History slavery Jamaica
📅 20 September 1837
📍 Jamaica
On 20 September 1837, commissioners George Gordon and John Daughtrey opened public proceedings at Brown’s Town, St Ann. Governor Lionel Smith had commissioned an inquiry into the administration of the post-emancipation apprenticeship law, particularly allegations in James Williams’s account of forced labor and punishment. The proceedings heard apprentices and other witnesses and later confirmed central claims in Williams’s narrative. This inquiry took place under colonial authority and within apprenticeship, a system that kept many formerly enslaved people bound to plantation labor after legal emancipation.
A House of Commons return dated 18 April 1832 requested the names of teachers, preachers and people connected with missionary establishments in Jamaica who had been arrested, along with the charges...
Sam Sharpe was executed in Montego Bay after the rebellion was suppressed. He had organized a strike intended to press for freedom and paid work, and became one of Jamaica's central symbols of...
On 22 June 1832, the House of Commons ordered a copy of a Jamaica House of Assembly committee report investigating the causes of the recent rebellion and the damage it caused, together with sworn...
The Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent, setting a legal timetable for emancipation across most British colonies. The act did not bring immediate full freedom for most Jamaican adults: it...
The Act took effect in Jamaica. Children under six and people born after the appointed date were free, but most adults were reclassified as apprentices and required to keep working under former...
👉 A public commission begins investigating apprenticeship abuses in St Ann
Current
20 September 1837
On 20 September 1837, commissioners George Gordon and John Daughtrey opened public proceedings at Brown’s Town, St Ann. Governor Lionel Smith had commissioned an inquiry into the administration of the...
At the commission hearing in Brown’s Town on 21 September 1837, apprentice Edward Lawrence described Henry James’s severe flogging at Penshurst and what he witnessed afterward. Lawrence said James was...
On 5 October 1837, the Gordon and Daughtrey inquiry moved its proceedings to St Ann’s Bay and inspected the parish House of Correction. The commissioners examined the institution and its records as...
On 21 October 1837, commissioners George Gordon and John Daughtrey sent Governor Lionel Smith the proceedings of their inquiry. They reported that James Williams’s allegations received “few and...
On 28 November 1837, Marianne Bell, a domestic at Penshurst, swore an affidavit concerning the imprisonment of James Williams and Adam Brown. She stated that food was sent to the prisoners and...
On 29 March 1838, the House of Commons debated immediate abolition of apprenticeship across the British colonies. Speakers cited evidence from Jamaica, including James Williams’s account and reports...
