By Henry Sterne

Henry Sterne’s An Exposure of the Apprenticeship documents some of the unfair incidences that unfolded during the Apprenticeship period in Jamaica, which lasted from August, 1834 to July, 1838. Sterne outlines cases where the system operated mostly to the benefit of the former slave-masters and to the detriment of “the apprentices,” mostly because interpretation and enforcement of the law was left up to the discretion of biased special magistrates.

An excerpt from An Exposure of the Apprenticeship:
On the 1st of August, 1834, and until very lately, I was an inhabitant of a populous country parish, called Saint George’s. This parish has been noted in the annals of Jamaica for what is, out there, termed rebellion. Of this, then, most rebellious parish, do I now speak, from a lengthy, personal knowledge and observation.