Having been in off-list conversations with various folks who responded to this post, I neglected to thank those who replied to the list. John Zaborney’s *Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia* (LSU Press, 2012) has arrived and is indeed an excellent source on slave hiring in general, as well as addressing this question in particular.
I highly recommend it!
-Lois
Lois Leveen, PhD
Portland OR 97214
[log in to unmask]
she/her/hers
> On Oct 27, 2022, at 8:24 AM, Sheri Huerta <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I was going to suggest John's book. He includes many examples of
> arrangements for women in hiring contracts. Hiring contracts contain loads
> of information about the conditions and terms of service and the many court
> cases brought against hirers indicates the degree to which these provisions
> and stipulations were not complied with.
>
> Can't wait to read your work, Lois!
> Sheri Huerta
>
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 8:14 AM T. C. GRAY <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> 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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>
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