In the summer of 1732, two enslaved women ran away together. They fled the South Carolina plantation that belonged to their owner, James Searles. They had brought with them a child so young, than one of the slaves, a woman named Delia, was still nursing the baby at her breast. Delia’s English was poor and broken, which suggests that she had only recently arrived in South Carolina. The other enslaved woman, Clarinda, spoke much better English, which suggested that the two women had not known each other for very long. Together, they stole a twenty five foot long canoe and set out on the nearest river. They paddled furiously whenever the river grew sluggish enough for them to make any headway against the strong current. There is no doubt that the child slowed them down. It’s dependence on them limited their flexibility, their ability to paddle and hide, or drift quietly for long periods.
For these reasons, most enslaved mothers chose not to try to escape, but to stay put in the plantation community and raise their children as best they could. A study of one hundred and ninety five advertisements for runaway slaves published in the South Carolina Gazette between 1732 and 1739 revealed that male runaways were more common than female runaways. Males outnumbered females by a factor of three to one. This amounted to one hundred and forty one men as opposed to sixty one who women. Some studies have also found that when enslaved women did take to their heels, they usually did so alone. Only 11% of runaway female slaves did so with children in tow. These uneven and lopsided statistics remind us of the emotional ties and familial responsibilities that kept the majority of enslaved women from following in the footsteps of Clarinda and Delia, effectively foreclosing the most common means of resistance to slavery that male slaves readily took at advantage of.
However, there was one form of resistance to slavery that was practiced almost exclusively by women. As a group, enslaved women generally had very little geographical familiarity with the world beyond the plantation. In contrast, the men in the slave community regularly transported people, goods and messages around the region in the course of their daily work. Women did not, and as result, when they did attempt to run away, they usually didn’t go very far, playing the role of truant, as opposed to fugitive. They usually fled to nearby woods or swamps for several days or weeks at a time, in the hopes of bargaining with their owners over the conditions of their return. Women were usually more likely than men to work in a domestic capacity and their absence was often keenly felt by the master and his family. The essential role played by women in the domestic life of the plantation also gave them other unique opportunities. Slave owners were always concerned that their cooks or serving girls might attempt to tamper with their food, wine or medicine, poisoning them at breakfast, or as they recovered from an illness. Slave owners went so far as to lobby their legislators to pass laws explicitly designed to deter would be poisoners. In 1724, a Royal Ordinance was passed in the French colony of Antigua, which mandated the death sentence for all slaves who were even suspected of attempting to poison their masters. There is no doubt that this resulted in many false accusations, as slave owners gave free reign to their suspicion and paranoia.
While enslaved women often did distinctive and special work, they also used their bodies to contest their enslavement. Historian have come to call this “gynaecological resistance.” This term describes a wide variety of ways in which enslaved women used their capacity for childbearing to fight their own enslavement. Some historians argue that female field workers may have sometimes used pregnancy as a means of reducing their work hours. However, some historians have also argued the exact opposite. They note that the planters often railed against their female slaves for not getting pregnant, or for aborting their pregnancies. They frequently complained that such actions lowered the plantation’s birth rate and slowed the over all expansion of the labour force. Some slave owners went so far as to charge female slaves of infanticide, or willful negligence to spare their children the horrors of a life in bondage. Female slaves who were suspected of committing infanticide or a self-induced abortion were forced to wear an iron collar, or were savagely whipped. As a result, slave owners were deeply suspicious of enslaved midwives and regularly accused them of sabotage and child murder. In order to ensure successful live births, slave owners often bribed pregnant slaves with extra days of rest. The more healthy children the slaves had, the better treatment they could expect. However, it is important to remember that a woman’s ability to successfully deliver live offspring is conditioned, at least in part, on environmental factors that may be beyond her ability to control. The historian Barbara Bush wrote that, “[U]nder extreme extreme conditions, a woman’s desire and ability to have children is reduced. The classic example here is the concentration camp.”
It is also worth noting that the reluctance of enslaved women to have children might, on some level, reflect their distress about their circumstances, their conception or the identity of their fathers. The rape of black women was endemic on plantations in the 18th Century. Because slavery was tied to the status of the mother, any children that resulted from these instances of rape were destined for a life in chains and only added to the master’s labour force. Additionally, the concept of rape had no legal meaning in this context. How was it possible to rape a commodity, or a piece of property that you owned? The law struggled, and largely failed, to account for that possibility. As a result, slave owners were protected from prosecution, According to the historian Sharon Block, “no rape conviction against a white man, let alone a victim’s owner, for raping an enslaved woman has been found between between at least 1700 and the Civil War.”
However, historians know, thanks to a wide variety of sources, that rape was rampant on slave plantations in the 18th and 19th Centuries. In 1792, the abolitionist David Rice had cause to ask, “[h]ow often have (white) men had children by their own slaves, by the slaves of their fathers or by the slaves of their neighbours?” Enslaved women were often unable to resist the advances of their owners. If unwanted pregnancies occurred some enslaved women embraced abortion.
Enslaved women were at constant risk of sexual exploitation by their masters, or the male members of their master’s family. The closer an enslaved woman’s work brought her to the master, or his family, the greater the risk she faced. At the same time, being the master’s favourite could bring certain privileges, but also additional dangers. Slave owners, and their male friends, as well as their family members were fully aware that threats of violence meant that they would not be refused. As a result of this lack of social or criminal punishment, Thomas Thistlewood is estimated to have raped a hundred and thirty eight enslaved women over the course of the thirty seven years he spent in Jamaica. According to Thistlewood’s own diary, which is as much an account of his sexual history as any other aspect of his life, he is estimated to have committed 3,852 acts of rape against his own slaves. In an average year, Thistlewood took at least fourteen different victims and committed at least one hundred and eight acts of rape.
Only the very old, the very young and the very sick were safe from Thistlewood’s advances. Thistlewood’s diary notes the time, place and person involved in each encounter. He also some times noted the sexual position in a Latin short hand, and whether or not he’d enjoyed himself. For the vast majority of Thistlewood’s reluctant sexual partners, there can be little doubt that they found that their intimate contact with their master greatly exacerbated their sense of debasement, which only served to compound the psychological damage of slavery. Despite this, a few were able to carve out small advantages from these encounters.
Several of Thistlewood’s victims received small cash payments for their co-operation. Two of these women, Susannah and Mazarine, earned sufficient income from these encounters to buy half a pig in one instance, and enough food to last for six months in another. As a result of the income that they earned from these encounters, these two women were able to take advantage of small entrepreneurial opportunities that they might not have had otherwise.
For other enslaved women, Thistlewood’s attention was the catalyst for much more overt forms of resistance. The story of a slave named Coobah is one such example. Coobah was only 4’10” when Thistlewood bought her at the age of fifteen, in 1761 She had turned sixteen when he raped her for the first time. As a result of this encounter, she contracted a sexually transmitted disease, which became a chronic health problem and continued to plague her for years afterward. In August, 1765, Coobah attempted to run away from Thistlewood’s plantation for the first time. When she was recaptured and returned to the plantation five days later, she was flogged and an iron collar with a chain was fastened around her neck in the hope of deterring a repeat performance. A few years later, at the age of twenty one, Coobah’s first child, who had been conceived with a free black man living near Thistlewood’s plantation, died while still a toddler.
Months and years followed, and Coobah redoubled her efforts to escape her master’s gaze. In 1770, Coobah ran away at least eight times. Each time she was recaptured, she received ever harsher punishments. She was flogged, put in the stocks and branded on the forehead. None of these deterents had the desired effect. Coobah continued to display nothing but contempt for Thistlewood’s authority. She even went so far as to defecate into his punch strainer. Upon learning of this, Thistlewood furiously rubbed her feces all over her face and mouth. By 1774, Thistlewood had had enough. Records indicate that Coobah was sold for £40.00 to a plantation in Georgia. It is uncertain if this was outcome that Coobah had hope for all along, but in any case, her actions had succeeded in putting an ocean between herself and Thistlewood.
After Coobah came Sally, who was originally from the Congo. She also developed habit of running away, usually two or three times per year. In each case, she only remained at large for a few days at a time. Sally’s instances of truancy usually corresponded to days on which Thistlewood raped her. He is known to have raped her at least thirty seven times. Thistlewood often noted in his diary that sex with Sally was unsatisfactory, which suggests that he may have had to use more force to subdue her than he would have liked. Sally’s disappearances following these encounters would seem to be a direct response to the trauma of sexual violence that she was regularly subjected to. This resulted in a regular search for sanctuary that had only limited success. After a decade of this nihilistic back and forth relationship between Thistlewood and Sally, Sally finally snapped. She began to behave in an increasingly erratic manner, as if her sanity was breaking down. Thistlewood concluded that she was no longer able to work and eventually sold her to a planter on the mainland for $40.00 in 1784.
A third woman, named Abba, who Thistlewood had purchased in 1758, responded to Thistlewood in a completely different manner than either Coobah or Sally. Over the thirty year period that Abba spent living on Thistlewood’s plantation, she was known to have become pregnant at least thirteen times. Of these, she gave birth to ten live children, and of those, six survived the first year of life, and four were still alive when Thistlewood died in 1786. Historians are uncertain as to how many of these pregnancies can be attributed to Thistlewood, but he is known to have raped her at least one hundred and twenty eight times between 1771 and 1774. What matters is that the presence that these dependents had on Abba was substantial. Abba’s experience as a slave was unlike that of Coobah or Sally. Abba had mouths to feed, and as a result, she may have found that she had no other option but to forsake the possibility of outright rebellion against Thistlewood, such as running away or committing acts of truancy. Instead, in order to protect herself and her children, Abba seems to have acquiesced to Thistlewood’s regime, including his sexual predations. As a result, she was flogged just three times in twenty eight years. This was a sure sign of her compliance to his will. She never once attempted to run away, as this would have required her to abandon some, or all, of her children. Instead, Abba tried to cope and endure, accommodating herself to her master’s demands in order to ensure that her children could live and grow.
What does it take for an enslaved woman to survive slavery? If Abba is one debased and acquiescent example, Phibbah, the woman Thistlewood had the most sex with makes for a startling contrast . Over the course of their thirty three year entanglement, Phibbah used her position as Thistlewood’s favourite sex object to protect and advance members of her family, purchase property and carve out an identity for herself as a powerful, respectable and quasi-independent woman. At a great and terrible cost, Phibbah was able to transcend slavery itself, rendering her legal status as a slave meaningless. As a result, she was able to achieve a rare and peculiar form of freedom.
Thomas Thistlewood first raped Phibbah in 1753, when she was probably in her mid-twenties. Over the course of the next thirty years, he would rape her 2, 142 times. He continued to exploit her in this way until just two months before his death in 1786. During the earliest of their entanglement, Thistlewood’s diary indicates that his encounters with Phibbah constituted 75% of he sexual activity with his slaves. This is an early sign of he devotion and fixation with her.
While Thistlewood often sought out sexual contact with other women, no one captured his attention in quite the same way that Phibbah did, even when she was pregnant or nursing small children. He hit her only once, and even allowed her to refuse his advances sometime. This was a striking show of restraint for this particular man. Such was Thistlewood’s love for Phibbah, that when she was struck with a nearly fatal Illness, in 1768, he stayed up all night to tend to her. Thistlewood’s affections created a series of opportunities that Phibbah readily exploited. Phibbah took on the role of chief housekeeper, a position which commanded the deference of all of Thistlewood’s household slaves. She was also required to make purchases, manage budgets and handle cash. Phibbah used her position to achieve economic independence for herself and her children. She was able to leverage her position as Thistlewood’s favourite and engage in small scale huckstering, such as the sale of surplus trade goods and agricultural products that came into her hands, She also sold food and clothing that she had made, in addition to gifts that Thistlewood had given her. Eventually, Phibbah was to buy her own livestock and a small amount of real estate, as well as two slaves, a woman named Bess and her son Sam. Because of her status, much of this capital was technically the property of her master, however, in his will, Thistlewood made arrangements to free Phibbah and transfer her various investments to her own lawful ownership.
As Thistlewood’s favourite, Phibbah’s utility to the slave community rose dramatically. Almost overnight, she was transformed into a kind of informant. She was now in a position to pass on crucial tidbits of information about Thistlewood’s state of mind, mood or recent activities to field workers and domestics in need of inside information. As a result, Phibbah began to function as an intermediary on the behalf of slaves seeking favour, or pleading for mercy, and whose requests might otherwise have been overlooked by Thistlewood. Phibbah was only reprimanded three times by Thistlewood for pushing these claims too far. On January 11, 1760, he chided her, “for meddling in field Negroes’ business with me.”
Phibbah reserved her most special favours for members of her family. She used her position to give them gifts, lighten their workload and even attempt to purchase their freedom. She also steered her daughter Jenny, who’s birth pre-dated her entanglement with Thistlewood, toward a relationship with the master of a nearby plantation. Phibbah seems to have been committed to the belief that such unions could ultimately advantageous. Jenny repaid this intended favour by visiting her mother frequently and by burrowing her own way into Thistlewood’s good graces. As a result, Thistlewood came to treat Jenny almost as one of his own. He sent plum jobs her way and bought her presents when she was sick.
Thistlewood was likely the father of Phibbah’s other child. In 1760, she gave birth to a boy, who she named John. Slave owners often refused to acknowledge the paternity of their mistress’s children. In contrast, Phibbah was able to convince Thistlewood to free John when he was just two years old, and to pay to send him to a local school. Had John not died unexpectedly at the age of twenty, he might have become Thomas Thistlewood’s principal heir, and become a member of Jamaica’s mixed race Creole elite. As a result of Phibbah’s entanglement with Thistlewood, her children enjoyed a much greater degree of stability, prosperity and opportunity than those enslaved women who did not have access to such patronage.
For these reasons, black mistresses quickly alienated themselves from their fellow slaves. They lauded their special status over them, however, Phibbah seems to have been different. She seems to have been able to walk the line between balancing her owner’s attention with the needs of the slave community for more than thirty years. When she was sick, field hands came to look after her. When John died in 1780, they came to his funeral and comforted her in her grief. Through it all, Thistlewood never questioned her loyalty. By the 1770s, he had even begun to allow her to entertain his white guests when he was away from the property. This was a sure sign that he thought that she was trustworthy and respectable.
Thomas Thistlewood died in 1786. In 1792, after several years of wrangling and delays, Phibbah was given the freedom that Thistlewood had promised her in his will. By this time, Phibbah was a woman in her sixties, a determined and resourceful matriarch, Phibbah was now wealthy and free.
What should we make of this superficially warm and loving relationship that made such transcendence possible? Born in bondage, Phibbah’s entanglement with Thomas Thistlewood was fundamentally the product of the master-slave dialectic. The structure of enslavement meant that enslaved women were at the mercy of their owners. Thistlewood exploited Phibbah using all of the social and physical tools at his disposal, and preyed upon hundreds of other women. However, Phibbah’s hold over Thistlewood also demonstrates that power can sometimes flow in the opposite direction. Phibbah exploited Thistlewood just as much as he exploited her. She used their entanglement to secure advantages for herself, her family and her community, which served to undercut slave owners’ notions of subjugation and served to nudge the balance ever so slightly in the favour of the slaves. As result Phibbah was everything and nothing. She was neither a victim or a rebel. She was both a collaborator and an insurgent. By sleeping with the enemy, she made the enemy her protector, and eventually her emancipator. Fundamentally, Phibbah was a realist. Phibbah had few other options or opportunities available to her. By accommodating herself to the realities of plantation slavery, she was able to blur the distinctions between 18th Century whites and blacks.
Wordsmith 