These were the huts of the lowest grade of negro-slaves of the fields.
The small merchants and the domestics had larger houses with boarded
floors, some even with linen sheets and mosquito nets, and shelves with
plates and dishes of good ware. Every negro received a yearly allowance
of Osnaburgh linen, woollen, baize and checks for clothes, and some
planters also gave them hats and handkerchiefs, knives, needles and
thread, and so on.
Every plantation had a surgeon who received a small sum for attendance on
every slave, while special cases of midwifery, inoculation, etc., had a
particular allowance. The surgeon had to attend to about four hundred to
five hundred negroes, on an income of L150 per annum, and board and
lodging and washing, besides what he made from his practice with the
whites.
Salem was no worse than some other plantations on the island, but it was
far behind such plantations as that owned by Dyck Calhoun, and had been
notorious for the cruelties committed on it. To such an estate a lady
like Sheila Llyn would be a boon. She was not on the place a day before
she started reforms which would turn the plantation into a model scheme.
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