![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In the climate of fear and retribution, the events took on a French flavour, indicative of those who had instigated the allegations in the first place. In ways redolent of other slave conspiracies across the Atlantic world throughout the eighteenth century, slaves were burned alive, decapitated or tortured, moderate planters were brought into line with the new order and apprehensions about Obeah and witch-doctory ran rampant. Bordering on the hysterical, their response to this perceived threat was extreme. Frantic planters, many of whom were new arrivals from Grenada, St Domingue and other French colonies, persuaded Governor Thomas Picton to hold brutal commissions into the practice to try and find out who was responsible. These fears exploded in 1801 when the island was hit by a wave of suspected poisonings from among its slave workforce. For the émigré planters like St Hillaire Begorrat, who brought with them the fears, paranoias and petty jealousies that had marked their previous lives, the huge number of free coloureds in Trinidad was a source of alarm. ![]()
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