These posts explore the histories of some of the most interesting or significant cases that we have found. Primary sources relating to hundreds more can be explored at Caribbean Religious Trials. The histories are presented here in the order in which we post them, but you can also explore them in date order through the timeline, or geographically via the map. We periodically add new cases. Subscribe to the site to make sure you get updates.

Teacher Bailey, Trinidad, 1918

Trinidad 0 Comments

In Trinidad, the Shouters Prohibition Ordinance of 1917 made practices of worship associated with the Spiritual Baptist religion illegal. Adherents of the religion were known by outsiders as ‘Shouters’, but described themselves as ‘Baptists’, ‘Penitents’ or ‘Spiritual Baptists’. The Spiritual Baptist religion was a form of African-oriented Christianity that developed in the late nineteenth and […]

Amelia Barker, Trinidad, 21 May 1898

Trinidad 0 Comments

Amelia Barker’s case shows how accusations of obeah were widely made, even when people weren’t on trial for obeah. Barker, who lived in Port of Spain, Trinidad, was threatened with arrest by a policeman, Sergeant Bernard, because she threw water onto the street outside her house. Angered by what she perceived as interference in her […]

A Butler in Vere, Jamaica, approx. 1770s

Jamaica 0 Comments

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 […]

Lucky

Brutus, Jamaica, 1788 to 1792

Jamaica 0 Comments

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 […]

Tony

Mary, Sarah, Tony, Neptune and Solomon, Jamaica, 1767-1782

Jamaica 0 Comments

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 […]

Rock, alias Venture, Jamaica, 1791

Jamaica 0 Comments

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 […]

Magnetism and Hypnotism

Mary and Arthur Clement, Trinidad, 1910

Trinidad 0 Comments

Obeah prosecutions were used very broadly, including against people whose healing work drew on European traditions such as mesmerism. One such case took place in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1910, when a husband-and-wife team, Mary and Arthur Clement, were prosecuted for ‘obtaining money by false pretenses with intent to defraud by the practice of […]

Cindy Brooks, Jamaica 1964

Jamaica 0 Comments

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 […]

Port of Spain, Trinidad, Harbour Works, 1939

Daniel Young, Trinidad 1931

St. Vincent, Trinidad 0 Comments

Daniel Young’s conviction for obeah highlights the importance of mass-produced books, particularly those published by the Chicago-based de Laurence publishing company, in twentieth century forms of spiritual work. The company was founded by Lauron William De Laurence, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1868. It published a mixture of magic, spiritual, and occult books, often plagiarising […]

polydore-image

Polydore, Jamaica 1831

Jamaica 0 Comments

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 […]

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