Benjamin McMahon’s autobiography, A Description of Jamaica planters viz. attorneys, overseers, and book-keepers, with several interesting anecdotes, published in London in 1838. McMahon had worked as an overseer on Palm Estate in 1822. As head boilerman, Quamin held a crucial and highly-skilled position on the estate, ensuring the cane juice was successfully transformed into crystalised sugar.
It is through McMahon that we see a power struggle between Quamin and the white overseer, Colin Graham Simpson. Simpson claimed that Quamin and the second boilerman, William Thomas, had complained about him to the attorney. As a result, Simpson was determined to see them indicted for serious crimes and tranported off the island. He asked McMahon to watch both Quamin and William Thomas closely and to set a trap by making it easy for them to steal from the estate. When McMahon failed to find fault with the boilermen, Simpson also took revenge against McMahon. Simpson inflicted repeated, brutal beatings on Quamin and other enslaved people, described by McMahon in graphic detail.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/media/view/142
I must mention that, while I was in Mslrgneritta, I had an opportunity of seeing nearly all the inhabitants who had for^merly been slaves, and who had only been made , free a few months before I got there. I believe / 1 can safely say, that 1 never saw one, either / man or woman, that had not their bodies covered f with scars, — ^their faces, necks, arms, legs and » bact, were all marked with cuts crossing each f other. My ignorance of the nature of slavery in those days, left me entirely at a loss to know how all the black inhabitants could have received such horrible wounds; and the truth never struck me, till after I had been a little, time in Jamaica. The people about forty years, /old were grey-headed, emaciated, worn -down / and often deformed, occasioned by the barba/rous cruelty of the inhuman Spaniards, calling ' themselves Christians.
On my arrival in Jamaica, a gentleman named Burke who kept a druggist's shop in Kingston, got me a berth in the planting line. I was employed at Bloxbargh Coffee Plantation, in the Port Royal Mountains : there were nearly 300 slaves upon it. The first morning I went to the field I was accompanied by another bookkeeper. I observed an extensive gang weeding young coffee, and two ferocious looking fellows, with« long whips, vv ^ll tarred , walking from right to* left behind the gang, who were almost naked. ^ These two men were the drivers. Occasionally they flogged all hands to make them work faster, and if any one dared to put up his hand to stop the lash, woe betide him. He was sure to be^ taken out and stretched on the ground, and ' there flogged without mercy.
https://archive.org/details/jamaicaplanters00mmagoog/page/n28/mode/2up
This a very good read.
It is through McMahon that we see a power struggle between Quamin and the white overseer, Colin Graham Simpson. Simpson claimed that Quamin and the second boilerman, William Thomas, had complained about him to the attorney. As a result, Simpson was determined to see them indicted for serious crimes and tranported off the island. He asked McMahon to watch both Quamin and William Thomas closely and to set a trap by making it easy for them to steal from the estate. When McMahon failed to find fault with the boilermen, Simpson also took revenge against McMahon. Simpson inflicted repeated, brutal beatings on Quamin and other enslaved people, described by McMahon in graphic detail.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/media/view/142
I must mention that, while I was in Mslrgneritta, I had an opportunity of seeing nearly all the inhabitants who had for^merly been slaves, and who had only been made , free a few months before I got there. I believe / 1 can safely say, that 1 never saw one, either / man or woman, that had not their bodies covered f with scars, — ^their faces, necks, arms, legs and » bact, were all marked with cuts crossing each f other. My ignorance of the nature of slavery in those days, left me entirely at a loss to know how all the black inhabitants could have received such horrible wounds; and the truth never struck me, till after I had been a little, time in Jamaica. The people about forty years, /old were grey-headed, emaciated, worn -down / and often deformed, occasioned by the barba/rous cruelty of the inhuman Spaniards, calling ' themselves Christians.
On my arrival in Jamaica, a gentleman named Burke who kept a druggist's shop in Kingston, got me a berth in the planting line. I was employed at Bloxbargh Coffee Plantation, in the Port Royal Mountains : there were nearly 300 slaves upon it. The first morning I went to the field I was accompanied by another bookkeeper. I observed an extensive gang weeding young coffee, and two ferocious looking fellows, with« long whips, vv ^ll tarred , walking from right to* left behind the gang, who were almost naked. ^ These two men were the drivers. Occasionally they flogged all hands to make them work faster, and if any one dared to put up his hand to stop the lash, woe betide him. He was sure to be^ taken out and stretched on the ground, and ' there flogged without mercy.
https://archive.org/details/jamaicaplanters00mmagoog/page/n28/mode/2up
This a very good read.
