Mary Prince

Mary Prince (c. 1788–after 1833) was born in Devonshire Parish, Bermuda, to an enslaved family of African descent. While she was later living in London, her autobiography, The History of Mary Prince (1831), was the first account of the life of a black woman to be published in the United Kingdom.

Belonging to the genre of slave narratives, this first-hand description of the brutalities of enslavement, released at a time when slavery was still legal in Bermuda and British Caribbean colonies, had a galvanising effect on the anti-slavery movement. It went through three printings in the first year. Prince had her account transcribed while living and working in England at the home of Thomas Pringle. a founder of the Anti-Slavery Society. She had gone to London with her master and his family in 1828 from Antigua.

Mary Prince was born into slavery in Brackish Pond, now known as Devonshire Marsh, Devonshire Parish, Bermuda. Her father (whose only given name was Prince) was a owned by David Trimmingham, and her mother a house-servant held by Charles Myners. She had three younger brothers and two sisters, Hannah and Dinah. When Myners died in 1788, Mary Prince, her mother and siblings were sold as household servants to Captain Darrell. He gave Mary and her mother to his daughter, with the slave girl becoming the companion servant of his young granddaughter, Betsey Williams.

At the age of 12, Mary was sold for £38 sterling (2009: £2,290) to Captain John Ingham, of Spanish Point. Her two sisters were sold the same day, each to different masters. Her new master and his wife were cruel, and often lost their temper with the slaves. Mary and other slaves were often severely flogged for minor offences.

Ingham sold Mary in 1806 to a master on Grand Turk, who owned salt ponds. The Bermudians had used these seasonally for a century for the extraction of salt from the ocean. The production of salt for export was a pillar of the Bermudian economy, but could not easily be produced. Originally, raking had been performed by whites due to the fear of black slaves being seized by Spanish and French raiders (slaves were considered property, and could be seized as such during hostilities). Black slaves crewed the Bermuda sloops that delivered the rakers to and from the Turks Islands and delivered salt to markets in North America, engaging in maritime activities while the whites raked. When the threats posed by the Spanish and French in the region reduced, however, slaves were put to work in the salt pans.

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