it may well appear that the notorious failure of the island-bred stock to maintain its numbers was not due to the working of the slaves to death.  The poor care of the young children may be attributed largely to the absence of a white mistress, an absence characteristic of Jamaica plantations.  There appears to have been no white woman resident on Worthy Park during the time of this record.  In 1795 and perhaps in other years the plantation had a contract for medical service at the rate of L140 a year.

“Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great Britain Esquire” was the absentee owner of Worthy Park.  His kinsman Rose Price Esquire who was in active charge was not salaried but may have received a manager’s commission of six per cent, on gross crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the colony.  In addition there were an overseer at L200, later L300, a year, four bookkeepers at L50 to L60, a white carpenter at L120, and a white plowman at L56.  The overseer was changed three times during the five years of the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually.  The bachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroon offspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumission of a woman or child.

Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the “drivers” or gang foremen.  Each of these had for example every year a “doubled milled cloth colored great coat” costing 11$. 6_d_ and a “fine bound hat with girdle and buckle” costing 10$. 6_d_.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the “stoke-hole boatswain,” and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively of the sawyers, coopers, blacksmiths, watchmen, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the head home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children’s field nurse.  These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly.  But a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were recorded of “rum used for the negroes on the estate.”  Upon the birth of each child the mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar.

No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offenses except absconding.  Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestry of those lying out at the end of each quarter.  At the beginning of the record there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; but during 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, most of whom were out for but a few months each, but several for a year or two; and several furthermore absconded a second or third time after returning.  The runaways were heterogeneous in age and occupation, with more old negroes among them than might have been expected.  Most of them were men; but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and the old pad-mender Abba’s Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter.  A few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the workhouse.  Some of the rest may have come back of their own accord.