Town's slavery links 'revealed' by letter

7:38pm Wednesday 11th April 2007

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SLAVERY in the 18th century Americas and exploited child labour in 19th century Christchurch have been linked by local history researchers following the discovery of a long-lost letter.

The town's involvement in the fusee chain industry using unpaid orphans from the workhouse to fashion the tiny links for pocket watches has been well-documented and plaques mark the sites of former factories in Bargates and the High Street.

But the painstaking practice, which ruined the eyesight of hundreds of youngsters in that unenlightened era, may have had its roots in an even more miserable chapter of history - slavery.

That's what Christchurch Local History Society chairman Mike Andrews believes after researcher Terry Tuck unearthed the evidence of a letter dated May 1730 among a box of dusty documents in the Druitt library.

The hand-written missive, referring to a cargo of more 250 black African men, women and children landed at Santiago de Cuba is signed by a Leonard Cocke who was an agent for the South Sea Company which trafficked slaves between Africa and the plantations of America and the Caribbean.

And despite the different spelling of the name, Cocke's letter was included by noted Christchurch antiquarian Herbert Druitt among his collection of papers relating to the family of clockmaker Robert Harvey Cox who founded the first fusee chain factory barely 50 years later.

Now the history society is checking with the archives of the Wilberforce Institute - named after the politician who led the anti-slavery campaign in Britain - and the university library at Bristol, which was one of the main slave trade ports.

"We can't prove that it was connected and there is no defining link between slavery and fusee chains, but we are looking for it," said Mr Andrews.

In his letter Cocke tells his bosses that he is waiting for the negroes to be marked' by government officials before they can be unloaded and sold, and grumbles that he has only been offered 248 pieces of eight' for the male slaves and proportionally less for the women and children.

"People looked at things very differently in those days," said Mr Andrews.