Lewis, M. G. (Matthew Gregory), 1775-1818 . Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies
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FEBRUARY 12.

    Poor Philippa, the woman who used to always to call me her "husband," and whom I left sick in the hospital, during my absences has gone out of her senses ; and there cannot well happen anything more distressing, as there is no separate place for



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    her confinement, and her ravings disturb the other invalids. There is, indeed, no kind of bedlam in the whole island of Jamaica: whether this proceeds from people being so very sedate and sensible, that they never go mad, or from their all being so mad, that no one person has a right to shut up another for being out of his senses, is a point which I will not pretend to decide. One of my domestic negroes, a boy of sixteen, named Prince was abandoned by his worthless mother in infancy, and reared by this Philippa; and since her illness he passes every moment of his leisure in her sick-room. On the other hand, there is a woman named Christian, attending two fevered children in the hospital; one her own, and the other an adopted infant, whom she reared upon the death of its mother in child-birth ; and there she sits, throwing her eyes from one to the other with such unceasing solicitude, that no one could discover which was her own child and which the orphan.