Lois,

I touch upon many of these things in *Slaves for Hire:  Renting Enslaved
Laborers in Antebellum Virginia* (LSU Press, 2012).

John Zaborney

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 4:26 PM Lois Leveen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Howdy list,
> Does anyone happen to know whether hiring-out agreements made any
> provisions regarding pregnancy of enslaved girls and women? What happened
> when a hired-out girl or woman became pregnant/delivered a child? We know
> from various sources that there were some fairly standard provisions in
> hiring agreements regarding the provision of clothing allotments or medical
> care for hired-out laborers. But I have never seen any references, either
> in the hiring contracts/receipts themselves or in any scholarship on the
> topic, regarding pregnancy -- either in terms of the pregnant person or in
> terms of any infant born while a mother was hired-out. Given both the
> effects pregnancy might have on the labor performed by a hired-out person,
> and vice versa, as well as the interests or concerns an enslaver might have
> regarding infants resulting from such pregnancies, it seems strange to me
> that the sources I know of appear entirely silent on this topic.
>
> While the majority of hired-out slaves may have been male, there were
> certainly females who were hired out (at least in antebellum Richmond, my
> area of focus). And there certainly must have been sexual activity
> involving those enslaved people -- perhaps consensual liaisons that
> hired-out people were able to pursue for themselves while away from their
> enslavers, but also potential incidents of sexual abuse of those who had
> been hired out. Indeed, I suppose a related question is whether we have any
> sources -- hiring contracts, court documents, correspondence, etc. -- that
> address situations in which hired-out enslaved people were subject to
> sexual predation during the period of hire. Was sexual "use" of a hired-out
> worker assumed as part of the contract?
>
> The wording of this query emphasizes the perspectives of the enslavers and
> the hirers, because presumably those are the perspectives that the extant
> records would be most likely to reflect and preserve. I do not mean to
> ignore the perspective of the enslaved/hired-out themselves; quite the
> opposite. The larger questions I am thinking about involve the experiences
> of hired-out females. What might an enslaved girl or women experience as
> part of hiring out, and how might pregnancy figure into their experiences?
>
> As ever, I welcome any help list members can offer.
> Thanks,
> Lois
>
> Lois Leveen PhD
> she/her/hers
>
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