Jamaica's first car

A Benz Velo may well have been Jamaica's first car.

If you were to Google "Jamaica's first car", you would be led to believe (by such reputable sources as the Georgian Society of Jamaica and the Daily Gleaner) that it was imported to Black River, St. Elizabeth, in 1903 by H. W. Griffiths of Hodge's Pen.

There's just one problem: Griffiths' car was not Jamaica's first. Dr Joy Lumsden has pointed out the same on her website 'A Steampunk History of 19th Century Jamaica'. The first car was actually brought to Jamaica six years earlier by Henry Walker, a resident of St. Andrew.

Walker was a mechanical engineer and an English expatriate. Born in the industrial city of Manchester in 1833, he migrated to Jamaica in the 1860s, by Dr Lumsden's best guess. Walker appears to have developed a relationship with a servant named Agnes Sarah McKen, with whom he had his first child in 1870. McKen was 10 years younger than Walker, born in Golden Grove, St. Thomas, in the year 1843. McKen was most likely black or mixed-race, as her children with Walker are described as "coloured" or black in later documents. Between 1870 and 1885, McKen and Walker had five children together (that I have been able to identify), four boys and one girl. In 1885, they married at St. George's Church in Kingston. Their only daughter, Helena Maude Walker, married Robert A. Marley, uncle of Bob Marley.

There is more to be learnt about Henry Walker, who does not appear in the Daily Gleaner archives until the 1890s. What was his business as an engineer in Jamaica? When did he leave Britain? Where was he trained and educated? His relation to Bob Marley and his heading a mixed-race family makes him appear a curious - but not untypical - white middle class resident of Jamaica in the Victorian period.

Walker's car

The story begins in May 1896, when an American car magazine called The Horseless Age published a letter from Walker. He told the magazine's readers that he had "a steam carriage, which he had built for his own use." He claimed that Jamaican "servants are a great nuisance... impertinent, thievish and lazy to a degree." He announced his intention to buy a motor carriage, perhaps of American manufacture.

Walker made good on this announcement, and in February 1897 he submitted a letter to the Kingston City Council, asking "for permission to use a motor carriage, which he intended to import, in the streets of the city." The council had no objection, and on 24 July his car arrived from Southampton, England, via the Royal Mail steamship Derwent. The Daily Gleaner reported "Mr Walker has removed it to his house in St. Andrew, but we may expect to see it on the streets of Kingston before long."

Walker had little chance to see that through, as on 17 December 1897, he died of nephritis. It appears he may have died intestate, as in May 1898 the Administrator-General ordered his car to be auctioned. It was described as "one horseless carriage with leather hood, complete with all necessary fittings. This carriage is from one of the leading makers in the world and is very strong, light, speedy, and easy running." It's not known exactly who purchased Walker's car after he died, but Dr Lumsden suggests it may have been Dr John A. Carpenter, a dental surgeon in Kingston. As early as November 1898, Dr Carpenter was reported as driving around Kingston, attracting "much public attention."

I have not found any information on the actual manufacturer of Walker's car. If he did not leave a will, the information will not be found there. It may be possible to find a cargo list for the Derwent in 1897, but my research so far has not found one. Historical car registration records, if they exist at all for Jamaica, would not cover Walker's car as the first motor car law was only introduced in 1907. Based on the information that is available, it's unlikely the car was of American manufacture, as it was imported from England. England's car industry was minimal at this point, so it was probably French or German. Therefore, Walker's car may have been one of several different makes and models, such as a Benz Velo or Victoria, a Peugeot Type 3, or a Panhard et Levassor.

Conclusion

It would take another 15 years after Walker imported his car for automobiles to take off in popularity in Jamaica, but what is evident is that Jamaica's first car arrived at the onset of automotive manufacturing history. Even the six year difference between 1897 and 1903 marks a major change in the development of the car. But for car enthusiasts of Jamaica, they can now rest assured in taking 24 July 1897 as the beginning of Jamaica's automotive history.

P.S. So what of H. W. Griffiths of St. Elizabeth, who in popular perception is considered the owner of the first car in Jamaica? Griffiths was certainly a notable early motoring advocate, and a voice who was published more than once in the Daily Gleaner on the subject. It is easy to see how his more vocal presence was mistaken for him being the earliest pioneer of this form of transport on the island. Perhaps his story will need to be explored in more detail in another blog.

The UWI Mona experience as an international postgrad student

The Caribbean Historical Research Unit room, which I used as a de facto study space during my first semester.

I have been a registered student of the University of the West Indies, Mona, for about ten months now. Not long after I arrived, I was warned by a couple people that UWI was a bureaucratic nightmare. I am pleased to say that, so far, my experience has not been all that bad. In this post I will outline some of my highlights and issues about the university to date.

As I outlined in my previous blog posts, my experience pre-arrival was not perfect. It took a very long time for the history department to administratively deal with my application (my course, the MPhil History, had technically been closed to applications in the year prior to my arrival). I had no meaningful response for months from Marlene Hamilton Hall, the accommodation for postgraduates, and so, four weeks before I left the UK, I paid the deposit and first month’s rent to Leslie Robinson Hall, a hall operated by a private company (138 Student Living). They subsequently ‘lost’ my payment until two weeks before I arrived, and were basically useless in facilitating my arrival. I had to pay $40 USD for an airport transfer from JUTA, even though 138 claimed to offer an airport transfer service.

That brings me up to my arrival. UWI, Mona provides almost no support tailored to international students. I was very lucky to find that I was not the only non-Caribbean international student arriving - there were four undergraduates from the University of Birmingham, among others, who were on a year abroad. Thus, we struggled to get to grips with things together for the first few weeks. Help was minimal from UWI, such as the International Students Office, which has provided no direction or assistance whatsoever in the course of my studies, other than to organise an Extension of Stay on my passport, for which it was actually quite useful.

The staff of the History and Archaeology Department have been very pleasant to deal with for all matters in which they could help, although the lack of graduate history researchers in recent years meant that most of the faculty were unprepared for someone like me. I was the only new graduate student in this academic year. There is no real graduate student community, in any meaningful sense, for the humanities. One reason for this is that many students take research degrees part-time, not full-time, like myself. No one from the department, faculty, or Office of Graduate Studies ever reaches out to me or asks for my feedback or opinion on any matter at all. The History and Archaeology department’s seminar series is a welcome oasis, and one of the only things that makes me feel part of the department at all. The other are the periodical field trips - I managed to visit Port Royal, Woodside (St. Mary parish), and the Blue Mountains as part of field trips this year, which has been a very nice and instructive experience for me.

Newcastle looking down on Kingston. From the history department field trip to the Blue Mountains.

Probably the highlight of my experience at UWI has been the Main Library. Although it is not perfect, the open shelf history, reference, and periodical collections are rather good. The West Indies and Special Collections, likewise, is a gem. I even worked there for a couple of months cataloguing a couple boxes of the Hugh Shearer papers. I do wish the library would be more proactive in taking out books from the Reserve Book Collection which are not on reading lists and putting them back on the open shelves. I also dislike the recent trend of buying ebooks instead of physical books (for instance, Jack Greene’s edition of James Knight’s history of Jamaica is only available through the library as an ebook with no pagination). Having moved away from campus at new year’s, I don’t really borrow books anymore, which is probably my biggest loss from moving off campus.  The fact the Post Graduate Learning Commons has been closed since before I arrived, and remains so with no opening date in sight, was a major let down in my first semester. The only postgraduate study space on campus is part of the Engineering Library, which I have to admit I never visited, perhaps to my loss. Fortunately, I have been able to use the Caribbean Historical Research Unit (formerly the Social History Project) room, which belongs to the department.

I did experience a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare when I tried to get my Sagicor/UWI health insurance card. The insurance is one benefit of the compulsory miscellaneous fees that you pay as a student each year (approx. 100 GBP). I was never contacted to be told that the card was ready to be picked up, although I realised that the cards were being distributed at the Undercroft on the centre of campus. Eventually, I went to speak to the Sagicor representative, who searched for the card but couldn’t find it. I filled out a form, and went away. I visited two more times over the course of a handful of weeks before I did my own research and contacted the HR Department, who are technically responsible for the cards. After a week or two longer, I was told that the card would now be there. Finally, I was able to pick up my card in January 2023, months after I had started at the university. There was no explanation for why it wasn’t there for weeks when it should have been. Fortunately I have had no medical emergencies, although I was able to use the card to get $500 off a medical exam for my provisional driver’s licence.

UWI, Mona has many flaws in its design, and isn’t always the safest place, although it remains more walkable than pretty much everywhere else in Kingston (other than Hope Gardens). The postgraduate students’ union has a presence near to nil, and there is no proactive contact or support from anyone in the university’s hierarchy. Certainly, it is easy to feel alone or abandoned by the system. I am lucky in that I have yet to face a major problem.

Would I recommend attending UWI, Mona as a postgraduate research student from outside the Caribbean? Not unless you are prepared, mentally, to deal with everything by yourself. If you are, then at least it’s got a pretty decent library.

End-of-year round-up: Research Progress

Working on deeds in the Island Records Office.

My last post on this research blog was in October last year. Suffice to say, much has happened since.

My weekly or fortnightly updates tapered off as my workload for my classes increased. The classes, HIST 6003 - Historiography and the Emergence of West Indian History, taught by Professor Kathleen Monteith, and HIST 6701 - History and Heritage: Theory and Applications, with Professor James Robertson, finished at the start of December. I was a solo student in the latter, and one of only two in the former. Both classes were interesting and did a lot to expand my understanding of the history of Jamaica and the Caribbean. With Prof. Monteith I got a good grounding in the historiography of Jamaica and the West Indies up to the late 1990s, which was, perhaps, the peak of the UWI, Mona history department. We covered material from Edward Long through to Eric Williams and Barry Higman. The great explosion in history-writing about Jamaica that has come in the last twenty years was not very well covered (although, there’s so much it’s pretty hard to get a grasp - it would probably have taken a whole other semester. I only know of Trevor Burnard who has even attempted this feat). In Prof. Robertson’s class, I benefited from a diverse reading list. Some of the most interesting things I read were outside the period of my studies, such as Born Fi’ Dead by Laurie Gunst and an interview with Richard Hart in an early volume of Small Axe. After the classes ended at the start of December, I was heavily invested in finishing the coursework, which was very time-consuming. The last of Prof. Monteith’s coursework was submitted in mid-January. I have the results from her class, and I was fortunate enough to get an A grade, which I am very pleased with. Prof. Robertson's grades took a bit longer to reach but I also managed to achieve an A.

With the end of my classwork in January (N.B. I do have to complete another course next academic year on Oral History), I was able to begin my thesis research, and see what I could find and what directions I could take a topic so broad as ‘merchants of Kingston in the eighteenth-century’. Unfortunately, the Jamaica Archives in Spanish Town was still closed from the start of October, and with no reopening date in sight, I arranged to visit the Island Records Office instead. While that arrangement was being made, I started working on some pdfs of CO 142 from the UK National Archives, better known as the Naval Office Shipping Lists (NOSL) for Jamaica. I have, so far, transcribed these shipping lists from 1698-1719. My hope is to bring my transcription up to 1752, so I can merge the data with a set from Peter Pellizzari, formerly of Harvard. Anyone who has looked at Naval Office Shipping Lists will agree that they are a fantastic source, although not comprehensive. Working on the NOSL alone is appealing, but has been done before - not just by Pellizzari, but by Yu Wu in his 1990s thesis at Johns Hopkins. While I hope the NOSL can be a major source of economic data for my thesis, I have to use it in conjunction with other material. I highlighted some of the flaws in using the NOSL in a seminar paper I presented at the end of March, focusing on its representation of contraband trade.

After securing access to the Island Records Office (IRO), I began working on their records. After a quick assessment, I decided to focus on deeds, hoping to find evidence of the economic activities of Kingston merchants while they were still alive (as opposed to using probate records like inventories and wills to see their wealth at death). I quickly discovered what a difficult task this would be. There are about 220 deed books covering the period 1692-1770, each with approx. 300 pages and approx. 200 deeds. That makes about 44,000 deeds to check individually to see if they were made by someone of the parish of Kingston. Even if the entire collection was digitised and OCR’d, that would be a very difficult task. Needless to say, I had to reduce my expectations significantly. After calling two or three books to get an idea of the content, I discovered that in the earliest books following the earthquake of 1692 a great deal of deeds were being enrolled as William Beeston selling plots of Kingston. I decided that my first task should be to collate all of these deeds, and in the process get a pretty good understanding of how Kingston was developed in the period 1693-1695. After finishing this, I began sampling the deeds at intervals of 20 deed books. I was able to get some good examples of the buying and selling of urban enslaved, the transfer of property in Kingston, and the involvement of merchants in transferring or mortgaging plantations. I feel like there is far more to be done with the deeds, and as much as I wish I could spend all day going through them, that simply is not an option. When I return to them, my approach has to be far more targeted to get something worthwhile from them.

I have also been able to do some research in the National Library and in the Jamaica Archives, since the latter reopened at the start of April. The transcribed Council minutes in the National Library will be invaluable - far easier to use and less fragile than those in the Jamaica Archives, and far closer than those in the UK National Archives! I can see myself dipping into the National Library collections later in my research to hoover up miscellaneous manuscripts, newspapers, and possibly early printed books. At the Jamaica Archives, I looked at the Inventories - a favourite of visiting researchers to Jamaica. I did, however, find them somewhat boring. Perhaps material history is not for me? I also looked at the Crop Accounts, specifically, the earliest volume. This I found to be far more interesting, especially the periodical accounts of to whom each plantation sold their goods, and I feel there will be a lot to be done with this. If I am lucky, I may even be able to draw some connections to the NOSL. The parish/vestry records are quite interesting and working with the Kingston poll and parish taxes is tempting, although it has been done before by Wilma Bailey in the 1970s. If I was to do the same, I would have to be sure I was not duplicating what she had achieved. Instead, I have found the tax lists on transient merchants to be very useful for my purposes, and I have never seen them cited before. There are some miscellaneous parish records, like a toll book of slaves sold from 1738-1743, which I hope to be able to use and might shine a light on specific aspects of what I am hoping to discover (that particular manuscript is out for repair). Beyond the crop accounts, inventories, and parish records, there are many others I would like to explore - the chancery court records, the powers of attorney, and the vice-admiralty court records.

The microfilm reader at West Indies and Special Collections, UWI Mona Library. The best in Jamaica and fantastic for using the extensive 5o-year-old collection built up by K. E. Ingram.

Other than physical material, research like mine demands working with digitised archives. I have been fortunate enough to secure access to a digital version of CO 137 from the UK National Archives, although I have yet to mine it for useful information. Efforts to digitise archives mean I can access the Bright Family Papers (in Australia), the Satterthwaite Letter Books (in the UK), and the Thistlewood Papers (in USA) all from the comfort of my desk in Kingston. Digitisation is not perfect, however, and different libraries/archives allow different levels of usability. Just because something has been digitised, if it has no index, it can still be very hard to use. Working with digitised material also means you have to have the quality technology to match, and a reasonable work desk and environment for long hours at a laptop or computer, which can be unaffordable for a graduate student.

So, where does one go from here? Having had some time to study the sources on the ground in Jamaica, I have decided to focus more on the economic aspect of eighteenth-century Jamaica, rather than tackling any social subjects. To keep the project manageable, I intend to restrict the sources I use, likely to the inventories, crop accounts, deed books, and the NOSL. Using sampling, I can get a picture of Jamaica's growth and development from the year 1700 and I can cut my research off at 1775, at which point the American Revolution materially changed the economic situation of the Atlantic world. I hope this new approach could be a manageable contribution to literature on Jamaica's wealth, the large integrated plantation model, and the causes of the British Industrial Revolution.

MPhil Diary: Weeks 5 and 6, 26 September-9 October

View of Parade Square and the Rodney statue in Spanish Town, from the archives lunch room.

This blog post sees two weeks rolled into one, for economies of scale. I have had plenty of work to keep me busy - for seminars over the past two weeks I've read Higman's Writing West Indian History, Goveia's A Study of the Historiography of the British West Indies, Trouillot's Silencing the Past, Higman and Hudson's Jamaican Place Names, and Shepherd's Maharani's Misery.

On Thursday 29 September I made my second visit to the Jamaica Archives in Spanish Town, which was entirely spent transcribing the 1745 Kingston parish and barracking tax list (and only about 75% was completed). Unfortunately, the Jamaica Archives charge $500 per photograph taken, so the only economic way to work there is by transcribing on site. This does, at least, mean I can't put off my transcriptions. The tax list is a huge mine of information about property owners, occupiers, and values. My aim is to transcribe all the parish tax lists that survive up to 1807 and use this as a basis for a quantitative study.

I also started doing a little paid work in the West Indies and Special Collections at the UWI Mona Library, where I have been asked to help catalogue the Hugh Shearer papers. Shearer was the third Jamaican prime minister, from 1967 to 1972, and was also Deputy PM in the 1980s under Edward Seaga. He is certainly a controversial figure in modern Jamaican history. In addition, one of the future tasks for WISC is digitising the microfilm collection, something I am particularly keen to help with.

Pretty much all my days are taken up with studying or working, but that is not a problem and as I've previously discussed, it is pretty much all good in the run-up to my thesis. I am also in quite a good rhythm. My first assignment is due this week - a grant proposal. I am finishing a proposal for an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship at the British Library, and if I have spare time I might write one or two for American universities. I also have to submit a revised budget and research plan to the Leverhulme Trust at the end of the week.

Not much else to say about the past couple of weeks. I am still having moderated fun in sanctioned quantities. The MPhil continues unabated.

The moon. A view from College Common.

MPhil Diary: Week 4, 19 -25 September

A campus short cut.

Before my arrival in Jamaica, I had not appreciated how hard it would be to concentrate in the midst of a tropical storm. While Jamaica has fortunately dodged the centre of Tropical Storm Ian this weekend, the outer bands are still covering us. The sheets of rain, thunder, and lightning have been intermittent on Sunday and Monday, and the forecast isn't all that great for the rest of the week.

This last week has been quiet other than the rapturous thunder. I had a seminar discussing Patrick Bryan's history of Wolmer's Schools and another discussing 'what is history?' and 'what is historiography?'. I have been reading Erna Brodber's Second Generation of Freemen in Jamaica, although I have found preparing for my next seminars to be a little difficult when I can't really leave my flat without becoming a wet blob.

I did manage to head to the library earlier and get a good survey of the material in Kenneth Ingram's various bibliographies. I have some really good ideas of where to source information for qualitative analysis, but on Thursday I am planning a visit again to the Jamaica Archives to really get some the parish tax information transcribed and start to build up my quantitative data that will be so crucial a successful study of Kingston. I have made the conscious decision to locate and gather qualitative sources but not to dig into them until I have got the number crunching out of the way. This does mean I am restraining my brain a bit, as it really wants to dig into something and run with it, but I think in the long run a disciplined approach will pay dividends.

I have also begun thinking about my assignments for my two classes this semester. The first (other than seminar reports/book reviews) is to write a grant proposal, due in a couple weeks. I have chosen for this the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme, and my target the Jamaican Court of Vice Admiralty collection in the Jamaica Archives. This has been discussed as a potential real application by people who are also interested in this stuff, and while my application will initially be just theoretical, I would have an extra month to turn it real if I wanted to. You never know.

This week allows me to share in the misery of lots of others around the world being paid in GBP. I don't think much needs to be said about this other than I am most definitely registering as an overseas voter. I am privileged enough to be in receipt of a generous studentship so that I should be fine, financially, although I would much rather be working with the exchange rate that existed a mere three weeks ago!

A little bit of rain never hurt anybody.

A little on logistics

Logistics makes the world go around, and since I haven't discussed it much, I thought I would put some words down here. The big day with the most moving parts was of course my departure day from the United Kingdom, 28th August. The Leverhulme Trust studentship covered the cost of the flight and any additional baggage costs up to a certain amount (which I did not exceed, although I could have brought more books I think). My dad kindly took me down and we stayed overnight the night before in a hotel by a motorway service station a few miles from Gatwick. Currently, only BA and Tui fly to Jamaica - BA from Gatwick to Kingston and Tui from a few places to Montego Bay. The Tui flights are cheaper but would have put me on the wrong side of the island, probably not ideal for the first visit. You can also only book the Tui flights from the UK, not from Jamaica, so I couldn't return on a Tui flight without paying for the flight out first.

All went well on the day, and I got through security and all that stuff without any issues. I did cut it a little fine with lunch, however, with my flight departing at 12:35. The flight itself was a good experience. I didn't get to sleep, although I didn't try very hard - my row mate slept through nigh-on the whole thing and took up more than his fair share of space, which I was too polite to do anything about. My in-flight entertainment had to be turned off and back on again by the stewards a couple times, but it kicked in before too long. I enjoyed Phantom of the Open and binged almost all of Martin Freeman's The Responder. Many of the shots reminded me of the city I called home for a year.

After landing, we queued first for immigration. I was given the entry stamp in my passport without too much fuss, the officer only asked to see my offer letter from the university and reminded me that I would need an extension of stay. I was nervous about customs, not because I was bringing in anything I shouldn't, but because I really had never been through international customs before in my memory. I was practically waved through. All they asked was whether I was bringing in anything I shouldn't, to which I confidently replied 'no'.

The prearranged airport transfer and arrival on campus all went smoothly, and although I was bemused by my first experience of Jamaican driving, it's all rather familiar now. Arranging accommodation from abroad had been a nightmare, and I failed dismally to get into Marlene Hamilton Hall - the postgrad studios - not for lack of trying. About a month before I left I applied to live in Leslie Robinson Hall, a private hall run by 138 Student Living, whose properties have a reputation for a high proportion of international/regional students. I paid the deposit and first month's rent, only for them to not be able to locate for a solid two weeks. Fortunately, about a fortnight before I was to leave they did 'find' it and when I arrived they did know who I was. It did take about 45 minutes for the security and night manager to find keys to an unoccupied room, though.

Other than the big first day, I have slowly begun to enter Jamaican society as an official immigrant. I obtained a Taxpayer Registration Number (TRN) from the tax office on Constant Spring Road, and I also now have a National Insurance Scheme (NIS) number from the office on Ripon Road. Both experiences were quite quick and efficient, nothing at all like I had been warned might be the case. I needed both of these as I am hoping to start working one day a week in West Indies and Special Collections (WISC) in Mona Library. I was most pleased, however, to find that as a full-time UWI student I am exempt from needing a work permit. Nonetheless, I think there is still paperwork to fill out to confirm that exemption, which I have not yet been informed about. My extension of stay for the duration of my course will hopefully soon be confirmed too, and can be done on campus through an arrangement between the university and PICA, the relevant government agency.

Hurdles yet to be jumped include organising insurance (medical, personal belongings) and a local bank account. Fortunately, unlike the UK, physical bank branches are still plentiful and so I will be making my way to one (probably Jamaica National) this week and enquiring about the process. JN also offer lots of insurance and have strong links to the UK so seem like the best bet from my initial research. As a student I also have medical and dental cover through the University Health Centre, and I believe I need to pick up a card confirming that at some point, from somewhere, although I haven't had an official notification.

A haphazard stack of reference books on the third floor of Mona Library. While the library is actually rather good and it grows on me every visit (other than when a pipe burst in the ground floor toilets last week), let us just say I will never complain about the lack of resources in a UK university library again.

MPhil Diary: Week 3, 12 -18 September

A view from my accommodation of Long Mountain, St Andrew.

It's now been three weeks since I arrived in Jamaica, and I have yet to succumb to the tropical disease profile that made the place so dangerous in the eighteenth century. An article about my proposed research was published in the Leverhulme Trust's September newsletter, page 10, and I am grateful to Bahia Dawlatly at the Trust for arranging that.

Parish taxes and West Indian historiography

I have not visited any repositories of intellectual resources in Jamaica this week, other than the Main Library on campus. This week has been marked by my first classes, one on West Indian Historiography, and the other on History and Heritage: Theory and Practice. There are overlapping elements, though that is no harmful thing, and both classes have graded assignments that can be incorporated into my thesis (a historiographical essay on a topic of my choosing, and a grant proposal) so I am not too worried about them dominating this semester. I have found Erna Brodber's work particularly interesting. I found Patrick Bryan's history of Wolmer's Schools to be a little on the tedious side, although valuable, while I thought that J. H. Hexter's writing on historiography was quite pretentious (I found reading M. G. Smith's annotations on the particular article in WISC to be quite cathartic).

One of the most interesting discoveries for my thesis, following on my blog post last week, was Jack Greene's Settler Jamaica in the 1750s: A Social Portrait. In this work, Greene has dedicated one chapter to Kingston: an economic/social analysis of its middle-upper classes based on the 1753 parish tax roll. It was a great relief to find that my proposal of an analysis of the parish/poll taxes in the Kingston Vestry Minutes was not unbroken ground, and while Greene's work was limited, it means I have a basis to build from, rather than dreaming it all up anew, which is somewhat daunting.

I believe that the ideal historical study of the kind I am proposing to do should have a rigorous quantitative basis, and on top of that a generous qualitative analysis. I would feel much more comfortable making claims about Kingston in the eighteenth century with some numbers to back it up, and so carrying out a study beginning with the parish/poll taxes would be my ideal approach. I am glad to see that it is feasible.

Aspirations for this year

I am particularly keen to take advantage of the myriad grants that exist for postgraduates (graduate students in the US) to visit archives and libraries. I am particularly keen to apply for an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship at the British Library, which as well as being a remarkable opportunity for study, would also be a pleasant excuse to return to the UK for a few weeks. Before I can really think hard about that, I need to consult Ingram's bibliographies of Jamaican sources to ascertain what relevant material is at the BL which has not yet been digitised. There are a much greater number of American archives, too, and to visit one or two of them over the next couple years would be a fantastic opportunity (especially as I have never visited the United States before).

To visit a conference would be a very valuable experience, especially after reading Small World by David Lodge. The Association of Caribbean Historians, which I recently joined, is having their June 2023 conference in Puerto Rico, although that is reasonably expensive to get to from Jamaica. Another option might be the Conference of Florida Historians, in January, which would at least be cheaper to get to. There are many other choices, like the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era in Texas in February. I will be keeping an eye open. Some financial support should be available from UWI, although I doubt their coffers run deep.

It would also be good to write something for submission somewhere. A book review, if nothing else, and this forthcoming publication looks like a good place to start. I have also been eyeing the New American Antiquarian as a place to publish some of the unpublished letters I have from Liverpool Record Office. We'll see.

This coming week brings more work and hopefully a first visit to the National Library of Jamaica.

MPhil Diary: Week 2, 5 -11 September

A view from Penfield River, Gordon Town, St Andrew.

Yesterday marked two weeks since I arrived in Jamaica to complete an MPhil in History at the University of the West Indies. The week in global news was dominated by the death of the Queen and the accession of King Charles III, who is also King of Jamaica. This was the last week before my two semester one seminars began, so I wasn’t really deep into research mode – still orienting myself.

The biggest development in my research was a visit to the Jamaica Archives in Spanish Town on Wednesday. I was particularly pleased to find a good quantity of useful records for Kingston, dating back further than Kenneth Ingram knew of in his Sources of Jamaican History (likely transferred from the Institute of Jamaica to the archives since in the 1970s). I consulted 2/6/1b in the local government records, which was a large bound volume of Kingston Vestry Minutes between 1744 and 1749. I found this volume particularly useful as it published the full tax lists for the annual parish and poll taxes, essentially providing lists of the wealthy residents of Kingston and the streets they lived on, as well as some extra information (like rent, number of enslaved people owned, number of cattle owned, and of course the value of tax levied). The Vestry Minutes also recorded a tax list on transient merchants passing through Kingston, another fantastic source.

The Vestry Minutes (the Common Council took over in 1803) exist from 1744 to 1815, with gaps in 1749-50, 1754-63, 1767-68, 1770-81, and 1788-95. There is also, apparently, some earlier material for the years 1739-44 in one of the later volumes. There is also some other material, including the Kingston Parochial Tax Roll from 1774-1805, the Parish Accounts from 1722-89, Vestry Accounts from 1760-92, Kingston Quarter Sessions Proceedings from 1770-98 and 1803-1839, the Toll Book of Slaves Sold 1738-43, and the Register of Free Persons 1761-95.

This was good to find out as my original research proposal involved doing some prosopographical work to really dig into the connections between individuals, particularly economic actors, in Kingston during the eighteenth-century. This looks all the more plausible, even though I am slightly handicapped by the prohibitive fee per photograph at the Jamaica Archives ($500 JMD, about £3). After building lists of individuals, these names could then be cross-referenced with birth, marriage, death records, inventories, court records, manumission records, cadastral maps, and so on. The list is practically endless, and so a line would have to, of course, be drawn.

A quick snap from the entrance of the Jamaica Archives in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

I have been surveying other sources, too, and compiled a list of historic maps of Jamaica (and particularly Kingston) in the eighteenth-century, from online sources. I’ve yet to dig into the manuscript collections of the National Library of Jamaica, or the West Indies and Special Collections here at Mona. I also need to look into the findings of the British Library’s EAP 148: a 2007 survey of endangered archival holdings in Jamaica.

I came to the sudden epiphany that the question I really wanted to answer was: “What did it mean to be a ‘merchant of Kingston’ in the eighteenth-century?” Studying the Atlantic history of places like Liverpool and Lancaster, ‘merchant of Kingston’ was a moniker attached to many people from these places. But what did it really mean? I think a study that examines the nature of the activities of a ‘merchant of Kingston’, particularly focusing on professions such as factors, super cargoes, and agents, who have thus far been neglected by secondary literature, and then set against a backdrop of a social/demographic history of eighteenth-century Kingston, would be truly worthwhile. The idea will continue to be developed as sources emerge.

This coming week sees my first two postgraduate seminars on Monday and Wednesday evenings, and hopefully I can fit a first visit to the National Library of Jamaica in there. I’d also really like to get my hands on some of the microfilm in the West Indies and Special Collections, a collection that is reputed to be extensive indeed.