Interior Of A Boiling-House

This print appeared in Richard Bridgens' 'West India scenery with illustrations of "Negro character, the process of making sugar, &c. from sketches taken during a voyage to, and residence of seven years in, the island of Trinidad' (London, 1836); namely twenty-seven plates with accompanying text. It illustrates four slaves and a white overseer in a boiling house on a sugar plantation in Trinidad during the nineteenth century. ‘The juice is conveyed in pipes from the mill to the boiling house. . . .Here it is converted through a succession of coppers. At each copper a "Negro" is placed to take off the scum as it rises, and when the temperature of that vessel has had its full effect, to remove it with a ladle into the next . . . .'(Bridgens).

When the scum diminished the fire was removed and when it solidified it was removed to hogsheads in the curing house where it rested for about six weeks until it went to Europe.

A sculptor, designer and architect, Bridgens was born in England in 1785. In 1825 he moved to Trinidad where his wife had inherited a sugar plantation. Although Bridgens apparently occasionally returned to England, he died in Port of Spain in 1846.