Baron’s confession under torture drags seven more people into court

Over the summer of 1742, after torture, an enslaved man named Baron confessed to causing the death of the woman who claimed to own him. He said he had bought herbs from Abraham on another plantation. He said he did not mean to kill her. He meant to cool her temper and avoid future punishment. He also named Coffij, who belonged to the Society of Suriname itself. Coffij denied it and gave the court Askaan and Emanuiel for poisoning other enslaved people, which produced their trials, and Emanuiel’s trial produced Ajuba’s. Baron additionally accused Louis, a driver on his own plantation, of going about with poison, and Louis’s case produced Sambo’s. Suriname had sixteen poison cases in the whole of the 1730s and forty two between 1740 and the end of 1745, and eighteen of the forty two were tied to another case. Baron, Sambo, Abraham and Emanuiel were branded, pinched with hot tongs until they died, and their heads set on spikes in the Suriname river.