Hi there! I find your question very interesting. Do you have any evidence or reason to believe that such agreements existed? I am totally unaware of such.
Shalom,
T.C. Gray
On Wednesday, October 26, 2022, 04:26:23 PM EDT, 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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