Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 289 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 289: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful novel titled "A Mulatto from the Rebel Plantations" (page 271). The text depicts a dialogue scene in which a young American man, apparently imprisoned in Barbados, claims to be white and freeborn, having been wrongfully enslaved. A doctor named Macglashan examines him skeptically, while another character (Tom) intervenes to protect the prisoner from a man named Higgins by obtaining signatures from Council members forbidding any punishment. The passage employs heavy dialect and period racial language to dramatize a conflict over the prisoner's legal status and identity.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A MuLaTTo FROM THE REBEL PLANTATIONS 271 “Doctor,” interrupted the young man a little quickly, “is not this a white man?”’ “As white as God makes ’em.” He put on his glasses and stared at the half-naked aie boy, with a pearly blotch on his well-set-up ack. “The pigment has been pit on the hide. God pits it under the hide. Hout tout, mon; how cam ye in sic a pickle?” ‘“ Kidnaped; imprisoned; sold as a slave. I’ve been foully wronged. Give me a chance to tell my story to the Bishop and the Governor of Barbados.”’ “Pit on your shirt, an’ get ye oot o’ the sun, Ameri- can.” “T won’t go back in the calaboose. I’m no slave — no felon!”’ Macglashan took a pinch of snuff. “Yell no kick oot o’ the traces in sic a like way, Ameri- can. There'll be preleeminaries, ye ken. There maun al- ways be preleeminaries. Higgins’ll bring ye to book for assault an’ battery, concussion o’ the skull, an’ so on. Been doun a week wr his hurts. The ways o’ Providence are unco mysterious. A mon like Higgins will come round; in spite o’ the Devil an’ the doctor! I tauld him when I clappit eyes on ye first, ye were no nigger. He was muckle ta’en aback. Mad as a mad fishwife. I’m no wiout curi- osity tae hear what defense he’ll pit up.” The young man turned to Tom. “T can’t take a prisoner out of jail without legal pre- liminaries, as Dr. Macglashan says; but I can protect you from Higgins; and I will lay this matter before Lord Mul- grave. Here are two more members of the Council. Gen- tlemen, we'll use our authority to protect this American.” He wrote a line, to which the signatures of all three were not unwillingly appended, forbidding punishment in any form to be inflicted upon the prisoner, “a white, and, as we believe, a freeborn American.” “T?ll speak to the jailer. Where is he?” CORNICLIOO@ SS (C©) mn