Picton and Woodford

Picton Street and Woodford Street in New Town, Port of Spain, commemorate two of the islands early British Governors.

Colonel Thomas Picton arrived in Trinidad with the British conquering forces in 1797. It was island embroiled in anarchy and on the brink of civil war and  slave insurrection, similar to those that had impacted on Haiti, Guadeloupe and Grenada Thomas Picton, under the aegis of marshal law and in the frame work of medieval Spanish statutes, imposed law and order by brute force. He was undoubtedly successful.

In 1813, Sir Ralph Woodford, some 16 years later, when the revolutionary insurgencies and slave revolts of the previous century had passed, presided over a different reality. Edward Lanzer Joseph, historian, in his "History of Trinidad (1838)" remarks:

"The administration of Sir Ralph Woodford, like that of Sir Thomas Picton, was well timed. They were both well fitted to govern Trinidad at the epochs of their respective administrations. Had Sir Ralph Woodford been placed as governor here at the time of capitulation, he perhaps would have lacked the stern, daring, the almost terrible energies which were necessary to control the jarring elements of the colony at the time of Picton. He certainly did not possess the determined military talents necessary to preserve the colony when rebellious colonists, intriguing spies, threatening neighbours, discontented slaves and a garrison both feeble and mutinous threatened on a daily basis the stability of the young colony. Had neighbouring governors set a price on Woodford's head, he perhaps would not have coolly sent them an invitation to come and get it.

On the other hand, Thomas Picton would have been misplaced in Woodford's time. The gruff Welsh professional soldier did not possess those polished and dignified manners that in Sir Ralph were so conspicuous and with the world at peace and through his own example tended so much to bring the islands' society into something like order.”

Professor Phillip Sherlock wrote:

"Picton ran Trinidad as if it were his regiment, Woodford ran it as if it were his country estate. Sir Ralph Woodford traveled widely through the country, saw everything with his own eyes rather than through the reports that others gave him, and made sure that his decisions were carried out. He was at his best when dealing with matters like planning, and building roads, and enlarging and beautifying Port of Spain. He also straightened the confusion over the ownership of land. This was a mess. The old Spanish Grandee families claimed more land as belonging to them than the entire square acreage of the island."

Woodford brought Spaniards from Venezuela, lawyers who were versed in the Spanish land laws. Their descendants are still with us as families such as Garcia, Llanos and Gomez.

Picton, on the other hand, had his own way of doing things, for example, as Edward Joseph recounts:

"The manner of Picton addressing a suspected inhabitant of this colony was characteristic. If he heard of anyone of them who behaved badly, he would send for him and take him to his gallery (he lived on the south eastern corner of Charlotte Street and Marine Square) before which was erected the mark of civilisation, a gallows. He would tell the party that he had heard so and so of him, which he hoped for his sake was not true. 'Go,' he would say, 'reform from your former life or leave the island, otherwise the wind shall pass between the soles of you feet and the earth.'"

Sir Ralph saw to the planning and building of a road from Matura to Mayaro and opened up the old Amerindian track between Arima and the Manzanilla coast. He put up a customs house in Mayaro, which made it easier and cheaper for people in the eastern parts to ship goods to Tobago. He opened up these areas in the hope of attracting settlers, disbanded soldiers from the Duke of Wellington's army. He felt that more English people should settle in Trinidad. He created prescriptions against the free black people and sought to prevent marriages between white and black people.

Picton, on the other hand, hung, flogged, beheaded, banished and jailed everybody, black or white, and openly kept a mistress of indeterminable racial mixture. Their descendants are still with us.

Woodford never had a mistress, although it is said that he was in love with Soledad, the daughter of Don Antonio Gomez. Henry Nelson Coleridge, the nephew and son-in-law of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote of her:

"Soledad! Thou wilt never read this book; few of those who will can ever know thee and I shall never see thee again this side of the grave; Therefore I write thy name whilst I remember thy face and hear thy voice, thou sweet ingenious girl!"

Picton was not charmed by the giles of the Creoles who knew well the art of currying favour. For example, calling once at the store of a reformed republican, the Governor complimented the man on his good conduct as of late and told him that those who, like him, behaved well, would prosper with the rising prosperity of the colony and should never want for his protection. The Frenchman was tasting wine, a glass of which Picton partook of and admired. The storekeeper subsequently sent the governor the cask of the wine as a present. Picton returned the wine with a brief note, which thanked the man for his offer but informed him that when his (Picton's) King could not afford to give him wine he would drink water.

Sir Ralph was first in urging from the Secretary of State a plan for attracting families of East Indians to settle and cultivate their own farms. He wanted them to come as small settlers, to create homesteads of their own. Woodford acquired the Peschier estate at St. Anns. It is interesting to note that he removed the original forest and imported trees, under the guidance of his botanist, David Lockhart, from other countries so as to create an English garden - which still exists in the form of the Botanical Gardens in St. Anns.

Picton put up a notice on the hangman’s gibbet in Marine Square, stating that he would hang the first Public Officer who took a bribe. With regard to obeah which was both prevalent and terrifying, an old man, who allegedly killed people with sheer fright of 'Obi', was caused to be seated on an ass with his face to the tail and all his collection of "rude dolls, dried bones, herbs, teeth, snakes" and other trumpery of his trade hung around his neck, while all the children of the estate stoned and hooted at the old impostor. This had the desired effect. It turned the obeah man to ridicule, and those who formally stood in awe of his supposed power now treated him with disdain. Had he been hung, he would have left the reputation of having been a great enchanter.

Port of Spain was still a small town when Woodford became governor in 1813. But it was growing rapidly and it might easily have lost some of its open spaces if it had not been for him. He saw the shabby lots that had been left empty since the fire of 1808, weeds covering the square which the Spaniards and French had called Place Des Armes and which the English re-named Brunswick Square. The empty wasteland west of the town, which was part of Ariapita Estate, the thick bush that covered the land, north of Oxford Street, the corbeaux that swarmed along the beach, the shacks and huts that littered the foreshore, where the Spaniards had their Calle Marina. He rode through Maraval and St. Anns, he laid out parks and brought pitch from La Brea to kill the weeds in Brunswick square. He bought through the Cabildo lands to the north of the town and laid this out as the Grand Savannah, later known as the Queen's Park Savannah, to be pasture for the cattle of Port of Spain. Close upon 200 years later, we still enjoy these green oases that Woodford created.

These men who have left their mark were men of their times and are remembered by Woodford Square and Picton Quarry as well as the two one-way streets in New Town.

Michel Jean Cazabon

1813. It was the year that Trinidad got her first civil governor, Sir Ralph Woodford. The world was full of significant men, never mind that they were all still in their diapers: Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Richard Wagner, Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon III, for example. Fürst Bismarck had yet to be born two years later, to be followed closely by Tolstoi and Rockefeller. The probably most important invention of the year was the bicycle, that is, if we disregard Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of it 350 years earlier; those had never been actually built.

In this setting, Michel Jean Cazabon was born in the Naparimas. His parents were French; coloured, well-off people who had come from the French islands to receive land grants in Trinidad under the Cedula of Population. Michel grew up with his mother and siblings in San Fernando, since his parents separated one year after he was born. In their household, as in most others in those days in Trinidad, people spoke exclusively French and Patois.

Michel grew up in an independent and outdoorish manner. The habit of rambling around in the country side was something which he would keep up throughout his lifetime, and even make a living off it.

Trinidad had been a British colony for only 16 years, and in order to converse with the officials bits and pieces of English sufficed. Like other parents, the Cazabons were looking ahead and planning a future for their son. And the future in Trinidad looked mighty British to them. Hence, they sent off 15-year old Michel Jean to St. Edmund's College in England, to learn English and the ways of a British subject in the colonies. Typically, they probably wanted Cazabon jnr. to become a doctor or a priest, respectability being the order of the day, especially for coloured people. However, already from his years in Hertfordshire, there is evidence that he had little inclination for the academics and a growing love for the countryside and for art: his bills for "mending of trousers" and "stationery" were quite high, as Geoffrey MacLean reports in his book on Cazabon.

After four years in England, Michel returned to Trinidad at the age of 19. Of the following seven years, only two paintings remain of him. In 1837, Michel and his mother move to Port of Spain. Later that year, he is sent to Paris for his further education. The Cazabons snr. manage to send him enough money to live in good "arrondissements" in France's capital.

Becoming a young bohemian in Paris, he probably took art classes at the Académie des Beaux Arts (without being officially enrolled). Other sources say that he studied with Paul de la Roche, who was then a famous painter in Paris. However, as the years went by, his parents might have become more and more reassured that their prodigal son was on the right way, or at least they boasted with his proficiency and his exhibitions in the metropole to cover the "scandal" of having produced an artist. He exhibited at the Salon du Louvre and even went to study in Italy for a year in 1841 - 1842; Italy was then still regarded as the Mecca of artists. His paintings sold for hundreds, even more than 1,000 francs.

What made him so successful? His style was that of a romantic landscape painter, with a close eye on the detail, on light and shadow, on textures and on the spontaneity of people in the scenes he depicted. His preferred medium was watercolour, which had become en vogue in the second half of the 19th century in Europe.

Michel Jean got married in France to Louise Rosalie Trolard and had two daughters and one son, who was mentally handicapped. When his mother died in 1848, he came back to Trinidad to live in Port of Spain. His wife continued to live in Paris with their first daughter and son, and didn't join him in Port of Spain until 1852, after the birth of their second daughter (Michel obviously having returned to Paris in the meantime).

In Port of Spain, Sir James Lamont and William Burnley, both wealthy planters, commission works by Cazabon. He also produces a collection of lithographs, which he subsequently publishes in Paris in 1851. His second folio, called "Album of Trinidad", was published in 1857.

Cazabon established himself in Trinidad by advertising himself, as MacLean records, first as an artist who "paints landscapes and sites", and then as a "drawing master". He also offered teaching to private pupils or classes at quite a stiff price: $5.00 or $3.00 per month, respectively. In addition to teaching and painting commissioned works, Cazabon also draws for the Illustrated London News.

When looking at Cazabon's works (and if you haven't done so as yet, please go and visit the Cazabon collection at the Victoria Institute!), one can picture the excursions that he and his students had to go on in order to get to the sites he depicts. No mountaintop to high, no weather to rainy or no sea to rough: even at a mature age Cazabon must have had many more pairs of trousers that needed to be mended. He is probably best known for his tranquil, lush and tropical landscapes from all over Trinidad and from down the islands. But he also travels to Grenada, Martinique and Demerara to paint, and in 1862 publishes his "Album of Demerara".

Michel and Louise lived in grand style. They loved and were used to the good life-entertaining, travelling, serving champagne. During their life in Trinidad, which was then mainly a planter society and generally not very artistically-minded, their resources dwindled, however. In 1862, they decided to move to St. Pierre in Martinique, which had by then earned itself as "Petit Paris des Antilles". Maybe the coloured artist hoped to lead a more gentle life in a French colony than in a British. But St. Pierre too proved to be provincial for the now 50-year old Michel, and he was again and again drawn to Trinidad, where he painted scenes of his favourite spots: Macqueripe, Belmont, Laventille and the north coast. With one of his daughters married to a Martiniquan, he and the rest of his family moved back to Port of Spain in 1870. Michel continued to paint and grow old here. In 1885, his wife died. He followed her into the grave three years later.

In his home country, his significance as a painter was only really appreciated almost a century later. Many of his works were destroyed in the volcano eruption in Martinique in 1902, in which also his daughter perished. Fortunately, he had been so prolific, that in the first half of the 20th century people had Cazabons hanging in their houses as a matter of course, not attaching any special value to them. They were given away as wedding presents, or even thrown away if something more modern was to be put up.

But many of his works have survived, and are now on par with other artistic works of his time, with the added value for us that they depict - us, our lives, and our country, more than a century ago.

Lopinot and the Haitian Revolution

There are few occasions in a person's lifetime that possess a sense-alteration to the degree of conveying the impression of being outside of the events taking place. The cusp of epochs; a common version may be the death of a parent or the collapse of a career.

To better grasp the scale of the Haitian Revolution, the events can only be perceived via such terms as Holocaust, mass murder, the liberation of a people, the birth of a nation, genocide, and even these, muttered out of context, lose their importance. Seeing is believing.

She was undoubtedly a woman of great strength of character and personal courage, exceptionally brave or perhaps simply possessed by the incipient stupidity that overbreeding sometimes brings to the upper classes.

She was completely aware of the whole scale destruction and mass murders being undertaken by the slaves. On the plantation La Resource she was not alone. The house slaves, still faithful to the memory of her parents, hovered breathlessly on the borders of their serfdom. She herself had but one clear intention, that was, to save the life of Charles Joseph Count Loppinot de la Fresillière, who had come into her pallid life two years before.

She was a Creole of this island and had known only the odour of the negroes, the aroma of burnt cane, the smell of molasses, of sawdust and of perfumes imported from abroad and as such, had lost their delicacy in the furnace holds of ships becalmed in the wide Sargasso Sea.

She knew well the fragrance of exotic tropical blooms carried on a warm wind when one sat dozing in the side gallery, the slave girl in spotless white, fanning her bare feet. She had been unprepared for the fresh crispness of his appearance, the originality of his clothing, and a sense about him that she could only compare to freshly baked bread or if you could imagine the smell of sunshine.

All her life, she had a highly developed olfactory faculty. They were never  lovers. He had arrived on the island aboard a 78 gun ship of the line in the company of the exalted. After having lived in Louisiana as an officer in the militia, he was now at St. Domingue where he was appointed Lieutenant de Roi par interim at Port au Prince. He became Major Commandante pour Roi at Jerome in 1784 and Commandante particulier at Port au Prince in 1787.

He occupied large estates in the colony. He married Catherine Fabre d'Auray by whom he had four sons. He was her neighbour. From the hilltop upon which her mansion had been built, she could see the burning cane fields. Macaque, her father's valet, so named in a moment of levity in what now seemed to be a thousand years ago, approached her with much gentility, smiled through his chattering teeth and told her in courtly French that the wagon was prepared and that the Monsieur had consented to enter the hogshead that had been provided for their escape and that he had requested her to join him. This she declined in as much as she had already decided to die in the house her father had built, overlooking the deep bay at Moucound.

Six of her strongest houseboys rolled the heavy oaken barrel in which the Count, wrapped in blankets against the inevitable collisions lay in hiding. This was heaved onto the waiting oxcart. Later they would roll it on to a careened longboat leaning on the waters edge in the bay. This in turn would be hauled aboard the British frigate "Arethusa" that would eventually take him and his family, also hidden in rum barrels, to Jamaica and safety. He would, however, return with the British expedition.

That evening, with her delicate profile turned slightly windward, she could smell them coming long before she heard them in the bottom of the garden near to the fountain dedicated to the Three Graces, built by her father in the year that she was born.

Five years later, between the execution of Louis XVI on the 21st of January 1793 and that of Marie Antoinette on the 16th October, at the promting of Loppinot himself, the future Louis XVIII - the Dauphin Louis XVII still being alive - then Compte de Provence, conferred on Loppinot the powers of Governor General of St. Domingue and Commissioner of all the Windward and Leeward Islands of America by a commission signed in Hamm in Westphalia on the 24th August 1793. This was to commence when "... His Majesty would only be able to decide further useful directions on the restoration of the monarchy, only then would he send his orders."

In as much as his lands had been lost in St. Domingue and in return for his service with the British expedition, the Secretary of State decided that a suitable grant of land would be made to him in Trinidad.

Col. Thomas Picton was a large, red-faced Welshman who drank more than he should and kept a notoriously common woman of an indeterminable racial background as a mistress. He tended to run the colony in much the same manner as he did his regiment. He was sitting in a warm rummy vapour which emanated from his person, when the Count was announced by the German sentry belonging to the 3rd Hompesch's regiment of German "Jägers" left behind so as to maintain order in the freshly captured island.

Picton could not stand the idea of meeting and dealing with yet another overly brought up, dandified ex-courtier of a now extinct kingdom. Frenchies made him sick. With elaborate resignation he listened as the Count Loppinot went through lengthy formalities, finally arriving at the point: land. Sorry, Picton had not heard a word from the Secretary of State and as such had no authority to make a grant. Undeterred, the Count borrowed money on mortgage. He attempted to utilise his slaves by purchasing a half share in a sugar estate at Tacarigua. But the depressed sugar market at the time, so different from the prosperous revolutionary days in St. Domingue, resulted in heavy losses for him.

In Trinidad, his rank and military experience earned Loppinot the confidence of the military governors of the island who succeeded Col. Picton. Brigadier General Thomas Hislop appointed him a brigadier-general in the militia. It was during the latter's governorship that the Count again applied for a grant of land in a mountain valley above Tacarigua. This time he was successful, and the area of his cocoa plantation is still bearing his name to date.

Under Hislop's successor, Major-General W. Monroe, during a period when the wars for the liberation of South America was being conducted by a young mestizo revolutionary called Simon Bolivar, Loppinot was sent with troops to flush out a revolutionary cell that had been built up under the aegis of one Geraldine Carry on Carry's island in the Dragon's Mouth, Chacachacare.

The insurgents, comprised mainly of members of the local Masonic Lodge, had already left for Guiria on the mainland. Taking the town, they were successful in the recommencing of the revolution, which had petered out. They were later known as the "Immortal 45" and were with Bolivar at the capture of Caracas.

Sir Ralph Woodford, the island's first civil governor who succeeded Munro in 1813, dismissed the old Council of Advice of previous administrators and appointed a new Council of Three, one of whom was the Count.

In 1814, the year after Woodford's arrival, the news of the fall of Napoleon came. The Count lost no time in suggesting means of winning back St. Domingue. In elaborate terms he addressed the Comte d'Artois. He commenced:

"Monsignor, we have heard the most memorable, the most happy and the most cheering event for the spirit of Frenchmen. The monstrous idol, that fantasy of ambition and error raised up is finally cast down to leave only the bitter memory of the most painful screams..."

He was reminding the Comte d'Artois of his position and rank and proposed a commission for himself as Governor General, not in name but in fact. He wrote dozens of letters outlining various schemes and plans to retake St. Domingue, now Haiti. They all came to nothing. The most wealthy, the most splendid, the most fantastic colony France had ever possessed was now on the road to its own destiny. The last of the house of Bourbon to sit upon the throne of France were reactionary relics of the ancient regime, best remembered by the saying that they learned nothing and forgot nothing. In his closing of one of his last letters to the king a disappointed Loppinot writes:

"Since the happy events which restored His Majesty to the throne, I have not received a single instruction..."

Loppinot lived out his last years in his mountain retreat as one of the most respected and prominent inhabitants of the British colony of Trinidad. When he died in 1817, he was buried on his estate, as were his wife and a son. Well beloved by his slaves, there was never a hanging in Loppinot. The family and title exist to this day in France.

Who celebrated Carnival?

Carnival in Trinidad has grown out of the collective experience of all people who have come to this island from Spanish times, prior to 1797, on through to the present day. 

Carnival is essentially Roman Catholic in origin. Its earliest participants must have been the Spanish settlers who, in isolation, living in the little hamlets bearing beautiful names like San José de Oruna and Puerto de los Hispanioles, would have danced the medieval “burroquete” in the muddy streets accompanied by guitar, fiddle and drum. The local Amerindians must have been looking on in amazement.

 Hardly drawing a crowd, the pre-Lenten fiesta would have been at most a dozen or so people dressed in rags, alpagattas and battered straw hats. The priests, the Governor, the chief of police, and of course the donkey costumes into which a man or boy got to prance about, waving the little ass’ head from side to side, making mincing steps in a parody of riding merrily. The burroquete mas is ancient, having its origins in north Africa and finding itself marooned in Spain after the withdrawal of the Moors in the 1490s. Eventually, it was brought to the New World.  

In the period before 1783, before the influence of the French and Africans, it has been suggested that the population was as follows:

Spanish white - 126

Coloured - 245

Slaves - 310

Amerindians (Carib) - 2000 

 

With the Cedula of Population of 1783, a dramatic change took place.  The island, though a Spanish colony, received a French population. These French, made up largely of the petit noblesse of France’s southern provinces, brought with them many slaves. They came mostly from Dominica, St. Vincent, Martinique and Grenada. Amongst them were a great number of people of colour, who were not enslaved. Those were the descendants of earlier French settlers and African slaves. The institution of slavery was then seen by Europeans and Africans, by Christians and Muslims, as an economic reality. It meant that these free black people who came to Trinidad possessed slaves as well.  

 

The population of Trinidad just before the British conquest in 1797 was as follows:

Spanish white: 150

Spanish coloured: 200

Africans enslaved: 300

Amerindians: 1127

French white: 2250

French coloured: 4700

African enslaved: 9700

 

Being almost entirely Catholic in their faith, the French in Trinidad just like the Spaniards observed Lent and celebrated Carnival. It is said that the French combined an aristocratic tradition and their natural tendency to “contagious gaiety, brilliant verbal sally and comic buffoonery” in their version of Carnival. This gave the festival a different flair altogether. Historians say that this period of Trinidad’s development, that is, the 1790s, was marked by a certain degree of racial ease. In as much as both the whites and the free coloureds were sharing the frontier town experience, having freshly immigrated, there was an atmosphere of modest mingling. In fact, there was a lot of so-called ‘miscegenation’ taking place! It was only with the advent of the British conquerors that this changed. 

 

Carnival celebrations of the turn of the 19th century were enjoyed by both groups of the population. But what of the several thousand slaves?

 

Port of Spain had then a large slave population which acted as domestics. What of the hundreds of slaves who moved about on their masters’ business, as messengers, sailors, wagon drivers, etc.? According to tradition, they took no part in Carnival. A memory by Ofuba the chantwell, a slave who sang “Neg deye polla” has been preserved, picturing a slave peeping from behind the door at the Carnival fête of the French masters (“Nègre derrière la porte”).

 

By the 1820s, during Governor Woodford’s term, the free persons of colour were subjected to very stringent regulations, and although it was not forbidden to wear masks, they were compelled to keep to themselves and never presumed to join the amusements of the privileged class.

 

The Caribs were moving in their own world, their own time and space. Their rapidly diminishing share in the population did not share in the realities of the European and African immigrants, who in turn may not have noticed them particularly.  

 

A description of a Carnival ball has come down to us. Mrs. Bruce’s ball in 1831 was attended by “the beauty and fashion of Port of Spain, composing a motley assemblage of elegantly dressed ladies, largely Swiss damsels, French marquises, English noblemen, grooms, postillions, priests and friars” (the latter costumes have been banned since then). The French also disguised as their servants and slaves, their husbands and mistresses. One costume was the graceful and costly one of the “mulatresse” of the time, whilst gentlemen adopted that of the “nègres du jardin” (in Patois ‘neg jardin’) or field  labourer. In that costume the gentleman often figured in the “bamboola” in the “giouba” and in the “calinda”, all popular local dance steps of the era. 

 

The French would often unite in bands, their faces blackened with soot, representing different estates. Lionel Fraser, who wrote a history of Trinidad, relates:

“In the days of slavery, whenever a fire broke out upon an estate, the slaves of the surrounding properties were immediately mustered and marched to the spot, horns and shells were blown to collect them and the gangs were followed by drivers cracking their whips and urging them with cries and blows to their work. After emancipation, the negroes began to represent this scene as a kind of commemoration of the change in their condition and the procession of ‘cannes brulées’ used to take place on the night of the 1st of August, the date of emancipation.” 

 

In later years, the practice of cannes brulées was used at a different time of year to inaugurate Carnival. With emancipation, social life was altered between the free black people and the slaves. The ancient lines of demarcation between them as classes were obliterated. Fraser remarks:

“As a natural consequence, the Carnival degenerated into a noisy and disorderly amusement of the lower classes. The earliest record of an attempt to regulate or control Carnival appears in 1833. An attempt was made by Mr. Peake (assistant to the chief of police) to check the shameful violation of the Sabbath by the lower order of the population who are accustomed about this time of year to wear masks and created disturbances on a Sunday.” 

 

Peake arrested several people. On returning to his home, he found that all his windows had been broken. 

Martial Law at Christmas

Christmas in the Caribbean slave societies was one where the uninhibited behaviour of the white population displayed a weakness and offered an opportunity for a revolt by the slaves.

One such revolt was planned for Christmas 1805. The revolt was organised to commence on an estate belonging to the Shand family in Diego Martin. From there, it was to spread through the island. It was meant to have been planned by some French and African slaves, and to have been masterminded by an African known as King Sampson, of a group describing itself as the “Regiment Macaque”. He had the appearance of an old man of Ibo descent, “but had a hidden reputation of a powerful obeah man”.

The planters, ever watchful especially after their Haitian experiences, were quick to foil the Christmas plot. The British, in whose hands the island was, acted with the thoroughness that was to characterise their colonial rule, and the first of several revolts of the black population was summarily and violently put down, resulting in the execution of several slaves.

It was against this backdrop that it became general practice to declare Martial Law at Christmas. One of the reasons given for this was to control abandon among the white inhabitants. In addition to the overall merrymaking, there was also the more serious problem of dueling. Excessive drink tended to arouse passions, in which words, often spoken out of turn, soon became a matter of honour between the aggrieved parties. This resulted sometimes in death, often in serious injury.

It would appear that the practice of dueling became quite widespread with not only the free coloureds taking it up, but also the slaves. Life in Port of Spain in the first decades of the 19th century, the 1800s, had many of the characteristics of a wild west town in the southern states. Men rode horses, most were armed, there were buggies, wagons and huge flat-trayed hand carts which were manhandled about the muddy streets.

Many trading companies were in the process of setting themselves up, some to last for generations, such as Wilson & Co., Charles Leoteaud & Co. John Boissière, in the absence of a bank, operated as a money lender, lending large sums on mortgage to estate proprietors. This operation was to continue well into the 1940s. There were slave importers, such as the Barry and Black, who were infamous for the importation of “poor cargoes”.

With the Woodford administration coming into place in 1813, every effort was made to impose order in the colony. Service in the militia was compulsory in the white and in the upper-class coloured community. Woodford was disgusted with the French Creoles of all hues and their habits of “easy love”, which produced an endless stream of coloured, illegitimate children.

Unlike his predecessors, Col. Thomas Picton and Don José Chacon, Woodford did not keep a black mistress, and unlike them did not leave a coloured family behind him when he died.
Sir Ralph Woodford was determined to stop Trinidadians from behaving in such a manner totally unbecoming of a British colony. John Crowley, historian and anthropologist, commented on Sir Ralph’s disgust for the French practice of dueling:

“Woodford determined to scourge Trinidad of this pernicious custom and used his own almost unlimited power and the severe enactments of the Spanish laws against duelists. The initial effect was to concentrated encounters at Christmas, when Civil Courts were closed. Woodford used the Court of Royal Audience (that remained open to him) to punish offenders.

According to Crowley, Martial Law during the Christmas season in 1820 should have ended on January 2, 1821. However, it was continued until the “Twelfth Night”, January 8, on which day the Board of the Illustrious Cabildo was sworn in, the companies of the West India regiment and the militia were inspected by the Governor, and a ball was held at the Governor’s house.

“By 1824, Woodford’s disciplinary measures had altered considerably the way in which Christmas was celebrated,” writes Crowley. “Contrasting past laxity with the present, the Trinidad Gazette commented: ‘The times since then have changed. The noise, the mirth, the revelry, and the inebriety are now found chiefly amongst the slaves and lower classes.’”

Christmas on the plantations, depended on the nature of the administrators’ relationship with their slaves. In one case, the owner’s wife was invited to a ball given by the slaves from St. Vincent, who had come to Trinidad from that island with herself and her husband in the 1830s. In her diary, the planter’s wife, Mrs. Carmichael, describes that the plantation house kitchen was given over to the slaves so that food may be prepared. Later, she visited the dance where the slaves paid great attention to proper dress and decorum. She was happy to report that there was no drinking or fighting. Music was provided by female singers, accompanied by a drum, with women playing chac-chacs. The dance was given by the slaves to welcome the new slaves who had been freshly acquired by the estate. There was much singing songs of their own composition, speeches and good wishes for a crop of sugar.

At Christmas, allowances and prizes were handed out to the slaves on estates. “A very merry scene” as Mrs. Carmichael described it. The slaves covered their faces with flour and put flour in their hair, calling out “Look at he white face and he white wig”. This form of role reversal is echoed with white people dressing as black gardeners, blackening their faces in the Carnival mask “Neg Jardin”.

The French philosopher and statesman of the 16th century Michel Chevalier wrote: “He who views the events of the past with the eyes of his time is very much exposed to a chance of error. Many a time it is a panorama in which the objects are dim, because one is placed beyond the point of view.”

This particularly so when attempting to understand the relationships between the white slave owners and the African slaves, especially so in that the history of these years were not taught to succeeding generations. Instead, the events of slavery were heavily politicised by the colonials on one hand, who tended to act as apologists - “Well, you know, slavery in Trinidad was short-lived. Slaves were expensive - would you destroy an expensive tractor because it would not start?” or “The French were not absentee owners. They had nowhere to return to because of the revolution and as such were paternalistic.” On the other hand, politicians upon independence, themselves the descendants of slaves, promoted the idea of terrifying, nightmarish conditions on the estates in which slaves were brutalised, murdered and raped out of hand.

The evidence, however, shows a mixture of conditions, reflective of the human condition and the nature of the times. The times themselves were brutal. Some slaves were dangerous, murderous men and women, whether in these islands or in Africa. Some performed heroic feats of bravery to save white people. Exactly the same yardstick may be applied to the Europeans, human nature being universal.

There was, however, one substantial difference, which was, of course, personal freedom. Lionel M. Fraser, historian of the late 19th century, reported the words of this song, perhaps dating from the 1790s and probably the first local song noted in history:

Pain nous ka mangé,

C’est viande beké

Di vin nous ka boué

C’est sang beké

Hé, St. Domingo,

Songé St. Domingo

(The bread we eat is the white man’s flesh,

The wine we drink is the white man’s blood,

He St. Domingo, remember St. Domingo.)

John Crowley remarks on this song: “For the ‘Supreme Tribunal’ the connection of these ‘allusions’ with a plot for insurrection was overwhelming, as was a ceremony held four times a year that was said to be ‘a profane and blasphemous parody of the Christian Sacrament’.”

The other song, perhaps the second ever noted by history, came from Mrs. Carmichael’s diary and dates from the 1830s. She writes:

“I heard some of the young negroes singing, as I thought, rather a singular song. I asked J. to sing it for me; he hesitated and said: ‘Misses, it no good son’. Why do you sing it, then? ‘Cause, misses, it a funny song, and me no mean bad by it’. At last I prevailed on J. not only to sing the song (which turned out to be an insurrectionary song), but to explain it. The words are these:

Fire in da mountain,

Nobody for out him,

Take me daddy’s bo tick (dandy stick)

And make a monkey out him.

Chorus:

Poor John! Nobody for out him, etc.

Go to de king’s gaol,

You’ll find a doubloon dey;

Go to de king’s gaol,

You’ll find a doubloon dey.

Chorus:

Poor John! Nobody for out him, etc.

The explanation of this song is, that when the bad negroes wanted to do evil, they made for a sign a fire on the hillsides, to burn down the canes. There is nobody up there to put out the fire; but as a sort of satire, the song goes on to say ‘take me daddy’s bo tick’ (daddy is a mere term of civility, take some one’s dandy stick, and tell the monkeys to help to put out the fire among the canes for John (meaning John Bull). The chorus means that poor John has nobody to put out the fire in the canes for him. Then when the canes are burning, go to the gaol and seize the money. The tune to which this is sung is said to be negro music; it is on a minor key, and singularly resembles an incorrect edition of an old Scotch tune, the name of which I do not recollect.”

Lapeyrouse Cemetery

Lapeyrouse cemetery in Port of Spain is one of the best examples of this country’s cosmopolitan population. It contains the graves and tombs of the rich and the poor. Reading the inscriptions is a veritable ‘tour de force’ of the known world.

There are rows of graves with Chinese inscriptions, as well as small mansions for the French aristocratic dead. Elegant monuments commemorate the more conservative British, and imposing rotundas and tall obelisks eminent free masons of a previous century.

The various religious rites performed at Lapeyrouse are a true reflection of the country’s multi-faceted society. On a busy afternoon, one can hear the clapping and chanting of the Shouters, while not to far away is the murmur of the Catholics working at their beads. In the gathering dusk, the mournful tubas of the Salvation Army Band keeps pace with alarming flats and sharps as rendered by the reeds and woodwinds. You can hear a kaiso or two and sometimes very god pan. The smell of flowers is often mingled with that of exotic incense, and at times there is the bang and flash of firecrackers. This is for the Chinese.

Indeed, the origins of Lapeyrouse are closely connected with the establishment of present-day Trinidad. Picot de la Peyrouse, a French nobleman, came to Trinidad in 1778. He was a friend and companion of Philip Rose Roume de St. Laurent. His older brother was one of those intrepid explorers who circumnavigated the globe towards the end of the 18th century.

Picot acquired land on the outskirts of Port of Spain, a muddy little village in those days. And together with a gang of slaves he cleared the dense forest and laid out the first sugar cane estate on the island. Picot also built the first factory there for the production of Muscovado sugar, brown, wet and smelling of molasses.

He may have been our first exporter. The Otaheite variety of cane did well and so did the de la Peyrouse family.

A parcel of land, no one knows quite where, was a burial ground even before the de la Peyrouse cane fields. This served a small village, now lost into the suburbs of Port of Spain. This parcel of land bounded on the estate or was perhaps on it. It was called ‘Campo Santo’ (the holy field). The earliest grave is said to have been one for Jean Creteau, who died in 1745.

Port of Spain grew and prospered, and by the time of the British conquest in 1797, it was in need of a bigger and better burial ground. This was marked off in a small area bordered by Tragarete Road, Richmond Street and Fraser Street. A wall was erected around it, and by 1813 it was referred to as the ‘Old Cemetery’. The records concerning the purchase of land from the de la Peyrouse family by the Cabildo have long since been destroyed by the various fires that have swept the town over the years. It would appear, however, that the Littlepage family business did tender for the erection of a wall around the ‘New Cemetery’. This new burial ground acquired the name ‘Lapeyrouse’ by 1831, being on the old estate lands.

By 1823, colonial order was being generally imposed on this unruly, very heterogeneous and bacchanal-prone island. This was highlighted by the inauguration of a section of Lapeyrouse for Anglicans towards the western wall. Not to be outdone, there was soon a place for Catholics - the eastern side.

Within just a few years, the cemetery was again enlarged, this time buying lands from the Shine family, who were originally Irish and are related to the Park and Black families. One Herr Schuler, a German, was employed as keeper. It is interesting to note that several remarkable people became keepers of the cemetery in the 19th century: P.G.L. Borde, for example, the notable historian, and also José Numa Dessource, an early socialist reformer who attempted to start a colony in Venezuela.

Over the next few years, more land was acquired by the Cabildo, this time from Joseph Dert (pronounced Der), who was the son of Benoît Dert, who had started the first coffee estate in an area between Queen’s Park south and Tragarete Road in the 1770s (now part of Newtown). Benoît also introduced freemasonry to Trinidad in the establishment of Lodge United Brothers, which is still in existence today.

Governor Sir Ralph Woodford (1813 - 1829) worked hard for the cause of racial segregation in Trinidad, to the extent of marking off a portion of Lapeyrouse cemetery for the free black people of the town. This in fact cost Schuler his job as for various reasons he lost track of the incoming dead and often buried the blacks amongst the whites and vice versa. The matter was amended only ‘as far as circumstances will admit’. It must have been extremely upsetting for the white dead who had avoided personal contact with the blacks throughout their entire lifetimes, to find themselves sharing the same worms in death...

In those times, Trinidad possessed chain gangs, prisoners chained together, who were set to work building roads like Lady Chancellor Road, cutting canals like Harts Cut in Chaguaramas (which was filled in the Second World War), and digging graves. The men in the chain gang were whipped on a regular basis by a slave called Cinq Sous (five cents). After Cinq Sous’ untimely death, the Illustrious Cabildo was forced to advertise for a new whipper.

Just as today, the cemetery was populated by both the living and the dead, and efforts were constantly made to stop the robbing of tombs of their monuments and mortuary decorations. There was also an active trade in skulls and other bones for the purpose of obeah. Corpses were sometimes exhumed by robbers in search of gold and other valuables and reports were made to the police of the finding of smashed dentures where gold had been removed from them. So much for ‘R.I.P.’ - rest in piece.

In the period just before emancipation, that part of town was pretty rough. There was stickfighting and brawling on an ongoing basis. Corbeaux Town’s name was well earned. Port of Spain’s jamette society staged spectacular funerals that were remembered more than 100 years later by oral tradition. This was recorded by Mitto Sampson in the 1940s, who was otherwise known as ‘Strong Man’. Sampson was famous for his death-defying hangman’s leap from the Dry River bridge, a noose being fastened to it and then placed around his neck.

The cemetery grew in direct proportion to the town, eventually covering some 20 acres. By the 1840s, Ariapita estate, which had once belonged to the wife of Roume de St. Laurent, had been developed for housing. So had been Tranquillity, acquired from the Cummings family. Newtown, once part of the St. Clair estate, was also opened up. Streets were laid out and people moved in. There was an air of prosperity about the place, which was of course reflected at Lapeyrouse cemetery with magnificent mausoleums, some containing chapels where masses may be sung in Latin, even then a dead language.

The cholera epidemics of 1854 wrought a terrible havoc in the town. The connection between the cesspits and the waterwells in most people’s back yards was not made until too late and Lapeyrouse possesses a certain melancholy for the quantity of graves with the names and years of life of the city’s very young inhabitants.

Burying people in the tropics had to be done quickly, even hastily. There is a case of an Indian indentured who was to be buried. Fortunately for him, his cries were heard coming from his coffin by some soldiers of the West India Regiment. He was saved. For many years later, he was known as ‘Lapeau’ (after Lapeyrouse) and made his living as a rat catcher.

Great samaans once lined Main Street in Lapeyrouse. Only two are left. No longer are there royal palms trailing yellow tail birds’ nests. The famous American naval commander Commodore Perry is remembered on the Tragarete Road side in ‘Perry Gate’. This monument is upkept by the American government. On the eastern side, Daniel Hart had erected a massive arch in the 1840s as the main entrance to Lapeyrouse, which was once flanked by elaborate cast iron lamps. These have long been stolen and sold. There was once a lovely water fountain - this too has gone.

The tombstones of Lapeyrouse make interesting reading, ranging from the simple to the hilarious. One ‘Wag’ had engraved on his marker: “Fart free, wherever you be, for this was the death of me.”

There is also the well-known “Malice to none, charity to all” and this inscription which you can find near to the southern gate:

“Stop, traveler, e’er you go by

So are you now, so once was I

As I am now, soon you will be

Prepare yourself to follow me.”

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J.B. Philippe

"My Lord,

            Relying on the liberality and candour so prominently distinguishing Your Lordship's character, and on that calm and moderate spirit which has ever persuaded all the actions of your life; I have presumed to address you on a topic of consummate consequence to a remote, much injured, and considerable portion of His Britannic Majesty's subjects."

With these opening words Jean Baptiste Philip set into motion a sequence of events that has unfolded over the centuries even to this day. J.B. Philip was born in 1796 in Trinidad.

His family was among the wealthy elite coloured sugar planters of the Naparimas. At an early age his father, Louis, brother of Judith Philip of Grenada, Carriacou, Petite Martinique, had noticed that his son was remarkably bright for his age and that he had the potential for a university scholarship. Concerned however in educating the boy to the point where enlightenment might work against him in the context of the slave society in which they lived and where prejudice may be directed at him by ignorant Europeans, he was hesitant to send him abroad. The boy's mother, a free negress, herself unable to read, was the one who convinced her husband, Louis, to send Jean Baptiste to England.

He may have arrived there around 1808 and prepared himself for university. He was regarded as very bright. He entered the University of Edinburgh in 1812. Prof. Carl Campbell in his paper ‘Man from the Naparimas’ remarks:

“Fortunately for him there were at that time no regulations governing the age of entry."

Jean Baptiste remained there until 1815 when he graduated as a doctor at the youthful age of about 19 years. He had written his thesis in Latin, on the subject ‘Hysterical Moods’.

He toured Europe and attended lectures at Montpellier and at Leyden. He had a strong personality and attracted several bright young rich people. He met a beautiful European woman and fell in love with her. But he heeded the advice of a friend who warned him of the impolicy of taking a white wife back to Trinidad. Campbell comments:

"It is not known what degree of racial mixture Philip represented, but it appears that he was sufficiently removed from white to be easily recognised as a man of colour."

When he left England, the island of Trinidad, freshly conquered from Spain, was still a free-wheeling frontier town. Men carried swords and pistols. There were duels; matters of honour were settled in public, Governor Picton burnt, hung, exposed the heads of the decapitated in public places - he did this to slaves as well as soldiers from the Duchy of Hesse who were under his command. There were men who walked the streets who had been present at the massacres of the French royalist in other islands. Child prostitutes lived with men old enough to be their grandfathers. The noblemen cultivated Epicurean taste in their octaroon mistresses.

Upon his return, life was becoming settled. Neapolitan Harps had become popular, duels were outlawed and the public executions were now private. The French creoles in perpetual pursuit of pleasure still kept mistresses, although, for the first time the question was being raised as to the propriety of giving the result of these liaisons their illustrious last names, in some families anyway.

Generalised lawlessness was giving way to institutionalised colonial prejudice under the governorship of Sir Ralph Woodford (1813 - 1829). The free blacks, slave owning, plantation possessing, educated,  began to feel the pressure of British crown colony rule. Gone were the days where atrocities and ‘sad depredations’ were visited on everyone, black as well as white, bringing comfort in the thought  of misery shared. Now it was a one-way street.

The most common Europeans had the rights and privileges of the high born educated upper classes when it came to dealing with free blacks. Woodford stopped them from being called ‘Mister’ and refused their commissions. They were not allowed to practice their professions. They may not inherit land. For the family of Philippe, land was vital; the ownership of land defined their personalities. J.B. Philip did not lose much time. He returned to England to fight a landmark case in the highest court of the Empire. He won it. Prof. Carl Campbell makes these remarks in the end:

"There is no mistaking the heroic quality of the life and achievement of Dr. Jean Baptiste Philip. There was youthful intellectual talent; a providential appearance when needed by an underprivileged social group; courage in the face of dangers; sacrifice of a professional career which could have supported a quite financially rewarding life; a book mature beyond the years of the author, as a personal testament to a principled struggle, and finally an early death at about age 33 just before the moment to triumph. Philip died two weeks before the proclamation of the law granting full civil rights equality to free coloureds. His entire adult life was consumed by the free coloureds' struggle. He did not live long enough to disillusion his admirers; or to sully his record by immersion into politics of conversion of paper rights into actual reality. Even so the issue of slavery, the fact that his family owned slaves as well as he himself, the absence of a clear call for the abolition of slavery from the man who saw the injustices done to his own social group - this, slavery, was the first major stumbling block to his acceptance as a hero to blacks and coloureds, especially the former, who had been slaves during the time of Woodford. Whatever explanations were offered in the post-emancipation period to mitigate Philip's personal involvement in slavery were probably less important as a healer of wounds than the passage of time itself. As slavery became more a memory than the actual experience of many living persons the conditions were created for the commencement of a more generous estimate of the work of the Naparima doctor. No monument was built in his memory as was suggested by a sympathiser in 1842, but some 30 years later there was a torch light procession to his grave in San Fernando, and speeches in praise not of a leader of the free coloureds, but of a hero of the underprivileged people.”

Port-of-Spain's early city life

The development of Port-of-Spain was Governor Sir Ralph Woodford’s pet project in the 19th century.

From the beginning of colonisation in the mid-16th century, the Spanish Crown kept Trinidad always a little obscure. Trinidad had a strategic position as outpost to the Orinoco delta, to the Crown’s possessions in the Guyanas and ultimately to ‘El Dorado’ of Hispanic dreams. In order not to attract pirates and the enemies of His Most Catholic Majesty, the Spaniards kept Trinidad unpopulated, a mere stop-over for Spanish ships in the safe harbour of the Gulf of Paria. They put about the story that Trinidad was indescribably unhealthy and dangerous, full of malaria and yellow fever (which it probably was in those years). Albeit all precautions, Sir Walter Raleigh, the captain of the Queen of England’s Guard, burnt down San José (St. Joseph) in 1595. Edward Tench, a.k.a. Black Beard, the pirate, ‘committed sad depredations in the Gulf of Paria’ in 1716.

The main anchoring place didn’t even receive a proper name, but was merely called a ‘Harbour of Spain’, Puerto d’España. And it was not until the mid-18th century that Puerto d’España became the capital of Trinidad. By 1757, San José de Oruna (St. Joseph) had fallen into delapidation, and the then Governor Don Pedro de la Moneda moved to the village of Puerto d’España, which consisted of two streets, Calle de Infante (Duncan) and Calle Principe (Nelson), a couple of little wooden houses and mud-huts, some 400 mostly Spanish-Amerindian mixed people and three shops. It was surrounded by high woods and mangrove swamps, and the inhabitants were fishermen, hunters, and small farmers of cassava, corn, and even a little sugar cane which they processed into ‘pampelona’, a roughly refined brown sugar.

This tranquil scene was soon to change. In 1783, Grenadian-born Philipe Rose-Roume de St. Laurent obtained the ‘Cedula of Population’ from the Spanish King Carlos III. Puerto d’España grew quickly into a proper little town of 3000 inhabitants. The few mud huts gave way to more than 600 houses. What is now Marine Square was then the waterfront. A mole and a wooden quay ran along what is today South Quay. Fort St. Andres, today opposite City Gate, was offshore, and when the tide came in, it splashed the walls of the old Roman Catholic church, which stood then a little east of its present site.

Trade and commerce started to flourish, and the first steps towards town planning were made: the Rio Santa Ana (Dry River) was channeled into its present bed, and the Rue Sainte Anne (Charlotte) was included, with the town stretching as far north as the Calle de Astuvias (Duke Street). Governor Chacon had the streets covered with macadam (burnt earth), with an open drain running in the middle.

Reportedly, the new settlers brought with them gaiety and festivity. Dance halls and night clubs sprung up all over the town, and every year before Lent the French held Carnival celebrations. The Illustrious Cabildo (the forerunners of the Town Council) started to charge a tax of one dollar per year for each gambling house and each billiard table. Port-of-Spain was the capital of a Spanish colony with Spanish laws, but the population spoke French and patois.

This atmosphere was to change visibly after the British had conquered the island in 1797. The first thing that the new governor, Sir Thomas Picton, did was to install a gallows in front of Government House at the corner of Marine Square and Charlotte Street. At that time, the capital was very overcrowded with approximately 10,000 inhabitants. Picton decided to have a land reclamation scheme implemented, which would turn the tidal mud flats into habitable lots. Starting in 1803, land fill was carted with mules from the Laventille hills, and over the next two decades all the land south of Marine Square was reclaimed from the Gulf.

In 1808, a great fire destroyed many of the wood-built houses of Port-of-Spain. The merchants of the town rebuilt them with stone from the Laventille quarry. In 1812, the prison in Frederick Street was completed, and criminals were ‘thrown’ into it along with debtors, mad people, and animals.

When Sir Ralph Woodford took up office as Governor in 1813, he undertook to give Port-of-Spain a newer and more modern face. Gravel covered the streets, sidewalks were constructed. Coconut oil lamps lent a warm glow to the streets at night. In order to protect the fine and expensive new streets, a law was passed in 1824 that forbid the keeping of pigs in town. Cows, goats, horses and mules had to be kept in compounds and were not allowed to roam the streets anymore. A dog tax was introduced to isolate and destroy the strays that wreaked havoc in the streets at night. Streetsigns were put up. As early as 1814, a proclamation against littering was made - up to then, Port-of-Spainers had endulged in the medieval practice of throwing kitchen waste and other more unmentionable things out of their windows. “Gadé liu!” they used to shout before the contents of the chamberpot came flying...

In 1819, Woodford purchased the abandoned Paradise estate in the name of the Cabildo from the Peschier family. He had the area, about 317 acres, cleared ‘for the recreation of the townsfolk and for the pasturage of cattle’. It was henceforth simply called ‘The Savannah’. In 1845 the name was officially changed to ‘The Queen’s Park’. But no fancy name could keep the townspeople from driving their herds of cattle to the Savannah, quite a frightening sight in Frederick Street!

The Governor also bought more lands from the Peschier estate at St. Anns, which was subsequently turned into the site for the new Government House and the Botanic Gardens. In 1828, the Savannah was for the first time used for horse-racing. Woodford contracted the botanist David Lockhart to design the Botanic gardens, and Lockhart introduced many trees from the tropical Far East into Trinidad, the most famous being the majestic samaan.

Under Woodford’s aegis and personal attention the first primary school for boys was opened in Port-of-Spain in April 1823, another one for girls followed three years later. The main goal was doubtlessly to establish a firmer foothold for the English language, which was still rarely understood or spoken by subjects of the British Crown in Trinidad. The highest academic achievement of the boys school was, after its first year, that 10 of the 252 pupils were able to do square roots in arithmetic!

Port-of-Spain also got new churches under Woodford. The new Roman Catholic Cathedral was begun in 1816 and completed in 1832, and the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity was consecrated in 1823. Hannover Methodist followed in 1826, and Greyfriars in 1837. All Saints Church, the oldest building on the Savannah, was completed in 1846.

Sir Ralph was not around to witness these latter additions to ‘his’ Port-of-Spain. In 1829, he died on board a ship and was buried at sea off the coast of Hispaniola.

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J.B. Philippe

A slaveowner fights against apartheid

The first civil rights case of the New World was not won in the United States, but right here in Trinidad, in 1829.

Doctor Jean-Baptise Philippe was born in the Naparimas in 1796 or 1797. Coming from the background of wealthy coloured sugar planters, his family was one of the many of the ‘free coloureds’ class, who had come to Trinidad under the terms of the Cedula of Population of 1783: they were catholic, had been granted land according to the number of slaves they owned, and had long since established themselves along with their white countrymen as subjects to the Spanish Crown.

In 1797 Trinidad was captured by the British. Besides the Cedula of Population, the Capitulation of 1797 became a most important document with regard to the situation of the free coloureds in Trinidad. In its 5th clause, it says that all foreign settlers and their offspring had the right to be admitted to civil service and to the militia, and in its 12th clause, the Capitulation expressively states: “the free coloured people, who have been acknowledged as such by the laws of Spain, shall be protected in their liberty, persons and property like other inhabitants.”

The first civil Governor, Sir Ralph Woodford, who assumed office in Port-of-Spain in 1813, was - inspite of the modernisations and improvements he implemented in Trinidad - not tolerant with people of colour. Free or not free, Woodford did not like to see non-European faces in the legal or medical professions, and he definitely did not want them to influence the economy as rich landholders and planters. Since he had no free hand to impose any discriminatory legislation, he passed some perfidious laws: he put a tax on property inherited by illegitimate children (which affected coloured children much more than whites) and he started to harrass several small free coloured land-owners with a strict Crown land policy. To enforce apartheid, coloured petitioners before the court had to state their colour on all legal documents, seating in theatres was segregated according to skin colour, as were ferry seats on the steamer between San Fernando and Port-of-Spain. Even the earthly remains of the dearly departed had to be buried in two different sections in the cemetery! Woodford stripped the coloured, educated gentlemen of their being addressed as ‘Mr.’ (which doubtlessly confused the employees at Government House tremendously) and so on and so forth. The man was a pain! But more than that - in his racist fervour, Sir Ralph infringed upon the written law of the Cedula and of the Capitulation, and this was to be his downfall in the end. But Woodford’s neglect of the law of the Cedula of Population did not go unchallenged.

Jean-Baptiste Philippe, who had meanwhile spent his teenage years in England and become a medical doctor, organised a non-violent opposition against Woodford. Quiet collections of signatures for petitions were not sent to the Council in Port-of-Spain, but directly to the government in England. In 1823, Philippe headed a two man delegation to London and presented the case directly to the Colonial Office, describing how the British governors from Picton to Woodford were abusing the civil rights of the free coloureds of Trinidad. He signed his petition not with his name, but with ‘A Free Mulatto’.

Supporting his cause, Jean-Baptiste wrote a book describing the case, entitled ‘AN Address to the Right Hon. Earl Bathurst’. It is not certain whether this book was actually published in 1824, the year that it was printed. The work might have been published for the first time in 1987 by a Trinidadian publishing company under the title ‘Free Mulatto’ .

The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Bathurst, might not have known of the book in 1829, but he knew of the elaborate petition that Jean-Baptiste Philippe presented him. And he ruled in favour of the thoroughly presented case by the doctor, condemning Sir Ralph Woodford for his actions.

Jean-Baptiste Philipe, however, was never to know that he had won the first civil rights case in the New World. Just before the decision of the Colonial Secretary reached him, he died in 1829 at the young age of only 33 years. Ironically, his adversary Sir Ralph Woodford died in that same year as well.