Insanity and Imprisonment in British Guiana, 1814-1966

Clare Anderson, Kellie Moss, Estherine Adams

Abstract


This paper explores links between incarceration and enslavement, migration, and mental health, in the colony of British Guiana. Contemporaries recognised the negative impact that mobility and labour had on the health and well-being of enslaved persons and Asian immigrants, including on plantations. Understandings of ‘insanity’ later developed to bring ideas about biology, context, and behaviour into dialogue, including through the racialisation of its prevalence and character amongst the colony’s diverse population. Before the construction of separate institutions, people who were believed to be suffering from mental illness were sometimes kept in jails, and due to a lack of capacity this continued even after lunatic asylums were developed from the 1840s. At the same time, colonial administrators recognised that incarceration itself could cause mental ill-health, and as such into the early twentieth century British Guiana engaged with global debates about criminal insanity.

Full Text:

PDF

References


Anderson C., M. Ifill, E. Adams and K. Moss (2020), ‘Guyana’s Prisons: Colonial Histories of Post-Colonial Challenges’, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 59, 3: 335-49.

Arnold, D. (1994) The Colonial Prison: Power, Knowledge, and Penology in 19th-Century India. In D. Arnold and D. Hardiman, eds, Subaltern Studies VIII, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 148-87.

British Library [BL], C.S.F.351, British Guiana, Inspector of Prisons Reports, 1889-1939.

Browne, R.M. (2017) Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Burnard T. and K. Candlin (2018), Sir John Gladstone and the Debate over the Amelioration of Slavery in the British West Indies in the 1820s. Journal of British Studies 57, 4: 760-82.

Donald, J.S. (1876) Notes on Lunacy in British Guiana. Journal of Mental Sciences, 22, 97: 76-81.

Earle, P.M. (1904) The Criminal Insane and Insane Criminal, in A.T. Ozzard and C.P. Kennard, eds, The British Guiana Medical Annual, Georgetown: Baldwin and Co.: 61-4.

Gibson, M. (2011) Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison. American Historical Review 116, 4: 1040-63.

Glenn, J.M. (2008) Mixed Jurisdictions in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Mixing, Unmixing, Remixing. Journal of Comparative Law 3, 1: 53-76.

Gramaglia, L. (2013) Migration and Mental Illness in the British West Indies 1838-1900: The Cases of Trinidad and British Guiana, in Catherine Cox and Hilary Marland, eds, Migration, Health and Ethnicity in the Modern World, Basingstoke: Palgrave: 61-82.

Robert Grieve (1880) Insanity in British Guiana. Journal of Mental Sciences 26, 115: 370-4.

- (2010) The Asylum Journal: conducted by the medical superintendent of the public lunatic asylum for British Guiana, Volume 1 (1881-1882), introduction by L. Gramaglia, The Caribbean Press, 2010 (online).

Hall, C. Draper, N., McClelland, K. Donington and R. Lang (2014) Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kirke, H. (1888) Our Criminal Classes. Timehri: being The Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana, new series 2, 1: 1-16.

- (1898) Twenty-Five Years in British Guiana, London, Sampson Low, Marston and Company.

Law, W.F. (1888) Insanity in British Guiana, in E.D. Roland, ed., The Georgetown Hospital Reports for 1887, Demerara: Baldwin and Co.: 19-34.

Morris, N. and D.J. Rothman, eds (1998) The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, New York NY: Oxford University Press.

Moss, K. Anderson, C., Ifill, M. and E. Adams (2019), ‘Guyana’s Prison System, 1814-1966’ https://leicester.figshare.com/articles/Historical_Overviews_of_Guyanas_Prisons_1814-1966/11591337 (accessed 8 March 2020).

Mustakeem, Sowande M. (2016) Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage, Champagne IL: University of Illinois Press.

National Archives of Guyana [NAG] AB1/236: Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court of Policy, 27 June 1874, enc. report of the committee appointed to investigate and report generally on the question of the removal of the penal settlement from its present site, 27 June 1874 [W.F. Haynes Smith, T.H. Mackey, Josias Booker, and Jas. W. Davson].

Paton, D. (2004) No Bond But the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870, Durham NC: Duke University Press.

L.M. Penson (1926), The Making of a Crown Colony: British Guiana, 1803-33, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9: 107-34.

Rodney, W. (1981) A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905, Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Roopnarine, L. (2014) Resistance and Adaptation among Indentured Indian Labourers in British Guiana during Indentureship, in M.S. Hassankhan, B.V. Lal and D. Munro (eds) Resistance and Indian Indenture Experience, comparative Perspectives, New Delhi: Manohar Publishers: 157-82.

Rothman, D.J. (1998) Perfecting the Prison: United States, 1789-1865, in N. Morris and D. Rothman, eds, The Oxford History of the Prison: the practice of punishment in western society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 100-16.

Smith, L. (2014) Insanity, Race and Colonialism: Managing Mental Disorder in the Post-Emancipation British Caribbean 1838-1914, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

The Annual Miscellany, or Local Guide; for the year 1817 (1817), Georgetown: William Baker [Royal Gazette Office].

TNA [The National Archives]:

-CO111/54/2 11 May 1826: Regulations for the treadmill, 9 March 1826.

- CO111/67/31 26 June 1829: Governor Benjamin D’Urban to George Murray, secretary of state for war and the colonies, 26 June 1829, enc. regulations for the house of correction and workhouse, Article 15.

- CO111/246 19 December 1847 no. 220: Henry Grey, secretary of state for war and the colonies, to Governor William Walker, 22 July 1848.

- CO111/268 17 September 1849 no 142: Governor Henry Barkly to Earl Grey, 17 September 1849, enc: The Queen v. Auchabar Ray, 31 July 1849.

- CO111/302 16 November 1854 no 88: William Walker and James E Roney, legislative commissioners of the penal settlement, to Governor Philip E. Wodehouse, 31 October 1854.

- CO111/323 22 March 1859 no. 21: Governor Philip E. Wodehouse to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, secretary of state for the colonies 10 March 1859; 20 May 1859 no 44: Wodehouse to Lytton, 20 May 1859.

- CO111/324 23 December 1859 no. 123: Governor Philip E. Wodehouse to Henry Pelham-Clinton, secretary of state for the colonies, 23 December 1859.

- CO111/328 15 June 1860 no 84: William Walker, secretary to government and official commissioner of HMPS Mazuruni, to Governor Philip E. Wodehouse, 4 June 1860, enc. Chief Justice William Arrindell to Wodehouse, 5 June 1860.

- CO111/391/111 8 August 1872 no. 11: report on penal settlement at Massaruni: Governor John Scott to Henry Herbert, secretary of state for the colonies, enc. 1871 Annual Report and Annual Report of F.H Andrews, medical officer, 1 January 1872.

- CO111/551/230 Convict Makundi: Charles T. Cox, secretary to government British Guiana, to Victor Bruce, secretary of state for the colonies, 18 July 1906, enc. report on the case of Mokandi, 92773 ex ‘’Main’’ 1902, plantation ‘’Wales’’, Berbice, 17 April 1906.

- CO111/554/Home Office Convict Makundi: Ernley Blackwell, assistant secretary Home Office, to Winston Churchill, under secretary of state for the colonies, 4 September 1906.

- CO111/719/3 Confidential, 1934 prison report: inadequacy of present accommodation at Georgetown prison: Crawford Douglas-Jones, secretary to government British Guiana, to Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 12 July 1934, enc. Superintendent W.F. Hodgson, Georgetown Prison, to W.E.H. Bradburn, inspector of prisons, 10 May 1934.

- CO111/750/2 Confidential, 1937 prison report: Governor Wilfrid Edward Francis Jackson to Malcolm Macdonald, secretary of state for the colonies, 17 March 1939.

- CO113/ 1/16: An ordinance for the punishment of idle and disorderly persons, rogues, vagabonds, and other vagrants, 1838.

- CO113/1/23: An ordinance to introduce into the colony of British Guiana the laws of England with respect to riots, routs, and unlawful and tumultuous assemblies, 1846.

- CO113/1/25: An ordinance for the safe custody of insane persons charged with offences, 1846.

- CO113/1/30: An ordinance for regulating the rights, duties and relations of employers and servants in the colony of British Guiana, 1846.

- CO113/2/20: An ordinance to provide general regulations for immigrants introduced into the colony of British Guiana, 1850.

- CO116/208-11, 213-21: Blue Books of Statistics: British Guiana, 1839-42, 1844-7.

- CO116/176-181: Blue Books of Statistics: Berbice, 1829-34.

UK Acts of Parliament:

- 1 & 2 Vict., c. 14. Criminal Lunatics Act, 1838.

- 3 & 4 Vict., c. 54. Criminal Lunatics Act, 1840.

- 8 & 9 Vict., c. 100. Lunatics Act, 1845.

UK House of Commons Parliamentary Papers [PP]:

- 1826-7 [008] Papers in explanation of the measures adopted by His Majesty’s government for the melioration of the condition of the slave population in His Majesty’s possessions in the West Indies, and on the continent of South America, and at the Cape of Good Hope. In continuation of the papers presented in the year 1926. Part II. 1827. (Berbice. Trinidad. Cape of Good Hope): An Ordinance for promoting the Religious Instruction and bettering the State and Condition of the Slave Population in His Majesty’s Colony of Berbice [Slave Code], 23 October 1826.

- 1830-31 [334] Gaols, West Indies. Copies of Correspondence relative to the State of the Gaols in the West Indies and the British Colonies in South America; and also, of any instructions which have been sent out from the Colonial Office relative to such Prisons, 30 March 1831: Extract from the Appendix to the Report of the Legal Commissioners, Commissioners Jabez Henry and Fortunatus Dwarris to Sir George Murray, secretary of state for war and the colonies, 4 June 1829.

- 1867-68 [3961] Prison Discipline in the Colonies. Digest and Summary of Information Respecting Prison in the Colonies, supplied by the Governors of Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions, in answer to Mr Secretary Cardwell’s Circular Despatches of the 16th and 17th January 1865 (London: HM’s Stationery Office, 1867): Governor Francis Hincks, British Guiana, to Buckingham and Chandos, secretary of state for the colonies, 7 December 1867.

- 1871 [393] Report of the commissioners appointed to enquire into the treatment of immigrants in British Guiana (London: Clowes and Son, 1871), Appendix G: Case of Three Immigrants, indentured to Plantation Good Success, Wakenaam. Complaint of ill-usage by the Manager, Mr. Finlay Matheson, 15 December 1869.

- 1875 [1338]a Papers Relating to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies (London, Harrison and Sons, 1875): Report on the Penal Settlement at Massaruni for 1873, 24 February 1874, enc. W.S.B. Pollard, Surgeon HMPS Mazaruni, to Superintendent T. Sealy, 6 February 1874.

- 1875 [1338]b Papers Relating to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies (London, Harrison and Sons, 1875): W.F. Haynes Smith, Attorney General, to W.A.G. Young, secretary to government, 28 November 1874.

- 1875 [1338]c Papers Relating to the Improvement of Prison Discipline in the Colonies (London, Harrison and Sons, 1875): Report on the Penal Settlement at Massaruni for 1873, 24 February 1874.

- [C.1517] Further papers relating to the improvement of prison discipline in the colonies, Harrison and Sons, 1876: J. Brumell, Director of Prisons, to W.A.G. Young, Secretary to government, 1 March 1875.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.29311/lwps.202143750

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2020 Clare Anderson, Kellie Moss, Estherine Adams

We use both functional and performance cookies to improve visitor experience. Continue browsing if you are happy to accept cookies. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.
OK


LIAS Working Paper Series

ISSN: 2516-4783

University Home