Know more about Codrington and its links to Durham
Bishop Thomas Thurlow was the Bishop of Durham from 1787 until he died in 1791.[1]
During this time, he was a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Abroad.[2] (SPG)
The SPG was formed in 1701 as a missionary organisation that went where English and later British people were colonising, in North America and in the West Indies.
In 1710 Codrington Plantation in Barbados was bequeathed to the SPG. Christopher Codrington had been one of the early colonisers of Barbados and a governor of Barbados in the 17th Century.[3] This plantation branded newly arrived people with ‘Society’ to tell them apart from the laity.[4] Christopher Codrington was sold the sugar-producing estate in the 1660s by William and Mary Consett from the Teesside area.[5]
The plantations were used to grow sugar. Due to it being run by a large organisation with benefactors in England, lots of records remain, and these are of use to historians today as they reveal, albeit through the eyes of enslavers, a lot about the enslaved people.
The Codrington plantations also used a system of rewards to control behaviour and to sow division between the enslaved. The giving of housing implements, and small amounts of money were meant to incentivise the enslaved workers and to get supplication. They were necessary items to live, not luxury goods, ‘we think it right to mention that occasionally gratuities of iron pots, knives, spoons etc are encouragements to the slaves which should be given as bounties for good behaviour’ (Society for the Improvement 1811-16: 131-46)[6].
There are records of infant mortality that show how harsh conditions were for mothers and babies and how babies were viewed as a source of income. As Stella Dadzie writes, ‘Records from the Codrington estate in Barbados between 1744 and 1748 list twenty-two live births and include at least ten infant deaths. For example, there was Betty’s child, who died of “fits” when he was ten days old; Molly’s boy and Bennebah’s girl, both of whom died at three months; and Occo’s daughter, who lasted just five.’[7]
For compliant behaviour the enslaved person could also be hired out to work, or even hire themselves out, and there was some possibility of buying their emancipation.
This rewards system also aimed to separate people into different classes, based on supplication and work rate.
The records kept by the Codrington estate also show that the plantation owners had favourites yet a mistrust, ‘the best of them are at all times ready to join in a conspiracy.’[8]
How much of this was Bishop Thurlow aware? We may never know. As this was one committee he sat on, and presumably as not a very significant member, it may have been very little. He must have been aware of a significant source of the SPG’s funding stream and its business. Enslavement was part of the fabric of Britain at this time, reaching into even the church who encouraged its continuance while money was to be made.
[1] En.wikipedia.org. 2022. Thomas Thurlow (bishop) - Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Thurlow_(bishop)> [Accessed 4 July 2022].
[2] The profits of slavery: Bishop of Durham - Durham Cathedral. 2022. The profits of slavery: Bishop of Durham - Durham Cathedral. [online] Available at: <That some plantation owners saw the United States over Britain to maintain their position reveals something of where the two countries were seen to be heading in the 1830’s.
And although the rebellion started as a strike, they had also formed armed groups, but they had no time to train or to organise properly> [Accessed 4 July 2022].
[3] Williams, E.E. (2022) Capitalism and slavery. London: Penguin Books. P85
[4] Williams, E.E. (2022) Capitalism and slavery. London: Penguin Books. P39
[5] The Black Indies: The Northeast Connections with The Slavery Business. August 2020 Sean Creighton. Pg3.
[6] Handler, J.S., Lange, F.W. and Riordan, R.V. (2000) Plantation slavery in Barbados: An archaeological and historical investigation. Bridgewater, NJ: Replica Books. p78-79
[7] Dadzie, S. (2021) A kick in the belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance. Brooklyn, NY: Verso. p.85
[8] Handler, J.S., Lange, F.W. and Riordan, R.V. (2000) Plantation slavery in Barbados: An archaeological and historical investigation. Bridgewater, NJ: Replica Books. P78-79 81