Albumen print. Part of the Michael Graham-Stewart slavery collection
(Mounted with ZBA2613; with another photograph above, 'W.I. Band')
These two photographs show life in Jamaica in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The images are staged, with plantation workers carefully posed for effect. The sugar industry, although in decline in this period, did not end with the emancipation of enslaved African people in 1838. Instead it continued, with black people becoming employees. As these images suggest, however, emancipation did not bring equality, nor did it end the rigours of working in the cane fields. This failure on the part of plantation owners and the colonial governments significantly to improve the day-to-day conditions and rights of the formerly enslaved and their descendents provoked resentment, and occasionally rebellion, among people in the Caribbean. In the photographs, workers are shown eating sugar cane, which would not have been permitted in real life.