On British slave ship carrying African slaves to Grenada, an African slave girl was hung by her ankle and whipped to death as depicted in copyrighted image. Ship’s Captain Kimber was found not guilty of murder in 1792

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British slave ship Recovery was owned by Bristol merchants. In 1791 an enslaved African girl was whipped to death for refusing to dance naked on the deck of the ship. At right, a sailor is seen suspending the African girl by her ankle from a rope over a pulley. The ship’s captain, John Kimber, left, holds a whip. Back in England, Captain Timber was tried for murder but acquitted. He was merely denounced before the House of Commons over the alleged incident….Image attributed to Isaac Cruikshank.…"Cruikshank’s depiction of the alleged murder of a slave girl by John Kimber, published April 10, 1792."…”This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3g06204.”…Image is “Copyright The British Museum.”

“Description: The Abolition of the Slave Trade, showing Captain John Kimber of Bristol flogging a slave girl because she was unwell and could not eat, by Isaac Cruikshank, 1792.

Copyright The British Museum

Creator: Isaac Cruikshank

Date: 1792, Copyright: Copyright British Museum”

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Added: Kimber was tried in 1792 and found not guilty of murdering the slave girl:

“Kimber was tried in the High Court of the Admiralty in June [1792]…The jury found Captain Kimber not guilty of murdering the slave girl on his ship.”

“The Kimber case," discoveringbristol.org.uk

“One Bristol ship’s captain became a household name during the Abolition campaign to end the slave trade. John Kimber was master of the slave ship the Recovery on her 1791 voyage to New Calabar (now in Nigeria, West Africa). He bought about 300 enslaved Africans. On the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the island of Grenada in the Caribbean, Kimber had punished a female slave. She was refusing to eat. The girl died. The surgeon on the ship, Thomas Dowling, had told the Abolitionist campaigner William Wilberforce about it. Wilberforce, speaking in the House of Commons during a debate on the slave trade, accused Kimber of murder. This was widely reported. The newspaper, Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal for 7 April 1792, published a report of the debate. Kimber placed an advertisement in the Bristol paper the next week. He denied the assault and promised to tell his own side of the story, asking that people did not judge him until they had heard his version of events. The advertisement is pictured here.

Kimber was tried in the High Court of the Admiralty in June, and Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal reported the case. No doubt other newspapers also followed the case, as it was of more than local interest. Kimber was accused of assaulting the girl, by suspending her by the ankle whilst beating her with a whip, and that she died of injuries received from this ‘punishment’. Various witnesses, including the Bristol merchant Walter Jacks and a fellow captain, Phillips, spoke for Kimber. The witnesses against him, the surgeon Dowling and the 3rd Mate Stephen Devereaux, were accused of making up the case against Kimber because they had quarrelled with him. It was claimed that the girl had died of natural causes.

The case was of great interest, and not just in Bristol. This cartoon was published by the London satirical cartoonist called Cruickshank. A booklet of the trial proceedings was published by Kimber’s friends, there is a copy held by the Bristol Central Library.

And what was the result? The jury found Captain Kimber not guilty of murdering the slave girl on his ship. Those who spoke against him, Dowling and Devereaux who were also on the ship, were charged with perjury (purposefully lying in court after swearing to tell the truth). The Abolitionist campaigners were not convinced by the outcome. William Wilberforce, the force behind the Abolition campaign, thought that the judge favoured Kimber. He also felt that the prosecution lawyers had not done their job properly, and that Kimber was guilty.”

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Added: More on Grenada: In 1800s after African slaves were freed, East Indian labor was imported to the British colony: “The emancipation of the slaves took place in 1837, and by 1877 it was found necessary to introduce East Indian labor. Grenada, with cocoa as its staple:”

“Grenada was discovered in 1498 by Columbus, who named it Conception. Neither the Spanish nor the British, to whom it was granted in 1627, settled on the island. The governor of Martinique, du Parquet, purchased it in 1650, and the French were well received by the Caribs, whom they afterwards extirpated with the greatest cruelty. In 1665 Grenada passed into the hands of the French West India Company, and was administered by it until its dissolution in 1674, when the island passed to the French Crown. Cocoa, coffee and cotton were introduced in 1714. During the wars between Great Britain and France, Grenada capitulated to the British forces in 1762, and was formally ceded next year by the Treaty of Paris. The French, under Count d’Estaing, re-captured the island in 1779, but it was restored to Great Britain by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. A rebellion against the British rule, instigated and assisted by the French, occurred in 1795, but was quelled by Sir Ralph Abercromby in the following year. The emancipation of the slaves took place in 1837, and by 1877 it was found necessary to introduce East Indian labor. Grenada, with cocoa as its staple, did not experience similar depression to that which overtook the sugar growing islands of the West Indies. It became independent in 1974.”

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