That’s a four pass Scotch marine boiler you’re looking at – made by EASCO in the Bronx, New York City, United States of America. EASCO stands for A.L. Eastmond and Sons Inc., a multi-million dollar company that is one of the largest boiler manufacturers on the Eastern seaboard. With almost one hundred employees EASCO is also the largest black-owned boiler manufacturer pretty well anywhere.
And who, really, is EASCO? Glad you asked. You see, almost a hundred years ago a blacksmith named Eastmond left his home in Barbados and headed for New York City…
Here is a wonderful piece of history and an uplifting read to start your day…
EASCO is a family and community affair
A.L. Eastmond and Sons Inc. (EASCO) has made its mark all over New York City. Chances are that the boiler in your apartment building was built by them. This successful multimillion-dollar business, started by a blacksmith from Barbados nearly a century ago, now spans three generations.
EASCO’s CEO is 85-year-old Leon Eastmond Jr. He told the AmNews how it all began in 1925.
“My dad came from Barbados and worked for other companies for several years. He bought a fleet of taxicabs. In those days, there was no permanent antifreeze and you had to let the water out of the motors at night so they wouldn’t freeze. The drivers left the water in the blocks and the motors froze overnight and cracked, making the cabs useless.
“So he said, ‘Let me go back to what I know.’ He was a blacksmith. He opened a place at 37 W. 144th St. in Harlem and began shoeing horses and putting springs in cars. He eventually bought a welding machine that you push like a wheelbarrow. After several years, he bought a welding truck…
Should Barbados look to Germany and the Holocaust camps for guidance?
by John Slapp
I have visited Barbados many times over the past years and each visit is preceded by excitement at the prospect of reacquainting myself with friends made in previous years and the beauty of the island.
This excitement is, however, tempered by the knowledge that Barbados has denied and neglected its history, both architectural and human, in favour of the “Luxury Dollar”.
Architecture
Walking around Bridgetown one is struck by the number of neglected historical buildings left to rot and decay. Just one example of many is the Eye Hospital. There are many more. They are treated no better than the eyesores of empty hotels along the Boardwalk.
The Garrison area is one shining light, however Needhams Point, with its guns rusting in the sea, is now a part of the Hilton, for goodness sake! An example of the Dollar being more important than Heritage. It also seems that the Gun Collection in St Ann’s Fort is a national secret if direction signs are anything to go by.
Driving around the island one comes across many old sugar mills and boiling houses. Maybe I am at fault but I have yet to see one restored to give visitors an idea of what they were like. A few days of cane crushing at Morgan Lewis is commendable but hardly inspiring.
I could go on and on, but I think that you get the point.
Human
Barbados has a history. Much as we all wish it had been otherwise the fact remains that slavery, both white and black, is a major part of this history. Continue reading →
Building tourism upon the dark history of slavery… slavery that inspired rebellion and a soaring quest for freedoms and rights.
by Passin Thru
For the last few days the local Bajan news media has been full of stories about the Oistins Charter. Our illustrious government says the country will be establishing itself as a heritage travel destination and our Prime Minister (what’s ‘is name again?) emerged from the martini lunches at the Hilton to do some photo ops. (See Barbados Today here and here)
Heritage tourism is a good idea – maybe a great idea – as studies show that tourists need more than sun, sand, sex and rum to get excited about a destination. But while some of us move to recreate and enhance our Bajan brand with history and heritage travel, others were busy destroying the architecture of one of our oldest structures.
According to Karl Watson on his Facebook page, the oldest existing building in Bridgetown was built around 1650 – and last week the new owners decided to “renovate” it by filling in some of the roofline with concrete. This happened at the same time that the government was saying wonderful things about heritage tourism.
Herein is the lesson about “saying” and “doing”: wonderful pronouncements from our Prime Minister and other elected representatives are not reality.
Words are not laws or enforced standards. Words are not deeds. Saying words, however inspired, is not taking action. Promising to do this or protect that does not make it so.
That is the problem with Barbados and that is the problem with the wider Caribbean: we citizens are told what the government plans or says it plans, but we never follow up to see what the government really does or accomplishes. In the old days we accepted the falsehoods in exchange for tinned beef, biscuits and a smash of rum or whisky. Now we trade our acceptance of obvious falsehoods for what?
What do we gain by nodding and repeating in a zombie-like fashion “Oh Yes! We will be a heritage travel destination!”
Who can hold the government accountable or judge performance when the most basic of financial expenditures remain secret because our politicians deliberately failed to pass a Freedom of Information law?
The Oistins Charter is the latest government fashion!
The Charter of Barbados was signed at the Mermaid Tavern, Oistins, on 11th January 1652 and ratified by the Assembly on 17th January 1652. It predates the US Declaration of Independence but contains an Article much treasured in the US…
As entered in the Charter of Barbados:-
3. That no taxes, customs, imports, loans or excise shall be laid, nor levy made on any the inhabitants of this island, without their consent in a General Assembly.
In the US Declaration of Independence this clause reads:-
There shall be no taxation without representation.
Barbados can be a world-class heritage tourism destination: but only if we stop destroying the physical evidence of our history. Perhaps fifty years ago Bajans – black, whitish and in between – made a decision to let the physical reminders of slavery rot and vanish. Walls, plantation houses, public buildings and books were offered as sacrifices to the concept that if we destroyed the relics we could forget or change history.
What a travesty! How wrong we were… and here we are today being force to “recreate” buildings and places like the Mermaid Tavern where the Charter of Barbados was signed.
Bajans must watch our representatives carefully to see that they really mean what they say. We should not accept any excuses. The truth is: I don’t believe Prime Minister Stuart. I don’t believe he and his government mean what he said, nor that the government will do what he said he would.
The wondrous life of James R. A. Bailey, DFC – founder of DRUM Magazine, South Africa
Anybody who has spent any time at all in South Africa knows DRUM Magazine, a publication that has had its ups and downs in the past six decades but was always on the front line of the struggle for freedom. Since I spent some time in Jo’burg in the early 1990′s, DRUM has turned into more of a black urban lifestyle publication but there was a time when the tabloid told stories that no one else could without getting banned.
What I didn’t know before now, and only just discovered this past week, is that DRUM was started and financed for decades by a white ex-Royal Air Force fighter pilot named Jim Bailey. To my great delight an old friend presented me with a birthday gift of Bailey’s wartime biography The Sky Suspended – A fighter pilot’s story. That led me to looking up the author online and there I found the story of Jim Bailey and DRUM. Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing?
As near as I can discern from the online stories, Bailey poured much of his inherited wealth into starting DRUM as a “black” publication in 1950. It was a true tabloid with girls, crime and violence to keep the readers titillated and the numbers up but it developed a reputation for coming right up to and crossing the line about freedom issues. I think BFP’s readers will understand our appreciation of that marketing philosophy.
When the police beat Steve Biko to death in 1977, DRUM showed the activist in his coffin. When Desmond Tutu wanted to tell the people why he met with the South African apartheid government, he did so in the pages of DRUM. When the bodies piled up on the streets in the townships, DRUM showed them beside the photos of the white police who shot them down. These were dangerous stories to cover, but DRUM did so and made a difference.
Jim Bailey died in early 2000 but he left a legacy of books and poetry that I’ve yet to read. I’m only 40 pages into The Sky Suspended, but other than writing this post I doubt I’ll do any work for the next few days until I finish the book.
Later this week I’ll put up a few more posts on Bailey and his role in Sooth Africa at the time, but for now here’s what he says about what it takes to be a fighter pilot…
It became a study of mine, one I pursued meticulously at this time, to discover what type of man makes the best fighter-pilot. I found, for example, that only children, pilots without brothers or sisters, were particularly helpless. When a new pilot came to us, I would try to guess after a day or two whether he came from a large family or not and then go and ask him. If he did, he had a better chance to survive.
Good pilots are common, good fighter-pilots were rare. It is as with polo: many can ride, but few play polo well; and among those who play well, many ride in a crude and efficient way, without good hands or precision. I arrived at a few conclusions. The qualities that made for success in a fighter-pilot seemed to be just those sturdy qualities that made for success in other professions; observation, initiative, determination, courage, including the courage to run away.
Battle of Britain veteran Jim Bailey on what makes a great fighter pilot
I’d not be surprised an editor would blank a script with such a heading as above. Yet in an attempt to continue encourage all our youth, in the pursuit of science, and mathematics, I can’t but press blindly ahead.
Thomas Bayes 1701-1761 was a clergyman from Tunbridge Wells in Kent. He was, as Bill Bryson writes in his newest book ‘At Home’ , a shy and hopeless preacher, but he was a singularly gifted mathematician.
The Rev Thomas Bayes somehow tripped upon an equation. And as has been often been the case with equations, he did not know what it could be used for.
Thankfully, Rev Bayes wrote it carefully down, but then he shelved it. That is right ! Rev Bayes shelved it away, and died two years later.
Two years after his death, a friend sent the equation to the Royal Society in London. It is a short equation. About 30 key strokes on a laptop could write it. The equation was published in the Royal Society’s ‘Philosophical Transactions’. But there were not any computers around in those days, to make head or tail of it.
‘Today that equation is used in modelling climate change, predicting the behaviour of stock markets, fixing radiocarbon dates, interpretation of cosmological events, and much else where the interpretation of probabilities is an issue.’
As I have said before in previous letters, this phenomena of a scientist/mathematician coming up with an equation that does not seem to fit anywhere, until a great many years have sailed by , never fails to bring up goose pimples. I don’t know how many times now, reading on science I have come across this extraordinary facet of long-delayed equation recognition.
I’m going to repeat my enthral of the other book by Bill Bryson. ‘ A Short History of Nearly Everything’.
If we are definitely serious about getting our young people interested in science, then the above book should be in every single classroom, and should have been read by every politician too, since it deals interestingly, and excitingly, in all the major knishes of science.
Reading such a book, would draw most of us out of the morose and blindness we swim around in concerning the world and the modern age in which we live.
Too many of us are being hoodwinked by sellers of modern technology dealing with climate change and alternative energy (for example), technologies most of us know extremely little about.
Thanks to the efforts of BFP reader Elizabeth, we can now tell you that the “David Roberts” in our story might be Sir David A. Roberts, K.B.E., C.M.G., who served as the UK High Commissioner to Barbados from 1971 to 1973.
Elizabeth also sent us a complete list of British High Commissioners to Barbados since our independence, so we’ll reprint it here, along with the link to the entire list of British Ambassadors from 1880 to 2010.
BRITISH AMBASSADORS AND HIGH COMMISSIONERS: 1880-2010
Introduction
These lists have been compiled from the information contained in the annual Foreign Office List(later renamed the Diplomatic Service List).
This invaluable source ceased publication however in 2006. In addition, latterly the annual editions only provided complete lists of the names of Ambassadors for the previous twenty years or so.
BARBADOS(from 1966):
John S. Bennett, C.B.E., C.V.O.: 1966-1970
Sir David A. Roberts, K.B.E., C.M.G.: 1971-1973
Charles S. Roberts, C.M.G.: 1973-1978
James S. Arthur, C.M.G.: 1978-1982
Viscount Dunrossil, C.M.G.: 1982-1983
Sir Giles L. Bullard, K.C.V.O., C.M.G.: 1983-1986
Kevin F.X. Burns, C.M.G.: 1986-1990
Emrys T. Davies, C.M.G.: 1990-1994
Richard Thomas, C.M.G.: 1994-1998
Gordon M. Baker: 1998-2001
C. John B. White: 2001-2005
Duncan J.R. Taylor, C.B.E.: 2005-2009
Paul Brummell: 2010-
Recently, there was a series of articles in the local newspapers (by Messrs Michael Dingwall and Rahim Shabazz), concerning the role of the black race in the advancement of science. I have some comments to make as a scientist. Let me first state that scientist are seekers of the truth. Scientists deal with facts and not sentiments.
Dingwall is correct when he states that as a race, black people continue to lag in the field of science and technology and to quote him: “The black man has been virtually absent where innovations in science and technology are concerned.”
The foregoing is a statement of fact and no amount of wishful thinking by Shabazz or Mr. Orlando Marville is going to alter the situation. The black race is always harping on the past. It is time to look forward ( I am not saying that one should forget the past) and make efforts to change the situation. At one time, Europeans were considered to be little more than savages by the Chinese and Muslims when these peoples were leaders of the known world. The Europeans pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. The achievement by the Europeans was led by their scientists. Continue reading →
“I often wonder whether Rihanna… ever thinks of or knows anything of her poor white ancestry, their specific role in Barbadian history, their heritage…and if it has any meaning at all for her.”
by Karl Watson
As in everything, the situation at the Yacht Club and Aquatic Club was more complex than it seems on the surface of a compartmentalized black and white scenario. In the early 1950′s and 60′s, the Yacht Club was definitely white with an emphasis on expatriates and upper and upper middle class Barbadian whites.
“Those with the wrong pedigree or background were blackballed.”
The Aquatic Club was mostly white or whitish (i.e. individuals with about a ten to twenty percent Afro admixture that everybody knew about, as genealogies are/were pretty well know for that class) middle class Barbadian with a sprinkling of more obvious i.e.darker mixed race individuals, but also of a middle class back ground.
Working class whites were simply too poor to be admitted…it probably never occurred to them to think of applying for membership.
“So as others have pointed out, in the simplistic equation of poor black and rich white…the fate of the poor whites is often omitted.”
From my personal experience and though we were Bayland poor, my family was not of the poorest, being blond and blue eyed did not save us from being run off the Yacht Club beach in those days. Yes, we “white” children were forbidden to walk on the Yacht Club beach. We would swim to the Aquatic Club with other friends and hold on to the steps like every one else. I almost lost an ear when one day, I made the mistake of stepping on the bridge and was unceremoniously “jacked up” and marched to the entrance to the club and thrown out. You shouldn’t do something like that to a child, but it was done to me. Continue reading →
In his portrait, he looks like a respectable man of his time. Intelligent eyes, distinguished appearance and a look of confidence. Nice suit. A successful man. Friendly. A kind and caring father, a good neighbour. A man to be trusted.
It just shows how little you can tell from a formal portrait, for Thomas Midgley invented something that killed people. He knew his invention was killing people and destroying the environment but for years he lied and kept on promoting his invention. Even when his invention ruined his own health, he continued to lie and cover-up to keep making money.
Meet Thomas Midgley, Jr. – Vice President of General Motors and inventor of lead in gasoline.
And, after his work poisoning people and the environment with lead, he went on to “give” the world the miracle of CFCs like Freon that destroy the ozone layer.
Fortunately, Mr. Midgley was strangled to death by one of his other inventions before he could do further harm.
Who are the Thomas Midgleys of Barbados?
There is a lesson here for modern Barbados as we watch the Midgley’s of our day wall off the coasts, fail to pass environmental legislation while approving commercial development of the last remaining wetlands, and continuing to believe that more cars on more roads is a plan to make our island home the best it can be for future generations.
The commemoration was this weekend just passed. I expect lots of pictures from the attendees, but this was the first one I received (top) which I thought’ you’d like.
Once in a while we receive requests to help locate long lost branches of family trees and unknown relatives. There are lots of genealogy forums out there, but sometimes it helps to put the names to a wider audience.
We don’t mind helping out and our readers have come up with some wonderful connections along the way. So let’s see if we can help this reader from the UK… Continue reading →
On the evening of March 22, 1990, Dr. Gerald Bull got out of a car in Brussels, Belgium and headed back to his apartment.
Gerald Bull got out of the elevator and walked toward his apartment. From the shadows another shadow stepped, holding a silenced pistol. Three shots were fired into the back of Gerald Bull and, after he fell, two more into his head for good measure. Gerald Bull was dead.
“Super Gun” Inventor Felled By Assassins – Were They American, Israeli or Others?
In the mid-sixties, the Government of Barbados allowed the Space Research Corporation (SRC) to use Barbados as a base for it’s High Altitude Research Project (HARP) in exchange for the installation and maintenance of an advanced Radar system at the Seawell Airport (now the Grantley Adams International Airport).
Officially, the purpose of HARP was to develop an alternative method to launching payloads into space. The scientists were exploring the possibility of using large guns to fire objects into space… instead of the conventional method of using rockets.
The large gun could be heard over most of the island… and just a few miles away, our house began to crack in the walls from the shockwaves…
(Thanks to Stephen Mendes and his excellent photo documentation of the HARP project in Barbados.)
Further BFP Reading About Gerald Bull & HARP Supergun
Abdul Karim is a piece of history they never taught us in school!
I only heard of Queen Victoria’s footman-lover John Brown when the movie Mrs. Brown was released in 1997. I wasn’t surprised that Victoria took a lover after the death of her husband. She was only 42 years old when Prince Albert died and at 42 years old no woman is ready to go it alone for the rest of her life. Not me anyway and not Victoria but when we learned about Queen Victoria in history class the teacher skipped the part about Mrs. Brown. Queen Victoria was a woman with lots of, “energy”!
My history teacher also skipped the part about Queen Victoria’s Indian lover, Abdul Karim, (called “the Munshi” that is “teacher”) but thanks to a gift from Marcus I’m reading all about the last scandal of Queen Victoria.
My newest book on the nightstand is “Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant”. I started it two days ago and I can’t put it down. I haven’t gotten to any naughty parts yet. I’ll let you know when I do!
Shona
The following is suggested by an old friend…
The story of a romantic, headstrong woman who liked passion, sex and men… dark and scandalous relationships with servants…
Like thousands of other young Bajans and Caribbean folks in the 1950s, George Applewhaite left his family and headed for “Mother England” to work as a bus conductor. And like most of his contemporaries, Applewhaite found that not all Brits were happy to see their cities “invaded” by people with dark skin and strange accents.
Fifty-six years later the pensioner looks back on his adventures and memories of the those times in his new book Don’t Forget to Keep Your Chest Warm. For his next book, he’s writing about his childhood in Watts Village.
“Mr Applewhaite said many people have told him his stories shone a light on an era when people acted in a more sociable and generous manner towards each other, but some tales reveal the occasional racial prejudice he encountered in Oxfordshire.”
Lots of interest. Many folks coming out for January 1st Trail Walk.
In response to multiple queries we are happy to provide more details and directions.
We will meet at the Indian Ground playing field at 3 p.m. on January-01-2011. For directions see map 001. We will have to leave latest at 3:15 p.m., as we want to finish before it gets dark around 5:30 – 5:45 p.m.
Come in good foot ware (runners or hiking boots) and with a water bottle. Our hike will be similar to the weekly hikes of the Barbados National Trust, except for the route. We will walk along the Old Indian Trail as marked on the attached map 002. The terminus will be Apes Hill. Vehicles will be waiting there to return the drivers of the participants’ vehicles to Indian Ground, so that they can drive back to Apes Hill to pick up the other members of their parties.
<Map 1<Map2
Public right of access: Use it… or lose it!
One of Richard Goddard’s ongoing battles is to keep the Old Indian Trail open to public use, especially near and across the Springhead plantation. It is a battle grounded in history: this was a public road-of-way in the days when Barbados had a vibrant sugar industry, used it for transport of crops, goods, as well as a way to church and market. The trail is almost forgotten now but for its records on old maps (see attachments, where it is traced it in red). Continue reading →
Murder victim Fred Parris former Prince Hall Grand Master Freemason
An upsurge in search queries from New York about murder victim Fred Parris made us curious about the famous free black leader and abolitionist, Prince Hall.
Victim Fred Parris (photo left), the brother-in-law of Barbados Governor General Sir Clifford Husbands, was elected in 1995 as the 52nd Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons of New York State. Mr. Parris was murdered Wednesday, December 8, 2010 while out for his morning walk and sea-bath at Brighton Beach. Police say that robbery was not the motive.
Prince Hall: Escaped Barbados slave, Boston slave or born free?
In researching the “Prince Hall Freemasons” that obtained a Warrant for Charter from the Grand Lodge of England in 1784 and formed African Lodge #459, we came across conflicting accounts of the birth place and origins of Mr. Prince Hall, one of the founders of Black Freemasonry in the United States. Continue reading →
Could you please tell me what were the names of Sir Frank Worrell parents. My grandparents were Charles and Elvina Worrell; they migrated to Panama, Central America along with their other brothers and their wives.
I would like to connect with the Worrell’s of Barbados and other parts of the World.
I was told that there were many brothers and they went all over after they left Panama.
Yours truly, Camilla Worrell
Editor’s note: We’re always happy to assist with this type of request because placing the story on BFP sometimes turns up information that doesn’t come forward on the various geneological research websites.
We haven’t included Camilla’s email address because she didn’t indicate if she wanted that kept private, but if she emails us again we’ll post it if she wants.
Barbados as a sovereign nation became independent from Britain 44 years ago. As an island we have achieved much in the last 44 years, thanks to the foresight of our past leaders. Most Barbadians, enjoy a standard of living which is the envy of many of their neighbors and others. Free bus fare for school children, free lunch for primary school children, free health care and free education. How much better can it get? A per capital income of $19,300 and a Human Development Index Rating of 42 out of 169 countries.
However, have our progress and successes blinded us from being strict guardians of our fate? Continue reading →
