U DDLA/41/1-14 Accounts

U DDLA/41/15-24 Correspondence

U DDLA/41/25-38 Various

The papers of Eliza Virgo Scarlett catalogued as U DDLA/41 were deposited in Hull University Archives in 1974 by Joyce Elizabeth Mary, Countess Fitzwilliam (nee Langdale), as part of a larger deposit of family papers for the Langdales of Houghton Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

The papers largely consist of the estate correspondence and accounts of Eliza Virgo Scarlett for sugar plantations in Jamaica. Some accounts and lists of debts pre-date the death of her husband, James Scarlett, in 1798. The collection contains her letter book 1798-1806, when she was conducting her affairs from England. Letters to her 1798-1817 are largely from solicitors and land stewards and agents. This collection is a valuable source of information about the ecomomy of slavery and its human consequences in the West Indies.

Other items in the collection include the will of Sarah Gallimore (1806) and the will of Eliza Virgo Scarlett (1820). There is also a bundle of letters and a press cutting about the sale of the Green Vale estate in 1802.

The plantations utilised enslaved people in their production of sugar and rum, and numerous enslaved people are mentioned by name within the records. In the "Lists and valuations of slaves", which were provided to Eliza Scarlett by her attorney, there are many names of people trafficked to work on the Peru and Green Vale estates. Some of these lists also record physical disabilities and "remarks" on the character of the enslaved people. The lists can be cross-referenced with the series of "Former British Colonial Dependencies, Slave Registers," available via ancestry.com. These registers were kept by the Jamaican authorities and provide additional details about individuals: for example, whether they were African (that is, born in Africa and trafficked to the Caribbean) or Creole (that is, born in Jamaica); or whether they had a white parent or grandparent. Children are listed in these censuses alongside the name of their mother, again allowing cross referencing.

Enslaved people are also a constant presence throughout the other records in the sub-collection. In the accounts of James Scarlett, deceased, with William James Stevenson (U DDLA/41/3) there are a number of entries relating to enslaved people, including several occasions where workhouse fees were paid, and a payment to a soldier for capturing a woman "who had joined the Rebels". In the letters to Eliza Scarlett from William Stevenson of Falmouth, Jamaica, regarding her estates, there are occasional references which can be inferred to relate to enslaved people on the estate. In the will of Sarah Gallimore, dated 1806, she left named enslaved people - women and their children - to her daughters Eliza Scarlett, Mary Wisdom Gallimore and Juliana James Gallimore. The three groups comprised "Old Clary, Henrietta and Peter, Louisa, Austin, Cymon and Little Clary, five Children of Henrietta"; "Old Chloe[,] Fanny and Robert, John[,] Charles and Samie the four Children of Fanny"; and "Old Kitta, Madge, Jenny and Becky". It is unclear how this bequest was administered, as Eliza was living in England at the time of her mother’s death in 1809, and the enslaved people left to her do not appear in the lists at U DDLA/41/26.