The Sounds of Slavery: Slave Bells, 1830's.

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Fresh from a short post on Richard Wagner writing and publishing an interesting piece on the future of music, and then months later writing a diabolically-bad and ruthlessly hateful pamphlet on Jewish people, I came to this--a pair of books with illustrations of another sort of ruthless control, this one mental, legal and physical.

Moses Roper's¹(b. 1815-1891)  A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery, (Philadelphia: Merrihew & Gunn, 1838) details a life-long series of vast mistreatment, punishment and torture while a slave.  He was a mulatto, and of very fine and fair skin, and so endured a particularly hard treatment from a number of different masters, changing masters 17 times. But he escaped, finally (after more than a dozen attempts) and made his way from Florida to New York, and then ultimately to England.  His book has few illustrations, but those that are there are unforgettable.

[Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections, here.]

[Source: Documenting the American South, here.]

"A vise used on slave ships to force open the mouths of slaves for feeding purposes..."

 

Also:

Faits relatifs a la traite des noirs. [title pa

Fers employés pour la Traite des Noirs.

Traite des noirs. Correspondance et renseigneme

Note explicative fournie par un forgeron de Nan

Suite de la note explicative fournie par un for

 

Notes:

1.  A chronology of Roper's life appears here.