housing+of+slaves

= Inside The Slaves Home = = [|http://www.ohlone.pausd.org/Williamsburg/038%20slave%20cabin%20interior.jpg] = =   = Slaves lived in dirty, crowded quarters, with no running water. "There were no privies used in the country," wrote an Appomattox County man to a doctor in Charlottesville. Slave cabins were stuffy, rats and other disease-carrying animals common. Dirty drinking water, unwashed food, and poor diet all threatened slaves’ health. So did ragged clothing, dangerous working conditions, and physical punishments such as whipping. Under such conditions, infant and child mortality rates were high. Many children died of diphtheria, whooping cough, and sickle cell disease. Malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases were common among blacks and whites alike, but cholera affected slaves more than whites because of slaves’ poor living conditions. [|-http://www.legacymuseum.org/herbs/G1/G100.htm]   **(7) [|Austin Steward], //Twenty-Two Years a Slave// (1857)**

Our family consisted of my father and mother - whose names were Robert and Susan Steward - a sister, Mary, and myself. As was the usual custom, we lived in a small cabin, built of rough boards, with a floor of earth, and small openings in the sides of the cabin were substituted for windows. The chimney was built of sticks and mud; the door, of rough boards; and the whole was put together in the rudest possible manner. As to the furniture of this rude dwelling, it was procured by the slaves themselves, who were occasionally permitted to earn a little money after their day's toil was done.      -http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAShousing.htm  **(5)**          **[|Frederick Douglass], //Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass// (1845)**

The   re were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This, however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep; for when their day's work in the field is done, the most of them having their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day; and when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and single, drop down side by side, on one common bed - the cold, damp floor - each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets; and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver's horn.         -http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAShousing.htm  (3) [|Josiah Henson], //The Life of Josiah Henson// (1849)

We lodged in log huts, and on the bare ground. Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children. All ideas of refinement and decency were, of course, out of the question. We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with boards; a single blanket the only covering. Our favourite way of sleeping, however, was on a plank, our heads raised on an old jacket and our feet toasting before the smouldering fire. The wind whistled and the rain and snow blew in through the cracks, and the damp earth soaked in the moisture till the floor was miry as a pig- sty. Such were our houses. In these wretched hovels were we penned at night, and fed by day; here were the children born and the sick - neglected. -  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAShousing.htm   = =