September 15, 2020 • 21 mins
Sally Basset was an enslaved woman who was executed in 1730 for allegedly attempting to poison her granddaughter’s enslavers. She is known throughout Bermudian folklore, where she is, to many, a hero.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
where we dig deep on crimes past to uncover their
hidden angles. And right now we are all about the
lady poisoners. I'm Maria Trumarqui and I'm Holly Fry. This
(00:23):
week we're going to talk about Sarah Bassett, who perhaps
is better known as Sally Bassett or even sometimes a
Sorry Bassett. Um. We're going with Sally because it's how
she's known throughout folklore and where she's from. Too many
she's a hero. Mm So. Sally was an enslaved woman
(00:49):
who was executed in seventeen thirty for allegedly attempting to
poison her granddaughter's enslavers. And today Sally is a well
known figure among Bermudians, and as we mentioned, she is
part of the island's folklore. But the historical significance of
her story remains open to interpretation, and it differs depending
on who you talked to. So to some people she
(01:10):
could have been an innocent victim, unjustly accused of an
act she never committed, but to others, she represents the
fight against the injustices of slavery. One thing is absolutely
for certain. The story of Sally Bassett's life gives us
a look into the complex dynamics of race, gender, and
medical knowledge in the Caribbean and islands nearby during the
(01:32):
eighteenth century. Today it's a self governing British territory, but
back in the eighteenth century, Bermuda was a British colonial island.
Bermuda had no indigenous population and its first inhabitants were
three survivors of the wreck of the British ship The
Sea Venture, who decided they would stay even when they
had the opportunity to leave the island, and three years
(01:53):
later it became a British territory. It remains so today.
Although in sixteen twelve the settlers were British and consequently white,
the island's population pretty quickly became racially and culturally diverse,
and that was because of two things. One, the slave
trade was flourishing at this time in history, and two
a sizeable influx of immigrants from Portugal and the West
(02:16):
Indies also came to the island. So within about four
years of the British settlement, Bermuda became the first British
colony with a significant and dentured population. It was mainly
black and mainly due to the tobacco trade. Um But
by the end of the sixteen hundreds, almost one third
of the roughly thousand inhabitants of a parish called Saint George.
There are nine parishes on the island, and many had
(02:38):
been enslaved from Africa. Today, many of Bermuda's sixty one
thousand residents can trace their roots to British, African and
Caribbean lineage. And Sally Bassett was a woman who was
enslaved on the island of Bermuda. But there's no record
of whether or not she was born there or she
came to be there through the booming slave trade at
the time um And actually there's there's no record at
(02:59):
all of when or where Sally was born. What we
do know about her and her story is more from
the legends surrounding her than perhaps from the cold hard
facts of her life. But Sally's race is one thing
that we do know, and to be black at this
(03:19):
time in a British colony pretty much meant you were enslaved.
So let's step back for a moment to talk about
how we talk when we talk about slavery. The language
that's acceptable among and regarding people of color has evolved
(03:40):
over the last century and thankfully continues to involve so Historically,
the now very outdated term mulatto has been used to
describe someone of mixed African and European ancestry, often specifically
as a way of describing someone who is believed to
be one half African ancestry and one half European ancestry.
(04:00):
Herself a woman of color and specifically mixed race, Sally
would have been in this time called a mulatto, and
that is how a lot of the writing about her
continues to describe her. That m today is considered antiquated
and really disrespectful. Um for, for one, is derived from
the Spanish word from mule, because that animal is a
(04:21):
cross between a horse and a donkey, And once you
think about it in those terms, it becomes pretty apparent
why we don't use it. Yeah, it is super derogatory.
Mixed race women at this point in time were considered
often to approximate the white ideal of female attractiveness, meaning
they often looked white, but they were legally black, and
they were commonly depicted as seductresses, and they were vulnerable
(04:44):
to being raped by an enslaver or frankly anybody. They
had no power. So you'll hear when we talk about
slavery that we've moved away from the idea of the
terms slave and owner or master um. Instead we use
language like an enslaved person and enslaver um. Otherwise we
just continued to reduce enslaved people to a commodity rather
(05:05):
than recognizing that it's a person who has had this
imposed upon them. Sally's enslavement history begins for us when
she was enslaved by a blacksmith named Francis Dickinson. That
(05:26):
was in Pembroke Parish, which is the busiest and most
popular of the nine parishes on the island of Bermuda.
He may or may not have been her first enslaver. Again,
there is very little recorded information specifically about her life,
as well as many other enslaved people that has made
it through the centuries. So when Francis died in seventy six,
(05:47):
his children inherited his property and that included Sally Um.
Just a few years later, Um, and now an elderly woman,
Sally was considered because of her age we quote useless.
Many enslaved women at this time were skilled as healers,
and in addition to their enslavement, they also provided essential
care not only to the enslaved community, but they were
(06:10):
also called on often to treat the white inhabitants of
the island as well, and it was not uncommon for
enslaved women to have medical knowledge from West Africa or
the West Indies or to learn its traditions just from
each other. It was like a pass down form of knowledge.
Then it is said that Sally was allowed to continue
her healing practices even though she had become useless in
(06:34):
all other ways, according to their judgments anyway, Um, what
we do know is that during the late seventeen twenties
across Bermuda, the white community was beginning to accuse enslaved
people on the island of poisoning them. Whether that was
true or not. During this time, there was no way
to ensure an enslaved person would not try to poison
(06:55):
an enslaver under the guise of medical treatment. But they're
also really wasn't a good way to discern whether or
not a person was the victim of poison or if
they were just experiencing and naturally occurring disease lots of
similar symptoms. Um. So many alleged poisoners were actually very
(07:15):
important in the households where they lived. They were cooks,
they were nursemaids, and they had other domestic duties. In
white homes, it wouldn't have been difficult to sprinkle a
little extra seasoning into the soup, if you know what
I mean. Yes, but often they were also scapegoats. Um.
I think probably more often than not they were. Yeah.
(07:36):
And because her story can be a bit fuzzy, there
are other records which suggest that at some point after
Francis Dickinson's death, Sally became considered the property of a
new enslaver. That was Thomas Forster. And Thomas was a
man of means. He was a white Mariner, and he
was the grandson of the former governor of Bermuda, Josiah's Forster.
(07:58):
Her granddaughter Beck was absolutely enslaved by the Forster family
for reasons that we cannot even begin to know. Just
before Christmas in seventy nine, Sally made a deadly powder
for Beck to use against the Forsters. Some speculate something
specific must have happened to Beck, and others theorized that
(08:21):
it was revenge for the punishments that she had already
suffered while enslaved. Either way, Sally prepared two bags of poison.
She instructed her granddaughter to keep one bag open in
the kitchen, presumably so the family could inhale the contents,
and the other was to be laced into the family's food.
So Thomas and his wife Sarah fell seriously ill because
(08:42):
of the poison, as did another enslaved woman named Nancy,
who discovered what was left in the kitchen. When Back
appeared unaffected by the illness that had struck the Forster household,
she was immediately accused of poisoning the family, and she
confessed that, yes, her grandmother had even heard the poison.
Fast forward to when it just goes to trial Beck,
(09:04):
It described the various poisons that Sally had made for
her um. It sounds scandalous that she gave up the
family matriarch, but speaking out against her grandmother was probably
Beck's way of bargaining for her own life. Purely as
speculation as well, there is also the possibility that Sally
instructed her to do so for that very reason absolutely.
(09:25):
According to the trial records, Bassett gave her granddaughter a
poison containing rats bain and that is, as the name suggests,
a rat poison, mansion el root, which is also called
by the name death apple, and an ingredient known as
white toad, which is actually a very interesting addition to
the mix. And when we come back from the break,
(09:47):
let's talk about why, yes, welcome back to criminalia when
we're talking about the life of accused poisoners Sally Bassett.
(10:08):
So white toad which we mentioned before the break and
which literally came from toads that were white, was not
a substance that would have been found in Bermuda at
this time, mainly because white toads were not indigenous to
the island. It was the skin of these toads that
contain toxins, and served in small doses, it could act
as a fairly benign muscle relaxant, while a large dose
(10:32):
is said to have been capable of causing respiratory failure
and other serious symptoms. Poisonous toads and in the case
specifically of white toads, uh they were commonly used in
ceremonies in areas of West Africa, and their use was
carried into the voodoo traditions in what's now Haiti in
the West Indies. Throughout the Caribbean, these traditions were usually
(10:52):
known as obeia, which is something a bit more than
folk medicine and a bit different than Western religious practices.
It was commonly practiced among the enslaved communities around the
Caribbean islands, and it's thought to have originated in West Africa. Actually,
evidence of its practice was found throughout the island since
British occupation began in the mid seventeenth century. Um and
(11:14):
Sally's use of these important poisons suggest that she too
was knowledgeable. Those who practice these traditions were known to
aid with romantic relationships, legal troubles, and evil spirits, and
they did this using spells or charms called fetishes. So
fetishes were commonly things like tinctures that were placed in
pouches or mixtures of herbs and dirt, or animal and
(11:37):
human body matters such as hair, blood and nail clippings,
or other bodily fluids that they kept in bottles. Sometimes
it could be an article of clothing worn in a
strategic or specific place on the body too, to acquire
an important ingredient like white toad, an enslaved person would
have to have asked for a favor from a mariner,
(11:58):
and that mariner would be able to get it on
their roots to West Africa and northern South America, where
the toads could commonly be captured or cultivated. What we
can surmise here is that the mariner would also have
to have been black and enslaved, because Sally would never
have been able to ask a white mariner for such
a favor um and the mariner would have been familiar
(12:21):
with these ingredients. He probably would have assumed he was
supplying a spiritual practitioner a tool against your enemies, not
that it would be used as a poisonous cocktail. Sally's
granddaughter Back was not the only person to testify against
Sally and court. Sarah Forster testified against her at the trial,
(12:43):
but because they were both unwell, neither Thomas Forster nor
their enslaved servant, Nancy did. Nine additional unnamed white Bermudians
also testified against Sally. We do not have an account
of what that testimony included. We can only begin to
speculate on it. We do know that Sally's reputation did
(13:04):
precede her, though, roughly sixteen years before she was accused
of poisoning the Forster household, Sally was accused by Captain
John Jennings of threats, property damaged and poisoning livestock. She
was found guilty at that time and sentenced to being
quote whipped through the parish, which was likely a sentence
that could have involved more than a hundred lashes. At
(13:27):
her trial at the State House in St. George in
June seventeen thirty, Sally was accused of quote horrid villainy
and of being quote evil and wicked. She was accused
of not living in the fear of God, but rather
as an agent of the devil, and she was accused
of poisoning several people. She also defended herself in court.
(13:50):
When she stood to hear her sentence, she declared she
never deserved it. In fact, she declared her innocence until
her very end, and in the end Sally was found
guilty were the attempted murder of Thomas and Sarah Forster
and for the enslaved woman Nancy, and she was also
accused of encouraging other enslaved people to poison their enslavers.
(14:11):
Her jury was definitely not one of her peers. It
was made up of twelve white men. It didn't take
long for that jury to return with dis verdict which
we quote guilty, and we value her at one pound,
four shillings and sixpence today, that's about a hundred and
sixty U s. Dollars. It probably comes as no surprise
(14:35):
that penalties for enslaved people were really harsh and very swift,
even for minor offenses. The Chief Justice sentenced Sally to quote,
be conveyed to the place of execution, where a pile
of wood is to be made and provided, and you
are there to be fastened to a sufficient stake, and
there to be burnt with fire until your body be dead. So,
(14:57):
in very simple words, she was sentenced to be burned alive.
Her grizzly sentence was made especially grizzly as a warning
to others who might have been plotting against their enslavers, and,
according to her legend, enslaved black mariners communicated the news
of Sally's execution at the stake around the islands and
(15:19):
in the North American colonies. Her execution, of course, happened
in public at Crow Lane at the east end of
Hamilton Harbor today that is full of yacht Marina's on
her walk there. It was reported that Sally said to onlookers, quote,
no use hurrying folks. There will be no fun till
I get there. It was said to be a terribly
(15:40):
hot summer day the day that she was executed, a
detail that has actually become part of her folklore. So
today you might hear someone on Bermuda call that kind
of scorcher a real Sally Bassett day. After a word
from our sponsor, we'll talk more about how Sally turned
into a Bermudian legend. Welcome back to Criminalia and the
(16:08):
story of Sally Bassett. In the days following her execution,
Bermuda officials went on to enact new laws that were
meant to tighten control of what they considered to be
and we're quoting here many heinous and grievous crimes as
of that secret and barbarous way of murdering by poison
and other murders, many times committed by negroes and other
(16:31):
slaves out of her ashes that day. According to local legend,
a small purple flower now known as Bermudian a grew
and it's now Bermuda's national flower. In two thousand nine,
as part of the islands four year anniversary, Bermuda's government
recognized and memorialized the history of enslavement on the island
(16:52):
by erecting a statue of Sally on the lawn of
the Government's Cabinet Building, which is the seat of government
in Bermuda. Her statue, which is ten feet tall, is
made out of bronze, and it depicts her standing barefoot
with her hands bound behind her back and her head
raised defiantly towards the sky. It's called the Spirit of
Freedom and it's the work of a Bermedian artist named
(17:12):
Carlos Dowling. And when it was officially commemorated by Premier
Dr Ewart Brown in two thousand nine, it became the
first time an enslaved person had been memorialized in Bermuda.
But it was not without controversy, of course, not right
like uh Sally's statue has since it went up been
(17:34):
a source of debate among Bermudians. Some mainly white residents
consider it inappropriate because Sally was a convicted criminal. I'm
just gonna insert my own eye roll here. Yeah, I
was doing that myself. Others, most often people of color,
argue that Sally was a resistance fighter and should be
considered a national hero, and the presence of this statue
(17:56):
has opened a heated debate about the nature and legacy
of slavery in Bermuda. I will also say I like
the idea that, um, there's never a concept that she
could have been found guilty and not have been actually guilty.
Like that's not right. That was part of her her story.
(18:18):
She's not gonna be it. No, she was a convicted felon, right. Ah, Sally, Hey, Maria,
so what's up? It's time for what's your boys? Is right? Uh?
So to give a little behind the curtain peak, Marianne,
(18:41):
I have talked about today's cocktail because we we were
dithering a bit. Well, I think we had ideas. Yeah,
I mean the obvious thing, if you're talking about Bermuda,
everybody's going to go rum, so they're probably expecting like
a dark and stormy or something. But I didn't want
to do that one because it is so expect it
into like there is that whole secondary problem of like
(19:04):
the rum, sugar and slave trade all being related. Uh.
Throughout the Atlantic um, and I thought, let's we don't
have to do that. Um. So we went on the
search for other things and Maria mentioned that one of
the most popular drinks in Bermuda is Maria to it
(19:25):
a ginger beer. Delicious, always delicious. Side note to that,
also a popular drink in West African countries because it's delicious.
Because it's delicious, but it also makes me, like I've
been trying this whole time. I've been wondering, like, was
Sally from mixed race? She was likely born on the island,
but there's no evidence of that, and so from all
(19:47):
of the healing traditions that she had, I've been trying
to figure out, you know, do I play her in
the West Indies, do I place her in West Africa?
And so like, I just like the idea that ginger
beer had some history in both of those places too. Yeah. Yeah,
it's also possible, you know, she could have been born
on Bermuda, but if the enslaved population was still culturally
(20:08):
from West Africa, she was raised in that tradition, so
there's also that. Um. But back to ginger beer. Ginger beer,
So I got to thinking as I was looking at
some ginger beer, about what I had on hand and
what might be interesting and a good way to honor Sally.
And here's what I came up with. Does a cocktail
I'm calling a white Toad, which is perfect because we
(20:31):
actually looked up cocktails named white Toad and found very little,
not a one. Uh. So it starts not with ginger
beer but with ginger liqueur, and it's just three quarters
of an ounce of ginger liqueur, one ounce of vanilla
vodka to take that edge off. That's very nice, and
then five ounces of ginger beer. And you can garnish
(20:53):
it with a thin slice of ginger if you wish,
but I will tell you it's already very gingery. Uh.
And I like it because it has a little bit
of bite, but the vanilla smooths it right out. So
anla is a fantastic addition to that, right. It just
softens the edges on the ginger a little bit. It's
quite delicious. I wanted several but only had one because
(21:17):
I was technically it's work right, um, But I I
will forever, I will make this drink again and again
because it really did turn out delightfully and I will
always raise it and do a quick toast to Sally.
I think as I do, so that's the the White Toad.
Go forth and make delightful cocktails, yes, non poisonous one.
(21:42):
Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership
with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
where we dig deep on crimes past to uncover their
hidden angles. And right now we are all about the
lady poisoners. I'm Maria Trumarqui and I'm Holly Fry. This
(00:23):
week we're going to talk about Sarah Bassett, who perhaps
is better known as Sally Bassett or even sometimes a
Sorry Bassett. Um. We're going with Sally because it's how
she's known throughout folklore and where she's from. Too many
she's a hero. Mm So. Sally was an enslaved woman
(00:49):
who was executed in seventeen thirty for allegedly attempting to
poison her granddaughter's enslavers. And today Sally is a well
known figure among Bermudians, and as we mentioned, she is
part of the island's folklore. But the historical significance of
her story remains open to interpretation, and it differs depending
on who you talked to. So to some people she
(01:10):
could have been an innocent victim, unjustly accused of an
act she never committed, but to others, she represents the
fight against the injustices of slavery. One thing is absolutely
for certain. The story of Sally Bassett's life gives us
a look into the complex dynamics of race, gender, and
medical knowledge in the Caribbean and islands nearby during the
(01:32):
eighteenth century. Today it's a self governing British territory, but
back in the eighteenth century, Bermuda was a British colonial island.
Bermuda had no indigenous population and its first inhabitants were
three survivors of the wreck of the British ship The
Sea Venture, who decided they would stay even when they
had the opportunity to leave the island, and three years
(01:53):
later it became a British territory. It remains so today.
Although in sixteen twelve the settlers were British and consequently white,
the island's population pretty quickly became racially and culturally diverse,
and that was because of two things. One, the slave
trade was flourishing at this time in history, and two
a sizeable influx of immigrants from Portugal and the West
(02:16):
Indies also came to the island. So within about four
years of the British settlement, Bermuda became the first British
colony with a significant and dentured population. It was mainly
black and mainly due to the tobacco trade. Um But
by the end of the sixteen hundreds, almost one third
of the roughly thousand inhabitants of a parish called Saint George.
There are nine parishes on the island, and many had
(02:38):
been enslaved from Africa. Today, many of Bermuda's sixty one
thousand residents can trace their roots to British, African and
Caribbean lineage. And Sally Bassett was a woman who was
enslaved on the island of Bermuda. But there's no record
of whether or not she was born there or she
came to be there through the booming slave trade at
the time um And actually there's there's no record at
(02:59):
all of when or where Sally was born. What we
do know about her and her story is more from
the legends surrounding her than perhaps from the cold hard
facts of her life. But Sally's race is one thing
that we do know, and to be black at this
(03:19):
time in a British colony pretty much meant you were enslaved.
So let's step back for a moment to talk about
how we talk when we talk about slavery. The language
that's acceptable among and regarding people of color has evolved
(03:40):
over the last century and thankfully continues to involve so Historically,
the now very outdated term mulatto has been used to
describe someone of mixed African and European ancestry, often specifically
as a way of describing someone who is believed to
be one half African ancestry and one half European ancestry.
(04:00):
Herself a woman of color and specifically mixed race, Sally
would have been in this time called a mulatto, and
that is how a lot of the writing about her
continues to describe her. That m today is considered antiquated
and really disrespectful. Um for, for one, is derived from
the Spanish word from mule, because that animal is a
(04:21):
cross between a horse and a donkey, And once you
think about it in those terms, it becomes pretty apparent
why we don't use it. Yeah, it is super derogatory.
Mixed race women at this point in time were considered
often to approximate the white ideal of female attractiveness, meaning
they often looked white, but they were legally black, and
they were commonly depicted as seductresses, and they were vulnerable
(04:44):
to being raped by an enslaver or frankly anybody. They
had no power. So you'll hear when we talk about
slavery that we've moved away from the idea of the
terms slave and owner or master um. Instead we use
language like an enslaved person and enslaver um. Otherwise we
just continued to reduce enslaved people to a commodity rather
(05:05):
than recognizing that it's a person who has had this
imposed upon them. Sally's enslavement history begins for us when
she was enslaved by a blacksmith named Francis Dickinson. That
(05:26):
was in Pembroke Parish, which is the busiest and most
popular of the nine parishes on the island of Bermuda.
He may or may not have been her first enslaver. Again,
there is very little recorded information specifically about her life,
as well as many other enslaved people that has made
it through the centuries. So when Francis died in seventy six,
(05:47):
his children inherited his property and that included Sally Um.
Just a few years later, Um, and now an elderly woman,
Sally was considered because of her age we quote useless.
Many enslaved women at this time were skilled as healers,
and in addition to their enslavement, they also provided essential
care not only to the enslaved community, but they were
(06:10):
also called on often to treat the white inhabitants of
the island as well, and it was not uncommon for
enslaved women to have medical knowledge from West Africa or
the West Indies or to learn its traditions just from
each other. It was like a pass down form of knowledge.
Then it is said that Sally was allowed to continue
her healing practices even though she had become useless in
(06:34):
all other ways, according to their judgments anyway, Um, what
we do know is that during the late seventeen twenties
across Bermuda, the white community was beginning to accuse enslaved
people on the island of poisoning them. Whether that was
true or not. During this time, there was no way
to ensure an enslaved person would not try to poison
(06:55):
an enslaver under the guise of medical treatment. But they're
also really wasn't a good way to discern whether or
not a person was the victim of poison or if
they were just experiencing and naturally occurring disease lots of
similar symptoms. Um. So many alleged poisoners were actually very
(07:15):
important in the households where they lived. They were cooks,
they were nursemaids, and they had other domestic duties. In
white homes, it wouldn't have been difficult to sprinkle a
little extra seasoning into the soup, if you know what
I mean. Yes, but often they were also scapegoats. Um.
I think probably more often than not they were. Yeah.
(07:36):
And because her story can be a bit fuzzy, there
are other records which suggest that at some point after
Francis Dickinson's death, Sally became considered the property of a
new enslaver. That was Thomas Forster. And Thomas was a
man of means. He was a white Mariner, and he
was the grandson of the former governor of Bermuda, Josiah's Forster.
(07:58):
Her granddaughter Beck was absolutely enslaved by the Forster family
for reasons that we cannot even begin to know. Just
before Christmas in seventy nine, Sally made a deadly powder
for Beck to use against the Forsters. Some speculate something
specific must have happened to Beck, and others theorized that
(08:21):
it was revenge for the punishments that she had already
suffered while enslaved. Either way, Sally prepared two bags of poison.
She instructed her granddaughter to keep one bag open in
the kitchen, presumably so the family could inhale the contents,
and the other was to be laced into the family's food.
So Thomas and his wife Sarah fell seriously ill because
(08:42):
of the poison, as did another enslaved woman named Nancy,
who discovered what was left in the kitchen. When Back
appeared unaffected by the illness that had struck the Forster household,
she was immediately accused of poisoning the family, and she
confessed that, yes, her grandmother had even heard the poison.
Fast forward to when it just goes to trial Beck,
(09:04):
It described the various poisons that Sally had made for
her um. It sounds scandalous that she gave up the
family matriarch, but speaking out against her grandmother was probably
Beck's way of bargaining for her own life. Purely as
speculation as well, there is also the possibility that Sally
instructed her to do so for that very reason absolutely.
(09:25):
According to the trial records, Bassett gave her granddaughter a
poison containing rats bain and that is, as the name suggests,
a rat poison, mansion el root, which is also called
by the name death apple, and an ingredient known as
white toad, which is actually a very interesting addition to
the mix. And when we come back from the break,
(09:47):
let's talk about why, yes, welcome back to criminalia when
we're talking about the life of accused poisoners Sally Bassett.
(10:08):
So white toad which we mentioned before the break and
which literally came from toads that were white, was not
a substance that would have been found in Bermuda at
this time, mainly because white toads were not indigenous to
the island. It was the skin of these toads that
contain toxins, and served in small doses, it could act
as a fairly benign muscle relaxant, while a large dose
(10:32):
is said to have been capable of causing respiratory failure
and other serious symptoms. Poisonous toads and in the case
specifically of white toads, uh they were commonly used in
ceremonies in areas of West Africa, and their use was
carried into the voodoo traditions in what's now Haiti in
the West Indies. Throughout the Caribbean, these traditions were usually
(10:52):
known as obeia, which is something a bit more than
folk medicine and a bit different than Western religious practices.
It was commonly practiced among the enslaved communities around the
Caribbean islands, and it's thought to have originated in West Africa. Actually,
evidence of its practice was found throughout the island since
British occupation began in the mid seventeenth century. Um and
(11:14):
Sally's use of these important poisons suggest that she too
was knowledgeable. Those who practice these traditions were known to
aid with romantic relationships, legal troubles, and evil spirits, and
they did this using spells or charms called fetishes. So
fetishes were commonly things like tinctures that were placed in
pouches or mixtures of herbs and dirt, or animal and
(11:37):
human body matters such as hair, blood and nail clippings,
or other bodily fluids that they kept in bottles. Sometimes
it could be an article of clothing worn in a
strategic or specific place on the body too, to acquire
an important ingredient like white toad, an enslaved person would
have to have asked for a favor from a mariner,
(11:58):
and that mariner would be able to get it on
their roots to West Africa and northern South America, where
the toads could commonly be captured or cultivated. What we
can surmise here is that the mariner would also have
to have been black and enslaved, because Sally would never
have been able to ask a white mariner for such
a favor um and the mariner would have been familiar
(12:21):
with these ingredients. He probably would have assumed he was
supplying a spiritual practitioner a tool against your enemies, not
that it would be used as a poisonous cocktail. Sally's
granddaughter Back was not the only person to testify against
Sally and court. Sarah Forster testified against her at the trial,
(12:43):
but because they were both unwell, neither Thomas Forster nor
their enslaved servant, Nancy did. Nine additional unnamed white Bermudians
also testified against Sally. We do not have an account
of what that testimony included. We can only begin to
speculate on it. We do know that Sally's reputation did
(13:04):
precede her, though, roughly sixteen years before she was accused
of poisoning the Forster household, Sally was accused by Captain
John Jennings of threats, property damaged and poisoning livestock. She
was found guilty at that time and sentenced to being
quote whipped through the parish, which was likely a sentence
that could have involved more than a hundred lashes. At
(13:27):
her trial at the State House in St. George in
June seventeen thirty, Sally was accused of quote horrid villainy
and of being quote evil and wicked. She was accused
of not living in the fear of God, but rather
as an agent of the devil, and she was accused
of poisoning several people. She also defended herself in court.
(13:50):
When she stood to hear her sentence, she declared she
never deserved it. In fact, she declared her innocence until
her very end, and in the end Sally was found
guilty were the attempted murder of Thomas and Sarah Forster
and for the enslaved woman Nancy, and she was also
accused of encouraging other enslaved people to poison their enslavers.
(14:11):
Her jury was definitely not one of her peers. It
was made up of twelve white men. It didn't take
long for that jury to return with dis verdict which
we quote guilty, and we value her at one pound,
four shillings and sixpence today, that's about a hundred and
sixty U s. Dollars. It probably comes as no surprise
(14:35):
that penalties for enslaved people were really harsh and very swift,
even for minor offenses. The Chief Justice sentenced Sally to quote,
be conveyed to the place of execution, where a pile
of wood is to be made and provided, and you
are there to be fastened to a sufficient stake, and
there to be burnt with fire until your body be dead. So,
(14:57):
in very simple words, she was sentenced to be burned alive.
Her grizzly sentence was made especially grizzly as a warning
to others who might have been plotting against their enslavers, and,
according to her legend, enslaved black mariners communicated the news
of Sally's execution at the stake around the islands and
(15:19):
in the North American colonies. Her execution, of course, happened
in public at Crow Lane at the east end of
Hamilton Harbor today that is full of yacht Marina's on
her walk there. It was reported that Sally said to onlookers, quote,
no use hurrying folks. There will be no fun till
I get there. It was said to be a terribly
(15:40):
hot summer day the day that she was executed, a
detail that has actually become part of her folklore. So
today you might hear someone on Bermuda call that kind
of scorcher a real Sally Bassett day. After a word
from our sponsor, we'll talk more about how Sally turned
into a Bermudian legend. Welcome back to Criminalia and the
(16:08):
story of Sally Bassett. In the days following her execution,
Bermuda officials went on to enact new laws that were
meant to tighten control of what they considered to be
and we're quoting here many heinous and grievous crimes as
of that secret and barbarous way of murdering by poison
and other murders, many times committed by negroes and other
(16:31):
slaves out of her ashes that day. According to local legend,
a small purple flower now known as Bermudian a grew
and it's now Bermuda's national flower. In two thousand nine,
as part of the islands four year anniversary, Bermuda's government
recognized and memorialized the history of enslavement on the island
(16:52):
by erecting a statue of Sally on the lawn of
the Government's Cabinet Building, which is the seat of government
in Bermuda. Her statue, which is ten feet tall, is
made out of bronze, and it depicts her standing barefoot
with her hands bound behind her back and her head
raised defiantly towards the sky. It's called the Spirit of
Freedom and it's the work of a Bermedian artist named
(17:12):
Carlos Dowling. And when it was officially commemorated by Premier
Dr Ewart Brown in two thousand nine, it became the
first time an enslaved person had been memorialized in Bermuda.
But it was not without controversy, of course, not right
like uh Sally's statue has since it went up been
(17:34):
a source of debate among Bermudians. Some mainly white residents
consider it inappropriate because Sally was a convicted criminal. I'm
just gonna insert my own eye roll here. Yeah, I
was doing that myself. Others, most often people of color,
argue that Sally was a resistance fighter and should be
considered a national hero, and the presence of this statue
(17:56):
has opened a heated debate about the nature and legacy
of slavery in Bermuda. I will also say I like
the idea that, um, there's never a concept that she
could have been found guilty and not have been actually guilty.
Like that's not right. That was part of her her story.
(18:18):
She's not gonna be it. No, she was a convicted felon, right. Ah, Sally, Hey, Maria,
so what's up? It's time for what's your boys? Is right? Uh?
So to give a little behind the curtain peak, Marianne,
(18:41):
I have talked about today's cocktail because we we were
dithering a bit. Well, I think we had ideas. Yeah,
I mean the obvious thing, if you're talking about Bermuda,
everybody's going to go rum, so they're probably expecting like
a dark and stormy or something. But I didn't want
to do that one because it is so expect it
into like there is that whole secondary problem of like
(19:04):
the rum, sugar and slave trade all being related. Uh.
Throughout the Atlantic um, and I thought, let's we don't
have to do that. Um. So we went on the
search for other things and Maria mentioned that one of
the most popular drinks in Bermuda is Maria to it
(19:25):
a ginger beer. Delicious, always delicious. Side note to that,
also a popular drink in West African countries because it's delicious.
Because it's delicious, but it also makes me, like I've
been trying this whole time. I've been wondering, like, was
Sally from mixed race? She was likely born on the island,
but there's no evidence of that, and so from all
(19:47):
of the healing traditions that she had, I've been trying
to figure out, you know, do I play her in
the West Indies, do I place her in West Africa?
And so like, I just like the idea that ginger
beer had some history in both of those places too. Yeah. Yeah,
it's also possible, you know, she could have been born
on Bermuda, but if the enslaved population was still culturally
(20:08):
from West Africa, she was raised in that tradition, so
there's also that. Um. But back to ginger beer. Ginger beer,
So I got to thinking as I was looking at
some ginger beer, about what I had on hand and
what might be interesting and a good way to honor Sally.
And here's what I came up with. Does a cocktail
I'm calling a white Toad, which is perfect because we
(20:31):
actually looked up cocktails named white Toad and found very little,
not a one. Uh. So it starts not with ginger
beer but with ginger liqueur, and it's just three quarters
of an ounce of ginger liqueur, one ounce of vanilla
vodka to take that edge off. That's very nice, and
then five ounces of ginger beer. And you can garnish
(20:53):
it with a thin slice of ginger if you wish,
but I will tell you it's already very gingery. Uh.
And I like it because it has a little bit
of bite, but the vanilla smooths it right out. So
anla is a fantastic addition to that, right. It just
softens the edges on the ginger a little bit. It's
quite delicious. I wanted several but only had one because
(21:17):
I was technically it's work right, um, But I I
will forever, I will make this drink again and again
because it really did turn out delightfully and I will
always raise it and do a quick toast to Sally.
I think as I do, so that's the the White Toad.
Go forth and make delightful cocktails, yes, non poisonous one.
(21:42):
Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership
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Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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