screws, suspended in the mizen rigging, and every attempt was made with the cat to compell her to eat, but to no purpose. She died in three or four days afterwards. Mr. Millar was told that she had said the night before she died, "She was going to her friends."
As a third specific instance, in another vessel, may be mentioned that related by Mr. Isaac Parker. There was a child, says he, on board, of nine months old, which refused to eat, for which the captain took it up in his hand, and flogged it with a cat, saying at the same time,
- ↑ To shew the severity of this punishment, Mr. Dove says, that while two slaves were under the torture of the thumb-screws, the sweat ran down their faces, and they trembled as under a violent ague fit, and Mr. Ellison has known instances of their dying, a mortification having taken place in their thumbs in consequence of these screws.
" Damn
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