Add MS 70952 A-I

70952. The maps are concerned with the emancipation of the slaves, with educational provision for them, and with estate ownership. The Slave Emancipation Act of 1833 (enacted 1834) stated, amongst other things, that children under the age of six were to be freed at once, and provision made for their religious and moral education. Several of the maps indicate the numbers of former slaves on estates (Add. 70952 G, H), and plans for building schools and churches (Add. 70952 B, G, and H). Duke's sketch of his own parish (Add. 70952 G) was certainly intended to provide information for his bishop, William Hart Coleridge, nephew of the poet, who became Bishop of Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad, and Guiana in 1824. From 1830 he was instrumental in encouraging his clergy to improve conditions of life for the slave population, especially in promoting measures to ameliorate the effects of the great hurricane of August 11th 1831. On the verso is the note, 'Mr Wyld is requested to place this map in confidential hands - as of a more private character - and to take charge of it himself as soon as a copy has been made - The Bishop wants its insertion as a specimen of a British Guiana parish'. 'Mr Wyld' refers to the London surveyor and cartographer James Wyld, and an almost exact copy of the map appears in Bishop Coleridge's Charges and addresses delivered to the clergy of the Diocese of Barbados and the Leeward Islands... with an appendix containing tabular statements &c. relating to the state of the diocese of Barbados (London, 1835) on a folded leaf between pp. 28 and 29. For further details on post-emancipation development in the islands and British Guiana, see the above-mentioned work, and other diocesan charges issued in Demerara in 1836 and Barbados in 1838. Purchased from Clive A. Burden Ltd., Jan. 1992.

Maps and Plans: Slaves, Slave Trade: John H. Duke, Rector of Trinity parish, Essequibo, British Guiana: Maps of parts of Lesser Antilles and British Guiana by [Rev. J. H. Duke?]: circa 1835: Partly signed.