From the 1940s prosecutions for obeah became less common, at least in Jamaica. The conviction of Cindy Brooks in 1964 is one of only a handful of prosecutions that took place after Jamaica became independent in 1962. As in the earlier conviction of Daniel Young in Trinidad in 1931, the occultist publishing and distributing house De Laurence […]
Rose Ann Forbes, also known as ‘Mammy Forbes’ ran one of the most important balmyards in Jamaica for at least thirty and probably nearly sixty years, at Blake’s Pen, on the border of Manchester and St. Elizabeth. Rose Ann’s husband, George Forbes, was also involved in healing at the balmyard. According to oral tradition, Forbes […]
Many people arrested under the obeah laws were members of religious communities who were prosecuted for group worship and/or healing activities. This was the case with the prosecution of Rosabelle Rennalls, Joseph Stephens, Julius Walters, Joseph Thomas, George Morgan, Miriam Henry and Leonora Thomas for participating in a religious healing meeting at Beggar’s Bush Pen […]
In 1831 in a special slave court in the parish of St. Dorothy, now part of Clarendon, an enslaved man named Polydore was charged with obeah, convicted, and sentenced to transportation for life. The records of the case provide one of the most detailed accounts of spiritual healing from the slavery period. First page of Minutes […]
Some records of the trials of people accused of obeah show that they were involved in collective activity to attack slavery, and that international events such as the revolution in Saint Domingue (Haiti) were widely discussed in Jamaica. One such case involved Brutus, an enslaved black man who had been convicted in 1788 of practising […]
Many enslaved people resisted enslavement by escaping from slave owners and living in Maroon communities or hiding in small groups nearby plantations. One way we know about them is through the advertisements placed by slaveholders in newspapers, offering rewards to others if they captured the runaways. One such advertisement, for two men including ‘Rock, alias […]
One of the most frequently repeated stories about the practice of obeah—at least in printed sources–first appeared in material presented to the British parliament in the late eighteenth century. The story, which we refer to as that of the ‘Woman of the Popo Country’ was much re-used and re-told in later generations. The story was […]
Winter was one of several enslaved people convicted of obeah in Jamaican slave courts in the decades after the 1760 legislation which first made obeah a criminal offence. He was tried in the slave court of the parish of St. Thomas in the East (today’s St. Thomas) and sentenced to transportation. This probably meant that […]
The experience of an enslaved brother and sister in eighteenth-century Jamaica demonstrates family connections and relationships of support that could existed amongst enslaved people. It was described in the evidence about obeah provided by Stephen Fuller, the Agent for Jamaica, to the 1789 ‘Committee of Council appointed for the Consideration of all Matters relating to […]
Obeah was not illegal until 1760, when the Jamaican Assembly passed ‘An Act to remedy the evils arising from irregular assemblies of slaves and to prevent their possessing arms and ammunition and going from place to place without tickets, and for preventing the practice of obeah, and to restrain overseers from leaving the estates under […]
