Title
Mug
Label
Child’s Mug
Made in Staffordshire, England, 1820-1860
Made of Creamware (Lead-Glazed Earthenware)
Diameter 2.50"
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by W. Groke Mickey
This child’s mug, decorated with a scene of a slave auction and an anti-slavery poem, was meant to teach a child a stark lesson about the cruelty of slavery.
In the scene, a slave is dancing on a barrel. This was not uncommon; one former slave noted that they were forced to “dance, jump, walk, leap, squat, tumble, and twist about, that the buyer may see they have no stiff joints, or other physical defect.”
The poem on the back is part of “The Sorrows of Yamba,” or “The Negro Woman’s Lament,” written by Hannah More and Eaglesfield Smith in 1797. It reads:
DRIVEN like cattle to a fair
See, they sell us, young and old
Child from mother too they tear -
All for love of filthy gold.
Made in Staffordshire, England, 1820-1860
Made of Creamware (Lead-Glazed Earthenware)
Diameter 2.50"
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by W. Groke Mickey
This child’s mug, decorated with a scene of a slave auction and an anti-slavery poem, was meant to teach a child a stark lesson about the cruelty of slavery.
In the scene, a slave is dancing on a barrel. This was not uncommon; one former slave noted that they were forced to “dance, jump, walk, leap, squat, tumble, and twist about, that the buyer may see they have no stiff joints, or other physical defect.”
The poem on the back is part of “The Sorrows of Yamba,” or “The Negro Woman’s Lament,” written by Hannah More and Eaglesfield Smith in 1797. It reads:
DRIVEN like cattle to a fair
See, they sell us, young and old
Child from mother too they tear -
All for love of filthy gold.
Citation
“Mug,” Museums at Washington and Lee University: Online Exhibits, accessed September 8, 2024, https://exhibits-museums.omeka.wlu.edu/items/show/14.