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“The Abandoned Lower Class of Females”: Class, Gender, and Penal Discipline in Barbados, 1875–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2011

Cecilia A. Green
Cecilia A. Green*
Affiliation:
Sociology, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
*
cagree01@maxwell.syr.edu
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Extract

Between 1873 and 1917, the numbers of Barbadian women committed to penal custody on an annual basis surpassed those of men. While women's per capita imprisonment rate was still somewhat below that of men for most of these years, given the wide margins by which women outnumbered men in the population and the labor force, these proportions were nevertheless unprecedented, not only in the British Caribbean but also in other parts of the world. Available figures for Jamaica and Trinidad over sections of the period hover around an 18–20 percent female proportion rate, while in Barbados the rate usually exceeded 50 percent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 144 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2011

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References

1 Some clarification is necessary here. In this paper, I work mainly with the figures relating to numbers of adult persons (those fourteen and older) committed to penal imprisonment (upon conviction, summary or by trial) on an annual basis. These figures understate the extent and experience of imprisonment. They do not include non-penal imprisonment or juvenile imprisonment, nor do they represent total incidents of committal for penal imprisonment. In other words, the annual totals reflect the total number of adult persons committed within the year for penal sentences only, and not total committals, and thus they do not account for re-committals (multiple separate prison terms) of repeat offenders.

2 Belle, George, “The Abortive Revolution of 1876 in Barbados,” Journal of Caribbean History 18, 1 (1984): 1–34Google Scholar.

3 During the period under study there were, more or less, twice as many women as men in the fifteen to forty-five age group, so that adult age-specific per capita rates of imprisonment were at least equalized during the exodus.

4 Isthmian Canal Commission (I.C.C.), Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission and the Panama Canal for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1914 (Washington, D.C., 1914)Google Scholar, Exhibit 4, 294.

5 Green, Cecilia A., “Disciplining Boys: Labor, Gender, Generation and the Penal System in Barbados, 1880–1930,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 3, 3 (2010): 366–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995)Google Scholar.

7 Feeley, Malcolm M. and Little, Deborah L., “The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687–1912,” Law and Society Review 25 (1991): 719–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; repr. in Weiss, Robert P., ed., Social History of Crime, Policing and Punishment (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 267–305Google Scholar, esp. 271 [723], 270 [722].

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9 Zedner, Lucia, Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 18–23Google Scholar.

10 Feeley and Little, “The Vanishing Female,” 290 [742].

11 Richardson, Bonham C., Panama Money in Barbados, 1900–1920 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 57Google Scholar.

12 See especially Levitt, Kari and Best, Lloyd, “Character of Caribbean Economy,” in Beckford, George L., ed., Caribbean Economy (Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1975), 34–59Google Scholar; Beckford, George L., Persistent Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Engerman, Stanley L., “Economic Change and Contract Labor in the British Caribbean: The End of Slavery and Adjustment to Emancipation,” Explorations in Economic History 21 (1984): 133–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 The term “total institution” is from Goffman, Erving, Asylums (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961)Google Scholar. See references in Beckford, Persistent Poverty.

14 Higman, B. W., Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807–1834 (Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago: The Press, University of the West Indies, 1995), 189Google Scholar.

15 Richardson, Panama Money, 57.

16 The more established Barbadian police force, reputed to be of “proved efficiency,” was a model for other police forces around the Anglo-Caribbean, and Barbadian police recruits and programs of training played a pioneering role in their development. Johnson, Howard, “Social Control and the Colonial State: The Reorganisation of the Police Force in the Bahamas 1888–1893,” Slavery & Abolition 7, 1 (1986): 46–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 53; “Barbadian Immigrants in Trinidad 1870–1897,” Caribbean Studies 13 (1973): 19–20; “Patterns of Policing in the Post-Emancipation British Caribbean, 1835–95,” in Anderson, David M. and Killingray, David, eds., Policing the Empire: Government, Authority and Control, 1830–1940 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), 71–91Google Scholar. In his book on Trinidad, Trotman lists Barbados as the country of origin for 301 of the 537 policemen that made up the entire Trinidad Police Force in 1895. Trotman, David Vincent, Crime in Trinidad: Conflict and Control in a Plantation Society, 1838–1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986)Google Scholar, table A.13, 284.

17 Colonial Report, Barbados, 1901–1902, 42.

18 Barbados Herald, microfilm, Barbados Public Library, Bridgetown, Barbados.

19 Colonial Report, Barbados, 1901–1902, 39.

20 See Green, “Disciplining Boys.”

21 Boa, Sheena, “Discipline, Reform or Punish? Attitudes towards Juvenile Crimes and Misdemeanours in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean, 1838–88,” in Heuman, Gad and Trotman, David V., eds., Contesting Freedom: Control and Resistance in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean (Oxford: Macmillan Caribbean, 2005), 65–86Google Scholar, esp. 77.

22 Trotman, Crime in Trinidad; Paton, Diana, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780–1870 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Trotman, David, “Women and Crime in Late 19th Century Trinidad,” in Beckles, Hilary and Shepherd, Verene, eds., Caribbean Freedom (Kingston: Ian Randle; London: James Curry, 1993), 251–59Google Scholar, esp. 255; previously published in Caribbean Quarterly 30, 3/4 (1984): 60–72.

24 Paton, No Bond, 124.

25 Ibid., 143.

26 Blue Book, Barbados, 1901, BB18.

27 Zedner, Women, 34, 131, 134.

28 Ibid., 23.

29 Ibid., 78.

30 See Green, Cecilia, “Caribbean Dependency Theory of the 1970s Revisited: A Historical-Materialist-Feminist Revision,” in Meeks, Brian and Lindahl, Folke, eds., New Caribbean Thought: A Reader (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2001), 40–72Google Scholar.

31 Trotman, Crime in Trinidad, 4

32 Ibid., 72.

33 Ibid.

34 These figures were computed using the raw data on annual convictions provided in the Jamaica Blue Books, 1890–1914, and population figures from Teske, K., Population and Vital Statistics, Jamaica 1832–1964 (Kingston: Department of Statistics, 1974)Google Scholar.

35 BDA, Official Gazette (Barbados), 16 Mar. 1925: “Report on Gaols and Prisoners 1904;” Blue Books, Jamaica, 1900–1901 through 1909–1910. It is important to note that combining penal and non-penal figures for Barbados would raise the figures by hundreds each year.

36 Ibid.

37 See Sydney Haldane Olivier, Jamaica: The Blessed Island (New York: Russell & Russell, 1971 [1936]).

38 Holt, Thomas C., The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

39 Paton, No Bond, 143.

40 Lobdell, Richard A., “Women in the Jamaican Labour Force, 1881–1921,” Social and Economic Studies 37, 1/2 (1988): 203–40Google Scholar, esp. 216.

41 Richardson, Panama Money, 19.

42 Green, Cecilia, “Historical and Contemporary Restructuring and Women in Production in the Caribbean,” in Watson, Hilbourne A., ed., The Caribbean in the Global Political Economy (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers; Kingston: Ian Randle, 1994), 149–71Google Scholar, esp. 154.

43 Green, Cecilia A., “Between Respectability and Self-Respect: Framing Afro-Caribbean Women's Labour History,” Social and Economic Studies 55, 3 (2006): 1–31Google Scholar, esp. 14.

44 Zedner, Women, 25, citing Kellor, Frances, Experimental Sociology: Descriptive and Analytical (New York and London: Macmillan, 1901)Google Scholar.

45 However, Kellor did comment on African American women: “But the facts for negro women are very different and conditions are such that they cannot well avoid immorality and criminality.… White men have little respect for the sanctity of family life of negroes, when they would hesitate to enter the Anglo-Saxon's home. Negro women are expected to be immoral and have few inducements to be otherwise” (Experimental Sociology, 171, my emphasis).

46 See Roberts, G. W., “Emigration from the Island of Barbados,” Social and Economic Studies 4, 3 (1955): 245–88Google Scholar, esp. 252–56; Richardson, Panama Money.

47 Roberts, “Emigration,” 250.

48 Ibid., 257.

49 Ibid., esp. 250–58.

50 Cited in Wynell Yearwood-Scott, “Juvenile Delinquency in Barbados, 1834–1930s” (BDA collection: University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Department of History Forum, 2004). In the 1840–1860 period whites made up 11–12 percent of the population, but, according to these figures, they accounted for about 1 percent of jailed persons. The Blue Books and other reports for our period do not provide breakdowns by race.

51 Sir Schomburgk, Robert H., The History of Barbados (London: Frank Cass, 1971 [1848])Google Scholar, tables 137, 139. These tables also show that whites, who comprised about 12 percent of Barbados' population overall, made up 5.9 percent of the total, the large majority of them men (including non-Barbadian “European soldiers and sailors” or “military prisoners”). White women, who outnumbered white men on the island, made up a negligible 1.1 percent of the female cohort and 5.1 percent of the white cohort. Afro-Barbadian women comprised 28.4 percent of their racial-ethnic cohort.

52 Reported in Beckles, Hilary McD., Great House Rules: Landless Emancipation and Workers' Protest in Barbados 1838–1938 (Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle, 2004), 137Google Scholar.

53 There was a spike in emigration, mostly to British Guiana, in 1873. Following passage of the 1873 Act, mandated registration, covering the nine and two-thirds months remaining in the year, enumerated 2,676 emigrants, more than twice the number of the succeeding year and four times the numbers recorded for 1875 and 1876. These numbers, however, reflected only officially registered emigrants. Blue Book, Barbados, 1878. The registration mandate expired after five years.

54 Note the two peaks of the graph.

55 Richardson, Bonham, The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992: A Regional Geography (Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Blue Book, Barbados, 1898, BB 8.

57 Women substituted for migrating men in the factories as well as in the fields, performing skilled jobs at unchanged wage rates.

58 Colonial Report, Barbados, 1925–1926.

59 CO 28/301, “Report on the Prison for the Year 1921.”

60 Colonial Reports, Barbados, 1903–1904, 17–19; 1904–1905, 15–17; 1905–1906, 19–21.

61 Colonial Report, Barbados, 1901–1902, 42.

62 BDA, Official Gazette (Barbados), 16 Mar. 1925, “Report on Gaols and Prisoners 1904.”

63 Blue Books, Barbados, 1892–1898; Colonial Reports, Barbados, 1901–1902 to 1905–1906.

64 CO 28/286, Despatch No. 169 of 28 July 1915 (Correspondence from L. Probyn, Governor of Barbados), 223.

65 Levine, Philippa, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 204Google Scholar.

66 Ibid.; Trotman, Crime in Trinidad, 250.

67 Ibid.

68 Belle, “Abortive Revolution,” 2.

69 Richardson, Panama Money, 85.

70 Ibid., 99.

71 Colonial Report, Barbados, 1903–1904, 19.

72 Colonial Reports, Barbados, 1902–1903, 13; 1903–1904, 19.

73 See CO 28/301, “Report of the Prison for the Year 1921,” table 1X, 559. However, men outnumbered women in this category by a ratio of three to one.

74 Schomburgk, History of Barbados, 136.

75 In the five-year period from 1906–1910, for example, this category of recidivists contained a yearly average of 522 women to 236 men.

76 CO 28/301, “Report of the Prison for the Year 1921,” table 1 “C,” 555.

77 Beckles, Hilary McD., A History of Barbados (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 148Google Scholar.

78 Ibid.

79 Richardson, Panama Money.

80 See Woodville K. Marshall, “Panama Money and Land Acquisition,” BDA, Y9/4/246.

81 During the five-year period of 1913–1917, overlapping with the final years of the Panama Canal construction and with most of the war, marriage rates averaged 3.5 per thousand a year. Between 1921 and 1930, the annual rates rose to an average of 7 per thousand (Colonial Reports, Barbados, 1913–1914 to 1930–1931).

82 A branch of Marcus Garvey's militant pan-African nationalist organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), was founded in Barbados in 1919. The Barbados Democratic League and the Barbados Workingmen's Association were formed in 1924 and 1926, respectively.

83 The out-of-wedlock rate rose from an average of 54.6 percent of all births in the ten-year period 1892–1901 to nearly 71 percent by 1925 (Colonial Reports, Barbados, 1892–1893 to 1925–1926).

84 Recorded membership in “friendly societies” more than tripled to over forty-eight thousand between 1904 and 1909 (Richardson, Panama Money, table 13, 206).

85 By 1925, there were more people in domestic service—the overwhelming majority of them women—than there were female agricultural workers.

86 Over the approximately thirty-year period of 1889–1919, the birth rate dropped from an average of forty-one per thousand during the five-year period 1889–1893, to thirty-two per thousand during the five-year period of 1915–1919 (Colonial Reports, Barbados).

87 Roberts, “Emigration,” 275.

88 Colonial Report, Barbados, 1923–1924, 20.

89 Ibid.

90 See, for starters, French, Joan, “Colonial Policy towards Women after the 1938 Uprising: The Case of Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly 34, 3/4 (1988): 38–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Feeley and Little, “The Vanishing Female,” 292–99 [744–51].

92 In her study of Victorian England, Zedner addresses the incompatibility between female criminality and domestic-service occupations, as well as the high “respectability” requirements of such occupations: “a good character,” “[being] presentable,” and “very high standards of dress” (Women, 44, 54).