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This record was last updated on 08 Mar 2011
John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, of a Five Years' Expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam . . . from the year 1772, to 1777 (London, 1796), vol. 1, facing p. 326. (Copy in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
Caption, "Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave." Shows a female hanging from a tree with deep lacerations; in background two white men and two black men, the latter with whips. Stedman witnessed this event in 1774. The female was an eighteen-year old girl who was given 200 lashes for having refused to have intercourse with an overseer. She was "lacerated in such a shocking manner by the whips of two negro-drivers, that she was from her neck to her ancles literally dyed with blood." This and other engravings are found in the autobiographical narrative of Stedman, a young Dutchman who joined a military force against rebellions of the enslaved in the Dutch colony. The engravings are based on Stedman’s own drawings and were done by professional engravers. For the definitive modern edition of the original 1790 Stedman manuscript, which includes this and other illustrations see Richard and Sally Price, eds. Narrative of a five years expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).