|
MURDER OF AN INFANT
---------------
ON board a slave-ship, a
child of about ten months old took sulk (as they
term it), and would not eat. The captain took up
the child and flogged it with a cat, saying, with an
oath, "I'll make you eat, or I'll kill you." From
this, and other ill treatment, the child's legs swelled,
and the captain ordered some water to be made hot, for
abating the swelling. But even his tender-mercies
were cruel; for the cook, putting his hand into the
water, said it was too hot. The captain, with
another oath, said, "Put his feet in.
The child was put into the water, and the nails and skin came all off his
feet. Oiled clothes were then put round them.
The child was then tied to a heavy log, and two or three
days afterwards, the captain caught it up again, and
said, "I will make you eat, or I will be the death of
you." He immediately flogged the child again, and
in a quarter of an hour it died. After the infant
was dead, he would not suffer any of the people on deck
to throw the body overboard, but called the mother,
the wretched mother, to perform this last sad
office to her murdered child. He beat her,
regardless of the indignant murmurs of her fettered
countrymen, (whom, in the barbarous plentitude of secure
tyranny, he permitted to be spectators of this horrible
scene), he beat her till he made her take up the child,
and carry it to the side of the vessel, and then she
dropped it into the sea, turning her head the other way,
that she might not see it. - Evidence before the
House of Commons.
"A few days ago, a young female was arrested at New
Buffalo, where she had resided some time. She had
been married but a short time before she was torn away
from her husband by the cruel slave-hunter, and hurried
off into Kentucky slavery, never more to see her
husband; for the laws would not permit him to visit
her." - Voice of the Fugitive
Leeds Anti-slavery
Series. No. 42.
Sold by W. and F. G. CASH, 5,
Bishopsgate Street, London; and by JANE JOWETT, Friends'
Meeting Yard, Leeds, at 1s. 2. per 100.
|
