Remembering Gérard A. Besson's Speech to UWI Graduands 2015

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the awarding of an honorary doctorate of letters to Gérard A. Besson. In 2015, the University of the West Indies bestowed this honour on him, which meant a great deal to the author and historian who had come a long way from being a dyslexic child in the 1940s and 50s, when even attending a regular primary school was out of bounds for him.

To mark the occasion of his achievement, we are reproducing here his very funny and philosophical speech to his fellow graduands, which is on the one hand "pure Jers" to all who knew him, and on the other speaks about the difference of truth and reality that was an important theme in his life.

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To be recognized and honored by the University of the West Indies is to be the recipient of an extraordinary accolade. Extraordinary, because in this time of institutional decline, some would say failure, this university has maintained the standards of excellence on which it was founded. I am humbled by this honour, I am grateful to those who thought me deserving of it and, in my heart, I remember all those who have guided me to where I stand before you all today. 

In one way or the other they were all teachers.  Three stand out; the first was Randolph Alan Young who ran a school for children with learning disabilities. Another was Prof. Bridget Brereton, who encouraged critical thinking and the third was historian Olga Mavrogordato. She too ran a school, an unorthodox one, very strict and very inspirational, as she taught love of country.  Though an unorthodox person in many ways, Olga touched the lives of several people, who have, over the years, been honoured by this university for their historical work.  Of the seven or eight who in one way or another were inspired, enlightened or even irritated by Olga, three of them have stood here, and received honorary degrees.  They are, Adrian Camps-Campins, Fr Anthony de Verteuil and Michael Anthony.  Historians, all, and as such, preservers of our National Heritage.

Fellow graduands, I have been allowed a mere 10 minutes to address you. This is rather like one of those little pies you get at cocktail parties– the first bite you take you have not reached the meat– the second bite you’ve passed it. 

That being the case, I thought that as a storyteller, I should tell you some stories. Stories that come from the great storytelling tradition of the world: the stories told on the caravan routes from Timbuktu across the Sahara to Cairo thence to take the old Silk Road to the furthest east. Tales recounted around campfires, in sand-blown caravanserai, in places with names like Alexandria, Bukhara, Katmandu, and Bactria, narrated by merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and happy wonderers. These were told as teaching stories or wisdom tales. From this tradition huge epics emerged, such as the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Old Testament— they are all founded in this oral tradition.

Often these stories were related as parables; this is because we are story telling and story-hearing creatures. We love stories and learn much better from them than from cold facts.  Advertisers, Politicians and Prophets know this and often use story-tellers and stories to sell their products, their promises or, their gods.

One of the great storytellers of the old Silk Road was the Sufi master, the amazing Mullah, Nasreddin.

He told this story.

“Truth entered a village naked as the day he was born. The villagers had one look at the naked truth and were afraid of the stark harshness and drove him out in anger and malice. Dejected, the Truth wandered in the desert. Without food and nourishment, he weakened and would have soon died of loneliness. One day he got to the home of the Parable.  She took him in, nursed him back to life. Soon the Truth was feeling well again. This time he returned to the same village clothed in a parable and was welcome and accepted with ease.”

As social scientists, you are, to be, in your professional lives, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society, and, as such, you must always be very mindful about recognizing Truth, even when disguised as a parable.

I will tell you a Sufi story.

“Nasreddin dreamt that he had Satan’s beard in his hand. Tugging the hair, he cried: ‘The pain you feel is nothing compared to that which you inflict on the mortals you lead astray.’ And he gave the beard such a tug that he woke up yelling in agony.  Only then did he realise that the beard he held in his hand was his own.” 

Now, as social scientists, it is vital, that you recognize the difference between truth and reality.  The reality he experienced in his dream, so real, was like any reality that is experienced –– and like all realities it passes away, while the truth of his realization endures.  Never accept reality, until it is proven, by truth. 

Truth is a universal constant, it is like the Newtonian constant of gravitation, or Pi, the mathematical constant, and it is different from reality, because realty changes, alters, ends, and begins again. 

Now you understand that with Sufi stories you must pay close attention, otherwise you may miss the meat of the matter. Sufi stories urge you to develop the faculty to tell the difference between reality and truth. And, in so doing, to thy own self be true. –

–––––––––  This was a pause, all story tellers must know how to use the art of pause.  

As you enter your professional lives understand that honesty is an aspect of moral character and connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness and straightforwardness.

Professional integrity. Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principals and moral uprightness.  You must be honest in your professional life, not because honesty is the best policy, but because it is shrewd, clever, to be honest.  Being honest shows that you are possessed of sharp powers of judgment, and that you are astute.

I will tell you one more Sufi story.

Mullah Nasreddin once became a university professor. One day he arrived at the weekly university talk open to all the public. Typically these talks were given by visiting professors and attended by the university staff and their spouses, as well as a few students and general public.

As Nasreddin entered the huge lecture theater the university the Principle took him to the side and said, ‘You are giving the talk.’

The Mullah replied, ‘I’m not ready for a lecture. What happened to the guy who was supposed to give the talk?’

The Principle informed him that the visiting professor had been delayed because of a hurricane and he had to give the talk.

Nasreddin asked, ‘Why me and what’s the topic?’

The Principle told him, ‘You talk on the subject of sex, because you are the only one whose wife is not here,’ and before he could complain he pulled Nasreddin with him to the podium and there announced that professor Nasreddin was going to give a talk on sex and marital bliss.

So, Nasreddin started to wing it and soon he was quite enjoying himself and got into a stride. Everyone really enjoyed the talk. Forty-five minutes later he finished and received a standing ovation.

That evening when Nasreddin got home his wife asked how the day had gone. The Mullah said that he had given a talk.

‘Really,’ asked his wife, ‘What was the talk about?’

Now Nasruddin did not wish to tell his wife that he had been talking about sex and marital bliss and perhaps revealed some information about their sex life and bedroom happening. So he replied, ‘I talked about sailing.’

His wife was incredulous. She said, ‘But you don’t know anything about sailing?’

‘I know that, but they didn’t,’ and that was the end of the conversation.

The next day Nasreddin’s wife bumped into a couple of faculty ladies who had heard the talk. One of them told her, ‘I didn’t know your husband was such an expert in the subject.’ Nasreddin’s wife said, ‘He! Oh, no he really isn’t such an expert. In fact he’s only done it twice, and the first time he lost his hat and the second time he fell over the side.’”

This, above all fellow graduands as you enter your professional life: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, that you cannot then, be false to anyone.  Seek out and speak the truth, and you will enjoy the meat of the matter.   

Thank you.

***

Gérard Besson died in 2023.

Video: Gérard Besson reads from "Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago"

In this video, Gérard A. Besson reads a prose poetry piece that he wrote in 1973, based on the impressions that he had gathered when walking along the Paria Main Road in the Northern Range of Trinidad. 

It was subsequently published in "Tales of the Paria Main Road" and in "Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago". 

This video was produced on 28 February 2021 at the author's home, following a request by the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago for a contribution to commemorate "World Read Aloud Day 2021". 

Enjoy! Cric! Crac!

Click here to view the Video on Youtube

Migration is Changing Trinidad’s Identity

Interview with Gerard Besson

Cultural researcher, historian, blogger, writer, and founder/director of Paria Publishing Company Ltd

by Trinidad Guardian Reporter Shereen Ali, September 1, 2016

Intro:

In this land of many peoples and people of many ancestries, how do people see their ethnic heritage? How do they practice it, ignore it, or celebrate it?

On the occasion of our 54th year of independence from Britain, Guardian feature writer Shereen Ali spoke to T&T citizens of different backgrounds to ask how they see issues such as ethnicity, race and in some cases, their own uniquely diverse heritages. People, in their own words, helped paint a picture of an ever-changing, complex twin-island nation of many different ancestral influences.

Last week we heard from people of First Peoples ancestry. Yesterday and today, we hear from people who have European ancestry as part of their heritage. Today's contributions are from historian Gerard Besson, who describes himself as a mix of French Creole and African.

When you have to fill in a form asking you your race, what do you put?

I put “mixed”.

How do you see your ethnic roots & heritage? Is it important to how you define yourself, or is it irrelevant, an accident of birth?
I see myself as Afro-French Creole. It is important because it gives me a sense of identity. I see myself as being a part of the French/African-Creole, patois-speaking Catholic people of long ago.

But I think heritage goes beyond ethnicity. It goes to identifying yourself in terms of being a Trinidadian. And not only a Trinidadian, but for me, someone who was born and grew up in Port-of-Spain.

Do you celebrate your ethnic heritage, ignore it as irrelevant, or have mixed feelings about it?
I acknowledge and embrace my heritages. For example, in 1970 I empathised with Geddes Granger; I was only in my 20s at the time, but I understood deeply what the Black Power movement was about, and I empathised with it. It expressed itself in my work at the time. I didn’t ignore it.

And then on the other hand, at another time in my life, I went to France to see the village that my family had come from in the first place. It was a nice feeling to do that as well. So I think that I have celebrated both aspects of my heritages at some point in my life.

I also celebrate my ethnic heritages in the work I do as a historian. For instance, when I took an interest in the African part of my heritage I spent a few years researching the Rada people and Shango in Trinidad. I went to Haiti and to Brazil. I found great similarities.

Do you know about the beliefs and lifestyles of T&T people of different ethnic heritages from your own?

Yes. I’ve spent much time reading, researching and writing about people here. Dr Bridget Brereton and I, for instance, published a book in 1989 called “The Book of Trinidad”, really an anthology of different people’s writings and observations about T&T over the years. That book will give you a fairly good historical perspective.

And then, in a different kind of way, I recently published a historical novel on Trinidad called “Roume de Saint Laurent … a Memoir”. Roume is interesting because he was the person who was responsible to a considerable degree for the creation of a document called Cedula for Population. He was especially visionary for his time.

The significant thing about the Cedula for Population is that it enshrined the rights and the privileges of free black and coloured people in Trinidad. So that, yes, about 1,200 French European people came to Trinidad as a result of the Cedula, but 11,000 free black and coloured people also came! They were all French-speaking.

That document has been described by Professor Carl Campbell as the first Constitution of Trinidad. Because it spelt out the terms and conditions, in law, for people coming to living here. And it acted as precedent for many of the laws that came into existence subsequently. So much so that there is a distinguished jurist right now in Trinidad, retired, who is studying this particular document with a view to seeing how it has affected the evolution of jurisprudence in Trinidad.

I tell the story of Roume de Saint Laurent and his affairs and his adventures, but what I also do is publish the entire Cedula of Population, so people can get an understanding of the foundation of Trinidad. You see, people do not understand these foundational elements of our society.

Do you think race is important in T&T?

Race touches everything that we do.

T&T is a segmented society with a lot of overlaps, because of miscegenation over time — well, not a very long time when compared to Jamaica or Barbados, because both these islands are much older than Trinidad in terms of their colonial settlement. Tobago has a different history, its colonial experience is as old as Barbados.

Trinidad’s society came into existence suddenly. Before 1783 and the Cedula for Population, if can you imagine, the population was about 126 Europeans, a few hundred people of African descent, who were not really slaves because there was no industry, and a handful of Amerindians — tribal people.

From then on, with the advent of the Cedula and plantation slavery the population expanded.

Free blacks and coloured people as well as white French people brought slaves together with their own societal landscapes and political and religious views to Trinidad; as compared to Barbados and the older islands where the society developed over a long period, even though it was a period of slavery, their societies matured more slowly.

In Trinidad everything seems to have happened almost overnight. It went from a few dozen people in 1780s, to 50 years later, more than 50,000 people. So Trinidad began in a strange, unique way in itself.

Race in Trinidad is a very loaded topic. It morphs into politics very easily. And this is so, because of the movement for Independence, how that came about and who did it, and under which group it happened.

Because for a very long time, for some 200 and something years, Europeans controlled the economic landscape of Trinidad, and these white people were both local and foreign.

The local ones were in agriculture, mostly cocoa, and government service, and the foreign ones were in sugar, business and government. That is how it was. It was a society that was not as segregated as say Barbados, but still segregated in terms of class as well as race.

The black population, as it advanced, went into teaching, the Civil Service, law and medicine, and later gradually into other professions.

So those two groups, the local white group and the coloured, Afro group, controlled Trinidad completely.

They posessed a Creole identity. The Indians, who had arrived in 1845 to 1917 were largely confined to the countryside. For most of the 19^th century, they often needed a pass to leave the estates – even if their indentureship was over.

All this changed after the world wars. After Independence, the children of the dominant groups began to go away to make a better life and a great many never came back. This was the French Creole people, mixed-race people, and people of African descent.

Trinidad has experienced in the last 50 or 60 years a demographic upheaval that no other island in the Caribbean has had, in that in the non-Indian population — this is in the Afro, mixed and other groups — say 500,000 or 600,000 people, over a third of that segment have gone away. And at the same time, about that same number of people have come from the other islands. That has been a blow to the identity that was formed from the 1780s to Independence.

No other island in the Caribbean has had the experience of hundreds of thousands of people going to it at the same time that so many people have left. The result of that is this:

The creole population, the product of the late 18^th century and 19^th century society, has had a huge dislocation caused by emigration and immigration.

This has produced a great disturbance within the cohesion of that group. A lessening of a Trinidadian identity. Now that is a serious issue. I notice that recently some social scientists are beginning to comment on it.

Now, insofar as the Indian side of the population is concerned, it has been argued that there were some events that made Indian people feel more intensely “Indian”, and less intensely “Trinidadian”, such as the black power movement of the 70s, being in political opposition, after Independence, for such a long time, what thirty years; the work of the various Indian religious orders whether it is in the context of Hinduism or Islam. The  appearance of Bollywood as well as the increase in business and wealth. There were many things that happened in the last 40—50 years in the Indian community that have made Indians feel more Indian, in a sense; while, in a contrary sort of a way, also more Trinidadian.

With the dislocation in the creole society taking place and with a deepening in the Indian society of an identity, the division has become more sharp and more obvious.

So there has been a dislocation in the society instead of the predominant races finding common ground with the sharing of identity. And this is what we see played out in politics. Because you don't see it played out in daily life, you don't see it played out in love affairs, you don't see it played out in business and work, it is played out in politics, where political parties go after their imagined constituencies.

So with Independence and the movement of people, the loss of a significant part of the Creole population, has meant that Trinidad has lost a lot of its Creole soul, and acquired, on the other hand, an increased Caribbean reality.

And you see it in the disappearance of certain cultural forms. Carnival is not as it was. The music — calypso — hardly exists anymore. You have to go in search of it in the tents. It has been replaced by other musical forms. Patois is no longer heard — and you have to bear in mind that up until the 1940s and 50s, a large amount of people in both Indian Trinidad and certainly Creole Trinidad — spoke this language.

Another important factor that has also impacted on identity was the end of the agricultural sector.

People see the agricultural sector from the perspective of today. And they only see Indian people – the world of the cane farmer.

In truth, the agricultural sector in the past was enormous. It included a lot of black and French Creole and mixed people. It existed for some 200 years.

But the ending of the agricultural sector was one of the things that undermined notions of identity which were built through the 19^th century and into the first half of the 20^th century.

One of the effects of the loss of the agricultural sector is a more compassionless society. Because when you have hundreds of thousands of people, whether they are Indian people, white people, mixed people or African people, who are devoted to the bringing up of livestock, who are devoted to gardening, market gardening, vegetable planting, to cocoa and coffee and so on, you have people who have a lot of love — for their animals and for their plants. You have to love your donkey!

So when you move hundreds of thousands of people out of that world of compassion, you create an increasingly compassionless society.

I think the agricultural sector died from the 1950s. The model that was introduced by Sir Arthur Lewis, the famous Nobel Prize-winning economist, in Trinidad, and through Dr Williams, saw a nation that would be modern and industrialised. It was a form of social engineering. A lot of these little islands in the Caribbean moved away from agriculture and went into tourism. It was considered modern, it was thought the thing to do. I do not believe it was the right thing.

So the combination of the end of the agricultural economy, the end of the railways (in itself a vast societal network of people who operated them), and then the displacement of so many people, in the emigration and immigration phenomena, created a dissonance and a collapse, a loss of identity.

You see, it was not only a brain drain; it was also a deep cultural drain. A lot of the identity of the 19^th century to the first half of the 20^th century began to fall away.

And what that culture has been replaced with is something imported through television, through cinema, and through the importation of black American culture. And you see it expressed in dance music and gangland activity and so on.

So what has happened is that the society on the whole, as a result of the Independence movement, has suffered more than it has gained.

The Indian segment of the society, however, because of the isolation, of being 30-40 years in opposition, and being apart from the Creole society, because of their extended family support, the pursuit of independence though economic means, the pursuit of education (there are more Indians with tertiary education, a startling number of them young women, than anybody else), has produced a society within the society that owns an economy that is very, very large. Whereas the other side of the society does not possess an economy; there is no big Afro business there – it depends on the State.

So these are the differences in the society that create the movements and the tensions and the feel of the place.

Prof Selwyn Ryan wrote in one of his articles some time ago that for 150 years, the elements of the white society and elements of the black and coloured society dominated Trinidad, possessed a hegemony over Trinidad, and this hegemony is now decreasing at a rate. He startled a lot of people with that, but what he said was true. Immigration and emigration have changed the landscape of Trinidad. All this has had a deleterious effect on the identity-forming mechanisms of the society.

Notions of identity as a Trinidadian or a Trinbagonian are increasingly becoming something more important than just merely how you vote at election time.

I think that there's a generation of people who are growing up, not necessarily young young people, but people in their 30s or 40s, who are increasingly beginning to come to an understanding about their own identity in the concept of a Trinidad & Tobago.

Do you think different ethnicities have different values?

I think different people have different values. This is not a matter of ethnicity. I think the human race is possessed of the same yardstick where it comes to morals, ethics, values. I think they all possess the same thing. So it’s not ethnic.

People express these values differently depending on how they have been socialised.

How long have you/your family had roots here (best estimate)?
Both my mother and father’s antecedents have lived here for more than 200 years. They named Besson Street in east Port-of-Spain after my family – my father’s ancestor came to Trinidad in 1787. Boissiere Village is named for my mother’s people.

What do you like and dislike about T&T culture?

I like most things about our cultures, except the recent introduction of extremely loud music.

Also, in order to analyse important issues such as the impact of immigration and emigration, you have to have information available. And the Central Statistical Office in Trinidad is one of the places from where you do not get statistics (laughs).

I am 74 years old. And what I have seen in my adult life is an enormous change in Trinidad. I mean, when you take something like the Red House – 30, 40, 50 years ago or more, leaving a significant building like the Red House in a dilapidated state would have been a big uproar. Same thing with President’s House. Now, increasingly, there are fewer and fewer people who care about those iconic sites, because they don’t mean much to them.

A Very Short History of the Press in Trinidad & Tobago

Samuel Carter, editor of the "New Era", a newspaper that was published in Trinidad in the 1870s, remarked in an editorial "A Crown Colony is a despotism tempered by the Press . . . In Trinidad, more than in any of the other Colonies, has the existence of the independent Press been an absolute necessity; in none has it done more good". This insightful remark may be regarded as an excellent example of the saying that the more things change the more they remain the same.

The history of the media in Trinidad and Tobago is almost as old as the modern history of these islands—modern history in the sense that in Spanish times, 1498 to 1797, there was not much development socially or economically. It was with the advent of the Cedula of Population of 1783 that a society, so to speak, started to formulate itself in Trinidad, so that seventeen years later, when a squadron of British Man-of-War landed troops at Invaders Bay, right next to MovieTowne, and the Union Jack went up a few days later at Fort San Andres by the Light House in Port of Spain, one could say that the modern era of Trinidad's history had commenced. Tobago has a different story, a much older one that winds its way back to the days of the Pirates and the Buccaneers of the late 16th century, passing from hand to hand among the European powers of the day to finally become a part of the British Empire in 1813.

One could hazard the guess that the "Tobago Times" was, if not the first, certainly among the earliest newspapers published there. Some of the first advertisements to appear in 1807 tell the tale of those times "By the undersigned, a Saddle Horse, who has been a short time in the country; he is well broke and trackable; he has no vice or fault that the subscriber knows of, the reason for parting with the horse is, his intention of very shortly quitting the colony. Signed Neil Stewart, N.B. Rum will be taken in payment." (March 1807.) And: "For sale by the subscriber, a healthy negro wench from Barbuda; she is a good washer, and was sent here by her owner for sale, only on account of his great want of money." He goes on to advertise: "A few pipes of London 'particular' Madeira Wine, New Foundland codfish in 3, 6, and 8 quintal casks. A few barrels of beef and the same of Lamp Oil . . ." And in the news of the day: "A French privateer appeared off the North side of the island on Wednesday and captured the drogher sloop JOHN belonging to Mr. Robert Hay. She soon fell in with His Majesty's Brig "Attentive", whom she endeavoured to bring to. We are informed the "Attentive" suffered her to approach within pistol shot, when she gave her the contents of her broadside, upon which the Frenchman, finding his mistake, sheered off. From her great superiority in sailing the privateer made her escape. We are happy, however, to learn the sloop was retaken."

And in a letter to the editor of September of that year we read: "We had here a deluge of rain yesterday. Courland River overflowed its usual boundaries more than ever known perhaps, since Noah's flood. A negro boy was carried away to sea, and has not since been heard of. Great damage has been done to provision gardens on the banks of the river."

In Trinidad, there were over twenty-five newspapers published during the 19th and into the first decades of the 20th century. These tended to reflect the nature of the segmented society of the day. There were papers that carried the views of the so-called English party, who, when not offended by the noisy and boisterous character of the natives, were principally concerned with the opinions of the local British Establishment—meaning the vested interest of the merchants, planters and bankers, whose interest were in turn closely linked to those of the occupants of Government House, and ultimately to the Gentlemen of the City of London, which was, in those times, the financial capital of the whole world. 

Then there was the concerns of the French Creoles, who were in a perpetual state of feeling put upon by the British Establishment and who, when not discussing the price of cocoa or the upgrading of their pedigrees by marrying their cousins, were expressing the conviction that they represented the bona fide Trinidadian point of view, having been here from before the British, and as good Catholics were convinced that God was on their side. Using the Press, they maintained the struggle for equal opportunity, promotions, and pay increases for everyone of their complexion.

Not to be outdone, the rising coloured educated, professional middle class felt constantly aggrieved, slighted, and socially embarrassed by being marginalised despite advances made in elocution, piano playing, deportment, cake icing, paper flower making, Sunday school going and all the other things necessary to arrive at being considered socially respectable in the eyes of the British, who in truth did not pay any attention to them, or any one else, at all. The Portuguese were few in number and not considered socially white and as such had neither voice nor vote. There were no Indian newspapers, as there was no market for them as very few Indians could read English. No one even thought of the poor Chinese, and the Syrians had not yet arrived in Goodwood Park.

That being the case, the Media Wars of the 19th and early 20th century were fought out mostly by the above. To give some samples of what occupied the minds of some of our ancestors, there are recorded in Dr. Bridget Brereton's excellent "Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad" some of the more fascinating discourses like: "In social life," wrote one reporter, "the non-white middle class had much to complain of. A correspondent to the Telegraph [that's a newspaper of the day that supported black and coloured interest] wrote that no amount of wealth or education enabled a man in Trinidad to enjoy social prestige, if he lacked 'the correct tinge' . Planters of wealth, merit, and character were 'tabooed', being without the 'colonial passport'. . . more potent than education, habits, principles, behaviour, wealth, talent, or even genius itself". 

Then there was William Herbert, a very well known and highly respected black Barbadian. He was the owner of several newspapers: "The Trinidad Press', the"Trinidad Colonists" and the "Telegraph" mentioned above. He was very active in local politics and a Mayor of Port-of-Spain (he had a street in St Clair named for him), and was considered to be 'the chief educator of public opinion' locally. He used his papers to defend the African race, to the extent that the black and coloured middle class perceived him as a champion of their cause.

Samuel Carter was a well known Free Mason; he also owned more than one paper. He may have started with the "New Era" which he left in 1874, but soon bought the "San Fernando Gazette". Originally a Tobagonian, he had come to Trinidad in 1856 and had served on the San Fernando Borough Council for some time. Both these men, Herbert and Carter, apart from being newspaper editors and seeking the interest of the black and coloured people of the colony, also involved themselves in the public affairs of the time. 

Thin-skinned and constantly on the lookout for stormers, Protestants, parvenus, and pass-for-whites who wanted to get into their act, the French Creoles were extremely sensitive on all points of honor. As born-again aristocrats (first in France and then on a much higher plane in Trinidad), they were often offended by newspaper editorials written by editors who dared to cross swords with them by insulting their sentiments or cuticle. These were publicly attacked and assaulted as in the case of W.R. Gawthorne of the "Star of the West" some four times, and once or twice in the case of T.R.N. Laughlin (an Irishman and a relative of some of the French Creoles) of the "Port-of-Spain Gazette".The English were often on their case, suggesting that they were not "loyal to the Crown". With perhaps a little too much cocoa in the sun, "The Public Opinion", the paper owned and supported by the French Creole community that was edited by French Creole journalist Joseph de la Sauvagère, responded with indignation, and, perhaps protesting a trifle too much, hastened to dismiss the notion. Just imagine, that anyone could think that THEY were foreign and could be less loyal than those of British descent! Well, depui mama fai me, mea nom paca bam mea bois, which means: you have to sleep with fowls to if they snore. 

They all chorused, "Trinidad is to a large extant French in feeling, in manners, nay even in language. . . A large portion of our fellow-colonists are of French descent and while making good and honourable British citizens, they are still 'Enfants de la Patrie'." 

Some French Creoles were on the leading edge of the radical Press of the day, for example Philip Rostant, who stands out as the most radical political leader in the later years of the 19th century. It is Dr. Brereton's view in her aforementioned book that "he expressed and exaggerated the hostility of the French Creole old families against the English, and he developed a kind of anti-colonilaism which aligned all respectable colonists, white, coloured and black, against British officialdom and expatriate firms." Which, I suppose, makes him enormously attractive to people looking for anti-British sentiment in the colonial past. 

To most of his relatives he was a pest, and a constant source of embarrassment. He was attached to, and at times owned, some of the leading anti-English establishment newspapers and journals such as "Public Opinion", "Reform" and the "San Fernando Gazette". Lucien Ambard owned the "Port-of-Spain Gazette", which was edited by his mulatto son A.P.T. Ambard. This paper became synonymous with all forms of paper, "Gazette Paper" was used for everything—wrapping fish, papering walls, and in the lavatory. "The Trinidad Guardian" and the "Evening News" came into existence in 1917. A relative newcomer, it was owned by the most wealthy and influential men of the day, Sir George F. Huggins, Sir Lennox O'Reilly, Mr. D. McBride and Mr E. Fitt. Its first editor was Mr. Courtney E. Hitchins. This highly reputed broad sheet became known as the "Old Lady of St. Vincent Street"; no one one knows why. By far the most scandalous paper of the early 20th century was Tony de Boissière's "Callaloo". In this very yellow press, all the intimate dirty laundry of the upper-crust was washed under public scrutiny, giving rise to the lyrics of some of the era's more scandalous calypsos.

The English colonials were avid writers of letters to the editor. Their complaints at time would focus on the character of the locals, describing them as lazy, mostly drunk, superstitious, dishonest and sly. At Carnival time, there would be a dozen letters to the editor complaining of the noise made by the fêtes, suggesting that Carnival was barbaric and disruptive to social order, and should be prohibited.

However, the British Empire was by far the most liberal empire of its day. It possessed an admirable sense of confidence, and that allowed for its citizens to say and do what they pleased, within the framework of the law, of course. That being the case, freedom of the press, and freedom of expression, in calypso for example, became enshrined in custom and law as this nation became independent in 1962. These freedoms are not to be taken for granted. Being free to express our varied points of view in the Press for some two hundred years does not mean that they cannot be taken away. It is a responsibility that we must all shoulder and if it becomes necessary, defend, but freedoms all come with responsibilities and these too must never be taken for granted. 

The Arabs of Trinidad & Tobago

“We were going to Cuba, and Mr. Laquis’ father said: ‘No, you are going to Trinidad. English law.’ So, he write a letter to Mr. Ayoub Sabga, saying, ‘Mr. Sabga, this family coming, we know them, I want you to look after them! I was having my first boy on the travel, on the ship, when we were in the Madeira water. I was 16. We come to Marseilles but I couldn’t have time to have the baby over there, so he was born on the ship. In Trinidad, ship stay far away in deep water, so you had a boat to bring us on the land. So they came to meet us, Mr. Abdou Sabga, and Ayoub Sabga. Only seven days I have the baby! They wanted me to go down a big ladder, and when Ayoub Sabga come, he said: ‘What is that?’ My husband said: ‘My wife had a baby.’ So Ayoub Sabga said: ‘Well, this will be my godchild.’”

Rahmé Hajal’s memories, so similar to the memories of virtually all the Arabs who came to these islands at the beginning of the twentieth century, contains a story of choice. To leave the ancestral village in Syria or to stay. To go to America, and the entire continent was America, was to take a monumental leap into the unknown. It also contains the essence of the community’s success in Trinidad and Tobago, the help and support that were so readily given to the immigrants by those who had come before. Yet, these survivors of another crossing, notwithstanding the drawbacks of language and poverty, loneliness and alienation, and against the backdrop of the worldwide recession that was crippling growth and progress at the end of the Great War, were able to survive, put down roots and prosper in a strange land.

They came mostly from the mountain villages and hamlets of south-western Syria, from Anaz, Ish Shooha, Bsas, Shmeisi and the valley of the Christians. They were all Christian: Greek Orthodox from Syria, and Lebanese Christians belonging  mostly to the Maronite Catholic Church.

Rose Abraham remembers that she was born in Lebanon, “. . . near to where the big ruins are.  I went to a school called St. Joseph de l’Apparition. My parents ran a silk factory.” They were forced to leave because of the introduction of artificial silk.  Anthony Sabga recalls, “I came to Port of Spain at a critical time in the life of any child. I was seven years old . . . Because of the language barrier, I faltered in school and never caught up.” Yet today Anthony Sabga, now at the great age of ninety-two, is one of the Caribbean’s foremost industrialists.

One of the earliest immigrants to Trinidad was Elias Ibrahim Galy. His family lived in the town of Macheta Azar, Tel Kalah, in Syria.  Galy was born in 1889. At the age of 21, he left his elder brother, his three sisters and his parents and came to Trinidad. He came from an environment where trade and commerce had flourished for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  Trading ran in his veins. Elias Galy and his friend Elias Abraham Aboud were bound for the French islands, this because they had a little French. They, however, overslept, Albert Hadeed believes that they had been seasick, and were not discovered until the ship had arrived in Port of Spain. Coming ashore, they wandered into the city and discovered that many of its merchants spoke French and that the coffee was delicious. They missed the boat’s departure, stayed on and became peddlers. The French merchant who had first befriended them gave them matches to sell, cards of pins, coloured thread and buttons. They travelled across the country to small towns with strange names like Tunapuna, Arouca, Chaguanas, Arima. When their goods were not sold out on the market days, they slept in railway stations or beneath awnings and the following day went from house to house. These were men without wives. But, not for long.

For some it began with wedding bells, congratulations and sweets and delicacies, “I was a Maronite. My husband was Orthodox, and I married in the Orthodox church. We became Catholic here. . .” Rose Abraham relates. In the sepia-toned photographs you can still see them as they were: beautiful Syrian and Lebanese women, almost child brides, young teenagers, barely acquainted with life and with their husbands. Many families had to endure years of separation before they became reunited. For all it was work. As the men took to the countryside, riding the trains to the distant villages the women sewed. They made children’s clothes and men’s shirts to be sold by their husbands. They lived a communal life, sharing what they had and nursing each other’s children.

At first, they lived in the oldest parts of the city. It was an attractive Caribbean town. Still a British colony, Trinidad, because of its history, possessed a cosmopolitan population. In the noisy, bustling market one could hear French, English, Spanish, even German and of course, the local French Patois. All around were Indians, whose ancestors or they themselves had come as indentured workers, Chinese, some still wearing pigtails, Portuguese hucksters and the local Africans dressed in gorgeous prints.

Chickens, vultures, dogs and goats competed in the noise of the raucous West Indian capital, which was not unlike the bazaars and marketplaces of the Middle East. Trams, hackneys, carriages and cabs filled the streets crowded with pedestrians, bicycle riders and the first motorcars. It was a prosperous island actually—its economy, based on the export of sugar and cocoa, coffee and citrus, would soon be augmented by the discovery of oil in considerable quantity.

For the Arabs, not yet a community, it was Yussef and Rahme Sabga who helped a great many of the newly arrived to start in Port of Spain. Often, Yussef would put up the bond required by the immigration authorities for a newcomer, and the Sabga house on Charlotte Street was a welcome first haven for a great many Arabs whose descendants became Trinidadians and Tobagonians. Rahme Sabga is believed to be the first Arab woman peddler in Trinidad. Today she is commemorated on a one dollar postage stamp of the independent Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. 

In the 1950s, the women of Trinidad and Tobago’s Arab community organised themselves into a charitable organisation, calling it the ‘Mediterranean Star’ (later to be renamed ‘Syrian Lebanese Women’s Association of Trinidad and Tobago’). Within the framework of this association, which celebrates its 64th anniversary in 2015, the women of the Arab community have rendered help and support to the underprivileged, the disabled and the destitute. They have organised highly successful fund-raisers for local charities as well as acted as a preservation agent for Middle Eastern cultural expressions such as Arabic food, music, dancing and the retention of family traditions.

Today, the Arab community’s contribution to the building of modern Trinidad and Tobago may be seen in the businesses created by them. These comprise the dry-goods stores started by their parents and grandparents and include the industries owned and operated by them. Amongst these are breweries, brick factories, newspapers, radio and television stations and some of the finest restaurants in this part of the world. They have actively taken part in the politics of their adopted home and have contributed, at times startlingly, to its eclectic culture.

The Syrian and Lebanese community was the last ethnic group to have come to Trinidad in the 20th century. The people from the Middle East had the challenge to integrate into Trinidad’s society when the island’s status as British Crown Colony was slowly coming to an end. From this community came outstanding businessmen and women, legal and medical professionals, artists and many, many other professionals—one might say they, the Arab community, have successfully taken part in the forming of our nation!

Sources:

Gerard Besson, “The Syrians and The Lebanese of Trinidad,” The Book of Trinidad. (Port-of-Spain: Paria Publishing Company, 1992)

Alice Besson and Gerard Besson, The Voyage of the Mediterranean Star: The Syrian Lebanese Women’s Association of Trinidad & Tobago. (St. Clair: SLWA, 2001)

Interviews with Anthony Sabga, and conversations with Albert Hadeed and Joe Sabga.

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Spreading the Love of History

Published: Sunday, October 20, 2013
Click here to read it on the Guardian's Website: Trinidad Guardian by Erline Andrews

It’s not easy being a historian in T&T. Jerry Besson has been chronicling the history of the country as a publisher and writer for more than three decades. This is tough enough but it becomes even more so because of the attitude many citizens have towards the task. “The most significant challenge has been the institutionalised indifference to the maintenance of the history of the island,” Besson said of his experience over the years. “If you were to go to the Registrar General’s office tomorrow morning and try to find out anything about your great-grandmother, you think it easy?” he said. “It’s one of the most difficult things in the world for you to be able to do, because of the disintegration and the bad keeping of those historical records.”

Besson, 71, persists in spite of the obstacles. His Paria Publishing, founded in 1981, prints his books and the books of other history stalwarts like Michael Anthony and Fr Anthony de Verteuil. Last month, he released his third historical novel, From the Gates of Aksum, a mystical adventure saga spanning the 18th and 19th centuries. He was scheduled to read from it yesterday at an Evening of Tea and Readings at Paper Based, a bookshop in The Normandie Hotel in St Ann’s which specialises in Caribbean literature. “He did a lot of important books,” said Paper Based owner Joan Dayal, talking about Besson’s contribution to Caribbean literature. “He’s one of the very few publishers in Trinidad. He also supplies a lot of information to people who are writing. He’s a wealth of information. And he’s a great storyteller, too.” From the Gates of Aksum is the third in a series of historical novels Besson said he plans to continue. “It’s important to do historical fiction, because many people cannot take on the weighty proposition of reading academic history,” he said. “so it is sometimes easier to take the historical narrative and romanticise it by arranging it in terms of action and adventure. It makes it more accessible.”

He added, tongue-in-cheek: “But you have to make sure you get your facts right, otherwise Bridget Brereton would point you out.” Brereton is a history professor and newspaper columnist with whom Besson collaborated on the popular Book of Trinidad. She has given Aksum a thumbs up, writing in a review that it was “definitely a book to get hold of.” Despite the obstacles, Besson—who has also established a number of museums, including the police museum and the City-of-Port of Spain Museum—calls what he does gratifying. While still too many people don’t appreciate it, enough do to keep him motivated. He describes being greeted with awe by the young workers at the National Library, who apparently assumed his books were written closer to the periods they were set in. “They said: ‘You is Jerry Besson? We thought you was dead!’” he recalled with a laugh. Besson is hoping to reach even more people and share with them his enthusiasm for local history. It’s important for reasons other than the enjoyment it can bring. “Trinidad has a very interesting, very compelling history,” he said. “And if people knew it more they would understand the social processes and the political processes that they’re going through.”

Gérard Besson doing a book reading from his latest historical novel, "From the Gates of Aksum", at Paper Based on 19 October 2013

The Spanish Dons of La Trinidad

The house was not very large as estate houses go, neither was it very old. It sat in the contented manner that bungalows do on a quarter of an acre of slightly rolling lawn, surrounded by a startling display of tropical blooms whose names I never learned, but whose vivid, indeed spectacular show I surely will always remember.

She said she was having a lazy morning, her basket filled to overflowing with enormous anthuriums. This told me that she had been working in her anthurium garden. "Come," she said, and I followed. Sitting in the long gallery, sipping lime squash, I had to admire Paulina Sorzano. Well into her late 70s, she possessed a lively mind, witty and very clear. She was also quite lovely and womanly, very feminine, stylish in an old-fashioned, "grande dame" sort of way. She being my father's first cousin, I called her Aunty Polly. I was there to get information on the Sorzanos. This is what she told me:

The Sorzano family has had a long connection with Trinidad for about 220-odd years, the earliest holding of the post of Contador de Real Exercito in the administration of Governor Don José Chacon. After the surrender of the island to the British, it became necessary for him to give an account of his administration of that office. He travelled to Spain with Don Chacon, and was one of the officers mentioned in the last paragraph of the dispatch in which the Spanish governor announced the disaster which had befallen him.

During that time, the Sorzanos owned several plantations on the island, and as such, he made up his mind to return and to take the oath of allegiance to his new sovereign and to regard this new British colony as home. With a view to making his family position perfectly clear, he took occasion whilst in Spain to collect all the necessary documents to prove his descent from a long line of distinguished ancestors.

The family of Don Manuel Thomas Sorzano de Tejada is a very ancient one. Its coat of arms was bestowed upon Don Sancho Martinez Sorzano de Tejada by Alfonso III Kind of Asturias,
for his distinguished gallantry at the battle of Albeida  in the year 859 AD, where he and his thirteen sons gained a great victory over the army of Abdullah, the Arab caliph of Cordoba. The thirteen green pennants which support the shield each have a crescent.

Don Manuel became commandant of Arima under Sir Thomas Hislop in 1803, and served the British government as such for several years. He was given a seat at the Board of Council by Sir Ralph Woodford. An old letter describes that when last he saw Don Chacon as being "in the Fort of San Sebastian outside the walls of Cadiz and for the moment unable to leave it". This was a civil way of saying that the unfortunate governor was a prisoner.

Aunt Polly's grandfather, Thomas Sorzano, had placed on loan at the Royal Victoria Institute 1897 exhibition several interesting exhibits, among these were a pair of very handsome pistols with old-fashioned flintlocks, the nominal roll of slave children on the Torrecilla estate, once owned by the family in 1803, an original printed copy of the Cedula of Population of 23rd November, 1783, and is meant to have been a copy brought out by Don Chacon to whom the working of the Cedula was entrusted, an interesting iron-banded wooden chest, said to have been "the chest of fines" in which the moneys paid to the courts were kept, and a very old flintlock musket.

Because our family is connected to the Ganteaumes and the Pantins, who are in turn connected to the Caracciolos, she was also able to tell me something about the latter. Count Giuseppe Joseph Caracciolo, who died in Trinidad in 1819, was a direct descendant of Domenico Caracciolo, Marchese de Brienza. Count Joseph's father was named Literis, and his name is registered in the Libro d'Oro of Naples. He married Mariana de la Porte Strabia. One of their sons, Joseph, Giuseppe, was born in 1779 and at the age of 18 was named sub-lieutenant in the Royal Cavalry. Impatient to earn military fame, he joined the Russian army under the famous General Suwarov, who was then engaged in aiding the Austrians to fight the French under the Generals Massena and McDonald. Giuseppe served for about a year and then returned to Naples. Subsequently finding his safety, perhaps even his life, endangered in consequence of having taken service with the Russians, he determined to emigrate and arrived in Trinidad in 1801. Four years later, he married Marie Josephine Amphoux by whom he became the father of two sons. His eldest son married Henrietta Pantin de Mouilbert, the other, Alfredo, married Barbara Almandoz.

"Which is the oldest Spanish family in Trinidad in the sense of being here the longest?" I asked.

"Oh, the Farfans of course," Auntie Polly answered. The first by that name had come out in 1644. His name was Don Manuel Farfan de los Godos. He founded the Hermanidad del Santisimo  Sacramento at St. Joseph. From him are descended the Farfans of today. For many years, indeed for more than a century, they dominated the Illustrious Cabildo, the government, wielding great power on the island, imprisoning governors, forbidding others to leave. Their power was not altered until the arrival of Don Jose María Chacon, the last Spanish governor. The distinctive epithet "de los Godos" indicates that they belong to one of the Gothic families at the disastrous battle of Guadaletec in 711 AD, where Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic Kings of Spain, was slain by the victorious Saracens.

In 1566, Don Pedro Huarez Farfan emigrated to New Granada, now Venezuela, and his descendants some 90 years later crossed over to Spanish Trinidad. An interesting connection of the Farfans is the Marquis de Creny whose daughter married a Farfan in the latter part of the 18th century. Another old Spanish family of Trinidad is that of Don Jose Mayan, who at the time of the capitulation in 1797 held the important post of Teniente de Justicia, Mayor of St. Joseph, an office that was created when the seat of government was removed to Port of Spain in 1774.

This move away from St. Joseph to Port of Spain was very upsetting to the old Spanish families. The office of Teniente, a kind of lieutenant governorship, was always held in reserve to be awarded in a special circumstance. Don Jose was the son of Don Matias Mayan who emigrated from the province of Galicia, Spain, in the 1750s. He settled at St. Joseph and married Augustina Prieto de Posada, daughter of Don Antonio Prieto de Posada and his wife Donna Josefa Gonzales, on the 7th April 1777. Jose Mayan married Dona Antonia de Salas, by whom he had issue one daughter, Trinidad de los Angeles. In 1797, Trinidad married Don Pablo Giuseppi. All the Giuseppis of Trinidad come from this union, so too the Ciprianis, Fitts, Frasers, and Monagas.

It was in the house of Don Jose Mayan on the Valsayn estate, St. Joseph, that the articles of capitulation were signed under which Don Chacon surrendered the island to the British crown, this on the 18th February, 1797. The old house was long ago knocked down. It stood in an area just behind where WASA now is in St. Joseph.

In 1880, the Royal Princes, the Duke of York and the Duke of Clarence, visited Trinidad in the H.M.S. Bacchante, honouring with their presence an entertainment given for them by Mr. Paul Giuseppi. His ancestor, Don Pablo Giuseppi, was a native of Corsica. He belonged to a family of considerable wealth and importance. In 1791, when the troubled times of the French Revolution were commencing, he was chosen commandant of the national guard of his district. His father, a staunch royalist, did not approve of his giving any countenance to the revolutionary party, and sent him away to Martinique, from which he subsequently emigrated to Trinidad, where he married the only child of Don Jose Mayan, Trinidad de Los Angeles, and became joint owner with her of Valsayn estate.

Another old Spanish family of Trinidad are the Basantas. Aunt Polly related that Don Valentine de Basanta, at the time of the capitulation to the British held the office of First Commissary of Population, to which he had been appointed by the King of Spain in the year 1792. He was also an officer in the Spanish navy like his friend Don Manuel Sorzano. He too owned property, had married in Trinidad, and decided to remain here after the conquest, taking the oath of allegiance to the King of England.

The name Basanta occurs in the chronicles of the 14th and 15th centuries as taking part in the wars with Navarre under Pedro the Cruel and in those waged by Ferdinand and Isabella against the Moors. Connected to the Lezama and Garcia families, many descendants still live in Trinidad.

"Did Don Jose Chacon leave any mementoes behind?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. A Mr. Diaz once showed me an embroidered robe, a prayer book, and a group of the Virgin and Child which belonged to his daughter, Maria Chacon. She married M. Henri Joberty and as such the descendants of Chacon still live amongst us."

A little bell tinkled from the dining room of Mausica estate house, calling us to lunch, ending a lovely morning, reminiscing about the old Spanish Dons of Trinidad.

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Mary Seacole

by Gerard Besson

The little woman, just a trifle plump, alighted from the carriage. Above, the London sky appeared a seamless fold of gray that descended downward and into an unremitting damp. As the carriage rolled away, she made her way across the broad pavement towards the great iron gates of Buckingham Palace and, to the startled amazement of the sentry pacing the perimeter of the palace, she slipped through the small postern gate, set into the huge railings near to the red and white striped sentry box.

"Stop at once!" called the sentry.

"Sir, a person has entered the courtyard and is making her way to the front entrance."

He reported to the sergeant of the Cold Stream Guards who had been alerted by his cry. Already the little woman was out of sight as she followed the wide curving sweep of the massive driveway, decorated with monuments of the Empire's glory. Spotting her as she took the flight of stairs, he blew shrilly on his whistle. This brought several guardsmen on the run. Their bright red tunics and tall, dark bear skins were starkly elaborate against the all-covering gray. By that time Mary Seacole had gained the portico and pulled the bell next to the main door.

"Halt, Madam!" shouted the first guardsman to mount the stairs. Already there were three other tall imposing young men, resplendent in their uniforms.

"Attention!" snapped the sergeant of the Cold Stream Guards. They had been joined by Captain Baldwin Northcliffe Phipps of the Household Regiment.

"Good Morning, Mother Seacole. I see you have come to call upon Her Majesty," tutted the distinguished, somewhat more than middle aged officer. "Perhaps you might have informed us of your presence in the city and of your intentions."

"Captain Baldwin Phipps, you look very well indeed."

"Thank you Ma'am."

Mary Seacole looked kindly at the smart young men still standing at attention and smiled into the slightly puzzled eyes of the sergeant of the Cold Stream Guards and said to him in her good West Indian way:

"My son, the Royal Family is glad any time to ask me to tea."

Indeed it proved to be true on that occasion. This is the story of one of the most remarkable West Indian women who ever lived. It is the story of a coloured woman who traveled round the Caribbean, in fact the world, at a time when most women stayed at home; the story of a woman who, with gentle persuasion, dealt with the British War office and made her way to the Crimea at the time of the Crimean War; the story of a woman who was well known to and on family terms with Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and who was decorated by Her on more than one occasion.

The story of Mary Jane Seacole is now all but forgotten. There was a time, however,  when her humanitarian and medical services to the British Army fighting in the Crimea War from 1854 to 1856 "made her a household name in Britain".

She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, Mary Jane Grant, in 1805. She was the daughter of a Scottish army officer and a coloured woman who ran a boarding house called Blundell Hall in Kingston, largely patronised by army and naval officers and their families Mary married Edwin Horatio Seacole who was a godson of Viscount Nelson. Her mother was well known for her skills as a healer and her ability to cure fevers, especially yellow fever, which ravaged Jamaica from time to time. Mary acquired her mothers gift and knowledge of Creole medical lore. She worked with her mother saving the lives of many service men and their families. Her reputation grew in such a way that the authorities enlisted her services for their military hospital.

Among the officers and enlisted men of the regiments she had known were some of the 48th Regiment of Foot, the 1st Battalion of the Northhamptonshires, stationed in Jamaica. While still in her teens she made the first of many trips to England. Learning of the terrible hardships caused by the incompetence of the military in the Crimea in the early 1850s, particularly the suffering of the wounded and the sick, "the inclination to gain my old friends of the 97th, 48th and other regiments battling with worse foes than yellow fever or cholera, took such exclusive possession of my mind that I decided to devote my energies to the alleviation of their misery".

She undertook the difficult task to persuade the military authorities to "permit an unknown coloured woman to proceed to the Crimea to help nurse the disease prevalent among troops in this war fought between Russia, England and France". Applying without success to the Secretary of War, the Quartermaster General, the medical department and to the wife of the Secretary of War, Mrs. Sydney Herbert, who co-ordinated the recruitment of nurses, including the famous Florence Nightingale, she was eventually obliged to set out, at her own expense, for Turkey and the theatre of war.

On the way, she was recognised at Gibraltar by two officers of the 48th bound for scene of action, who warmly greeted her. On arrival in the Crimea, she set to work "serving the expeditionary force, both as unofficial nurse and as a 'suttler', that is, one who followed the army and served food and drink."

Within two months, she had opened the British Hotel just north of Balaclava on the road to Sebastopol. A London newspaper reported:

"Lord Raglan's veto for women rendering assistance at the battle front did not inhibit Mrs. Seacole from riding forward with her small personal mule train of medications, food and refreshments."

By the summer of 1855, Mary Seacole was regarded by the troops as part heroine and part mascot. If the other battle front had Florence Nightingale, the lady with the lamp, Balaclava could offer the romantic legend of a Creole with a tea mug. The soldiers called her "Mother Seacole" and "Auntie Seacole."

Her hotel was on the main road to the front line and to many it was a place of comfort and healing. When peace came, Mary had to sell her hotel. Her work had already made the news. W.M. Russel of the "London Times" wrote:

"I have witnessed her devotion and courage. I have already born testimony to her services to all those who needed them. I trust that England will not forget one who has nursed her sick, who has sought her wounded in order to aid and succor them and who has performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead."

Mary returned to Jamaica where she helped her sister, Louisa, to run Blundell Hall. She visited London whenever she could. Mary Seacole wrote the story of her life in a book called "Wonderful adventures of Mrs. Seacole in many lands". Count von Gleichen, a nephew of Queen Victoria, made a little bust of her in terracotta which is kept on show at the Institute of Jamaica.

She was widely known as a woman of great courage and kindness and as a devoted nurse at a time when the professions were closed to women and few ventured abroad. Today there is a Mary Seacole Hall at U.W.I in Jamaica. Wouldn't you agree that her name should be better known to West Indians?