By James Williams In A Narrative of Events Since the First of August, 1834, James Williams, a Jamaican “apprentice” (former slave), describes his experiences under the British apprenticeship system that was established as a transition period from slavery to free labour to facilitate the gradual abolition of slavery within the British empire in 1833. His account tells of the brutal punishments he had to endure, including numerous floggings and imprisonments. He also describes the prison conditions where the use of the treadmill was common, as well as how women were constantly abused in many ways. Williams concludes that the system of apprenticeship worsened the conditions of Jamaican ex-slaves, as the former slave-owners used the Jamaican legal system to constantly harass and punish them. An excerpt from A Narrative of Events Since the First of August, 1834: I have been very ill treated by Mr. Senior and the magistrates since the new law come in. Apprentices get a great deal more punishment now than they did when they was slaves; the master take spite, and do all he can to hurt them before the free come;—I have heard my master say, “Those English devils say we to be free, but if we is to free, he will pretty well weaken we, before the six and the four years done; we shall be no use to ourselves afterwards.”

By Baptist Wriothesley Noel The Case of George William Gordon, Esq., of Jamaica by Baptist Wriothesley Noel examines the events that led to the execution by hanging after the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865 of The Right Excellent George William Gordon, National Hero of Jamaica. Noel details Gordon the successful businessman, Christian and family man, as well as the flimsy and unfair charges brought against him by the colonial government for suspicion of having planned the rebellion. An excerpt from The Case of George William Gordon, Esq., of Jamaica: As a Christian and a man of strong affections it was impossible that he should not use his influence to protect the weak from suffering wrong. More than many rich men do, he resembled the patriarch, who could say of himself, “When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. I was a father to the poor, and the cause that I knew not I searched out; and I break the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.”

By Hope Masterton Waddell Hope Masterton Waddell was a missionary in Jamaica when a slave uprising started after December 25, 1831, which lasted into the first weeks of 1832. A Christmas Rebellion is Waddell’s recollection of this rebellion that is considered the largest slave rebellion in the British Caribbean. The uprising was also called the Baptist War because many of the rebels were Baptist denomination. An excerpt from A Christmas Rebellion: Early in December 1831 rumours of an impending servile war began to spread abroad and agitate the community. The slaves, it was said, had bound themselves by a solemn oath to each other to be slaves no longer. The conspiracy was discovered on Salt Spring estate, near Montego Bay, from the mysterious and threatening language of an angry negro to his overseer, which aroused suspicion, led to investigation, and thereby brought to light the whole scheme. The time was near for its being carried into effect, yet nothing seemingly could be done beforehand to prevent it.