#maryprince

Mary Prince

Mary Prince (l. c. 1788 to c. 1833) was the first enslaved Black woman to publish an autobiography/slave narrative. Prince was illiterate but dictated her life story to the writer Susanna Strickland (l. 1803-1885), published in 1831 as The History of Mary Prince, which became a bestseller and garnered support for the abolitionist movement.

Prince was born a slave in Bermuda, taken to Antigua, and finally to England, where she left her master and found refuge in the Moravian Church (which opposed slavery). She was then taken under care by the abolitionist Thomas Pringle (l. 1789-1834), who was a friend of fellow abolitionist Susanna Strickland (better known by her married name, Susanna Moodie), who took down Prince's account.

Owing to the prevailing belief that Blacks were subhuman and incapable of writing, and because the work was put to paper by Strickland and edited by Pringle, it was dismissed by pro-slavery advocates as propaganda created by the Anti-Slavery Society. The details of her account, however, were corroborated by others who were acquainted with slavery as practiced in Bermuda and Antigua.

Even readers who knew nothing of daily life in those regions found Prince's story profoundly moving, and it went through three printings in its first year. England had outlawed the slave trade in 1807 but retained slavery, which was only ended by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. How much influence Prince's autobiography had on Parliament passing that act is still debated, but judging by the work's popularity between 1831 and 1833, it quite likely played a significant role.

In her introduction to The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, scholar Sara Salih writes:

Telling her life story gave Prince and her supporters the opportunity to demonstrate that, contrary to contemporary belief, 'Negroes' were not merely chattels, but humans who were seriously damaged by the brutal treatment they were forced to suffer at the hands of their white masters and mistresses.

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Prince's death date is unknown, but the last public record of her in England is 1833. Today, she is recognized as a national hero of Bermuda, and Mary Prince Day is celebrated annually on 2 August.

Slave Life & Freedom in England

Prince was born a slave in Devonshire Parish, Bermuda, c. 1788. Her father was an enslaved sawyer held by one David Trimmingham, and her mother was a domestic slave held by a Charles Myners. She had two sisters and three brothers, all belonging to Myners, and when he died, they were sold away from their mother to Captain George Darrell, who presented Prince to his granddaughter, Betsey Williams, who, as Prince says, treated her kindly as a pet.

When she was 12 years old, she was sold to Captain John Ingham while her two sisters were sold to another slaveholder. Ingham and his wife Mary regularly beat their slaves, killing Prince's friend, Hetty, who died after an especially severe whipping. Prince ran away from Ingham and took refuge with her mother, who was now the property of one Richard Darrell. Her mother hid her in a cave, but because she could be executed for harboring a fugitive, her father intervened and brought her back to the Ingham plantation.

Ingham sent her to Grand Turk Island, where she was forced to work in the salt ponds, harvesting salt from the sea, and regularly standing in the water for 17-hour shifts, before she was bought by Robert Darrell and returned to Bermuda. Darrell put her to work on his farm before selling her to the merchant John Adams Wood Jr. in 1815.

Wood and his wife brought Prince to their farm in Antigua where she worked as a domestic. When the Woods were away on trips, Prince earned money selling coffee and yams and taking in washing, hoping to be able to buy her freedom. She also approached one Mr. Burchell, asking him to buy her, as the Woods were brutal masters who beat her often, but they refused to sell her and would not accept any amount she had made to purchase her freedom.

She joined the Moravian Church, where she began to learn to read, but to continue her studies, she would require a note from her master granting permission, which she knew he would not give, and so she never asked him. Soon after this, she met Daniel James, a free Black carpenter, and they were married in 1826. The Woods were outraged that she had married without their permission, and she was flogged with a horsewhip.

In 1828, the Woods took her with them to England, and she left their house one day, finding refuge at the Moravian Church in Hatton Garden, London. She was found there by Thomas Pringle, who hired her as a domestic and petitioned the Woods to free her, but they would not. Prince was only free as long as she remained in England, and so she could not return to Antigua and her husband without becoming enslaved again. Whether she ever saw Daniel James again is unknown, but unlikely.

In 1830, while working for Pringle, Prince dictated her autobiography to Susanna Strickland. It was Prince's idea to publish her life story as she hoped it would influence lawmakers to abolish slavery. The History of Mary Prince was published, along with another slave narrative, The Narrative of Louis Asa-Asa, A Captured African, as a pamphlet in 1831, going through three printings in its first year.

Two libel cases arose from the publication, the second one brought by Wood, and Prince testified at both. Wood won his suit in 1833, the same year the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by Parliament, and this is the last time Mary Prince appears in the historical record.

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While Equiano reached out to the politicians and public authorities of his time, it’s apparent that Mary Prince reaches out to another audience in addition to these people – the women. Prince uses her ethos and pathos of womanhood and slavery to spread the messages about the condition of family during this time period.

One of the “alluring” factors of the slave trade was the ability to “civilize” the “barbarians” of Africa. I put these in air quotes because we have sources such as Equiano that allow us to see that these human beings already held value in family and civil living long before the Europeans ever came to take them away.

Prince touches on this in her narrative as she talks about her family as well as the families she interacts with. She starts her story and gives readers a sample of her own family lineage and selling history. We then see Mary with the Williams family with her mother and sisters. Instead of talking about her own family, she discusses the situation that lies with her masters’ household. She speaks fairly about Mrs. Williams, but then turns around and calls Mr. Williams cruel and heartless. A slave coming from a broken family dynamic now works for a broken family dynamic. It’s an interesting parallel to see these bonded people hold family to a higher value than those who have enslaved them. Proof of this comes from plantation owners sneaking into the night and sexually abusing and impregnating the women who worked the plantation. This then led to more children being separated from their mothers and sold when the plantation owner’s wife found out about the atrocities committed by her husband. Slaves were essentially denied the comfort of family.

This denial creates an extremely powerful form of resistance. Slaves were able to resist and in a way, rebel, by sticking around and staying for their families. Marrying a free man, refusing to give up children, or accepting beatings for coming back late from visiting a family member were all ways to stick it to the idea that these people were inhuman.

Another critical point that Prince brings into question is the idea of terror. Terror as a technique for control over the slaves. Slaves lived in constant fear of physical punishment for the slightest mistakes. Mary talks about two young boys who her master’s wife “vented her bad temper in a special manner” (239). Mary then goes on to say that her “master and mistress seemed to think that they had a right to ill-use them at their pleasure…whether the children were behaving well or ill” (239). These masters had control over the mental stability of the people working for them and they abused and terrorized them. And this was not just during the work hours. Prince recalls being awoken in the middle of the night and “had then to stand at a bench and wash during the greater part of the night, or pick wool and cotton; and often…dropped down overcome by sleep and fatigue, till roused from a state of stupor by the whip, and forced to start up on my tasks” (239). Regardless of the time of day, slaves were not safe and that fear is exactly what their masters exploited.  

Prince finishes her story with a sort of “call to arms,” and lists the things that slaves everywhere want. No special rights, no special treatment. Just “proper treatment, and proper wages like the English servants, and proper time given in the week to keep us from breaking the Sabbath” (263). It’s fascinating that these demands are so simple, and the desire for slaves so great, that these demands were never met. This form of simple compromise was too much for plantation owners. These simple and same rights to pay, family, and protection under the law were too much for the imposed hierarchy. That’s what amazes me – the country that claimed to need slavery to succeed was not willing to budge on how they treated the people who worked for them.