Did this inspire IDS with the idea of restoring slavery over here for people on benefits? I wonder ... In the 18th century, Aberdeen was a thriving sea port and a base for child slavery. Noted local figures such as Alexander McDonald, Bonnie John Burnet important merchants and Alexander Cushnie a dean and procurator fiscal of Aberdeen were involved in selling children into slavery. By the early 1700s the slave trade was booming, it helped enrich cities and fuelled the industrial revolution. In 1733 the Treaty of Utrecht ensured a British monopoly in the movement of slaves by promising a yearly rate of 4,800 to the Americas. Children were easy to capture and could be sold at a very high profit. 17th century authorities had decided to rid towns and cities of vandals, waifs and strays offering the new colonies much needed labourers. In Britain small children could be used as unpaid workers so why not in America? Virginia had already received 100 children in the late 17th century. They were such a success the Privy Council sanctioned the schemes. Children were sometimes sold on to a list by relatives for a single shilling. The City and villages near Aberdeen were plagued by roving gangs set to capture the young for indentured servitude, which was another name for slavery. White Slavery and Children. An average cargo was three hundred, but the shipmaster, for greater profit, would sometimes crowd as many as six hundred into a small vessel. The death rate of 25% for White slaves en route to America was 5% greater than Black Slaves. Up to one‐half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were White slaves and they were America’s first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too. Slaves were auctioned on the block with children sold and separated from their parents and wives sold and separated from their husbands. Scottish slaves were worked to death in the sugar mills of Barbados and Jamaica and the plantations of Virginia. Children wounded and crippled in the factories were turned out without compensation of any kind and left to die of their injuries. Children late to work or who fell asleep were beaten with iron bars. Lest we imagine these horrors were limited to only the early years of the Industrial Revolution, eight and ten year old White children throughout America were hard at work in miserable factories and mines as late as 1920. With thanks to David Dobson author of Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607‐1785 for all the details above.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 22:07:53 +0000