Talk:Mary Prince

Untitled
Not clear in the article when slavery became illegal in BritainJohncmullen1960 (talk) 17:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"When Prince's book was published, slavery was still legal in England, and had not been abolished by the 1772 Somerset v Stewart ruling, as previously believed by some historians" The impact of Somerset's case is disputed (and has been for very many years), but this is very glib stuff, backed by a single reference from Simon Schama. I appreciate the aim is to convey the importance and explain the situation of Mary Prince, but even so.

There's a rather deplorable tendency to suppose that dead historians were hopelessly biased and modern ones are inherently more trustworthy. Schama is not a lawyer and is every bit as capable of writing things that reflect his political beliefs as anyone else.

Question of Age
The article does not give Prince's year of birth, and the one reference to her age (12) does not give the year. It is clear from the way it is written that she was born before the death of Minors - presumably far enough before that she was old enough to remember events surrounding his death - which the article records as having occurred in 1788. It also records that she was first sent to the West Indies (Grand Turk) in 1806 (or rather that she was sold to a salt raker on Grand Turk; one presumes this was on the occassion of her being taken there), where she "As a child Mary worked in poor conditions in the salt ponds up to her knees in water". If she was perhaps 10 in 1788, she would have been 18 in 1806. In the "Representations in other media" section, Monday 1 October 2018 is given as her 230th birthday, placing her birth about 1788. If so, Minors death was presumably about the turn of the century. Not all contemporary Bermudian church registers survive, but the collected and compiled (by A.C. Hollis Hallett) publication (published in 1991 by Junipehill Press, Bermuda) titled "EARLY BERMUDA RECORDS 1619-1826: A Guide to the Parish and Clergy Registers with some Assessment Lists and Petitions" (Page 322, Ewing Register) lists a Charles Minors as having been buried in Devonshire Parish on the 4th of August, 1808 (the only burial of a Charles Minors or Charles Myners listed between the early 17th Century and circa 1830). Aodhdubh (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2023 (UTC)