John Smith was born in Northamptonshire and had a background in trade. At the age of eighteen, he underwent a religious conversion and felt a calling to missionary service. Smith received some training in Essex and Gosport and was ordained, accepting a missionary post in Demerara. He set out with his new wife, Jane, a fellow member of the evangelical movement and in February, 1817, arrived at his post at Le Resouvenir estate in Demerara. Demerara, a former Dutch colony, had been in British hands since 1814, and was to become part of British Guiana in 1831.
Some reservations had been expressed about Smith’s suitability for the post in Demerara, notes E. V. Da Costa, a historian of the Demerara slave uprising. Smith’s referee to the London Missionary Society, the Reverend John Angell James, described the would-be missionary as “entirely a novice” and ill-prepared for such a challenging posting, where a missionary was likely to encounter hostility and resentment from slave-owners. Da Costa points out that Smith’s working-class origins, youth and lack of experience must have made it impossible to gain the trust and respect of the status-conscious landowners of Demerara, and contributed to his fatal alienation from them.
Although Smith was not popular among the planters of Demerara, he seems to have engaged well with the slaves to whom he ministered, gradually tailoring his schedule of services and the content of his sermons to their needs and interests. He did not, however, further or favour the slave rebellion which commenced on August 18, 1823. On the other hand, he also refused to join a militia of planters to counter the rebellion. For this he was arrested, convicted by a court martial of fomenting discontent among the slaves, and condemned to death by hanging. He died of a lung disease while in prison, before news of the English government’s decision to grant him clemency reached Demerara. The hostility of the colonial authorities carried over even into the funeral arrangements, according to Wallbridge. Mrs Smith was not allowed to follow her husband’s coffin to the graveyard, and the monument which members of Smith’s congregation built was summarily torn down.
The account of the events leading to Smith’s death was written by fellow missionary Wallbridge to commemorate Smith and rehabilitate him as a martyr rather than conspirator and convicted felon. Wallbridge draws on Smith’s own diary and correspondence, including letters written from prison, and quotes from them at length. Wallbridge’s narrative, published fifteen years after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, concludes with stern pronouncements on the lingering effects of slavery and the ongoing need to defend the precarious “civil and religious liberty” which had been secured for the people of British Guiana: “the deteriorating influence of slavery is not confined to those who were once unjustly held in bondage; it taints – it still taints every part of the social frame ….”
The Demerara Martyr 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:
Da Costa, Emilia Viotti, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Mitchell, Don, Mitchell’s West Indian Bibliography, 9th edition [ http://www.books.ai/, accessed 19 March, 2009], s.v. “Wallbridge, Edwin Angel” and “[Smith, John]”.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [ http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25850, accessed 20 March 2009], s.v. “Smith, John (1792?–1824)”.
Wallbridge, Edwin Angel, The Demerara Martyr: Memoirs of the Rev. John Smith, Missionary to Demerara, London: Charles Gilpin, 1848.
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