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The World of Alexander Johnston: The Creolization of Ambition, 1762–1787*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Alan Karras
Alan Karras
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, the ‘devil of a country’ to which Dr Alexander Johnston referred, seems an unlikely candidate, at the historian's first glance, for consternation. Today's visitor would find that the ‘Garden Parish’, St Ann's, truly exudes everything warm and wonderful associated with tropical stereotypes. Yet two hundred years ago Dr Alexander Johnston, ‘Practitioner of Physick and Chiurgery’ rarely observed this very paradise, the foothills of coastal St Ann's, in a positive light. To this particular Scot, the bright reds and greens clearly took second place to the shabby problems of daily life in the Caribbean.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 53 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Alexander Johnston to James Johnston, 24 June 1783, Alexander Johnston Section, Powel papers, letters, 1781–1787 (+ undated), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

2 Braithwaite, Edward, The development of Creole society in Jamaica (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, has come the closest to undertaking a systematic study of people like Johnston. His evidence, unfortunately, appears incomplete; his narrative, as a result, never rises to more than speculation about what life may have been like for middling and small whites.

3 See Devine, Thomas M., The tobacco lords: a study of the tobacco merchants of Glasgow and their trading activities (Edinburgh, 1975)Google Scholar; Also, Price, Jacob, Capital and credit in British overseas trade: the view from the Chesapeake, 1700–1776 (Cambridge, MA, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘The rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake tobacco trade, 1707–1775’, William and Mary Quarterly, XI (1954), 179–99Google Scholar; as well as Brock, William, Scotus Americanus (Edinburgh, 1982), particularly pp. 13–67, 114–26Google Scholar.

4 Braithwaite, Creole society is again closest to getting this part of Jamaica history right. Still, his book is organized so that his chapter on whites discusses only the obvious (see pages 105–50): royal administrators, merchants, sugar planters and their houses. His chapter on ‘Other whites’ recognizes that, in 1820, between 18,000 and 24,000 of Jamaica's white inhabitants were other whites (p. 135). He attempted to deal with them, although to my mind he misses a wonderful opportunity and does little more than rattle off the occupations of these other whites. What I am hoping to do through the records of Johnston and others like him, successful or not, is to examine the middle levels of island and mainland society. Certainly, Johnston provides a complete sense of the ambition of the day, with the added value of having been successful. Others, with the same ambition, must have enjoyed far fewer pleasantries than this paper's protagonist.

5 While it is now impossible to estimate the exact number of Scottish professionals in all the eighteenth-century colonies, it can be observed that Scots largely filled the professional occupations. Scottish professionals may actually have been in demand. It might even be possible to consider Johnston part of the beginnings of a minor trend.

6 Johnston, Alexander, ‘Each great is nothing but collected smalls’, 19 04 1769Google Scholar, A. Johnston papers, books. The men's names were George Chalmers, William Gould, William Johnston, Sylvester Douglas, John Paterson, William Gordon, George Ramsay, and Johnston. The book contains nine discourses on medical and physical treatment, delivered before the medical society at Aberdeen in 1761.

7 Silvester Douglas of Fechil was a member of the arts class of King's College of 1755–61 but did not graduate until 1765. The following year he obtained his medical degree from Leyden. Of the names in Johnston's book, he was one of the two who did not go to the West Indies. Also at King's College, George Chalmers of either Aberdeen or Glass (there were two) was a member of the same class, 1761, as was William Johnston. John Paterson was a member of the class of 1755–9 and William Gordon of Sutherland joined the class of 1759–63 in 1760. All these men attended the University. At Marischal College, records for George Ramsay exist (A.M. 1762) as do those for John Paterson's and Alexander Johnston's sons. It is most peculiar to note that of all the men in Johnston's Scottish notebooks, information and verification can be located for all but Johnston and William Gould (who will probably remain lost to the ages). See Fasti Aberdonenses: officers and graduates of the university and King's College, Aberdeen, 1495–1860, ed. Anderson, P. J. (Aberdeen, 1893)Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, Alexander Johnston to William Edwards, 31 March 1774, draft, Alexander Johnston papers, letters.

9 I have not yet analysed all of the neighbourhood patterns nor identified the point of embarkation for a majority of St Ann's parish residents. The records are particularly weak for this period. It does, none the less, seem perfectly clear from Johnston's own records and official vestry records that Alexander Johnston saw mostly Scottish named patients and that St Ann's had quite a substantial population of these individuals.

10 Alexander Johnston to James Johnston, June and July 1771, pp. 2–3, John Johnston papers.

11 Ibid. p. 3.

12 Ibid.

13 See The north-east of Scotland, a survey prepared for the Aberdeen meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Aberdeen, 1963), pp. 197–8Google Scholar. The vowel sounds are distinctly different from other parts of Scotland and England and probably account for Johnston's problems with accent and pronounciation. ‘Wh’, for example is pronounced as an ‘f’ while ‘u's’ and ‘i's’ are interchanged.

14 See the important work of Landsman, Ned, Scotland and its first American colony, 1683–1765 (Princeton, NJ, 1985), especially pages 61–3Google Scholar. Graham, Ian Charles, Colonists from Scotland (Ithaca, NJ, 1956)Google Scholar has argued that the emigrants who sailed from the north of Scotland in such multitudes around 1772–3 ‘were far from being the most indigent or the least capable of subsisting in their own country…[I]t was not poverty or necessity which compelled, but ambition which enticed them to forsake their native soil’, (p. 39).

15 Johnston's immediate neighbours were members of the Gordon and Menzies families, both residents of the area surrounding Aberdeen. Members of both of these families, as well, attended the university of Aberdeen. See Fasti Aberdonenses, pp. 202, 235 and index. Some of the other names, like Strachan, Forbes, Cargil and Rose, were among Johnston's biggest patients as well as members of Aberdeen's college classes. The King's College and Marischal College records reveal this as well.

16 A history of Johnston's family, the Johnstons of Crimond, claimants to the title of Annandale, has not been completely finished. It is, however, known that this family was related to the Johnstons of Caskieben, also with claims to the peerage of Annandale (see Scottish Record Office Collection, Johnston of Caskieben, GD 208, uncatalogued as yet). The family certainly had some property, though the amount is at present unclear. See, for example, The peerage of Scotland, anon. (Edinburgh, 1834)Google Scholar.

17 Alexander Johnston to his father, 1762, John Johnston papers.

18 See Cumberland's, Richard comedy, The West Indian (London, 1835?)Google Scholar. It was posthumously published. He lived from 1732–1811, making him roughly Johnston's age. The treatment that returning West Indians received in London society is the topic of this satire. It also suggests that their wealth was not enough to gain acceptance for them in their upper orders, despite a number of repeated attempts on their part to do exactly that.

19 See Braithwaite, , Creole society, pp. xii–xvi and 105–34Google Scholar.

20 See Sheridan, , Doctors and slaves (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 21–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Ibid. pp. 42–52.

22 Leslie, Charles, A new history of Jamaica (London, 1740), p. 49Google Scholar. Also see Johnston's account book for Charles Leslie's account, p. 13.

23 Ibid.

24 At his death Fullerton's estate was valued at over £216,033. See Inventories, 1B/11/3/108, p. 194 in the Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Also see the Jamaica almanack for the years 1762–87. Fullerton served as a member of the Assembly for St Ann (1764, 1774, 1781, 1787, 1790). See Official and other personages of Jamaica from 1655–1790, Feurtado, W. A. (Kingston, 1896)Google Scholar. In addition, he was either a Justice or a Vestryman for St Ann's every year from 1767–1783. Clearly, he was an important figure in both the island's and the parish's politics and social order. Dr Fullerton, also a Northeastern Scot, graduated from Aberdeen in 1717.

25 Johnston, A., ‘Memorandum’, 09 1766, page 3Google Scholar, A. Johnston papers, business papers, fo. 1. See Sheridan, p. 302. Johnston's experiences sound a lot like those of a Dr Jonathan Troup of Dominica, also an Aberdeen medical practitioner.

26 Of the 209 different accounts found in A. Johnston, Account Book, 1768–73, A. Johnston papers, books, only eight free blacks were readily identifiable. Furthermore, Table 2 of this paper indicates that blacks were not a frequent stop on Johnston's parish rounds. Of course, St Ann's in 1760 only had 78 free blacks within its borders. See ‘Negroes, Mulattoes, etc., inc. Men, Women, and Children, in Jamaica, 1760’, BM Add MSS 12,435/26. Note the contrast with Richard Sheridan, p. 287.

27 Johnston would have had no interest in the number of slaves on a particular plantation if he was not in some way involved with either their or their master's care.

28 See Appendix A, last column, for the actual plantation names and their owners. If the records for these plantations are available, then it might be possible to compare their expenditures to Johnston's receipts. Richard Sheridan has used Alexander Johnston and his account book to discuss smallpox inoculation only. It seems to me that he has overlooked a more fundamental observation on the state of slave medical care in Jamaica. It seems that his table for Grenadan doctors and their slave charges (p. 297) showed that Johnston, sixty years earlier, was at the very top of plantation doctor status. In other words, Johnston served more slaves in Jamaica sixty years. earlier than the highest Grenadan doctor. Sheridan chose to look only at the nineteenth century, thus missing an excellent comparison of slave practice, and its variation from place to place and time to time in the West Indies.

29 There are three alternative reasons for this. Johnston's misinformation in either one or both areas; the exclusion from vestry records of very old or very young slaves (those more likely to need medical care); or, most probably, the tax reports may be deliberately understated. Johnston's figures are consistently higher than the returns in Appendix A.

30 The 1768 figure is from the Jamaica Poll Tax, BM Add. MSS 12,435/31–32, papers on the statistics of Jamaica, 1739–70. The 1804 figures are from a count from Robertson, James, Map of Middlesex county Jamaica (London, 1804)Google Scholar.

31 See Higman, Barry, Slave population and economy in Jamaica (Cambridge, 1981), p. 25Google Scholar. Higman has charted the course for discussing Jamaican activities for the nineteenth century. It remains for historians to work the data backward into the eighteenth.

32 For a contemporary account of diseases affecting blacks and their supposed frequency see Farquhar, George, ‘An account of the climate and diseases of Jamaica’ in The Philadelphia Medical Museum 1 (1805), 176 ff. Farquhar claims that June and November are the most sickly times of the year and that winter – from December to April – is the healthiestGoogle Scholar. Banner, Thomas in The Medical Assistant (Kingston, 1801)Google Scholar also discusses the various temperaments and treatments of Jamaican blacks as well as whites. None the less, it is difficult to say whether the diseases fell into some sort of pattern peculiar to sugar production or whether they were a result of penning or even climate.

33 See the discussion of fees in Sheridan, , Doctors and slaves, pp. 315–19Google Scholar. His figures are predominantly nineteenth century. In 1832 the charge seems to have been 7.s. 6d. In fifty years this represents a 25% inflation rate, indicating, perhaps, that A. J. was more of a bargain than he would have liked to admit. It might also be simply a function of the fact that Sheridan's figures are largely from doctors treating sugar-producing slaves while Johnston's, more than likely, are from cattle-ranching slaves. It may be that secondary industries brought secondary prices.

34 See A. Johnston, Account Book, 1768–73, A. Johnston papers, books, under any one of the accounts listed in Appendix A. Note that some of the owners were charged 7s. 6d. for the care that others received for 5s. Either they paid for better care for their servants or, more likely, they lived at a greater distance from Johnston, requiring him to travel greater distances over a longer period of time. A geographical analysis, where it has been possible to carry it out, confirms the second theory. Still, a more complete work-up is called for here. Also look at the account book for a more precise list of Johnston's charges for a black. Generally, these treatments were exactly half the price of comparable white care. Johnston obviously spent less time administering a black vomit than he did giving a white one. See Sheridan for a confirmation of the nineteenth-century case.

35 His account book never indicates which days he visited any plantation, and looking at the number of patients he saw per day exclusive of the mass visits (if such a thing existed), shows that he would have had little time to see them.

36 Tables 1 and 2 are both based upon tabulations from the above account book.

37 See Farquhar, quoted in Sheridan, Doctors and slaves, p. 191Google Scholar. In fact, the most healthy period of the year was from the first of December until April. During this time ‘ the cold north wind blows, the atmosphere is clear, and the autumnal rains having ceased, those who have suffered…begin to recover.’

38 See Zuckerman, Michael, ‘Fate, flux, and good fellowship: an early Virginia design for the dilemma of American business’, in Business and its Environment: essays for Thomas C. Cochran, ed. Sharlin, Harold (Westport, CT, 1983), pp. 161–84Google Scholar.

39 Again, see Johnston's account book. Purges and vomits cost 5 shillings; most medicines cost either 7s. 6d. or 10s. Gum was available for the meagre sum of 7½d. while the top of the line, operations, went for several pounds Johnston really didn't perform very much surgery. These fees appear to agree with Sheridan's data.

40 See Ferguson account, Johnston' s account book.

41 Here we have two alternatives to explore: either Johnston's community networks were like concentric circles, divided into thirds – friends/neighbours, affinal kin, and cognitive kin, as described by MacFarlane, Alan, The family life of Ralph Josselin, (Cambridge, 1970) or like those webs described by Lorena Walsh in her unpublished paper, ‘Community networks in the early Chesapeake.’ My suspicions are that Walsh is fundamentally correct; her work invites a comparison of Scottish networks in Jamaic a and the ChesapeakeGoogle Scholar.

42 Johnston may have treated only one patient per visit, but it is probable that he saw all the household members who were not about the parish visiting others. He, in all likelihood, either chatted or shared some rum or tea with his hosts. It must be remembered that Johnston was an ambitious man, with high aspirations, as well as a doctor, and so his visiting patterns must have been extremely refined. Repeated visits, each month, of which there were a substantial number, indicate that Johnston received even more attention than he otherwise might have.

43 Johnston was a frequent correspondent of residents of Kingston, Half-Way Tree, Bel-Aire, Spanish Town and assorted other places. A record of his trip to Kingston is also included in his records: A. Johnston papers, business papers, fo. 2.

44 Aaron Moffatt's estate was valued at £49,562. 15s. in 1795, John Gordon's estate at £31,543.6d. in 1779. The list, of course, could go on and on. It is interesting for us to note that ullerton, given his rich background, may have encouraged Johnston in his pursuits.

45 See Anne Tucker's account in account book, pages 16, 80, etc. for a complete list of the myriad of services Mrs Tucker received from Dr Johnston.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid. In Januar y 1771, Johnston saw Mrs Brady only once an d Mrs Tucker six times, only two of which were visits for herself. In Januar y of the year before, however, Tucker received fifteen visits and Brady nine.

48 Estate inventories for these women, under these names, are no longer extant on the island.

49 There seems to be some discrepancy here. Richmond estate amounted to 1,200 acres and was conveyed to Pinnock, deeply in debt, by Gershom Ely in 1747. In 1767, Pinnock used it as security to his London merchants, Trecothick and Apthorpe. Pinnock, in 1775, when he sold the land, had substantially increased the estate's size. He sold Richmond, New-Works, and Black-Heath Pen in order to recover some of his debt. Pinnock was an old hand at island politics: he was a member of the Island Council in 1761 (and probably 1754), a member of the Assembly from St Ann in 1768, St Thomas in the East in 1770, Speaker in 1768 and 1769. His land holdings in 1754 totalled nearly 4,000 acres in four parishes. See Colonial Landholders in 1754, P.R.O., C.O. 142/31, Feurtado Collection, National Library, Institute of jamaica, and ‘Richmond Estate in the Parish of St. Ann’, Oliver, V. L., ed. Caribbeana, IV, 155–9Google Scholar. I was unable to find a record of his estate inventory.

50 Jamaica Landholders in 1754, P.R.O., CO. 142/31.

51 See the Caribbeana history of Richmond, above.

52 ‘Land indenture,’ 25 October 1770, A.Johnston papers, legal papers, 1769–1806, fo. 1. The deal was to have closed on 14 June 1771.

53 The official Jamaican records have been consulted for all of Johnston's land purchases. Unfortunately, the records are incomplete for St Ann's, and the best answer to this problem has turned out to be an estate map of his lands, in the National Library of Jamaica. The map was dated after his death, though a comparison with that in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania concludes that the plots are roughly the same as those described in the new map.

54 Certainly Jews. A. Johnston papers, legal papers, fos. 1 and 2. Lousada and Henriques have turned up in a number of estate inventories and land conveyances. Their estate inventories have not yet been located.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 I find it interesting that Johnston renamed his estate Annandale. Given that he most certainly was not a part of the Annandale Johnstons, his estate's name suggests a peerage debate going back a long way. It does not suggest a coincidence of any sort.

58 Johnston had his estate independently valued on 7 July 1784. The assessors estimated that he had 3,000 acres worth £10,250; 80 slaves worth £5,200 and 329 animals valued at £1,590. The total, according to this valuation, which did not include furniture, amounted to £19,300, hardly a pittance by any standard. See estate valuation in A. Johnston papers, business papers, 1758–1838,83. 1.

59 Philip Pínnock to Alexander Johnston, 18 February 1774, A. Johnston papers, letters.

60 Pinnock to Johnston, 5 June 1775, A. Johnston papers, letters.

61 Pinnock to Johnston, 22 June 1777, A.Johnston papers, letters.

62 Letter from John Campbell of Orange Hill to Archibald Campbell of Knockbury, both in St Ann's, 4 June 1767, Campbell family letters, on microfilm in University of West Indies Library, Mona, Jamaica.

63 Alexander Johnston to James Johnston, 20 January 1784, A. Johnston papers, letters. According to vestry records there were only 10 doctors in the parish throughout most of the period. See St Ann's Vestry Orders, 1767–90, 2/9/1, Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town. Johnston had by far the biggest estate. By comparison, St James parish in 1774 supported only six identifiable doctors with an average of 14·slaves and 3·67 stock (BM Add MSS 12, 435/3–4). Johnston was doing quite well.

64 Ibid.

65 For example, Robert Holden, Johnston's wife's guardian died in 1781 still holding a bond from Johnston for £13. See Estate Inventory, Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town.

66 Johnston, A., ‘New memorandum book’, 1776–1777Google Scholar, A. Johnston papers, books, p. [27].

67 Alexander Johnston to James Johnston, 14 November 1786, A. Johnston papers, letters.

68 ‘An account of the number of negroes and stock in the different parishes of this Island of Jamaica for the Year 1778’, BM Add MSS 12,435/7 and ‘1788 Jamaica Poll Tax’, BM Add MSS 12. 435/43.

69 A. Johnston to James Johnston, 21 August 1784, A. Johnston papers, legal papers.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Letter from unknown author to William Pyper, 30 August 1779, A. Johnston papers, letters.

73 See, for example, James Pyper to Alexander Johnston, 1784, A. Johnston papers, letters; and A. Johnston to James Johnston, 4 July 1783. A. Johnston papers letters.

74 Their pre-nuptial agreement was quite an involved contract. The former Elizabeth Gilbert and her guardians William Seton and Robert Holden paid Johnston 5s. at her betrothal. Johnston, in return, agreed to give Elizabeth 300 acres of his Annandale estate, along with all the houses and buildings standing on the property, as well as twenty-four slaves and their offspring. In return, he was allowed to maintain the lands as if they were his own, enjoying the profits from them for the paltry sum of a peppercorn's rent each year. In the event of her widowhood, she would receive £280 living pension per annum. Johnston, A., Gilbert, E. and Seton, R., ‘Tripartite agreement’, 6 02 1773Google Scholar. A. Johnston papers, letters. It might also be wise to note here that Holden's estate, at his death, was valued at over £27,000 in 1781. No definitive record can be found for Johnston's wife, who later remarried (and was later widowed again) in the estate inventories. It is thus, at this point, not possible to tell whether the agreement was maintained or not.

75 A. Johnston to John Johnston, 18 March [1786?], John johnston papers.

76 A. Johnston to James Johnston, 24 June 1783, Johnston papers, letters.

77 Gray, William and Johnston, Alexander, ‘Bill of Manumission’, 14 08 1782Google Scholar, A. Johnston papers, legal papers.

78 Moffatt's estate size, at the time of his death in 1795, amounted to £49,562.15. His holdings were roughly two and a half times as big as Johnston's.

79 See small untitled notebook, n.d., A. Johnston papers, books.

80 Johnston, A., ‘Last will’, 1786Google Scholar, A.Johnston papers, legal papers.

81 Ibid. Partible inheritance was much more common in Scotland than in England.

82 He graduated in 1799.

83 See A. Johnston, ‘Last Will and Testament’.

84 It seems that some time in 1787, Mrs Johnston tried to remove some property from the family house at Annandale. The executors would not permit her to do this. The existing details are extremely vague. See ‘Estate records’, A. Johnston papers, business papers, fo. 2.

85 Dr Alexander Weir's estate was valued at £1,606.12.6 on 15 February 1794.

86 Johnston, A., ‘Riddle’, 30 07 1769Google Scholar, A. Johnston papers, business papers, fol. 1.