Demographics of Bermuda

[21] The majority white-Anglo population, or at least its elites, became alarmed very early at the increasing numbers of Irish and non-whites, most of whom were presumed to be clinging to Catholicism (recusancy was a crime in Bermuda, as it was in England).

This included the multi-racial descendants of the previous minority demographic groups (Black, Irish and Native American) that had quickly blended together, along with some part of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, as well as the occasional Jew, Persian, East Asian or other non-White and non-Black Bermudian.

Their replies were: The Royal Gazette, on 13 December 1926, quoted a contemporary Irish newspaper as having described the enslaved Bermudians as they spoke English very well, and were stout, healthy men, clean and well dressed.

After the American War of Independence, there was deep distrust of Bermuda's local government and the merchant class that dominated it due to the prominent Bermudians who had schemed with the continental rebels, supplying them with ships and gunpowder, and continuing to trade with them in violation of the law.

Bermuda's shipbuilders struggled not to exhaust this precious resource, and land-owning Bermudians counted cedars on their property as wealth which accrued interest over decades as the trees grew, and the remaining forest was consequently protected.

Of his reasons for writing the account, he wrote in the preface: The obscurity in which the Bermuda's, or Somers' Islands, have remained in point of historical facts, since they were first peopled, and my fruitless endeavours to gain information respecting that Colony, on my appointment to a public situation there, four years ago, determined me to glean all I could during a residence of that period.

The friendly hospitality of the men, the mild and gentle demeanour of the women, that needed not a frown to awe the libertine to respect them, the curiosity natural to a citizen of the world, the wish to become useful to my country, and last, though not least, a desire to make my researches as advantageous as possible to my numerous family, were irresistible inducements, first to collect all the materials I could, and now to trust my feelings and my fate to a generous public.Of Bermuda's importance to the British Empire, he observed: The possession of Bermuda, as the key of all our Western Colonies, is of the first importance to England, for if a foe of any maritime strength had possession of it, our trade would be exposed to much annoyance, if not total destruction.Of the prevailing opinion of Bermudians as expressed by other Imperial government officials who had served there, and of his own opinion of Bermudians, he wrote: It has become too much the fashion amongst the officers of the various branches of the public service to ridicule the Bermudians, after partaking of their hospitality, but the latter are not inferior in any particular to the people of the Mother country; the women are as chaste and as fair, and the men as clever, as friendly, and as hospitable too in proportion to their relative means.

The female slave joined her supplications to the silent but powerful eloquence of the mistress, and Jem of course had his punishment remitted.He also wrote at length about the industry, economy and subsistence strategies of Bermuda, showing the usual attitude of Imperial officials to Bermudians perceived failure to clear forest to turn land over to commercial agriculture: ...Of the twelve thousand acres which Bermuda is said to contain, two thousand might be brought into cultivation if there was less veneration for cedar trees, and a trifling exertion made to drain or embank the marshes, whereas at present there are not two hundred acres disturbed by the spade or the plough; indeed there is but one plough in the Colony, and that belongs to an Englishman named Winsor, who has proved what could be made of ground apparently barren......The facility of receiving supplies from America, has too long made the Bermudians regardless of internal resources; and the produce of the soil, even with the quick succession and perpetual vegetation, will not keep pace with the active mind of a man accustomed from boyhood to the more quick returns of commercial speculations......Almost all the occupiers of land sow a small quantity of barley, but in getting in their harvest they seem to scorn the copying system; neither scythe nor sickle are in use, but an old woman (generally a black) is furnished with a basket, and a pair of scissors, of equal standing in the family with herself: thus equipped, she proceeds to cut off the ears of Barley, and in the course of time she has the satisfaction to see a whole rood of barley reduced to headless straw, which is soon converted into bonnets.

When they catch fish, they reserve as much as will sustain nature as long as the price of what they sell will produce rum enough to keep them in a state of intoxication, using neither bread nor vegetables; their wives and children live on the bounty of the ladies of their respective neighbourhoods, who are without exception kind-hearted and charitable.

Except with a few who can afford to enclose their grounds, the cattle of Bermuda are tethered on the pasture; even hogs and goats can range no farther than the length of their strings, the Bermudians being very jealous of trespassers.

They are amiable and affectionate, exemplary in the discharge of the domestic duties, and extremely quiet and retiring ; which surprised me, when I heard that, with but few exceptions, the young ladies receive their education in a boys' school.

As they are great sufferers under a system which prevents them from acquiring the more feminine accomplishments, I am glad to find that several ladies' seminaries are about to be established in Bermuda, which will call forth the talents they undoubtedly possess, and open a wider field for intellectual conversation.

Many of them have been called to offices of high trust in other colonies, as well as in the mother country.She devoted more attention to the subject of black Bermudians, writing: Some most Caliban looking negroes have just been dancing on the lawn ; for in this season of general festivity, they are all permitted to indulge in the wildest mirth and revelry.

They completely besieged my room, which opens on the garden, so that I was forced to remain a close prisoner, and listen to their rude songs, which I should fancy must be very like the wild yelling scream that we read of in African travels.

Still, however, after all these concessions, the coloured inhabitants of Bermuda are bondsmen, and have long suffered the two heaviest ills of bondage, a political incapacity to receive equal justice, and a spiritual privation of religious instruction and happiness.

The gleam of Christianity which penetrated the dreary dungeon of their African superstition, was at first so faint that it served rather to discover the gloom than to dispel the darkness which shrouded them; and having embraced the profession of the gospel, they adopted its name without receiving its influence in their heart.

The entire wealth of many individuals often consists in two, three, twelve, or more of these slaves; and if the owner has no occasion for their services himself, he hires one out as a carpenter, another as a mason, house-servant, &c. They regularly bring their full wages to their master, who commonly allows them a small proportion of their earnings.

The slothful are therefore not made to feel so sensibly the consequences of their idleness, while the upright and conscientious have only the very abstract motive of their master's interest to encourage them to diligence and fidelity:-altogether the system of slavery is a sad check upon active industry and persevering exertions; and I am convinced, that, even with a temporary loss, the slave-owners would ultimately be infinite gainers by the introduction of free labour, and the power of employing only such workmen and servants as should produce a given quantity of labour for fair and stipulated remuneration.

I had often remonstrated with him for not attending church; when he one afternoon made his appearance there, and told me very gravely the next morning that he had put the date into the little book which I had given him ; that he would look at it every Sunday, and that when he died he would have it laid upon his heart and buried with him.

A Negro is the most loquacious being on earth-he seems to talk in spite of himself, and is a very child in the expression of his feelings.Lloyd's negative comments on the dissenters reflected the Church of England's belated attempts to counter the inroads made by Methodists with coloured Bermudians.

The foundation stone of a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was laid in St. George's Town on 8 June 1840, the local Society (by then numbering 37 class leaders, 489 Members, and 20 other communicants) having previously occupied a small, increasingly decrepit building that had been damaged beyond use in a storm in 1839.

A few evenings ago a fine and generous hearted youth, whose complexion may vie with the raven's wing, felt his honour mortally offended on being called a black nigger by a negro a few shades lighter than himself; he instantly seized a knife that was lying before him, and would have plunged it into the man's breast, had not some one providentially held back his arm.

Lieutenant-Colonel John McMaster Milling, an avid fisherman who befriended coloured Bermudians who shared his passion, wrote of his period serving in Bermuda as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, The Bedfordshire Regiment, from 1910 to 1912:[36] ...they are blacker still.

As Christiana Rounds wrote in Harper's Magazine (re-published in an advertising pamphlet by A.L Mellen, the Proprietor of the Hamilton Hotel in 1876):[37] Those who plume themselves on their culture, and who regard all places except those in which they have resided as very benighted quarters, would, of course, look upon Bermuda as almost outside the limits of civilization.

Many who have led very circumscribed lives, who have never been away from Bermuda, possess an ease and grace which would do credit to habitues of society, arising apparently from perfect faith in others, and an earnest desire to add to their pleasure in every possible way.

With the increasingly racially divisive politics that have followed the election of the PLP government, as well as the decades of increasing costs-of-living, the exclusion of unskilled workers from jobs in the white collar international business sector that has come to dominate Bermuda's economy, and the global economic downturn, all of which many Black Bermudians perceive as hitting them hardest, there is little sentiment today amongst people who have long been obliged to think of themselves as Black, in opposition to being White, to identify even partly with their European ancestry.

Some men were as cruel to their daughters, wives and enslaved females as was common elsewhere, but in 1684, following the revocation of the Somers Isles Company's charter, Bermudians were freed to develop their maritime economy, and by the 18th Century virtually the only industries were shipbuilding and sea faring.

This had a profound effect on the lot of women as most Bermudian men spent months away at sea, leaving wives to handle matters at home as best as they could, with many becoming competent at managing financial affairs.

Mary Prince, born into slavery in Bermuda, related in " The History of Mary Prince" (1831) vicious attacks on his daughter by one of her masters in which she sought to protect the other woman, chastising him that they were in Bermuda, not the Turks Islands (where some Bermudians, free and enslaved, migrated seasonally to gather salt for sale on the continent, and where, out of sight of their wives and polite society, some men resorted to debauchery they would not dare to at home), and his having her bathe his naked body until she refused, .

After that I was hired to work at Cedar Hills, and every Saturday night I paid the money to my master.This led to a marked difference in the way women functioned in Bermuda, and were and are perceived (both by themselves and by men), when compared with Britain, the United States, Canada, or the British West Indies.