During the winter, slaves toiled for around eight hours each day, while in the summer the workday might have been as long as fourteen hours.
Sixteen to eighteen hours of work was the norm on most West Indian plantations, and during the season of sugarcane harvest, most slaves only got four hours of sleep. The punishment for disobeying an order was far worse than just accepting what was asked.
Arriving for work at dawn, enslaved people only stopped for rest and food at breakfast and lunchtime, after which they worked until nightfall. After returning to their living quarters, they would often still have chores to do before going to bed. Enslaved people were whipped if they did not work hard enough.
On a typical plantation, slaves worked ten or more hours a day, "from day clean to first dark," six days a week, with only the Sabbath off. At planting or harvesting time, planters required slaves to stay in the fields 15 or 16 hours a day.
Slaves, especially those in the field, worked from sunrise until sunset. Even small children and the elderly were not exempt from these long work hours.
In ordinary times we had two regular meals in a day: breakfast at twelve o'clock, after laboring from daylight, and supper when the work of the remainder of the day was over. In harvest season we had three.
On Sundays, enslaved individuals tended to their own gardens and livestock provided by their enslavers, practiced religion, and engaged with family and friends.
Yes, enslaved children were forced to labor on this plantation. Boys and girls under ten assisted in the care of the very young enslaved children or worked in and around the main house. From the age of ten, they were assigned to tasks—in the fields, in the Nailery and Textile Workshop, or in the house.
A broad and common measure of the health of a population is its life expectancy. The life expectancy in 1850 of a White person in the United States was forty; for a slave, it was twenty-two. Mortality statistics for Whites were calculated from census data; statistics for slaves were based on small sample-sizes.
Weekly food rations -- usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour -- were distributed every Saturday. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Morning meals were prepared and consumed at daybreak in the slaves' cabins.
Besides planting and harvesting, there were numerous other types of labor required on plantations and farms. Enslaved people had to clear new land, dig ditches, cut and haul wood, slaughter livestock, and make repairs to buildings and tools.
According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery (2022) from Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration: 49.6 million people live in modern slavery – in forced labour and forced marriage. Roughly a quarter of all victims of modern slavery are children.
Maize, rice, peanuts, yams and dried beans were found as important staples of slaves on some plantations in West Africa before and after European contact. Keeping the traditional “stew” cooking could have been a form of subtle resistance to the owner's control.
Providing for family, whether that be food or furniture, also fell to men during their free time at night. Female slaves saw the dark- ness as a time to care for the needs of family.
So, what did the slaves eat on this day they were allowed to celebrate? The slaves who worked in the fields would often go out and catch wild game for their family and close slave friends. The women would prepare cornmeal cakes, or pone cakes to go along with the game.
One might also sit on a stool or chair for the sponge bath, or use the tub as a medicinal foot bath. If used by an enslaved woman, it may have been used outdoors or in the kitchen. In some households she might have been allowed to bathe in her room.
Many slaves suffered from dysentery, dropsy, fevers, and digestive and nervous diseases. Yaws, a non-venereal form of syphilis, was common, and there were regular epidemics, such as a cholera epidemic in Grenada in 1830.
The Underground Railroad Era 1820-1860. Thousands of slaves fled bondage each year in the decades before the Civil War. The most frequent calculation is that around one thousand per year actually escaped. Some runaways sought a brief respite from slavery or simply wanted to reach family and friends.
Enslaved people created variety in their diets by keeping gardens, raising poultry, foraging for plants, fishing, and trapping and hunting wild animals.
The risk of sale in the international slave trade peaked between the ages of fifteen and twenty five, but the vulnerability of being sold began as early as age eight and certainly by the age of ten, when enslaved children could work competently on the fields.
The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century when the largest number of people were captured and enslaved on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa.
Basic garment of female slaves consisted of a one-piece frock or slip of coarse "Negro Cloth." Cotton dresses, sunbonnets, and undergarments were made from handwoven cloth for summer and winter. Annual clothing distributions included brogan shoes, palmetto hats, turbans, and handkerchiefs.
The slaves' diet consisted of a mix of traditional African foods brought over to the Caribbean (including okra, blackeyed peas, saltfish, ackee, mangos, kidney beans and rice), vegetables and fruits native to the Caribbean (such as papaya, yams, guavas and cassava).
Slavery and the Making of America . The Slave Experience: Living | PBS. Although slaves on the Eustatia Plantation often had to work through showers, on many days in the account book, the overseer notes that slaves did not work because of rain.