Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-8cnds Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T15:23:44.331Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

Natalie A. Zacek
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access

Summary

In the summer of 1753, fashionable Londoners were intrigued to read, in the August issue of the popular London Magazine, a vivid account of a murder trial that had taken place the previous winter in St. Kitts, one of the four islands that, along with Antigua, Montserrat, and Nevis, made up the federated British West Indian colony of the Leeward Islands. The magazine's editors explained that they had chosen to devote front-page space to these distant proceedings because the story “has of late been a subject of conversation, and contains some very extraordinary circumstances.” Specifically, “the proof [of the defendant's guilt] was founded entirely upon presumption, without any one witness of the fact, which is a dangerous sort of proof, but more necessary to be admitted in the West-Indies than here at home, because negroes are not admitted as witnesses.” In other words, the defendant, a young attorney named John Barbot, had been found guilty of murder and executed for this crime largely on the basis of testimony of several black slaves, who under both English and colonial law were not legal persons and whose testimony had to be presented in court as hearsay evidence from the lips of white men. A careful reading of the London Magazine article and the transcript of the trial, which appeared in London in pamphlet form that same summer, makes it clear that, although both the victim, Matthew Mills, and his alleged murderer were white, they were very different sorts of men in the eyes of their fellow white Kittitians.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Natalie A. Zacek, University of Manchester
  • Book: Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776
  • Online publication: 05 July 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760907.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Natalie A. Zacek, University of Manchester
  • Book: Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776
  • Online publication: 05 July 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760907.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Natalie A. Zacek, University of Manchester
  • Book: Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776
  • Online publication: 05 July 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760907.003
Available formats
×