Summary

A shackle, wrought iron, probably European, 18th or 19th century. Of two curved rods of iron, each flattened at one end and joined and hinged around a round-headed iron rivet, the other ends each splitting and terminating in an oval loop or ‘staple’.

Full description

Shackles have been used for millennia to restrain, control, identify and punish enslaved, imprisoned or convicted people. This example was probably a neck shackle (see another, described as a ‘neck ring’, in the collections of Bristol City Council Museum, Object ID E4780), although similar examples are sometimes described as ankle or leg shackles (i.e. Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 88/1928/47). It was probably made in Europe (many were made by English founders), where the mining and forging of iron were industries which both facilitated, and were facilitated by, the trade in enslaved peoples. This type of shackle, with large loops or ‘staples’ at the end of each of its ‘arms’, was probably intended for use with chains. These chains would have been threaded through the loops and attached to a fixed point, or to wrist or ankle restraints or, most likely, to the neck shackle of another slave, prisoner or convict. The Mobee Royal Family Original Slave Relics Museum in Nigeria displays a linked group of at least seven neck shackles and chains, demonstrating how this type of device was used to forcibly join and restrain large groups of people, not just individuals. Drawings and photographs from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries show both enslaved or convicted men and women restrained by neck shackles joined by chains, working in ‘chain-gangs’ or being transported by foot in lines referred to as ‘coffles’. Neck shackles, which simultaneously inflicted pain and humiliation, left the arms and legs unrestrained, allowing slave-owners and captors to capitalise on the labour of those forced to wear them. -- Wade family context and connection to the British West Indies -- The shackle is part of the hugely varied collections amassed by Charles Paget Wade (1883-1956) which were displayed in his home, Snowshill Manor, Gloucestershire. Wade was an architect and artist who dedicated his life to collecting, having inherited his family’s sugar estates in St Kitts. Charles presented his collection throughout the rooms of Snowshill Manor, living himself in an adjoining cottage. He aimed to display his collections in a surprising way, not as a museum. He wanted to provoke a dramatic response, tell stories and draw the viewer back in time. Charles Paget Wade’s family had a long association with the British West Indies. His great-grandparents and grandfather all owned enslaved people, including children, on the Caribbean islands of St Martins and St Kitts. One child, Robert, 2 years old, was freed on 1st August in 1834 under the Slavery Abolition Act. As part of the process of emancipation enslavers received compensation. Records show that Charles’s grandfather, Solomon Abraham Wade (1806–81), received £29 17s 4d compensation for two enslaved people (approximately £4000 in today’s money) and shared £109 19s 0d for another seven enslaved people (approximately £14000 today). [1] Solomon Abraham Wade, initially a merchant on St Kitts, purchased his first plantations there in 1850, sixteen years after the Slavery Abolition Act came into effect. By the time Charles Paget Wade, his grandson – himself of mixed racial heritage – inherited the plantations in 1911, slavery had been abolished for over seventy years. There is currently no known evidence connecting this shackle to the Wade family holdings, as detailed in the provenance research below. It is possible, indeed likely, however, that the object was used historically on the plantations in St Kitts and passed into Charles Paget Wade’s hands as inheritor of the land. -- Provenance research and display history -- The provenance of this shackle is currently unknown. Research has revealed that it was displayed at Snowshill Manor by Charles Paget Wade in the room known as Admiral by 1955 when it is recorded in one of Charles Wade's notebooks. [2] The shackle was displayed with - A deed of sale for an enslaved woman from St Vincent, 1799 [3] Another record [4] reveals that the following documents were also display in Admiral - The Accounts ledger for the Dupuy’s and Frigate Bay estates, in St Kitts (formerly British West Indies), 1825 to 1836, which contains an annotation, possibly in Wade’s hand, against the entry for an enslaved woman known as Little Praise [5] - 14 old parchment deeds from 1788 relating to plantations in St Kitts. Whilst these records all relate to enslaved workforces, none of them has a direct relationship to one another, nor do they relate directly to the shackle. The deed of sale contains on its envelope a sketch of the shackle, rendered in Wade’s hand, and an inscription relating to it, however no evidence has been found connecting the shackle to that particular sale on the island of St Vincent. Nor can the shackle be directly associated with holdings in the Accounts ledger. Neither the Dupuy estate nor Frigate Bay were in Wade family ownership, so it is unclear how the ledger came into Charles’s hands. The fourteen old parchment deeds relate to estates which only later became part of Wade holdings, after the Slavery Abolition Act (1833). There is no proven association between these holdings and the shackle. In sum, at present, there is a total absence of documentary evidence firmly associating the shackle with any of the enslaved people recorded in these accounts, or Little Praise in particular. It appears to have been shown by Charles Paget Wade as part of a display of thematically related items, which together illustrated the story of enslavement in the British West Indies. Wade gave Snowshill and its contents to the National Trust in 1951. In 1955, he wrote a poem, ‘That Wide Arched Door’ which reflected on the insensibility of later generations of visitors to Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis, to the plight of enslaved peoples. ‘In sunbaked street of Basseterre Town Lighthearted crowds pass up and down, Ne’er for a moment would they stay To give a thought upon their way To old stone wall with wide arched door, That now forms part of Merchant’s store. In times that were, now long years dead Into the dread Slave Market led. That yard, where now breadfruit trees grow Where flowers of gay Hibiscus show, Heartrending memories must hold, Shipments of African slaves sold. Iron shackle round neck of each one Till day of public auction come. After weeks in frightful ship’s hold Brought here to market to be sold. What cruelty man dealt to man, But chattle then the African.’ In handwritten notes which follow the poem Wade wrote, ‘SLAVE’S SHACKLE. There is one of these in ADMIRAL’S ROOM at Snowshill Manor with deed of sale of woman slave for £25.’ [6] It should be noted that the deed of sale recording the purchase of a female slave on the island of St Vincent in 1799 was for the sum of £132, not £25, however the association of this sale with the drawing of the slave shackle on its envelope suggests that it was to this deed that Wade was referring in the poem’s note. [7] Wade’s decision to highlight one enslaved woman, Little Praise, in the Accounts ledger, which records many enslaved people over a period of eleven years, perhaps sheds some light on his approach to displaying archives and items associated with enslavement. Little Praise and the birth of her newborn son are recorded on the 1st January 1834, just 8 months before the Slavery Abolition Act came into force on the 1st August 1834. [8] Wade was very aware of this date and made note of other key dates and Acts on the abolition of slavery after his poem, to highlight his interest in the emancipation of the enslaved workers, writing: 'NOTE 1792. Motion passed in House of Commons for gradual abolition of Slavery. Emancipation Act. Twenty Million Pounds paid to Slave Owners.' [9] From the 1st August 1834 the Accounts ledger interestingly records all enslaved people as apprentices, as following the abolition of slavery each enslaved person was transferred, without choice, to a four-year apprenticeship period in which they continued to work for their former owners. Little Praise and her infant son were now, in theory at least, no longer enslaved. [10] Whilst Wade may have expressed abhorrence to the historic trade in human beings in his poem, and illustrated his concern for the historic emancipation of the enslaved workers on St Kitts through his curated display in Admiral, he nonetheless benefited financially from the legacy of the trade in St Kitts, as a significant landowner. In 1947 Wade Plantations Ltd owned 11% of estates on the island, 12.5% of cultivated land and 13.5% of sugar cane output. Post the abolition of slavery, sugar production continued to control the lives of the inhabitants of St Kitts for over one hundred years. The control by estate owners of the island’s extremely limited natural resource – land – and the almost single minded application of this resource to one industry - sugar production – led to a large class of waged labourers who generally resented foreign influence as sugar was a non-staple and non-nutritive crop. A century later, the collapse of the sugar market brought on by the Great Depression saw the birth of an organised Labour movement in St Kitts and fuelled labour riots in 1935-6. The movement established a political arm – the St Kitts and Nevis Labour Party – in the 1940s which put Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw (1916-78) in the Legislative Council. In 1948 a three-month strike promoted by Bradshaw for workers’ rights began. That year 1,500 acres and 45,000 tons of the Wades’ sugar cane were destroyed by arson as part of the unrest. [11] In 1949-50 Charles Paget Wade’s income was £11,979 and his personal estate was worth £107,000 [12] (£426,000 and £3.8 million respective equivalents today). [13] -- Change in display of the shackle - post 1955 -- At an unknown date after 1955 the shackle was moved to a different room in Snowshill Manor (Dragon) and displayed amongst a large collection of metal objects amassed by Charles Paget Wade, where it became associated with a padlock (see NT 1333514), however this type of shackle was probably used with chains (see above). This object, and the Wade family’s historic connections to slavery, are the subject of continuing research. Footnotes: [1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator and https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ [2] Charles Wade notebook, Vol. 33, pp. 21-2 (NT 1340937.28 - SNO.MISC.956.28) [3] Norfolk Record Office, Wade, Spencer, Bulwer and Earle Papers, Wade Family Papers, Wade Sugar Plantations at St Kitts, West Indies, MC 2782/D/1/3 [4] Charles Wade Admiral Notebook NT 1340945/2 / SNO.MISC.956.28, started May 1944 [5] Gloucestershire Archives, Bound accounts ledger, of 132 pages, for the Dupuy and Frigate Bay estates of Isaac Dupuy in St Kitts, covering supplier purchases, rum, sugar and molasses sales, payments to Custom House, a plantation account, stock of horses, mules, asses and cattle, and slaves (deaths and births), for the period 1825 to 1836, D10423/Box52/5. [6] See footnote 2. [7] See footnote 3. [8] See footnote 5. [9] See footnote 2. [10] See footnote 5. [11] G. Richards, 'Masters and Servants: The growth of the Labour movement in St Christopher-Nevis, 1896-1956', Ph.D Thesis, Cambridge University (1989), p. 375. [12] Letter from Anthony Leathart (Lee and Pembertons) to Charles Wade, 26 August 1950, pp. 1-5. [13] See footnote 1.