BBC History File: Everyday Life

The written and visual records we have give us different bits of the story. We haven't got a full life history of anyone who was a field hand. But from the various sources we do have, I can reconstruct what life might have been like for someone. I'm bettin Newton. I'm a field hand. I started working the field when I was about four years old. When I could help with fetching water for the others. As I got older, I moved into the third gun, tending cattle and weed in. Now I'm in the first gun. A horse soil, a dick dream, a cut and bundle can at harvest time. I carry basket of manure to the fields. I work from before sunrise to nightfall with about half an hour to eat. I busy times like harvesting, that means 16 hours in the field. The beer be often wants food, but sometimes you oversee a war and let me feed in because it's slow down your work. When I come home, I make food for my family. 

My husband, John works in the sugar factory. We grow our wound food, look after animals and cut wood for cooking. Sweet too water never dry. You get it on the phone milky water never drive you'll get it on the phone. Don't baby don't cry you'll matter. Don't be dying you might not know. Women like Betty didn't have much time to look after their children. Men and women in the first field gangs did the same hard, heavy work until they were too old and worn out when they would go back to the second and third gangs to lighter work. They would still work the same long hours. Are you sure me? This is a plan of a typical plantation. What would you like to look at? These are the cane fields where Betty would have worked. The young kid has to be hoarded regularly to keep it free from weeds. This is butt breaking work. Sometimes the song beats down for hours at a time they reinhard, but we still have to carry on. Once it's grown, it has to be harvested. 

First of all, the key in his burned, doesn't that damage the cane? No. The fire is just to burn off all the leaves and makes it easier for us to get between the rows and cottage in. Then we caught it. We work in pairs, we cut together of each royal kin, how can the lowest part of the kin then trim in it and turn it down behind us? When the key is being cut, I have to work very long days. We start as soon as it's light enough and carry on all day, raw after all. It's hard work and goes on for many weeks. Then the kid is taken to the factory. And the factory is washed and then chopped and crushed. This is what squeezes out the key in juice. The juice is where the sugar is. The juice is boiled and distilled and the sugar crystals begin to form. The boiling water opens up and the boiling sugar has to be stirred by hand. This is a dangerous job. Sometimes people get terrible burns from buying sugar. 

When all in moisture has been removed, sugar is what's left. So what else would people have done? What happened over here? This is the plantation owner's house. Wow. Very nice. Yes. And these 5 buildings were built by the enslaved people of the Caribbean. I think I'd rather work here than in the fields. They were some advantages to working in the house. My daughter Mary works up at the plantation house, serving food to the master and the mysteries. She has to get up very early to get the fires going and start breakfast. And she often doesn't finish until after dinner has been eaten and the washing up been done. It's a very long day, but she gets better food and sometimes you get given things by the mistress. I'm glad to think she does an easier job than I do. But working so close to the owners means that she has to put up with their moods. At least in the fields we are away from that most of the time. 

They don't bother coming down to the fields very often. They just leave us to the overseers. What's an overseer? He's in charge of the work. He keeps us in line. Make sure we keep at it. The overseers could be poor white immigrants or promoted slaves. They had many more privileges than the ordinary slaves. Most of them are a bit too fun to whip when it comes to keeping order. They'd like to throw their weird her own. Some of them are worse than others when it comes to handing out the punishments. The best jobs on this plantation are usually given to the men. My son Samuel is a driver for mister Newton, the owner. He gets to see a lot of places and gets to hear a lot of news. He has to be very careful and not upset the master. Once he was almost put him back in the field because he was late getting back. I don't want him to end up in the field. It's hard work, and there's not much chance of improving yourself. But in his position, he even gets to make a little money sometimes doing extra job for people. 

I thought slaves didn't get paid. They didn't. Slaves were given food, shelter, and clothing. But they got no wages. So how does your son make money? Well, we grow our own food. And sometimes it's a little extra left over. My boy's Samuel, he take it and sell it to the sailors who come into the ducks whenever he's down there. And if he isn't going on a trip, there's always the market. From the plantations, the busy marketeers came from every direction. They had sweet potatoes, yams, corn, fruits and berries, vegetables, nuts, cakes. The air was one woman with a small black pig under her arm, another girl had a brood of chickens. Other people made money through the work they did for their owners, like olaudah equiano. 

He acted as a cloud for his master, and he managed to use his time to buy and sell things to make money. He was one of the people who made enough money to buy their freedom. Well. £40. I have always known you to be a man of your word. And did you not say that 40 pounds would buy my freedom? How many people bought the freedom then? Only a few. It cost a lot of money as much as 200 pounds and plantation owners didn't want to lose their fittest and most hardworking slaves. This is what Juan observer said. Some slaves live in comfort and have plenty to eat, but most slaves the field slaves are treated more like beasts of burden than like human beings. People had to work hard. Sometimes they deliberately refused to cooperate with the owners, even though they might be punished. Some owners couldn't understand this. Even if you're kind to them, they'll lose. 

The only thing that keeps them in order is the whip. Sometimes people run away, even though runaways face terrible punishments. What happened to them when they escaped? Jack, for being a runaway, sentenced to be immediately carried to the place of execution and there to be hanged by the neck until he is dead. Priscilla, for running away, both her ears cut off to receive 39 lashes the first Monday in every month for one year and to work in irons for a year. Apart from physical punishment, one of the worst things that happened was when people were sold off away from their families and friends. This was sometimes used as a punishment. Couldn't people do anything about it? Very little the planters had total power over the enslaved people. She's only a little girl. Yes. 

The loneliness and separations must have been some of the most difficult things that happened to people. One of the ways they cope with it was by making their own life outside of work. At home. Because there's a bunch of guys that they understand. So a bit different to the planter's house. Yes. People weren't allowed much time or space for building their own houses. They were often very close to the plantation house so that the planters could keep an eye on what was going on here. In the slave quarters, people tried to make the best of their situation. We live very close together. Sometimes people just get sold and the children are left here with no father. Everybody has to help and look after each other. We all rely on each other. If it gets sick, there aren't many doctors for us. 

Mostly we get help from one of the old women here. She know a lot about medicine using the herb she grow. The best times at the end of the day are when we get together and tell stories to entertain each other. The children like the anansi stories that my mother told me. My mom taught me the Nancy stories. Did they come from the Caribbean man? No. Announced his stories came from West Africa. An answer spider gets his own way by pretending he isn't very clever. He usually manages to win. These stories inspired many slaves. Because this is the wood at the edge of the plantation. Okay, what happens over here? This is where the slaves held secret religious services. 

In practice religions remembered from Africa and they mixed African religions with the Christianity. They were taught by missionaries in the Caribbean. This is where we come to prayer. The master doesn't bother us as long as we do it in our own time. We have services at night with singing and dancing and drumming. We have to be careful about to do them in. They don't like that. Why not? Well, I guess they think we'll be Tapping out secret messages under drums. But we just calm down here to have some fun. But there's a church on here as well. What's this doing in? We go to the white church as well. So I'm preachers turned up to tell us about God and to have us all baptized and made into Christian. 

I know at first a master wasn't very keen on that either, because they don't like us having time off work. We have to go to service at 5 o'clock in the morning if there's work to be done. That way the church going doesn't interfere with the work. A quite like going to church. But the services have been boring. No fun. I like to sing and dance and be happy if I'm in church. But the white preacher doesn't like it if we call out when he's talking. They don't like black people preaching either. They insist we have a white preacher. What's happening here? This is what happened when people got a day off. 

Field hands often got Sunday on. And there were days off at new year, the end of harvest, which was called cop over and shrove Tuesday. And these days, slaves were able to enjoy themselves. Don't really think of slaves having any fun. Slavery wasn't fun. It was a vicious system, people lost their freedom and their rights as human beings. No one had a good life under slavery. But people had to find ways of surviving it. And they did that mainly in the lives they led after work was done.