Women not only outnumbered male field workers, the majority of the total female population were field workers. For example, at Mesopotamia estate from 1762 to 1831, at least 84 percent of the total female population were field workers, compared to 55 percent of males.15 Enslaved women dominated field labor because there were fewer specialized roles reserved for them. With the exception of domestic and health-care positions, like housekeepers, cooks, and midwives, women performed few skilled jobs. Men worked in specialized and supervisory roles, including drivers, craft workers, and stock keepers. At Mounthindermost plantation in 1831, for example, men exclusively held at least seven occupational categories.16
Field workers were usually the healthiest, most able-bodied workers ranging from ages fourteen to fifty-one, with a mean age of thirty. This age range overlapped closely with the ages at which women became mothers. The recorded ages of mothers at Worthy Park estate for the years 1784 to 1838, for example, reveal that women birthed children between ages nine and fifty-one, and had the same mean age of thirty as women field workers. Ironically, then, youthfulness, health, and vitality that permitted planters to exploit women as field workers were the same factors that marked their most fertile years. It is therefore unsurprising that the bulk of women who bore children were field workers. At John Tharp’s estates, most, and on some occasions all, mothers worked in field gangs. In 1818, of Covey’s eighty-nine women, ten field hands and only one domestic were pregnant. Similarly, at Wales estate, with the exception of one woman, Molly, all five expectant mothers were field workers. The same is true of Pantre Pant estate, where 14 percent of childbearing women were field workers. Simultaneously reassigning all eight expectant mothers would have slowed the productivity of the plantations, and Pantre Pant estate would have lost eight women workers in addition to the thirty other women who were described as “invalid [and] incapable of working.”17
Records of other Jamaican estates, like those belonging to Nathaniel Phillips, similarly show that pregnant women were typically field gang workers. At Phillips’s Pleasant Hill estate in 1789, of the seventy-seven women, fifty worked in the fields, four of whom were pregnant. Likewise at Phillipsfield estate, of the sixty-nine women, fifty-five labored in the fields, of whom eight were pregnant, one about to give birth.18 Given that the plantations depended on women as field workers and that these were the women most likely to bear children, Jamaican planters had to develop practical working solutions that allowed them to exploit the reproductive ability of women while minimizing production loss. The tension between fertility and productivity meant that parturient workers received minimal care to protect their unborn children without it being too costly to the labor needs of an estate.19 Enslaved women’s importance to field work meant that slaveholders adopted abolitionist proposals to relax the labor routines of mother-workers according to predicted consequences for the productivity of their plantations.
Field workers were vitally important to the sugar plantations, a status well reflected by their fiscal value. At Good Hope estate in 1804, all nine childbearing women were field workers with values in excess of £100. Expectant mothers attracted a price of £115 to £180, with a mean of £140, which was on par with prices for nonpregnant women laborers (£50-£180 with the same mean of £140).20 Most importantly, pregnant and nonpregnant female field workers had values that compared favorably with those of male field hands, which ranged from £50 to £220 and similarly had a mean value of £140. As was the case for other workers, chronic illness or disability rather than pregnancy reduced the fiscal worth of mother-workers.21 At best planters viewed childbearing as a temporary impediment, distinct from more permanent impairments and disabilities that classified laborers as “invalids,” “superannuated,” and “worthless.”22 Of the workers valued at Tharp’s estates in 1804, Mundingo Juliet’s condition of “breeding constantly” reduced her assessment from £170 to £115.23 While women’s child-bearing potential did not necessarily inflate or impair their marketability, their values fell more quickly after birthing many children. Numerous pregnancies were thought to weaken women’s physical stamina and therefore reduce their anticipated productivity and value.24
The importance of reproductively capable women to the sugar estates made it a huge financial liability to remove them from the fields as abolitionists proposed. Planters therefore put expectant mothers to work in less labor-intensive gangs, rather than grant them full exemption from the fields. Estates generally classified bonded workers in six major categories: drivers, domestics, craft workers, field workers, marginal workers, and non-workers, subdivided further according to particular skill or specific tasks. Craft workers included carpenters, masons, and smiths, while domestics were cooks, washers, and seamstresses.25 With the exception of Green Park estate, which listed “pregnancy” and “lying-in” in the occupation categories of its roll call, most sugar estate inventories listed “pregnancy” as the “condition” of workers, in the same way that they recorded illnesses. At best, they considered pregnancy as a factor that impaired the laboring ability of women temporarily. On some properties, planters placed pregnant women in the same gangs as workers suffering from other illnesses.26
One eyewitness, Maria Nugent, the Jamaican governor’s wife, claimed that while touring the island between 1802 and 1804, she saw “women with child work[ing] in the fields till the last six weeks” of their pregnancies (emphasis added).27 Nugent gave her readers no indications of the types of work pregnant women performed in the fields. Planters sometimes reassigned parturient workers to a variety of field-related tasks based on perceived difficulty. The proprietor of Cornwall estate, Matthew Lewis, instructed his attorney to discharge Cubina’s pregnant wife “from all severe labour” (emphasis added).28 Similarly, at Denbigh and Thomas River estates, the moment women were “under the suspicion of being with child” they were removed from the “harder labour of the field and put to light work” (emphasis added). They were reassigned to the “hoeing of fences” and “boiling of oils for the use on the estate.”29 Given that women of childbearing age dominated field work, and were as highly valued as able-bodied men, estate owners and attorneys hesitated to grant mother-workers full labor release. Planters attempted to balance their reproductive goals with their ongoing labor needs and financial investments by placing would-be mothers in work roles presumed to be less strenuous. Reproduction as a value-added commodity singled out childbearing workers from the mass of enslaved women.
As plantation owners sought to capitalize on the productive and reproductive capacities of female slaves, enslaved women became more vulnerable to the scrutiny and control of medical practitioners. Plantation physicians attended the general needs of the sick, and to a limited degree, they supervised labor, pregnancy, and delivery. Between 1741 and 1745, Jamaica had just twenty-four doctors and surgeons, which increased to twenty-six between 1771 and 1775. By 1795 the number of doctors doubled to fifty-six and their presence in the island continued expanding throughout the 1800s. With important exceptions, doctors were planter allies in the struggles to harness the reproductive potential of female slaves.30 Physicians like Benjamin Turney, who was contracted by Golden Grove estate, lived on the property and monitored the everyday health and labor of workers.
In addition to overseeing work performed by enslaved women and attending to medical emergencies, other doctors, like David Collins and William Sells, published general guidelines on how to regulate the labor demands on enslaved women to protect their pregnancies while capitalizing on their full labor potential.31 Sells believed that childbearing women could continue working in their customary roles until they were midway through their pregnancy. He wrote, “no alteration [is needed] in their usual labor until four or five months advanced.” After the fifth month, he recommended “a lighter employment … and continued until the lying in.” He did, however, advise planters to grant pregnant women time off from