Slavery, Culture, Economics, Aesthetics and the UCL Slavery Research Project

The acknowledgement of the influence of the slave trade on contemporary Britain is, of course, contentious. For some, that is.

When I was growing up, the rich used to show their supremacy, culturally and economically, by paying in ‘guineas’ rather than pounds. I had to become an adult before I found out the precise provenance of that word. Similarly, I had to wait for maturity and beyond, before anyone wondered if Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley might have made their money from slavery. And don’t get me started on Colston Hall …

Part of the reason for this lies within mainstream school and university twentieth century textbooks - the ‘Whig view of History’ has prevailed in this country, pretty much, throughout my lifetime: incremental, empirical, pragmatic, non-ideological, practical progress. Omniscient and generous rulers, who knew when it was exactly the right moment to bring in exactly the right amount of reform, and so avoid those beastly continental revolutions.

It is this historiographical trope that trots out a so-called line running from Magna Carta, through the ‘Glorious (‘peaceful’, and exaggerated) Revolution’ of 1688, and on through the Reform Acts of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This trope misses out the Commonwealth (‘Interregnum’), of course, but includes the 1807 Act ending the slave trade in the British Empire, and the 1833-4 Abolition of Slavery Act.

Oh, beneficent all-seeing rulers: born to rule, and always knowing best: lucky Britons and lucky Britain.

This is, needless to say, an illusion at best, false consciousness at worst – and dangerously deceptive with regards to slavery. The foregrounding of the 1807 and 1833 Acts has too often got our past off the hook – two centuries worth of slave trafficking sent backstage. And the history books that have contrasted the domestic programme of the ‘Modernizing Whigs’ of the 1830s with the ‘Reactionary Tories’ pre - 1832, have often glossed over some of the detail of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.  The textbooks have focused upon Whig/Benthamite reforms for factories, towns, workhouses and so on, rather than the abolition of slavery.

The 1833-4 Act freed slaves within the British Empire (but let the East India Company off), but provided £20 million in compensation for the slave owners. That was not far off half of all governmental expenditure for that year, and is the equivalent of some £17 billion in today’s values. The UCL research project indicates that about half of those slave owners resided in this country and half in the West Indies (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/commercial/).  The mapping of these beneficiaries shows how slave owners pop up in the most unlikely of places in the United Kingdom in 1834.

The project also shows what was done with much of this compensation and, unsurprisingly, a huge amount went into investment in the railways.

In a sense, the ‘Railway Mania’ of the 1840s, and the subsequent speculative investment cycles in the British domestic economy, were fuelled by those handouts to slave owners – and when you take into account the Keynsian multiplier effect, it’s hard to imagine almost anyone whose lives weren’t touched by that dirty money.

I researched two areas on the database for slave owners: Stroud and Portland Place in London. Portland Place was absolutely rife with slave owners; Stroud had but one in 1834: Samuel Baker of Lypiatt Park. Think of that, the next time you gaze out on that grand house; think about Baker’s 410 slaves on his two estates in Jamaica and how all his compensation helped fund many of our local railway lines: ‘A Day in the Life of a Penny’.

Appetite whetted, I typed in Painswick and discovered: Rev. Joseph Duncan Ostrehan, Sheepscombe Parsonage, He received compensation of £85 8s 11d for 3 slaves in Barbados, God bless him.

I then typed in Gloucestershire – why was I so astonished to find so much compensation being paid to Bristol in general, and Clifton, in particular?  But a few more local parishes popped up. (Stop Press! I have now decided, whilst writing this, to collate all of these so as to put together a walk around the county and around the city – so no more of these entries for now. I’ll post all of that in a couple of weeks’ time.)

As regards the consequences of compensation for culture, the sullied cultural legacy resulting from this dirty money is shown at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/cultural/ , and https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/physical/

also shows how compensation paid to the 46,000 owners of about 800,000 slaves helped pay for new grand houses. It also funded many charities; indeed, the Royal Lifeboat Association was floated with slavery compensation. (To name but one.) Your own delving will reveal this hidden history of widely tainted philanthropy.

Another cultural legacy – albeit delayed – was racialist ideology.  The campaign led by free traders against mercantilism, monopoly and slavery meant that imperialism and empire were regarded with thrifty suspicion by the Manchester mid 19^th century zeitgeist – but the ‘Age of Empire’ would see the resurrection of racialist ideas in the late nineteenth century.

And how. 

And, of course, it’s still with us today.

And how.

More of this on a future post – and working backwards, more on the economics, ideology and cultural consequences of slavery in the 18^th century on a future post too.

To conclude for now, the link below takes you to the two excellent documentaries on BBC 2 in July 2015. David Olusoga was quite brilliant in these programmes about the UCL project. His presentation was especially poignant when reminding us that the abolitionists were, in the end, only allowed to free fellow human beings, by denying those slaves their humanity. This was, in a sense, a denial of the abolitionists’ fundamental beliefs.

The slave owners were triumphant in defeat: compensation for property, not humanity. That is why there is no equality of payment; instead there is a calibrated proportionality; Jamaican soil was becoming sugar-exhausted, whereas British Guiana was sugar-fertile, and so, Jamaican slaves were worth less … indeed, some were ready reckoned down to the most exact halfpenny.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2015/28/britains-forgotten-slave-owners/

Freedom's Arch, Stroud and the Abolition of Slavery

This is my first draft script for the play 'Freedom's Arch'. This was a commissioned piece about the arch near Archway School and was performed there by the Stroud Football Poets, Souled and Healed, the Gloucester Gospel Choir and students from Archway and Brockworth, in 2003, I think. The final script contained scenes on the Stroud 1831 election hustings and the Stroud context. Alas, I have no copy of that final script to be found, although Katie and Danny McCue from Souled and Healed might have one somewhere. The script here is for anyone to use in any way if they so wish - for Black History Month, for example. I have copies of the lyrics to the songs if wanted, and can put you in contact with Katie and Danny.

FREEDOM'S ARCH

SCENE 1 – ship setting; also rolls of cloth/cotton/chains etc

Young slave: Granny Judith said that in Africa, when she was a girl, they had very few pretty things. Then one day some strangers with pale faces came and dropped a small piece of red flannel on the ground. The cloth came from somewhere called Stroud in England.

                      All the black folks grabbed for it. The strangers dropped more and more pieces of the red cloth, leading the whole village down to the river bank.

                      When they got there, they saw a ship with many more brightly coloured   things on the deck. They rushed forward in excitement, but when they turned round,

                    the gate was chained up and they could not get back.

                    That is how Granny Judith said she got to Jamaica. If that’s true, then she was the lucky one; no musket, sword, chains or face mask for her. But I’m speaking nonsense – how can you be lucky when you’re stolen from your homeland in Africa and sold into slavery far across the ocean?

1. SONG: When will freedom come? (Outside musicians: “Souled and Healed”)

Narrator:

Ladies and gentlemen we are gathered together today to celebrate the abolition of the trade in slavery in the British Empire, 200 years ago. We may also remember the building of an arch in 1834, commissioned by one Henry Wyatt former mill owner of Stroud to signify the total abolition of slavery in the British Empire. This arch stands at Archway School in Stroud. It is a monument to all those who fought for so long and so hard to end the appalling traffic in human beings. A memorial to all those nameless millions who suffered terrible miseries, torture and death. Hear now how the Innocent and the guilty tell their tales.

3. SONG: Save me

Now on stage – Olaudah Equiano and 2 white men, one a sailor:

EQUIANO: I had the misfortune to be kidnapped at the age of 10 from the Ibo tribe in Nigeria. I was taken on board a slave ship riding at anchor in the bay, and forced into the stinking hold. So low in despair was I that I resolved to starve myself to death but the brute forces of two English soldiers prevented me.

Gentleman:        So you try to keep them healthy, then bosun?

BOSUN:      Indeed we do, sir. Buckets are provided for them to do their naturals in but to tell you the truth, most don’t use ‘em, what with the chains and everything. There is quite a stench even with all twelve portholes open. I have to have a swig of rum before I go down to drag out them what’s died, and a swig after I come back.

EQUIANO: As a punishment I was whipped and thrown into an even smaller cramped space with no room to move or air to breathe, a room where sickness could roam triumphant, with misery and melancholic madness in attendance. The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole, a scene of horror almost inconceivable.

BOSUN:       They’re always getting sick in spite of what we do. Sea sickness, fever and heat stroke, but the worst is the small pox. That spreads like wildfire so we throw ‘em overboard as quick as we can.

Gentleman:          So you leave a trail of bodies in your wake?

BOSUN:       Not for long on account of the sharks. They follows us all the time now. They seems to know they’ll be easy food to be had from a ship such as ours.

EQUIANO : I was still resolved to kill myself and I knew of others who escaped their torment by jumping overboard. We preferred drowning or the stomachs of sharks to this terrible brutality.

Gentleman: Are you in any danger yourself?

BOSUN: Most certainly sir, for some will try to mutiny. But the cutlass, musket, leg irons and chains keeps em under control as a rule.

EQUIANO: And it did keep us under control but I managed to free myself and become a gentleman in England and there I campaigned relentlessly for the ending of slavery. But I, Olaudah Equiano, am somewhat less remembered than Mr. Wilberforce. I taught myself to read and write – listen to my poem.

Now dragged once more beyond the western main

To groan beneath some dastard plate's chain

Where my poor countrymen in bondage wait

The long enfranchisement of a lingering fate.

Hard lingering fate where e'er the dawn of day

Roused by lash they go their cheerless way

And as their souls with shame and anguish burn

Salute with groans unwelcome mom's return.

And chiding every hour, the slow paced sun

Pursue their toils 'tll all the race is run

No eye to mark their sufferings with a tear

No friend to comfort no hope to cheer.

Then like the dull unpitied brutes repair

To stalls as wretched and as course a fare

Thank heaven one day of misery was o'er

Then sink to sleep and wish to wake no more.

5. SONG: The dirge

SCENE 2 – HOUSE SCENE – TABLES, CHAIRS, QUILLS ETC

Gentleman: I have just been reading about our estates over in the Caribbean. Pray, listen to this -

“There was about a hundred men and women of different ages, all occupied in ditches in a

cane field, naked or covered with just rags. The sun shone down with full force and sweat 

rolled from every part of their bodies, while their exhausted limbs struggled with the weight

of their pickaxes and with the resistance of the clay soil, baked hard by the sun. A

mournful silence reigned, broken only by the occasional cracking of the whip and cries of

anguish from those who received the blows, who were those too exhausted to work.”

It is a sadness to me that my wealth depends upon such scenes, but surely it is God’s will that white men should rule the world?

Clerk:           There were Africans in these parts, too, in Gloucestershire. Were they slaves? Not legally perhaps but they were bound in allegiance to their masters and had to take their names, religion and culture. Some were educated to a higher standard than the average servant but they were still their master’s property. Hard for a runaway to pass unnoticed in Gloucester. Now where are those parish records? Ah, here we are -

(Clerk reads the places names and dates. Students come on to stage

and say rest of entry)

                     Newnham on Severn, Easter 1715.

John Price, a black boy lately brought to England, apprenticed to John Trigge, attorney at law.

                      Nymphsfield june 20^th, 1773.

Francis London, a servant to the right honourable Lord Ducie, supposed to be 17 years of age- a native of Africa- was baptized.

                      Stroud February 28^th, 1786.

Adam John Parker, negro, 32, was buried. Parish Funeral-paupers grave.

                      Frocester November 4^th, 1790.

William Frocester, 11 or 12 years of age, born on the island of Barbados, now servant of Edward Bigland Esquire, residing in Jamaica.Baptised.

                     Stroud May 7^th, 1801.

William Ellis, son of Qualquay Assedew of Guinea, a negro, aged 12.Baptised.

                      Bisley July 5^th, 1815.Testimonial from Richard Raikes, supporting the application of John Hart, writing master, for the post of master at the Bisley Blue Coats school-unfortunately he is a mulatto, a native of the West Indies.

Gentleman: Tell me Francis, what is your opinion on what I have just said. Do you not think it is God’s will for me to hold sway over you?

FRANCIS: Sir, I cannot afford to think about this. Since I am in your service, I am dependant on you for food and shelter, indeed, sir, for my very survival. It would not to fall form favour.

(CLERK begins to read out punishment for slaves)

                      The boy is right to be cautious, for punishments were severe.(Reads)

                       A runaway slave-pinned down by each ankle, covered with sealing wax and lit.

                      Runaway slave, second offence-leg cut off.

                      House slave, let pot boil over-bones broken….

GENTLEMAN: Enough! We do not behave like that in England.

CLERK:          Perhaps not, but how come Francis went to Gloucester while his mother, father, sister and brothers went to Africa, to be further tortured with hard labour and punishments on the plantations from which your class has gained its continued wealth.

GENTLEMAN: Its is true and I wish it were not. But Francis, you have gained from your life with me. You are educated, have fine clothes to wear, a home, a comfortable life. It would not have been so in Africa.

FRANCIS (aside) What do you know of Africa? What do I know since I was torn form there? You say England is my home, yet I can never be at home in this country while my colour sets me apart. You have made me a stranger in a foreign land with nowhere to return.

GENTLEMAN: Thank you Francis, that will be all.

                                             GOSPEL CHOIR

Scene 4:         PLANTATION (group of slaves on stage; manager and missionary hurry on in conversation).

MANAGER:    I have a bad set of people. They steal and runaway, get drunk and fight and are generally work shy. Now, if you can bring them under the fear of god or a judgement to come, you may be doing both them, and me, a service.

MISSIONARY:I have come to bring you salvation

BOY:               He’s going to save us from the master!

MISS’Y:          No, from the devil, my son. And I bring you freedom.

BOY:              He’s going to free us from slavery!

MISS’Y:          No, freedom from sin. A better life in the hereafter.

EQUILANO: We want a better life now.

MISS’Y:       I bring you the bible so that you can read the word of god for yourselves.

BOY:           But we can’t read.

MISS’Y:       Then I will set up a school and teach you.

6. Narrator:

The little education received by slaves often came through the church wanting to bring them Christianity.

7. SONG: Amazing Grace (Gospel Choir)

8. Narrator: or Equiano

And if you can read the Bible you can read anything, an anti slavery tract, or a radical pamphlet. And the news was of revolution, in America, in France. People struggling for their freedom and independence, so why shouldn't we? In Jamaica slaves carried on a guerrilla war with the plantation owners. On the island of San Dominga in 1792 the French planters refused to grant citizenship as decreed by the new revolutionary government in France. Their words freedom, brotherhood and equality had a hollow ring. Slave rebellions happened everywhere. Not Just hundreds but thousands rose up against the injustice done to them.

EQUILANO: We did not take slavery lying down. We mutinied on the slave ships and some    of us escaped to the Northern States of America or to the Spanish colonies.

BOY:         Some of us joined the maroons in the mountains of Jamaica and carried

                  on a guerrilla war against the plantation owners.

EQUILANO: On the island of St Dominga, we proclaimed -Freedom, Brotherhood and Equality, and 40,000 of us fought to liberate ourselves.

BOY:             Led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, using armed struggle and clever political alliances, we eventually won our own liberty and created the first modern black nation in the western hemisphere.

9. SONG: Make your voice heard Make Your Voice Heard

Scene 5 – a court setting

10. Narrator as Judge:

So let us sum up and review the history of this crime against humanity. Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492 to bring cruelty and disease and so wipe out many of the original people of the Caribbean. As regards the British colonies in the so-called West Indies, the first shipments of labour there were indentured white labourers, Irish and Scots rebels working the sugar plantations. But as the coffee houses became more popular in England so the demand for sugar grew. The inexhaustible supply of slaves from Africa running into millions became the workforce that sweetened the latest fad. The triangular trade of industrial exports to Africa – including guns; the middle passage carrying slaves to the Caribbean and then rum, sugar and tobacco back to Britain enabled Britain’s industrial revolution to lead to world dominance. Some of the most beautiful houses and estates in England were built on the hidden profits of this crime against humanity. And who deserves the credit for the abolition of the slave trade? Is it William Wilberforce? Olaudah Equiano? John Newton? The anonymous thousands who fought for their freedom? Ladies and Gentleman, I find the evidence inconclusive. You are the jury – it is your responsibility to decide. In the meantime, do not forget, it was only the slave trade that was abolished in 1807; not slavery itself. That did not come for another 26 years – hence the arch in Stroud at Archway School. And do not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that slavery still exists in the world today. We still have to fight it.

11. SONG: S.D.A's/Gospel Choir

Finale SONG: Oh mother tell me

Redemption, the Pink Cabbage, Slavery and Stroud

Redemption

Redemption: a typically Christian conflation of the spiritual, the mundane and the material.  Redeeming: an act of atoning for a sin, mistake or fault; salvation from sin through the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ; the state of being redeemed from evil or error; deliverance from sin, salvation; atonement. Repurchase of something sold; paying off a mortgage, debt, bond or note; recovery of something pledged, pawned; conversion of paper currency into bullion or specie; fulfilling an obligation. Archaism: buying one’s freedom from ransom; rescue. Origin: Middle English, Old French, Latin: redemptio/redimere (to buy back).

'The immediate successor of the Indian, however, was not the Negro but the poor white. These white servants included a variety of types. Some were indentured servants ... Still others, known as "redemptioners", arranged with the captain of the ship to pay for their passage on arrival or within a specified time thereafter; if they did not, they were sold by the captain to the highest bidder.'
Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams

Redemption’s Song: ‘Old pirates, yes they rob I, Sold I to the merchant ships’

Stroud Scarlet, Uley Blue and Berkeley Yellow. Watch those explorers canoeing Canada, Trading Stroud Scarlet with the Iroquois, When fair exchange was no robbery
For the Hudson Bay Company, Or for the East India Company too. See that Stroud Scarlet cloth, Stretched out on tenterhooks in our fields, Eventually shipped down to West Africa; Its folds concealing any human cargo. Admire General Wolfe and his red coats, Up there on the steps of Quebec, A few short years after riding down Stroud Scarlet weavers in the streets and fields: “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”

Sunday July 1^st, 1739: “Today I heard George Whitefield preach at Minchinhampton. He has inspired me with his breath of the Great Redeemer and I am resolved to provide the funds for the building of a Tabernacle at Rodborough. I am also resolved to do something about the licentiousness and intemperance of the local population of Stroudwater. I am hopeful of making a start with the notorious Pink Cabbage. Redemption could begin with its conversion from an inn to a coffee house.” Thomas Adams

George Whitefield’s views on slavery:

“Though liberty is a sweet thing to such as are born free, yet to those who never knew the sweets of it, slavery perhaps may not be so irksome. However this be, it is plain to a demonstration, that hot countries cannot be cultivated without negroes. What a flourishing country might Georgia have been, had the use of them been permitted years ago? How many white people have been destroyed for want of them, and how many thousands of pounds spent to no purpose at all? Had Mr Henry been in America, I believe he would have seen the lawfulness and necessity of having negroes there. And though it is true, that they are brought in a wrong way from their own country, and it is a trade not to be approved of, yet as it will be carried on whether we will or not; I should think myself highly favoured if I could purchase a good number of them … It rejoiced my soul, to hear that one of my poor negroes in Carolina was made a brother in Christ. “

Colonel Wolfe, The Pink Cabbage, Stroud, October 1756

” The people are so oppressed, so poor and so wretched, that they will, perhaps, hazard a knock on the pate for bread and clothes. I have charge of six companies of foot soldiers, enough to beat the mob of all England. The Gloucester weavers and I have not yet come to blows nor do I believe we shall, but the poor half-starved weavers beg about the country for food. The masters have beat down their wages too low to live upon, and I believe it is a just complaint. But those who are most oppressed have seized the tools and broke the looms of others who would work if they could. The face of this country is different from anything I have seen in England. Numberless little hills, little rivulets running in all the bottoms; the lower parts of the hills are generally grass, the middle corn, and the upper part wood and innumerable little white houses in all the vales, so that there is a vast variety; and every mile changes the scene, and gives you a new and pleasant prospect. It is melancholy to reflect that in the midst of this beauty, the weavers have little likelihood of their redemption.”

Iam a negro and a free man, but close to death. I was born in Guinea in 1760, I have been told, and was sold to a ship’s captain from Bristol. He bought me with red cloth. I know now that cloth came from Stroud. I was taken to Barbados where I excelled at my studies and so became a servant to ------------ -------------------.My artful dissimulation enabled me to play perfectly the role of periwigged, liveried footman. There never was a more attentive peacock. At length, my master decided to return to his estate in England. My master’s estate was in the south of the shire and north of Bristol. After about a year, a coachman ‘of sable hue’ arrived one day with some new materials for my master’s chosen livery: Stroud Scarlet, Uley Blue and Berkeley Yellow. He called me over before the coach departed and whispered in my ear. He told me that my long lost brother was in this country too – and only some 30 miles away - a servant at The Pink Cabbage in Stroud.

The following night I exchanged my livery for fustian brown and disappeared into the darkness of the night. Comforting light for a fleeing slave! 
I concealed my person in the newly planted hedgerows by day and walked by night, keeping the moonlit River Severn on my left and close to sight. My coachman friend had told me that I should go to Arlingham, where there was a chance of obtaining a place on a crew of a vessel heading for Gloucester. My good fortune continued and I duly found a place on the Quadrille, bound for Gloucester. Here I met more men of colour, some from America.

One of these mariners told me the whereabouts of The Pink Cabbage and that he had heard that a negro was in habitation there. This news spurred me as much as my hearty dinner – my brother! The mariner advised me to head back to Framilode, so that I might join a crew on a ship heading for Stroud through the Stroudwater Navigation. When I mentioned the Quadrille, that was sufficient testimony to my prowess, and I took my place on the Sabrina.

I alighted at Wallbridge to take the path up the hill to The Cross. It was with a little trepidation but much expectation that I entered that parish on that autumn day. I sought out the clergyman at the church and explained my quest. I showed him my Bible in my bag; my name in the front’s piece seemed to reassure him of my bona fides. He looked at me solemnly and dropped his gaze. He asked me to follow him and this I did, following in his dolorous wake.

He lifted the parish register and leafed through the pages. After some moments of pensive perusal, he showed me this entry:

1st July, 1778, William Jubiter, ye black, buried.

I buried my head in my hands and cried the salt tears of loneliness. At length, I was led from the church and so made my melancholy descent back to Wallbridge.
 I despaired of human company and recoiled from the thought of contact, such was my sadness. I resolved to make a solitary way along the cut and so reach the River Thames; and thence to London. The beauty of the bosky hills and vales; the serenity of the sylvan shade; the laughter of the waters; the wind in the reeds; the white stone cottages like so many pebbles thrown on the hillsides; the pure green fields – all of these conspired to give me endurance, fortitude and make thanks to God. Two days walking led me to Lechlade where I found a place on the William Butler, bound for Deptford. Here I found friendly mariners and also negroes. They told me that the riversides in London possess a whole reticulation of havens and hidey-holes for escaped slaves and servants. A trudge through a labyrinth of streets, creeks and chimneys led me to my haven, where I presently lie on my bedding.

The death-rattle of my cough echoes the call of the birds of my homeland in Guinea. There is no song of Redemption for me here.

Some entries from Gloucestershire parish records:

Newnham on Severn, Easter 1715: John Price, a black boy lately brought to England, apprenticed to John Trigge, attorney at law.

Nymphsfield June 20^th, 1773: Francis London, a servant to the right honourable Lord Ducie, supposed to be 17 years of age- a native of Africa- was baptized.

Stroud February 28^th, 1786: Adam John Parker, negro, 32, was buried. Parish Funeral-paupers grave.

Frocester November 4^th, 1790: William Frocester, 11 or 12 years of age, born on the island of Barbados, now servant of Edward Bigland Esquire, residing in Jamaica. Baptised.

Stroud May 7^th, 1801: William Ellis, son of Qualquay Assedew of Guinea, a negro, aged 12. Baptised.

Bisley July 5^th, 1815: Testimonial from Richard Raikes, supporting the application of John Hart, writing master, for the post of master at the Bisley Blue Coats school - unfortunately he is a mulatto, a native of the West Indies.

Henry Wyatt decides to erect an arch on the drive to his Farmhill Estate, Stroud 1834, in an act of symbolic redemption:

ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES THE FIRST OF AUGUST A.D. MDCCCXXX1V

But there was also redemption for the owners of slaves: £20 million (about 40% of the British government’s spending that year), nearly £17 billion, using today’s values.

But the tyranny of time can still prevent redemption:

Opposite the Pink Cabbage is the National School where the “Black Boy”, “one of Stroud’s most celebrated symbols”, stands above the clock.  He was fashioned by John Miles of Kendrick Street in 1774. A Stroud Local History Society leaflet goes on to tell us that he first stood outside a watchmaker’s shop in the High Street, before migrating to the Duke of York in Nelson Street.  He ended up at the school in 1844. The leaflet tells us:

“He held a hammer which rang a bell in front of him when the hour struck.”

This is no Song of Redemption for Stroud