"On August 7, 1823, 19 enslaved people in Barbados became the property of the British crown after their enslavers died without legal heirs. These individuals had names, families and histories that stretched across years of shared survival under slavery. They included Quow and his son, Caesar; Orange and her son, October; and Abel and Lubbah and their children, Thomas, Kitty and Becky. There were also four sisters-Deborah, Sukey, Betsey and Polly-and their brother, Thomas, along with their children."
"The receiver general, an officer charged with managing payments on behalf of the crown, offered the enslaved Africans to the highest bidders in the king's name. At least 13 planters attended. They purchased individuals, not families. Mothers were separated from their children. Fathers lost sons. Abel and Lubbah saw their three children purchased by different enslavers. Betsey watched her 9-year-old daughter, Medorah, taken away. Only young children, including Sukey's 18-month-old son, James, and Betsey's younger daughters, 4-year-old Caroline and 2-year-old Grace, were sold to the same purchaser alongside their mothers."
"Polly fled with her 11-year-old son, Richard, before the auction began, choosing flight over the certainty of family rupture. Mother and son evaded the authorities and vanished from the historical record, unsold and beyond the crown's reach. The proceeds from the auction, £401, or roughly $56,000 today-the "price of blood," as abolitionists called it in an 1827 pamphlet-landed directly in George IV 's treasury."
On August 7, 1823, nineteen enslaved people in Barbados became property of the British crown after their enslavers died without legal heirs. The crown treated enslaved people as commodities, placing them at public auction in Bridgetown where buyers purchased individuals and separated families. The receiver general sold the enslaved in the king's name and funneled proceeds—£401, roughly $56,000 today—into the royal treasury. Some enslaved people fled to avoid sale and family rupture. Belonging to the crown provided no legal protection from sale, separation, or continued exploitation under slavery.
Read at Smithsonian Magazine
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