Confronting The Past - Edward and Peter

The ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests around the world are drawing attention to the continuing pervasiveness of systemic racism and encouraging us to confront the darkness in our collective past. It also asks us to reconsider how we interpret and memorialise historical people and events. As confronting as this may be for some, we cannot just look away, nor simply dismiss it as ideologically driven historical revisionism or political correctness gone mad.

I cannot escape the fact that my Scottish ancestors who arrived in Western Victoria in the early 1850s farmed on land that was stolen from aborigines – many of whom were systematically massacred by the earlier settlers over the previous two decades.

This is not giving in to what historian Geoffrey Blayney dismissed as the "black armband view of history”, it is just accepting the reality of what occurred.

St Mary's Church, Norton Subcourse

In a church that dates back to Saxo-Norman times in a small village called Norton Subcourse in Norfolk, England, there is a marble plaque on the wall. The plaque is a memorial to Edward Wigg, my four times great uncle. My research into my family’s Norfolk forebears, my father’s maternal ancestors, revealed that Edward was the brother of my 3 times great grandfather, James Vincent Wigg.

 

The plaque in the church reads as follows:-

Sacred to the memory of Edward Wigg, Son of James & Susanah Wigg, Who died at Tobago, in the West Indias (sic), March 4th, 1825, Aged 32 Years

                           

On learning this, I was curious to know what he was doing on the Caribbean island of Tobago.  An internet search of his name took me to the ‘Slave Registers of Former British Dependencies’. What I then discovered was chilling - a handwritten record that Edward Wigg on July 25, 1822 had ‘purchased” a slave named Peter from John and Ann Carstairs.

Slave Register, Tobago

That there was only one slave registered in the name of Edward Wigg suggests that Peter may have been ‘kept’ as a domestic servant. This may perhaps be confirmed in other records that I am yet to identify.

While Edward Wigg died in 1825 at the young age of 32, a subsequent record from January 1827 – almost 2 years after Edward’s death – revealed that Peter had died in October 1826. At the time of his death, he was still considered the ‘property’ of the “Heirs of Edward Wigg”. The cause of Peter’s death was given as ‘debility caused by a violent flux’ or as we would know it today, amoebic dysentery, a common cause of death for slaves, particularly whilst being transported at sea.

I wanted to hope Edward Wigg was really a good natured and decent fellow and benevolent in his treatment of Peter during the short time that he ‘owned’ him. But then my revulsion at the notion of capturing, transporting and trading human beings for the purpose of slavery disabused me of any such wishful thinking about the character of my distant relative. I asked myself how could a Christian and God-fearing man, as I assume he would have been, bring himself to owning another human being. Indeed, can you even be considered a decent person if you ‘own’ a slave. No amount of historical relativism or cultural context can bring me to accept slavery as anything other than evil and an abomination.

The British and the French fought on several occasions over possession of Tobago, but from 1802 until its independence was granted in 1962, it remained firmly under British control. From the late 18^th century to the early 19^th century, the economy of Tobago was entirely dependent on slavery and sugar was the main crop.

Slavery was regulated by the Slave Act (formally An Act for the Good Order and Government of Slaves) of 1775 and slaves were considered to be property, with no intrinsic rights. We know that the majority of slaves lived and worked in horrible conditions, often under cruel masters. Their nutrition was usually poor and disease was rife.

Even though Britain had agreed to abolish the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, the ownership of slaves in Tobago was legal until Britain passed the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833, which led to the gradual abolition of slavery in all British colonies. However, it was not until 1838 that full freedom was granted to the slaves of Tobago and plantation owners in the West Indies were able to apply for financial compensation for their ‘losses’.

Today Edward Wigg’s short life is memorialised by a plaque on a wall in a village church - the church where he was christened in 1792 with the name given to him by his parents. His family in Norfolk was able to mourn his death, while Peter’s memorial is to have his name entered on a register of slaves – a name that was likely chosen for him by an earlier ‘owner’. Just another indignity to be inflicted on a victim of the slave trade.

I know I am still able to learn more about Edward Wigg’s life and family and the places where he lived, but I cannot realistically hope to learn more about Peter and the life he lived before and after he was taken to be a slave.  Did he have family or friends on Tobago who grieved at his passing?

We cannot change what occurred. Nor should we allow how we re-interpret the past to become weaponised in a phony culture war. Nevertheless, no matter how painful, we must admit to past wrong-doings, commit to ensuring history is not repeated and accept that we still have unfinished business.