Abolition

During the slave trade era millions of Africans were taken from their homes on a voyage across the Atlantic in stinking and cramped conditions. Many of them died before they got to the plantations in the Caribbean or the Deep South of what is now the United States.

Sugar cane plantation on Barbados

Those that survived would have had a very hard life indeed. It's said that once they reached the plantations, average life expectancy lasted between 5 and 7 years. They and their children were treated as belongings and were seen as being on the same level as cattle or sheep.

Pedro Welch

When I went to Barbados in 2007, I met Pedro Welch from the University of the West Indies who told me a lot about what they would have had to endure. Including the enslaved man who was accused of rape and then without any sort of trial, he was taken to the market place and had his genitals cut off and burned in front of him.

But I'm not going to go into great detail about their experience here because it's already well documented elsewhere. The Rum Story in Whitehaven is a good place to start for example.

The slave trade operated on what was known as the Golden Triangle which meant ships from Whitehaven and other ports took manufactured goods to Africa to trade in exchange for enslaved human beings.  The African captives were then sold to plantation owners and the ships returned from the Caribbean full of goods like sugar, rum and spices.

St Nicholas church

This Triangle meant that there were never a large number of Africans, slaves or otherwise, arriving in this country. But a few did make it to Cumbria.

Thomas Kent was one of them. He settled and married and had children here and one of his descendents still lives in the county. Click on the link below to read the farmer's story.

He wasn't the only one. Some church registers in the county show black men, women and children being baptised, married and buried locally, especially in Whitehaven in the 18th century.

Rasselas Belfield's grave

I went to see the St Nicholas register at the records office in Whitehaven and there, in beautiful copperplate writing, were their names with the words "black man" or "negro" written next to them.

The registers give very few clues as to where they might have come from....but one does mention that Leonard Jackson "a negro man" was born in Savannah, Georgia for example.

Rob David

A grave in St Martin's churchyard in Bowness on Windermere records that the woman, Rasselas Belfield, was a former slave from Abyssinia.

But were they brought here in bondage? Rob David, a historian at Lancaster University who's done a lot of research into Cumbria's links to the slave trade says this is debatable.

They may have originally been slaves on plantations but once in this country they were more likely to be servants, although exactly how free they were is open to question.

Apart from Kent and Jackson, other surnames include Sampson, Caton, Oates, Faddy, Whaley, Hilton, Bush, Mawson and Stanley.

Who knows, you might be descended from one of these former slaves.  Or maybe you know that already?   

*Click on the Creative Partnerships link to see copies of Cumbrian historical documents related to the slave trade.