The Journey of Mary Prince
This picture is not Mary Prince, but is often used to contextualise her story.
Margôt Maddison-MacFadyen is perhaps now the definitive scholar on the subject of Mary Prince. Her excellent website offers much more information on Mary Prince. Website link
The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840
by Benjamin Robert Haydon
oil on canvas, 1841
NPG 599
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Why should we teach our children and young people about Mary Prince, enslavement and abolition?
‘Slavery involves human exploitation, indignity, suffering and
cruelty and the transatlantic slave trade provides many of the
worst examples. However, its history also illustrates the power of
the human spirit to retain dignity, to resist injustice and regain the
right to liberty, irrespective of race or culture’
National Maritime Museum (United Kingdom)
The American academic Emily M.N Kugler has plotted the journey of Mary Price. Beginning in Bermuda, moving to the Turks and Caicos Island, back to Bermuda, then Antigua, and finally England, the text covers a wide swath of the Atlantic World. This a distance of approximately 11,035 kilometres (6,856.83 miles)
Mary Prince Podcast - BBC
Professor Gretchen Gerzina explores a largely unknown past - the lives of black people who settled in Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In this episode, Professor Gerzina explores the life of Mary Prince. listen to the Podcast
Colonial North America’s slave trade begins when the first American slave carrier, Desire, is built and then launched in Massachusetts.
“We slept in a long shed, divided into narrow slips, like the stalls used for cattle. Boards fixed upon stakes driven into the ground, without mat or covering, were our only beds. On Sundays, after we had washed the salt bags, and done other work required of us, we went into the bush and cut the long soft grass, of which we made trusses for our legs and feet to rest upon, for they were so full of the salt boils that we could get no rest lying upon the bare boards.”
