Jamaica Committee | Autograph album including Darwin, JS Mill, and other members of the Committee, 1860s

Jamaica Committee--Autograph album

Album entitled "Autographs of members of the Jamaica Committee"

containing 23 signed quotations and signatures, seven with accompanying photographs, including by Charles Darwin (signature dated 24 February 1867), J.S. Mill (signed quotation and photograph), John Bright (signed quotation dated 16 February 1867, and photograph), Thomas Huxley, Charles Lyell (signature and photograph), mounted on rectos only, 4to (247 x 197mm), 1867, binding worn at spine and edges 

A RELIC OF AN IMPORTANT DEBATE ABOUT RACE AND THE RULE OF LAW IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN.

The Jamaica Committee was formed in outrage at the British army's violent suppression of an uprising in Jamaica. On 11 October 1865 a protest march in Morant Bay against the oppression of the black peasantry ended in violence. Jamaica's governor, Edward Eyre, swiftly declared martial law and about 500 people were executed in the weeks that followed the riot, including Paul Bogle, the Baptist deacon who had led the protest, and the politician George William Gordon, who had not even been present in Morant Bay. The Jamaica Committee focused its efforts on bringing a prosecution against Eyre in the UK for atrocities committed under the spurious authority of martial law, especially the execution of Gordon. An important principle was seen to be at stake, as articulated by John Stuart Mill: "The question was, whether the British Dependencies, and eventually, perhaps, Great Britain itself, were to be under the government of law, or of military licence."

This album dates from February 1867, at which point the Committee was pursuing private prosecutions of several military officers who had served in Jamaica. It attests to the prominent support garnered by the campaign: it was led by two eminent radical MPs, John Stuart Mill and John Bright, and it was supported by a wide range of progressive voices. However, the cause split British society and Eyre had many vocal defenders, including John Ruskin and Charles Dickens, who argued that a firmness of hand was needed to preserve colonial order. The argument, in effect, set the rule of law against a racial hierarchy that was made explicit in The Spectator: "We pardon Eyre because his error of judgment involves only negro blood". Although Eyre was dismissed from his position and never held another government job, repeated attempts at prosecution all failed to indict Eyre and the Jamaica Committee was wound up in 1869.

The current album was assembled by John Bright's daughter Helen (1840-1927), who had recently married William Stephens Clark (liberal Quaker owner of Clarks shoes). She continued the family tradition of passionate support for liberal causes. Meetings with Frederick Douglass inspired her anti-racism, and she was a lifelong and vocal supporter of women's suffrage.

PROVENANCE:

Helen Bright Clark (1840-1927); thence by family descent