"From a cylindrical stone vat filled with steaming liquid protrude the legs and arms of a negro, who is being held under the surface by a fierce-looking overseer with the handle of a scourge. The overseer stands on a ladder (right), saying, "B-t your black Eyes! what you can't work because you're not well? - but I'll give you a warm bath, to cure your Ague, & a Curry-combing afterwards to put Spunk into you." On the wall above his head are nailed up, in a row with a bird, a fox, and ferrets (vermin), a black arm and two ears. Through a doorway (right) palm-trees are suggested. Beneath the title is etched: 'Mr "Frances [sic] relates "Among numberless other acts of cruelty daily practised, "an English Negro Driver, because a young Negro thro sickness was unable to "work, threw him into a copper of Boiling-Sugar-juice, & after keeping him, "steeped over head & Ears for above Three Quarters of an hour in the boiling "liquid, whipt him with such severity, that it was near Six Months before he "recover'd of his Wounds & Scalding"------Vide Mr Frances Speech, corroborated by Mr Fox, Mr Wilberforce &c &c.'."--British Museum online catalogue
Description:
Title from text in image., Printmaker from British Museum catalogue., Sheet trimmed to plate mark on three sides., Temporary local subject terms: Barbarities -- Barbarities to blacks -- Overseers -- West Indies -- Enslaved people -- Motion to abolish slave trade, April 18, 1791 -- Allusion to Charles James Fox, 1749-1806 -- Allusion to William Wilberforce, 1459-1832 -- Allusion to Sir Philip Francis, 1740-1818., Matted to 36 x 49 cm., and Watermark.
Publisher:
Pubd. April 23d, 1791, by H. Humphrey, N. 18 Old Bond Street
