Correspondence from the Revolutionary Atlantic 1797–1798

A selection of letters from the Trinidad Historical Society Collection, written by British naval commanders during the period of the French and British wars fought in the Caribbean Sea during the period of the French Revolution. These naval battles between France and England caused various islands in the Caribbean chain of islands to change hands and in so doing alter the destinies of millions of people. 

Sir Ralph Abercromby

Sir Thomas Picton

The Police Force

Under Spanish law, before the conquest of Trinidad by the British forces in 1797, the police force in Trinidad  came under the control of the Agualcil Mayor, who was a member of the Illustrious Cabildo which formed the effective government of the colony.

The police in those days comprised six men. These were kept in at St. Joseph, the old capital of Trinidad. As the little village of Cumucurapo grew into the town known as Port of Spain, their activities became increasingly concentrated there. At the time of the British conquest, Trinidad was going through a very turbulent period. The Spanish colonial establishment was relatively small, comprising a dozen or so officials, headed by Governor Chacon and supported by a handful of local Spaniards, a few Frenchmen and a couple of Irishmen. Their chores derived mostly from criminal elements and republicans both black and white, runaway slaves, freebooters and members of various militaries who absent without leave. All these found a ready heaven in Trinidad, arriving by the hundreds from the nearby islands and from down the main. They challenged Chacon's authority almost daily and alarmed the French creole establishment, who were conservative royalists and who had invested what was left of their fortunes in the purchase of slaves and the establishment of plantations. Both property and life were under threat on a regular basis. Chacon could not handle it for much longer.

All this changed with the arrival of the British forces. Sir Ralph Abercromby left his aide-de-camp Colonel Thomas Picton in command of the island. Historian Michael Anthony recounts his words to Picton:

"I have placed you in a trying and delicate position, nor ... can I leave you a strong garrison: but I shall give you ample powers. Execute Spanish law as well as you can. Do justice according to your conscience. That is all that can be expected of you."

With some 15,000 people, mostly French-speaking, both European and African, who had republican sentiments and disliked the English for their support of the French royalists, Picton's job must have been a tough one. History shows that he dealt forcefully with insurgents, malcontents, revolutionaries, lunatics, criminals and opportunists by deporations, public hangings, decapitations and the exposing of body parts of the executed at the town gate and other public places, as was the custom in England and the continent of Europe at the time.

Colonel Picton created a military police force. One could say that the military tradition of the police service in Trinidad, which has come down to the present, has its origins from Picton's time. Picton "instituted the compulsory enlistment of Free Blacks and coloured men into the police and as a result the police force was soon regarded (and so it was considered for many years) not as an essential service but as a form of punishment." writes Fr. Anthony de Verteuil in his "History of the Irish in Trinidad".

Certainly, it became an important employer for the Barbadians, Grenadians, Vincentians and other "small islanders', who came in great numbers to this island. Even in the 1930s, when former police commissioner Eustace Bernard joined the service, he could write in his memoirs:

"The Trinidadian, not the Tobagonian, thought that it was 'infra-dig' to become a policeman, and that the policeman's status, if he had one, was low indeed."

From very early on, recruits did in fact come from overseas, not just the British colonies in the West Indies, but significantly from Ireland. Fr. de Verteuil recounts that in 1823, the police force consisted of James Mean, who was the Chief of Police, Assistant Chief H.G. Peake, Corporal Alexander Sandy, and Constables John McCarthy, B. Vasquez, Peter Stevens, Michael Christie, James Stephens and Peter MacDonald. 2 years later, there were 100 constables in the service, mostly from Barbados.

The commissioned officers were of course from Europe, as all positions of authority during this period of colonial rule were held by British officials. There was an inspector, later called inspector commandant, and two sub-inspectors. Not all the Barbadians who entered the force in those years had African ancestors.  There was in Barbados a relatively large community of impoverished white people, who had been transported to the island during the previous century, some to be servants of the upper classes, others to serve indentureships on similar contracts as the Indians who came to Trinidad. These were called "Red Legs" for obvious reasons and because of the class system endemic in the colonial period were treated no differently from the coloureds by the official establishment, who were or pretended to be of the upper classes.

A quarter of century later, in 1877, five members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were brought into the local police force. In 1876, the Police Headquarters was built on St. Vincent Street. On the site of this building once stood the barracks of the old West India Regiment which was brought back from Martinique in 1802. It was built in the Italian gothic style of limestone quarried at Picadilly Street in Port of Spain and cost some £90,000 altogether. It was equipped with an iron ball on a flag post, which fell precisely at midday Greenwich mean time.

It contained a residence for the head of the force as well as quarters for the volunteer fire brigade and the volunteer corps. At one time, the stipendiary magistrate of Port of Spain held his daily court there. In 1882, it burnt down as a result of a fire started in the lamp room. 1862 [?] saw the establishment of a "plain clothes detective branch".

In 1884, Commandant Baker described the force as being composed of 436 men of all ranks including 30 additional in that year. His staff consisted of two inspectors, Englishmen, one posted in Port of Spain, the other in San Fernando. A sergeant major from the Irish constabulary for each division, five sergeant superintendents, one a black man, the others former soldiers from the Irish constabulary, 21 sergeants, both white and coloured, 26 corporals of mixed ancestry, three grades of constables, full strength 350, some of who were European, the others mostly from Barbados "and two or three natives of Trinidad in the whole force, who are usually wathless from stupidity. Besides this stupidity, there is a great dislike to enter the force amongst the natives and the dislike has existed for years." [Source?]

J. N. Brierly came to Trinidad in 1874 to join the police force. Making a name for himself as a detective, he became senior inspector and was instrumental in laying out San Fernando and Port of Spain into beats. Fr. de Verteuil recounts that he travelled extensively to all parts of the island on horseback, giving lectures and instructions. Amongst those Irish were Darcy Costelloe, Fahay Flynn, Murphy Peake and Fraser.

The police force was to be severely tested in the last decade of the 19th century with the Hosay Riots and with the Cannes Brulées Riots, when pitched battles were fought both in the countryside and in Port of Spain between poui stick wielding batonniers and policemen armed with riot batons. By 1890, the York and Lancaster regiment that had been stationed at St. James barracks, left Trinidad. They had been stationed here from the conquest, a distinguished corps whose battle honours include the peninsular wars (March 29, 1815) to the 2nd battalion Aribia (Feb 24, 1824), to the whole regiment India (December 12, 1826). To this day, buttons are found bearing the distinctive rose and the numbers 65 and 84.

A great many Irish policemen were to stay on in Trinidad and marry into local families both black and white.

In 1903, the force now considerably strengthened and housed at St. James barracks in quarters vacated by the York & Lancaster regiment, assumed a military character and was turned out in force to deal with the rioters of the Water Riots, who subsequently succeeded in burning down the Red House. Former commissioner Eustace Bernard, who entered the Police Barracks in 1934, remembers a police force cast in the model of the old school, 2000 strong, commanded by Colonel A.S. Mavrogordato, "every officer was white and with few exceptions came from the United Kindgom. They were termed commissioned officers."

Their appointments had to be published in the Royal Gazette, an official British publication. Bernard recalls that the highest rank a constable could get was sergeant major. He remembers the three local men who rose to that rank as Sgt. Major Rose of the ... department, Sgt. Major Woods in charge of training and Sgt. Major Williams in charge of police headquarters. There was a  Sergeants' Mess for non-commissioned officers of the rank of sergeant and above, where no one below that rank may enter and in a similar manner the Officers' Mess.

In those days, there was no such thing as a 44-hour week. Men in training worked for their officers, "making up beds, sweeping floors, cleaning yards and boots, chopping wood etc." Eustace Bernard was in fact the first local man of colour to rise from the rank of constable to that of Commissioner of Police.

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.

Trinidad in Hislop's times

Brigadier Thomas Hislop became Trinidad's second military governor in 1804. Sparsely populated, the census of the period showed a population of free persons to be 7,538, comprising 1,095 French, 505 Spanish, 663 British, and 2,256 Free Coloureds. This free coloured population ranged from pure African to light-complexioned individuals, who would be taken as European anywhere on that continent.

The colonial reality, however, dictated that every black, free or enslaved, be accounted for. In terms of their political persuasions, the free coloureds included royalist sentiment, republican fervour, on to revolutionary zeal. Several were wealthy land and slave owners and had been from two or even three generations, other were artisans and labourers, some did nothing at all. Because of their history on other islands where they had been fired by the prospects of what they imagined republican status would mean for them, and because of their involvement in bloody revolution from Haiti to nearby Grenada, they were held in opprobrium and viewed with suspicion by the British administration.

It was felt that in the event of an attack on the island by either republicans or for that matter the Spanish, the free coloured population could not be counted upon to support British interest. One report stated: "If the inhabitants are not controlled, untold trouble in inevitable." It pointed out that the previous administration's "interference in the affairs of the police has produced arrogance in the people of colour and insubordination among the slaves". The difference in number between white and coloured people made the Cabildo uneasy lest the disturbances of other islands spread to Trinidad through indecisive government. the report to the Cabildo continued:

"To relax the police when we still have 5,000 of these people and daily increasing would be an act of moral madness. Most of them are the scum of the revolution who find here a 'refugium peccatorum' and against whom every precaution is necessary."

They missed "the good old days" of Colonel Thomas Picton's governorship, which featured public executions, decapitations, amputations, the administering of thousands of lashes in public places on any given individual, and the exposing of severed heads and other human body parts at public places and at the entrances of the various towns.

That Picton did not hesitate to dish out this form of justice to the free, the enslaved, the military or the civilians, black or white, was remarked on particularly as many of those who had fled to the main in Picton's time were now returning to the island.

Attorney General Archibald Gloster in writing to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointed out that "Both France and Spain look at Trinidad with a jealous eye and will not fail to take advantage of our foolishness. We are surrounded by the worst class of coloured persons joined to French and Spanish brigands. It they attacked with such a host of enemies within, we are lost and with us the whole archipelago of the West Indies."

In this period, both the civilian population and the military establishment lived in constant fear that a surprise attack on the island might force its surrender. They had considered fortifying St. Joseph, but abandoned that idea in favour of an older Spanish plan to turn Chaguaramas into a formidable bastion in the style of Cartagena de los Indies or those in Cuba. Point Gourde was selected as a military post. The islands of Carrera and Cronstadt were also surveyed and roads cut on them.

The fortifications were built with slave labour levied from the planters. Governor Hislop was not comfortable, however, with this type of defense, especially as a French battlefleet was known to be in Caribbean waters and was expected to attack Trinidad. He turned his attention to La Vigie, now Fort George.

The island, unlike its neighbour Tobago where there was a fort overlooking every bay and cove, had almost no defensive armament. There were four cannons at Fort Picton in Laventille, seven cannons at Fort Abercromby, two in Macqueripe Bay and twelve at Fort George. 

The Cabildo Building

 There is a little building on Sackville Street, recently restored, right next to the newly built office of the Attorney General, that has been known for years as the cabildo building. Tradition has it that this, Trinidad's first governing body, once sat there. This is very likely, as the Cabildo sat in many places, not having a home of its own. It met in the private residences of its members.

The building on Sackville Street, however, does not date from Spanish times, which came to an end in 1797 with the British conquest. The Illustrious Cabildo continued up until the late 1840s and then metamorphosised into the City Council. That particular building may have belonged to the Senoir family, a distinguished Spanish family of Jewish descent.

The Cabildo, as a Spanish governing institution, involved in administration and deliberation, is claimed by some to extend as far back as the tribal assemblies of the original Iberian peoples in the Spanish peninsuar, prior to the arrival of the Romans. This is an interesting piece of historical trivia for anyone wishing to study the origins of jurisprudence in Trinidad and Tobago!

Be that as it may, it started as an annual court to elect their magistrates and their municipium for the year, to manage their local affairs. This annual assembly also legalised or censured the proceeding of the provincial governors.

From the 400s A.D. to 700 A.D., under the Visigoths, and from 700 to 1000 A.D., under the Muslims, the conditions in Spain favoured the risk of the warlords and the powers of the Cabildo waned. It was not until some 300 years later, in the 1300s, that a notable revival took place and the Cabildos were again supported by the crown.

With the discovery of the New World, it was inevitable that the Spanish authorities should take with them their system of Government. The Cabildo was established in Trinidad in 1592. Its membership was slightly altered in 1797, when the British started to keep Spanish low in place.

The revenue of the Cabildo was obtained from various sources, some of which have continued in practice to the present day. The following is a summary of the general heads revenue and the average yield in the early 1920s (from Dr. K.S. Wise, "Historical Sketches of Trinidad and Tobago", Vol 3):

1. Licenses to sell spirituous liquors, which cost about $10 each year. About 50 licenses in Port of Spain yielded about $6,000 a year.

2. Licenses for billiard tables, $4 monthly. Port of Spain had four tables, yielding $192 a year.

3. Rents for stalls in the public fish and flesh markets, yielding $1,100 a year.

4. Rents of land down the islands for planting cotton, provisions etc. Monos, Huevos, the Perroquets (now Five Islands), Diego Martin Islands (now Carrera and Cronstadt) and El Pato had been granted to the town of Port of Spain by Governor Chacon. Rent was from 4 -6 reals a quarree, totoal yield about $100 a year.

5. Rents of lots in Marine Square and in the Grass Market, yielding $1000 a year.

6. Rents of lots at the western extremity of the town, called Puerto Cacao, granted by Chacon, yielding about $120 a year.

7. Rent of the Cocal on the east coast, granted to the town by the Spanish king, renting for $300-500 a year, but for a few years had been without a tenant.

8. Rents of the new lots east and west of the new mole made by filling at the end of frederick Street and which formed a new part of the town. Granted to Port of Spain by Governor Picton. Annual rent $50-$150, yielding $2400 a year.

9. Grant of one quarter of one percent, on inward and outward cargoes at the port. This was collected by the customs officers and forwarded to the Cabildo. It had been granted by the King of Spain, yielding $2500-$3000 a year.

10. Payments for the use of water from the public well and for the use of the pump and aquaeduct by ships in the harbour. Yield $1000 a year.

11. Fines imposed on delinquents, varied yield.

12. Tax on carts, $2 a month, yielding $1400 a year and wholly spent on maintenance of the streets.

13. Duty on foreign liquors, yielding $1000 a year.

The total annual revenue of the Cabildo was thus approx. $17,000, exclusive of the various fines collected in the Courts of the Alcaldes. The population of Port of Spain was about 7,000.

The annual administrative expenditure of the Cabildo was:

Escribano (Secretary) $300

Interpreter $400

Chief of Police $912

Gaol Keeper $365

Seven Police $1680

Collector, 3% on collections $800

Rent of gaol and maintenance of prisoners unable to keep themselves $2,700

Rent of Caibldo building $960

Maintenance of properties $400

Celebration of the Feast of St. Joseph $400

"The necessary expenses to keep the streets in order were variable from year to year, as also were the expenses of the maintenance of slaves employed on works of public utility," writes Dr. Wise.

The records show that any money left over after expenditure had to be invested in fixed property, so as to increase the revenue in future years. In 1802,  fish and flesh market was built. Later, a gaol was completed, costing $20,000. Afterwards, a hospital for those found ill in the streets was commenced, and in 1809, $5000 was spent to repair the mole at the foot of Frederick Street.

The houseowners of Port of Spain also made a voluntary payment to the Cabildo for the maintenance of fire engines. This was introduced by the first British governor, Sir Thomas Picton. 

Your Free Paper Burn

The tragedy of slavery came to Trinidad with the Cedula of Population. This remarkable document, promulgated by the Spanish Crown, made it easy for Catholics to arrive in this deserted, neglected, but in terms of the times very strategic island. In terms of significant beginnings, this was a big one for Trinidad.

Prior to 1788 the island had no economy and was very impoverished. The difference in life style between the few enslaved and their owners was made even more opaque by the status of the children they shared.

One of the significant things that occurred with the Cedula of Population was the arrival of a large quantity of black people who were not slaves. Some had been born into slavery but had gained their freedom in various ways, for example as rewards for acts of kindness, faithful service or heroic action. Some bought their freedom. Others had been born that way as a result of parents being themselves free.

The fact is that of the ten or twelve thousand free people of colour who came to Trinidad with the Cedula, the majority were slave owners and a handful were big time slave masters. As an institution, the ownership of your fellow human being was an economic necessity. There was no economy outside the plantation system, except in shipping and trading, and money did not change hands as we have seen from earlier articles on the history of banking.

It has been put forward by Vidia Naipaul in his ‘Loss of El Dorado’ that part of the British government's disaffection with Sir Thomas Picton was that he followed the lead of the planters, both French and the coloured, and made Trinidad into a slave island by the 1800s. What was becoming policy was to offer Trinidad as being soft in slavery as a sop to the abolishment. Be that as it may, by the time the British government announced its decision to free the slaves, the real reason was not humanistic, but purely economic. From one day to the next, black slave owners and the previously held slaves were one and the same in the eyes of the law, society and to each other, although this may have been very one sided view. Both the white planters and their coloured counterparts were faced with economic collapse as their workforce walked.

Equally keenly felt was the hard-won ‘maintenance of status’ by the  black former slave owners. The terms of the Cedula by which they had come to Trinidad provided a very unique arrangement for free black people at the time. They could own land, slaves, benefit from tax relief, inherit property, educate their children in respectable professions, become commissioned in the militia, make a lot of money: in short, live life for all intent and purpose like the white people.

With the conquest of Spanish Trinidad by Britain in 1797, these terms relating to the free blacks were enshrined in the articles of surrender. In the period after the Napoleonic wars, that is in governor Sir Ralph Woodford's time (1813 - 1829), there was a move to repeal those articles relating to the free coloureds. Fortunately for them, produced from their ranks a wealthy, highly educated, politically active and energetic person, whose name was Jean Baptiste Philippe.

Philippe travelled to London, armed with a petition, and made important representations. His case for the rights of the free coloureds in Trinidad was upheld in the House of Lords. Free blacks and people of colour were able maintain their status under the law. Racial prejudice, dished out to them by the Europeans under the Woodford administration, was dealt with. At the end of the day there still existed a social abyss between them and their slaves, which was not to change before emancipation in 1834.

This awesome dichotomy between the people of African descent, slave and former master, has eroded through the centuries, and the real historic reasons have long been forgotten. The myth that black people naturally do not like to see their own prosper has its foundations in the class structure among people of African descent, which has been formalised by the end of the 1900s. Those were the years that local political movements began to group themselves, but  later the successors of those same political organisations could not fill the lack of unity. People of African descent became mixed up about whether they are Trinidadians or merely the ‘African problems’ of the segmented society. The social problems of this segmented society, and this has not to do with tribalism, may be summed up in the obituary of a well-off coloured businessman:

"Rich, educated, strictly moral, yet he had no place in society, because of those social distinctions with which the country is cursed. And he was not without manly pride, which enabled him to be satisfied with a very small number of chosen companions rather than to court those whom he felt to be his inferiors morally and intellectually, and whose only claim to consideration consisted . . . in the purity of their Caucasian blood . . . He felt keenly the disabilities under which certain races, notably that to which he himself belonged, were subjected." 

It was not in England's interest to deal with the social, moral and economic fallout of these beginnings. The responsibility lies with us at any point in time, because history is about capturing a beginning and following its resulting course of events in an attempt to organise meaning.

19th Century Carnival

Carnival today continues much as it has done for the last two hundred years of its evolution in Trinidad - a national exercise in joy and creativity, harmony and togetherness. Carnival is daring and inventive - long may it reign!

The 1890s Carnival went through one of its many phases in colonial Trinidad. Originating in both the traditions of Western Africa and the Latin countries of the Mediterranean, Carnival became a pre-Lenten festival: Saturnalia for the god Saturn, Bacchanalia for the wine-god Bacchus, was brought to Trinidad by the Spaniards in the mid-17th century and by the French in the 1780s.

Thr Africans in the 18th century, both enslaved and free, had memories of the tribal ballad songs, sung at market fairs and in the various courts of their kings. Those songs were in praise of their rulers, or sometimes to win the favour of some visiting potentate. In Africa, the people shouted:’Kaiso’, a word meaning ‘Well done’.

When on Emanciaption day in August 1834 the former slaves joined the free coloureds and free Africans in the French Mardi Gras, Carnival evolved from being a round of fetes and balls to a street festival with spectacular parades termed ‘canboulay’ (cane burnt). These bands were led by ‘batoniers’, fierce stick fighters with the drums of the calenda ringing in their ears, and the songs of the chantuelles evoking in their hearts the valour of their ancestors.

To the polite members of society, these were the savage and degrading aspects of Carnival, the occupation of the ‘diametre’ (jamette) or those beyond the diameter of society. It was largely because of these forms, now almost disappeared, that Carnival was almost brought to an end.

In those days the Carnival ran for three weeks and may be said to have begun with the end of the Christmas festivities on the feast of Epiphany. The Spanish Parangueros blended into the rest of society for a series of fetes, balls and street parades, all coming to an end with the beginning of Lent and the season of fasting and abstinence and, no doubt, many ‘mea culpas’.

A feature that distinguished the Carnival of the 19th century was the use of masks. The festival was then being referred to as a ‘masquerade’. The music was supplied by the African banjos and the local string bands, goat skin drums, conch shells and later bamboo cut to varying lengths (tambu bambu) and struck on the ground or beaten with sticks, thus providing the percussion. The steelband was not to appear on the scene until the early 1940s.

The Origin of Trinidad Carnival

Carnival in Trinidad is rooted in historical irony. Just at a time when the British conquered the island in 1797, and Sir Thomas Picton started to impose a very puritan and austere governance with iron military rule, the catholic festival gained impetus.

“The French were never in possession of the island by virtue of discovery or conquest,” writes Andrew Carr in ‘Book of Trinidad’. “But they migrated to the island in such numbers that they exercised a cultural dominance in the society.” In terms of Carnival, this cultural dominance fell on fertile ground: the French settlers’ neighbours were of Spanish descent and were quite familiar pre-lenten celebration. ‘Burrokeet’, a distinctly Spanish mas which came to Spain out of North Africa, depicts after the Roman wine-god Bacchus riding on his donkey to the ‘bacchanalia’!

In the 17th century, Carnival in Trinidad must have looked like that: five or six young men dressed up as burrokeet (these probably comprising the priest, two or three Farfan cousins and a Robles or Lopez), roaming the streets in San José de Oruna, visiting the fourteen or so thatched-roof houses where their friends lived, and dancing, eating and drinking on this warm Tuesday night, the great forest closing round, enjoying the merriment before the austerities of Ash Wednesday morning dawned.

This idyllic scene was definitely to change in 1783, when the French and Free Coloured settlers came to Spanish Trinidad under the Cedula of Population. The Spaniards at that time numbered 126 Europeans and 245 Free People of mixed European and African descent. When the British conquered Trinidad in 1797, a census numbered 2,151 people of European descent, 10,009 slaves of African descent, 4,467 free people of mixed descent and 1,082 Amerindians. Carnival in terms of private costume balls - the term ‘fete’ was coined then - was already popular among the white and coloured elite, as were dinners, balls, hunting parties and ‘fetes champetres’, outdoor picnics. Those festivities took place between Epiphany and Lent, coming to a culmination on ‘Mardi Gras’ (fat Tuesday).

“During this French period, in addition to the gay balls and parties, bands of individuals indulged in much frolic for some weeks before the Carnival Monday and Tuesday,” writes Carr. “Disguised and masked, and accompanied by musicians playing such instruments as the violin, guitar, cuatro, bandol, mandolin and chac-chac, they went on foot or in carriages to the homes of friends or on parade in the streets.”

The Amerindian people kept entirely aloof, Carr states further. African slaves were prohibited by law from taking part, except if an individual received special permission.

And what did the costumes in those pre-Emancipation days look like? People wore elegant disguises, like the French marquis, the English noblewoman and the Swiss damsel. Besides those, it was a time for the French planters to dress up like their servants: there were grooms and postillions, priests and friars. Some white women disguised themselves as the beautiful mulatresse their husbands so desired, while some of the slave masters dressed up like the garden labourers, the ‘neg jardin’.

When slavery was abolished in 1834, the aristocratic and exclusive character of Carnival disappeared, and it became a more popular affair. Black and coloured people started to participate in the canboulay parades. It must have come as a shock to the polite society, when the former slaves turned tables and dressed up in Carnival like Europeans, with white masks! The spirit of Carnival was thus completed; for two days each person could pretend to be the other, whose qualities they secretly or openly envied...

In the 1840s, Carnival bands started to form, mostly consisting of no more than a dozen people portraying characters. There were pirates and turks, wild Indians of South America (portrayed by Spanish peons from Venezuela), and even a personation of the Grim Reaper himself, with a skeleton painted on a tight-fitting black outfit. Some bands even did dramatic performances, with mock-beating and chain-pulling going on in the streets.

Yet, the years of the French cultural dominance had come to an end, and for the predominantly protestant British Victorian establishment Carnival was degenerate and undesirable. The authorities’ main goal of the coming decades became the maintaining of public order, almost a contradiction in terms to Carnival. Also, the population of Port-of-Spain grew dramatically in the decades after Emancipation. Between 1860 and 1880 it grew from 16,457 to 29,468 inhabitants. 40% of the latter number had been born outside of Trinidad and were not even aware of the catholic festival tradition.

In 1858, Governor Robert W. Keate prohibited the wearing of masks - something which to that day was an integral part of the ‘masquerade’. There was not a time, however, that Carnival aficionadoes didn’t find ways around any obstacle or prohibition: more and more masks were carried on sticks, a tradition which holds to this day, when no costume is complete without its ‘standard’.

Inspite of the attempts by the government to curb and suppress Carnival, the canboulay parades were increasingly taken over by people who came form the lower classes in east Port-of-Spain. The newspapers described this ‘Jamette Carnival’ as an “unremitting uproar, yealling, drumming and blowing of horns”. In 1881, Captain Arthur Baker on horseback lead a riot squad of the police charging into the masqueraders. It came to a massive riot, to this day remembered as the Canboulay Riots. The expert stickfighters, spurned on by the chantwells, proved to be quite a tough match for the policemen, who were themselves armed with batons! Many were injured on that fateful day.

By the 1890s, Carnival started to fade away from the wild days of the jamette society to the more competition-oriented middle-class festival it is today. Merchants began to realise that improvement of Carnival would eventually lead to economic benefits. At the turn of the century, the first competition for best-dressed band and individual was held on King Street (now Independence Square) by Town Councillor and merchant Ignacio Bodu. With prizes to be won, bands started to have more elaborate costumes, and all the better ones were lead by a King or Queen. The competition set the tone for the development of Carnival all through the 20th century.

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Some traditional mas

The Neg Jardin

In the mid-19th century, this was already considered a ‘traditional’ mas. The disguise by the white planter as the field slave was later adopted by the batonnier or stickfighter. The outfit consisted in jackets, worn by the ‘zom camisol’ (jacket men), trousers turned inside-out, belts strung with ribbons and handkerchiefs. The headties were called ‘fula’, from the French ‘foulard’. On Tuesday, the Neg Jardin came out in ‘kandal’, knee-long pants made of satin or velvet, alpagats (rope sandals), a bright shirt and a heart-shaped panel losely pinned on his chest called ‘fol’. The goal of the stick-fighter was to rip off his opponent’s ‘fol’ and thus win the fight.

Dame Lorraine

Dame Lorraine was played in the yards of the early mas camps, where the bands gathered at night before parading in the street. With huge padded breasts and buttocks, the Dame Lorraine ironically represents an elegant 18th century outfit of a French lady. Both men and women disguised as Dame Lorraine, engaging in mock plays and dances, and the haunting melody of the Dame still sends shivers down one’s spine:

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Pissenlit

Freely translated as the ‘stinker’, and you will soon see why! ‘Piss en lit’ is French for ‘wet the bed’, and in true J’ouvert tradition this mas was obscene and, well, smelly. During the jamette Carnival, this must have been the most objectionable character. Always played by a man, who dressed like a woman, wearing long, transparent nightgowns, the Pissenlit had with him menstruation cloths stained with red fluid. “They danced an early version of winin’, the rapid shifting of the pelvis.” writes Daniel Crowley in ‘Trinidad Carnival’. The Pissenlit also sang obscene songs and had a poui stick protruding between the legs, playing sexual horseplay. The mas did not survive in the 20th century.

Moko Jumbie

The Moko Jumbie or stilt walker is known throughout the West Indies. Sometime he is called John Canoe, and he may appear not only in Carnival, but also during Christmas. Sometimes accompanied by a dwarf to accentuate his height, the Moko Jumbie would parade in the streets, collecting money and flirting with the Creole ladies who watched the spectacle from the safe height of their wrought-iron balconies on the first floor! A Moko Jumbie sometimes ran into danger, too. In his lofty heights, his head was easily caught in the overhead electrical wires! Also, when the ladies on the first floor had a jealous guard, two strong hands might have pushed the stiltwalker over! In fact, there is an incident of a Moko Jumbie at Green Corner, who leant against the first-floor window of a pub at the Plaza Hotel at the northeastern corner, and got into a quarrel with a sailor in the pub. The sailor gave the Moko Jumbie a good push, and the poor stiltwalker fell diagonally across the intersection, splitting his head in two on the wall of Globe cinema!

Jab Molassi

The Jab Molassi (Molasses Devil) is one of the many devil masks of Carnival. When Emancipation came around and the former slaves were able to participate in the revelry, they brought with them satirical depictions of plantation life, the only life in the realm of their experience. Falling into a pot of boiling molasses had been the ultimate dread on a plantation, and the Jab Molassi interprets that. He wears short pants or old, frilled trousers with the legs cut off. A wire tail with a brush at the end protrudes from his backside, chains, horns, lock and keys complete the costume. Most importantly, this ‘Diable’ is smeared with molasses, grease, or mud.

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Lionel ‘Lanky’ Belasco - the Scott Joplin of Calypso

Amongst the truly great and almost forgotten figures of Trinidad music is Lionel Belasco. Born around 1881 to a musical family, his birthplace might have been Barbados, Venezuela or Trinidad. His mother was a piano teacher, his father, a Sephardic Jew, sang baritone, played organ and violin.

Although his parents tried their best to give little Lionel a classical musical training, the young man was more drawn towards roots music. He became a ‘gentleman stickfigher’, one of those ‘zom camisol’, middle-class men who wore jackets and accompanied the stickfighters.

At the turn of the 20th century, Port-of-Spain might well have been the most cosmopolitan place on earth, considering its small size. Syrians, Chinese, Portuguese, Indians, Europeans from various countries, Jews, Africans - everybody contributed, and ‘Lanky’ was exposed to the musical styles and festivals of the various ethnic groups, but most of all our own Creole culture.

The Belascos lived in Duke Street, not far from Laventille and Belmont, where African Orisha and Rada cults were still practiced. Fascinated with Afro-Caribbean and South American ritual music, Lionel began to compose at the age of twelve.

His preferred instrument was the piano, and like some of his middle-class contemporaries he “continued the bourgeois Creole tradition of modifying the sounds of outdoor Carnival for indoor performance”. By the early 1900s, Belasco’s band performed at get-togethers for the colonial elite, for example at Government House, and he taught piano to the Governor’s daughter.

Belasco always liked travelling. He got involved in the fledgling cinema business in Trinidad and in other places in the Caribbean and Guyana. In 1914, he made his first music recording in Trinidad for the American company Victor.

Shortly afterwards, there were rumours that Lionel’s lessons to the Governor’s daughter had gotten beyond the realm of piano playing. The girl was sent back to England, and Lionel went to New York. He was probably the first one who brought Trinidadian music to that city, recording frequently in his late teens and early twenties. He and Sam Manning became quite popular in New York City in the 1920s. Belasco accompanied vaudevillian Phil Madison in recordings, and recorded piano rolls for a company called QRS. Before the Great Depression, Lionel regularly returned to Trinidad to judge calypso competitions during Carnival. He picked up new songs, and went back to New York with his own interpretations to perform and record. He also recorded with Wilmoth Houdini, a chantwell from Trinidad whom he had admired greatly in his youth. Houdini became thus the first calypsonian since Julian Whiterose to be on record.

During those years, Belasco also ran a piano store in upper Manhattan. Aspiring musical stars from nearby Harlem, such as Fats Waller, used to drop by and practice on some of the instruments before going on a gig at night.

In 1933, Lionel decided to return to Trinidad. His arrangement with the Gokool brothers and lawyer Mikey Cipriani to establish a theatre in Port-of-Spain for him to manage went sour, and after losing a law suit against the Gokools, Lionel went back to the United States and continued his recording career there.

In the early 1940s, Lionel teamed with singer Massie Patterson. Together, they published a booklet of calypsoes called ‘L’Année Passée’. Belasco claimed he had published in it the 1900s. One of the songs, based on a Martiniquan folksong, which was copyrighted in his name, became later the most famous song of the World War II era: “Rum and Coca Cola”, sung by Lord Invader to a melody almost identical with Lionel Belasco’s tune from ‘L’Année Passée’. A famous lawsuit resulted from this, which Lionel won.

As he grew older, Belasco continued to tour and perform, but hardly recorded anymore. The greatest composer of West Indian music died in 1967 at the age of 85 in New York, leaving a legacy of some four hundred ballads, pasillos, waltzes, calypsoes and rumbas.

(Lionel Belasco’s recordings can be found on Rounder Records CD 1138, “Goodnight Ladies and Gents”)