Featured collection: West India Committee rare books

George Wilson Bridges’ The Annals of Jamaica, a history of the West Indies and an apology for slavery, was published by John Murray in two volumes in London in 1827 and 1828.

Bridges (1788-1863) was an Anglican clergyman, but his move to Jamaica in 1816 took place under the shadow of scandal. He had been obliged to leave England after he fathered a son before marriage and eloped with the mother, Elizabeth Raby Brooks. In Jamaica, he took up the lucrative rectorship of St Ann’s parish.

Bridges had a chequered career in Jamaica. Although he had success serving as a mouthpiece for slave-owners and in persecuting Methodist missionaries on the island, in 1829 he was himself investigated for the savage beating of Kitty Hilton, his slave. The Jamaican council of protection, which exonerated him, was harshly criticised by Viscount Goderich, secretary of the Colonial Office, for failing to bring Bridges to account for the physical abuse. Bridges also provoked controversy with his Annals, where he discussed, among other things, the deportation from Jamaica of two free black men, Louise Celeste Descesne and John Escoffery. The book’s publisher, John Murray, was prosecuted in 1829 for libels against Descesne and Escoffery in the second volume, and Murray cooperated in the book’s recall and suppression.

This first edition, held by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies library, is interesting not only because of its rarity but also because it bears an inscription by its author. Bridges dedicates the book thus:

The unworthy Author, in / presenting this work to / Joseph Sharp / hopes that he may be / allowed to solicit his prayers / for one under the heavy hand / of an offended God – and / to subscribe himself his / afflicted friend / G W Bridges / Jamaica – 25th Feb: 1837.

Bridges’ melancholy references to his afflictions probably refer to the death of his four daughters in a boating accident on January 1, 1837. Bridges’ wife Elizabeth had left him in 1834, and was in England at the time of their death.

That same year, Bridges left for Canada with his surviving son, and after a five-year sojourn, returned to England. Bridges and his wife were never reconciled, but after her death, he explored the estrangement in a private publication entitled Outlines and Notes of Twenty-Nine Years, referring to the period between estrangement and Elizabeth’s death in 1862.

In addition to the Annals and Outlines, Bridges published several pro-slavery tracts. These included A Voice from Jamaica (1823), which argued against Wilberforce’s Appeal in favour of abolition, published earlier that year. He also published collections of his own photography.

The Annals of Jamaica is part of the West India Committee deposit, which was entrusted to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on permanent loan from the Crown Agents in 1977.

Sources:

Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, London: for the London Society for the Abolition of Slavery, vol. 3, 1831.
Bridges, George Wilson, The Annals of Jamaica (2 vols.), London: John Murray, 1827-8.
Hannavy, John, ed., Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-century Photography, London: Routledge, 2008, s.v. “Bridges, Reverend George Wilson”.
Mitchell, Don, Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography, 9th edition [ http://www.books.ai/ , accessed 19 March, 2009], s.v. “Bridges, George Wilson”, “Lushington, Stephen”, “Lescesne, Louis Celeste” and “Escoffery, John”.
Turner, Mary, Slaves and Missionaries: The Disintegration of Jamaican Slave Society, 1787-1834, Barbados: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998.