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viii                 Acknowledgments

of the information. On a more recent quest for data a few years
ago, I received some very useful assistance from Mrs. Pauline
Kerr at the Library of the University of the West Indies; for this
I wish to record my deepest appreciation. Likewise I wish to
record my appreciation to Miss Marie Bailey of the National
Library of Jamaica, for assistance extended to me during my
January 1992 visit, and to Miss June Vernon of the same institu-
tion, for assistance given over the years of data collection.
  Regarding the financing of this research, thanks are due to
the University of the West Indies for the award of a postgradu-
ate scholarship that enabled me to undertake the work in the
first place. Later, after I joined the faculty as a teacher, I re-
ceived sundry other forms of assistance that permitted me to
extend my investigation of the subject in question. Lastly, I owe
a deep debt of gratitude to the Hamilton College administration,
and to Dean Eugene Tobin in particular, for a generous grant
that enabled me to pursue research in Jamaica in January 1992
and thus to complete this study on the Jamaica tourist industry.
  Over the years, many of the chapters of this book have ap-
peared in some fashion or the other. I am grateful to the editors
of these publications for the permission to reproduce them here,
bringing the work together in print under one cover. The chap-
ters that appeared earlier in print whether in whole or in part
are listed here. Chapter 2 originally appeared as "From Hell-
shire to Healthshire: The Genesis of the Tourist Industry in
Jamaica," in Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History
1700-1920: Essays Presented to Douglas Hall, ed. B. W. Higman
(Jamaica: Heinemann Books [Caribbean], 1983). Chapter 4 ap-
peared as "The Resurrection of Jamaica: The International
Exhibition of 1891," Revista/Review Interamericana 14 (1984).
Chapter 5 appeared as "The Ordeal of the Infant Hotel Indus-
try in Jamaica, 1890-1914,"Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History 16 (January 1988). Part of chapter 6 appeared in my
analysis Jamaica-The Welcoming Society: Myth and Reality ((Ja-
maica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1975), Work-
ing Paper No. 8. Chapter 7 was produced earlier as "The Burial


































The Myrtle Bank Hotel after the 1907 earthquake. Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.





"Ho-tel Me Not"


89


Titchfield the only lodge owned by the United Fruit Company in
Jamaica; it possessed another at Bowden in the St. Thomas Par-
ish,60 though information on this is unavailable except for the
fact of proprietorship. By 1911, the United Fruit Company was
extending its tentacles toward the infant Jamaica hotel industry,
while the Elder, Dempster Company, seemed on the verge of
expiration. The power of the United Fruit Company extended
to the new Myrtle Bank Hotel, rebuilt after the earthquake and
reopened in January 1910 in association with the Titchfield
Hotel.6'
  In explaining the failure of Alfred Jones's hotel business, con-
sideration must in the end return to the old problem of manage-
ment. The Elder, Dempster Company's entry into the hotel
business had still not stopped the complaints of tourists regard-
ing poor service.62 The frequency of complaints diminished, but
as a visitor's letter to the Daily Gleaner put it, "if complaints are
no longer heard, it is only because it has long become recognised
that it is perfectly futile to make them."63 Unlike the Titchfield,
which from the beginning employed a staff composed almost
entirely of Americans, the Elder, Dempster Hotel staff was
mainly Jamaican. This itself posed peculiar problems, as the
blacks and coloreds in the hotel industry seemed acutely sen-
sitive to racial slurs and infamy. Even to come forward to greet
the guest on arrival was frowned upon by the native staff, for
"such civility would smack of servility and remind the black or
brown person who showed it that his or her colour was once the
badge of slavery."64
   In their face-to-face encounters with visitors from abroad, the
hotel staff were the locals most directly exposed to the super-
ciliousness and cultural arrogance of the whites of that time.
The hotel industry served to resuscitate the dying master-
servant culture of the Great House era in Jamaica. Little won-
der, then, that the hotels became an arena of subtle black-white
confrontation in which the specter of past struggles came to life
in a new guise. For centuries before Emancipation serving as
hewers of wood and drawers of water for whites, the blacks on






90


To Hell with Parade


the whole were sensitive about their new status as free men. The
subtle struggle for dignity is best illustrated by Trollope in his
West Indian travelogue of 1860:65
At home, in England, one is apt to think that an extra shilling will go a
long way with boots and chambermaid, and produce hotter water, more
copious towels, and quicker attendance than is ordinary. But in the
West Indies a similar result does not follow in a similar degree. And in
the West Indies it is absolutely necessary that these people be treated
with dignity....
  "Halloo, old fellow! how about that bath?" I said one morning to a lad
who had been commissioned to see a bath filled for me. He was cleaning
boots at the time, and went on with his employment, sedulously, as
though he had not heard a word. But he was over sedulous, and I saw
that he heard me.
  "I say, how about that bath?" I continued. But he did not move a
muscle.
  "Put down those boots, sir," I said, going up to him; "and go do as I
bid you."
  "Who you call fellor? You, speak to a gen'lman gen'lmanly, and den
he fill de bath."
  "James," said I, "might I trouble you to leave those boots, and see the
bath filled for me?" and I bowed to him.
  "'Es, sir," he answered, returning my bow; "go at once." And so he
did, perfectly satisfied.
  Had he imagined, however, that I was quizzing him in all probability
he would not have gone at all.
  Viewed from a perspective of years later, the ignorance and
impudence complained of time and again by guests would seem
to have been but manifestations of passive resistance by black
hotel staffers. In general, they tended to behave "as if it were
gall and wormwood to their haughty souls to have to wait upon
the white person." The deportment of these black servants was
"in a way unmistakably denoting that they were revenging them-
selves for the indignity of having to accept such service."66 It was
almost impossible to get prompt service. The hotel guest might
ring until he became tired but could never succeed in getting a
servant to hear the bell or come. The servant who was asked to





"Ho-tel Me Not"


91


do anything invariably concluded that the particular thing was
not in his line of duty and most often called upon someone else
to do it, and so on.67
   In Pullen-Burry's opinion, however, much of this was but
another index of black inferiority. It was appropriate, she
suggested, that the visitor bear in mind that he was in an under-
developed country, so to speak, and that he therefore should not
expect from these colored islanders the quality of hotel and
restaurant table service he would get in London or Paris.68 If,
indeed, poor hotel service was "an unavoidable evil not to be
cured but endured," did it stem from the natural inferiority
Pullen-Burry ascribed, or from the political sociology of the con-
tact situation? "Some of the visitors had rather peculiar experi-
ences. If the negro is abused, or looked disdainfully at as if he
belonged to an inferior class, he becomes absolutely useless: he
forgets to come back if he is sent away on an errand and becomes
ignorant if any information is required. He obviously tries to
create as much trouble and annoyance as he possibly can."69
  At Constant Spring, part of this troublemaking frequently
involved standing on one leg and gaping at the guests while they
ate or spinning around on it several times while an order was
being given.70 Uppishness, feigned stupidity, clumsiness, and
deliberate inefficiency were part of the resistance kit of these
early black hotel staffers.71
  And so the attempt at hotel keeping by the Elder, Dempster
Company floundered and failed. But the circumstances of its
failure raise some contingent social questions. How representa-
tive was the assessed behavior of hotel workers regarding the
extent and depth of social sentiment toward the holiday makers?
Was the image, then peddled abroad, of Jamaica as a welcoming
retreat a mere figment of the imagination of those interested in
promoting tourist traffic? Clearly, the first modern hotels in
Jamaica were little integrated into the local economy, consider-
ing the foreign ownership, foreign management, foreign chefs,
foreign waiters and waitresses, foreign foods, foreign furnish-
ings, and so forth. Evidently, too, the private rate of return did






92                  To Hell with Paradbe

not live up to expectation and was generally minimal or even
below zero. Yet whatever the verdict on their profit making,
according to A. W. Farquharson, the early hotels had been a
social boon:

It is hardly necessary for me to state what is a truism, namely that
without proper Hotel accommodation a country, however progressive it
may be, must remain isolated from the outside world, save to those who
are actually driven to visit it by stress of business. The disadvantages
which result from such isolation are obvious .... a country can in no
true sense be in touch with the progress of civilization if communica-
tions with it are restricted to the actual necessities of business.72

   In Farquharson's view, the hotels were crucial to the process
of modernization in Jamaica. Still, given that these institutions
had been poorly integrated into the local economy, were they
any better integrated into the local society? Before the advent of
the big hotels in Kingston and in Port Antonio, the retiring hour
in Jamaica had been nine o'clock at night. To be out after that
time had been hardly respectable unless one was coming from a
church soiree, the theater or a private dance.73 With the arrival
of the modern hotels, social recreation was broadened beyond
the afternoon teas, small private parties and, for the men, drink-
ing bouts. The hotels brought bright lights, fine orchestras, balls,
banquets, billiard contests, and a brand new range of social ac-
tivities locally.74 Perhaps, as Farquharson contended, the hotels
were essential to keep Jamaica in touch with the rest of the world,
but might they also bring new contradictions into the world of
Jamaicans? What, for instance, did they bring to the racial situ-
ation in the island? And what also did they augur as regards cur-
rent race relations?
  Jamaican tourism was sick from its beginning, and this wining
and dining of transient whites simply renewed old social sen-
sibilities. In practice, tourism somewhat rekindled the mores of a
bygone period, when sugar was in its golden age and the planter
elite was acclaimed for the openness and hospitality with which it
received strangers in their land.75 Such was the sociability and






"Ho-tel Me Not"


93


liberality of the West Indian planter class in that era that Bryan
Edwards, for instance, asserted one could hardly find a tolerable
inn in any of these territories.76 Similarly, Trollope years later
attributed to this much-acknowledged hospitality the lack of
hostelries so often noted in the West Indies.77
  If the Great House spawned the cult of the Jamaican welcome,
it also provoked a profound counterculture to it. The ethic in
the huts of the dispossessed black toward the white passerby was
quite different from what emanated from the manor. Decades
after the British slave Emancipation, this difference persisted.
As one foreigner fulminated, "the negroes in the English islands
are unpleasantly familiar and cheeky . . . and they seldom ask a
traveller into their huts. The white residents on the contrary, are
hospitality itself."78
  While the early modern hotels sought to refurbish the tradi-
tional welcome and, Midas-like, convert it into cash, they became
(much to their bewilderment) veritable frontlines of black re-
sistance. During the ongoing black struggle for racial redemp-
tion, complaints that "the black waiters in the hotels are insolent
and casual" were still legion well into the twentieth century. This
resistance was not confined to the hotels. "Indeed the impu-
dence of all the natives of Jamaica is astonishing to a traveller
used to the respect shown to a white man in tropical countries,"
trippers grouched repeatedly.79
  In the late nineteenth century, Jamaica emerged as an escape
for the weak and weary from the metropoles of Europe and
America. These had been told that the colony was not out of the
way, just out of this world. All the same, visitors to this island
haven more often than not encountered impertinence rather
than adulation, derision rather than welcome. That, in the final
analysis, was the social end product of a process in which tour-
ism had come to represent a new kind of cash crop-a new
sugar.








                         Chapter 6


              The Ratooning of

                  the Plantation

      It is beyond doubt that those who live in Jamaica ... do
      everything in our power to make the stranger welcome and
      happy.... This old social virtue of ours must never be
      allowed to deteriorate. . . . it is as much a part of Jamaica as
      is her soil and climate. And it is as natural and genuine a
      thing as are her soil and climate.
                                  -Daily Gleaner, 3 April 1923




           SI DENTIF Y fully the sociocultural connotations of
           the evolving tourist traffic to Jamaica, one must first
           turn to the past, to a time well before the formal
           gestation of the holiday industry in the island in
1891. Though the physical climate of Jamaica had customarily
been vilified with regard to health matters, its social climate and
the generous hospitality of its gentry had won much applause as
one of the colony's most pleasing traits. The hospitality of the
planter class was proverbial. "Few individuals have resided even
a short time in this country, without having experienced the
truth of this observation which has been made, or assented to by
all writers on the subject," Robert Renny related.' Much as hos-
pitality was the Antillean norm in that era, nowhere was it as
prevalent as in Jamaica, Bryan Edwards claimed.2
  In the heyday of sugar should a stranger, without even a letter
of introduction, pull up before any of the Great Houses scat-
tered throughout Jamaica, he could expect almost without fail to
be treated as an old and esteemed friend of the family and
invited to dine and spend the night. Next day he would likely be


94





The Ratooning of the Plantation


asked whether he must indeed depart and urged to remain a
day or two longer as a houseguest.3 Accommodation was itself
no problem. The typical Great House staff in the second half of
the eighteenth century comprised some twenty to forty servants,
including seamstresses, storekeepers, footmen, coachmen, and
postilions.4 The warmth of the welcome that the planter class
extended to its guests was thoroughgoing and lavish. In the
ethos of the times, so ingrained was hospitality that, even in the
face of debt, it was still common for many a planter to persist in
"the undiminished exercise of their generous hospitality" and
regale their guests with all customary magnificence.5
  Paradoxically, the Jamaican planter was in most cases, like his
guest, a mere transient. For most plantocrats, Jamaica was not
home but the place where they sojourned during their tropical
exile. The planters' ideal was to amass great wealth in these
islands and then retire in comfort to their home across the ocean.
Few considered the Antilles a fit place to live. As one planter put
it, "the climate of our sugar colonies is so inconvenient for an
English constitution, that no man will chuse to live there, much


A typical English planter's "great house." Courtesy of National Library of
Jamaica.


95






96


To Hell with Paradibe


less will any man chuse to settle there, without the hopes at least
of supporting his family in a more handsome manner, or saving
more money, than he can do by any business he can expect
in England, or in our plantations upon the continent of Amer-
ica."6 The Caribbean colonies were zones of exploitation, not
settlement.
   Life on the plantations was a cheerless cycle of planting, reap-
ing, and replanting-at crop time a planter could be fully oc-
cupied from five in the morning till eight at night. His life was
more boring than busy. Nor was the banality of colonial domicile
relieved by the hedonism and materialism of the planter gentry.
Far from it-their intellectual sterility and limited diversions ac-
centuated the boredom:

As a taste for literature is but little cultivated in this island, so neither do
any of the polite and elegant amusements of life meet with encourage-
ment in it. There is neither countenance for the poet, nor employment
for the painter, the statuary, nor the harmonious son of Apollo. Here is
no classic ground for the contemplative student to tread on; and as to
the muses, they are treated as vagrants.'

  There was little appreciation of aesthetics and little spiritual
edification in the life of the planter class to ease the daily tedium.
Horse racing, gambling, drinking, and parties constituted the
chief forms of recreation.8 The ladies, in particular, found few
diversions in the colony. Those residing in Kingston had a dis-
tinct advantage over their counterparts in the country, as they
could occasionally relieve the monotony by shopping. In general,
however, there was little for planters' wives to do to dissipate their
boredom, except indulge in talebearing and rumormongering.
As a gentleman of long residence in the island remarked, gossip
as a pastime at least had the advantage of enabling these women
to exercise their dormant wit while adding zest to tea.9
  Although Jamaica is a small island, the geographical distance
between places was in those days greatly magnified by the rug-
ged nature of the terrain and the absence of serviceable roads.
Internal travel was expensive, and during the rainy season many





The Ratoon q of the Plantation


places lost contact with the outside world for some time. This
isolation helped foster a widespread desire for company. The
local code of welcome was hence interconnected with both the
geography of the island and the difficulties of internal commu-
nication.10 When a planter entertained a guest at his home, it
was a big event, for the monotonous rhythm of colonial life was
briefly broken. A splendid sideboard loaded with choice wines, a
table covered with fine damask, and a dinner of perhaps sixteen
or twenty dishes might be produced." Spontaneity and gaiety
characterized the entire event. At the end of it all the enter-
tainer, starved as he was for company, probably felt as much
obliged as the guest.'2
  This peculiar conjunction of a social code of friendliness and
hospitality on the one hand, with the agonizing inhumanity of


A native's wattled hut. Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.


97






                     Acknowledgments                      Ix

of the Past. The Promotion of the early Jamaica Tourist Indus-
try," Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 40. Some of
the material on the Jamaica Tourist Association presented in
chapter 7 appeared as "The Birth and Growth of the Jamaica
Tourist Association 1900-1914," Jamaica Journal 20 (November
1987-January 1988). Finally, chapter 8 appeared earlier as
"The Tourist Industry in Jamaica 1919-1939," Social and Eco-
nomic Studies 22 (June 1973).
  Many people associated with the enterprise unfortunately
cannot be mentioned; to all I owe heartfelt thanks. Special men-
tion, however, must be made of Ms. Marlene Saunders-Sobers,
administrative assistant at the UWI, Trinidad, for the encour-
agement she offered when I began to put the material together
for publication in book form and for her work in typing some
of the earlier draft chapters. I am also indebted to Mrs. Janice
Edwards, secretary at the Department of History, UWI, Trini-
dad, who typed the first draft of this work, and to Ms. Rita
Ordiway, secretary at James Madison College (Michigan State
University) who at short notice but with patience and good
humor prepared a penultimate version of this work. Last but not
least my wife, Belinda Anastasia Taylor, typed the final chapters
of the book and inspired me to bring the work to a successful
conclusion. For that I am deeply grateful.
  As the title of the work I have chosen the famous phrase "to
hell with paradise," first uttered by James Mitchell of St. Vin-
cent. The occasion on which Mitchell is said to have coined this
expression was the Caribbean Travel Association's 1972 Haiti
meeting, where he insisted that the paradise marketed by re-
gional tourist boards has never existed. This historical conflict
between myths and reality is uncovered in these pages on the
Jamaican experience.






98


To Hell with Paradise


slavery on the other, demonstrates the harsh extremities in Ja-
maican planter society. Excess was common among the planter
class: excessive eating and drinking, excessive adultery, and to
top it off, excessive brutality toward their slaves. That the plant-
ers were said to be "hospitable even to excess" was typical." To
planter apologists like Edwards or Renny, this prodigality to-
ward strangers was a redeeming quality, whatever the planters'
imperfections. To some later historians, however, such benefi-
cence has smacked of not authentic altruism but vulgar ostenta-
tion. The spirit of individualism was rampant in that era. "The
interests of all were the interests of none." Planter hospitality
appears in perspective to have been a semblance of altruism
masking the naked fact that the occasion of a visitor constituted
a welcome pretext for a parade.14
  The notion of Jamaica as a welcoming society hence had its
genesis in the delight with which the gentry greeted all guests,
especially the stranger. Concurrent with this, on the sugar plan-
tations during slavery another conception was nurtured, one
based on distinctions of color so deeply implanted in the breasts
of white men that it seemed almost natural. According to this
notion, black people were a race distinct from and inferior to
whites. Providence, this idea ran, had created blacks to be
merely hewers of wood and drawers of water for whites. In the
prevailing conception of the welcoming society, the black's ex-
clusive role was to serve and that of the white was to enjoy this
service.15 Since the vast majority of Jamaican slaves, however,
did not accept these assumptions, conflict was chronic.
  In this society whites were by far in the minority, with a ratio
of at least ten blacks to one white person in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and of more than thirteen to one in the
early nineteenth.'6 White ranks were continuously undermined
by high levels of absenteeism and the stupendous death rates
owing to disease. Thus in slavery days there developed a practice
of welcoming white migrants to the colony and encouraging
them to settle:






The Ratooninq of the Plantation


99


Beggars, those unhappy, and degraded individuals, who swarm in all
European cities, are here happily unknown. To a poor man indeed,
who in his native land, finds a difficulty in acquiring the necessaries,
and little comforts of life, this is the best country in the world. Here,
industry not only procures the necessaries, but the conveniences and
even the luxuries of life. Turn your attention, then, ye industrious
individuals, who are forced to leave your native shores, to this happy
island! Here you will find a welcome, a happy and secure asylum.'7

  The gratifying thing about such entrants was that they helped
maintain a safe ratio of whites to blacks. Perhaps, as Ragatz
noted, these newcomers were often "carpenters" devoid of any
working experience with tools, "bricklayers" who scarcely knew
the difference between a brick and a stone, and "book-keepers"
who were both illiterate and innumerate. In Jamaica, under the
prevailing system of stratification they were incorporated into
the dominant social group-members of the elite by virtue of
skin color, if nothing else.8s They were heartily welcomed be-
cause of the role they played in maintaining the white suprema-
cist system.
  The Jamaican traditions of hospitality, up to the time of
Emancipation, were the products of the prevailing pattern of
racial stratification and displayed an exclusively white bias. The
Jamaican welcome, furthermore, had a political function to per-
form, specifically, to ensure the preservation of that white bias in
the social, economic, and political order. Before proceeding,
then, to evaluate the characteristics of the welcome and the so-
cial responses to it that developed with the birth of tourism, it
would be useful to survey the political economy of Jamaica dur-
ing that interval between the ultimate termination of the slave
system in 1838 and the rise of the holiday trade some half a
century later.
   At Emancipation, Jamaica had a substantial measure of in-
ternal self-government, vigorously asserted and jealously pro-
tected by the white plantocracy for nearly two centuries. Ultimate
control, of course, resided with the British Crown, and all acts of






100


To Hell with Paradse


the Jamaican Assembly were sent overseas for final approval.
This political constitution was not modified by Emancipation,
though the Emancipation Act profoundly altered the physical
pigmentation of the polity throughout the West Indian colonies.
With Emancipation, the exslave became constitutionally a citizen
and eligible as such for both public office and the vote, pro-
vided he possessed the respective property and income qualifi-
cations required to realize these rights. Of cardinal importance
to the advancement of the social and political lot of the freed-
men was, therefore, their attainment of economic progress as
well.
  At the time of the Emancipation, settlement in the Jamaican
interior was still sparse. On obtaining their freedom many ex-
slaves eventually withdrew their labor from the plantations and
retreated to the highland regions of the interior.19 There, de-
spite legislation designed to discourage it, they soon succeeded
in establishing peasant communities in a bid to secure economic
independence from the plantations. As time passed, the black
politician also began to surface upon the local scene. This was
more than the planter elite could bear. Efforts were made,
though in vain, to exclude the black man from the local legisla-
ture.20 The rationale for such recourse was simple. "To suppose
that two alien races can compose a political unity is simply
ridiculous," one metropolitan critic of the postemancipation
constitutional system explained. "One section must govern the
other."21
  Yet the phenomenon of the black politician was not a sudden
apparition in the view of the insightful. Not long after blacks in
the British West Indies were granted full freedom, Thomas
Milner cautioned about the inevitability of black domination in
the island:
It cannot but happen that, at a certain period of time, the descendants
of the African race must become dominant in the West India colonies.
Equal freedom and civil rights, now superadded to preponderance in
numbers, must produce this result; and the supremacy heretofore ar-





The Ratooninq of the Plantation


101


tificially secured to the European colonists will, in the natural course of
events, consequent upon the changes in the construction of the social
system, pass away.22
  As whites in the colony ceased to have it their own way, they
became less opposed to the abolition of all local legislative powers
and the establishment of direct rule from "home." It was not until
1866, though, that constitutional change was effected. Following
an uprising among a section of the black population at Morant
Bay in 1865, Edward Eyre, governor of the island, astutely seized
upon the resulting panic as an excuse to engineer the constitu-
tional change that submitted Jamaica thereafter to direct Crown
rule. Although in 1884 a slight modification was made in the
system to accommodate a representative element, the establish-
ment of Crown Colony government frustrated further par-
ticipation of the black Jamaican in the island's government for a
considerable time. It was not until 1896 that a full-blooded black
man gained one of the unofficial seats for which some allowance
was eventually made on the legislative council.23
  The constitutional change of 1866 is central in accounting for
the genesis of the tourist industry in Jamaica. As far as the
greater part of the white community was concerned, Crown
Colony government, whatever its demerits, liberated the island
from the prospects of political pandemonium, social chaos, and
total anarchy. In the opinion of many whites, even the warmest
proponent of "the man and brother position" would have been
hard put to find three or four black men fit to make laws for
their own guidance, much less that of others.24 While in 1860
only seventeen out of the total of forty-seven members in the
legislature were black or colored, an assembly 36 percent non-
white was still too much.25 In the island and abroad many whites
were of the view so succintly stated later on by one resident: "I
am sure that if the black people were the absolute governors of
the country, not one white man would remain in the country. It
would be impossible; look at Hayti! The blacks are utterly inca-
pable of self-government."26 According to this vein of thought,






102


To Hell with Paradise


white people evidently would not be able to live in Jamaica,
much less holiday there, were the blacks ever to become ascen-
dant. Crown Colony government had thus rescued the island
from this grave threat.
  Judging from the comments of many contemporaries on the
Jamaican political scene after 1865, it would appear that the
black people in the island were habitually indifferent to political
questions in the aftermath of the Morant Bay Rebellion. One
journal even claimed that for at least fifty years after that there
were no more political questions, only routine administrative
issues.27 Yet, given the prevailing paucity of media for political
expression (whether political parties or trade unions), the appar-
ent silence of the masses was no index of their true sentiment.
The colonial police certainly did not have any illusions regard-
ing the so-called political disinterestedness of the black masses
and were usually as ruthless and repressive in their methods as if
the Morant Bay uprising had just occurred.28
  There was great animosity between the black masses and the
colonial police, and at times there were violent clashes between
the police and elements of the native population, as in the Mon-
tego Bay disturbances (1902) and the Kingston riots (1912).29
There were, among the masses, many who reacted to this hostil-
ity in the political environment by withdrawing from it as much
as possible. One reviewer has suggested that, inasmuch as any
accommodation to the old order existed, it was due to limits self-
imposed by the black masses and intended to reduce friction
with the ruling elite.30
  Jamaica's genesis as a health and holiday spa for the foreigner
had been premised in part upon the gestation of what, to many
blacks, was but a new form of oppression: Crown Colony gov-
ernment. The early tourist industry itself seemed, from the
onset, preoccupied with functions other than merely providing
recreational or leisure facilities for visitors from overseas. In the
post-Emancipation years, the plantations entered into a pro-
longed phase of economic decline that reduced the number of
whites in the island. This reduction in white numbers was la-





The Ratooning of the Plantation


mented by all who reputedly had the interests of the islanders at
heart and who recommended that rebuilding the white commu-
nity was a vital step for any renewal of colonial, social, and eco-
nomic development.31 Tourism was considered a panacea for
this problem by a lot of these economic well-wishers, as the
numerous handbooks for visitors and prospective settlers at-
test. The Colonial Standard and Jamaica Despatch of 26 March
1895 declared that the function of tourism was basically one of
"bringing to our shores large and frequent relays of strangers,
who ... would thus be enabled to form those favourable opin-
ions of its agricultural and other attractions which would not fail
in many instances to induce the desire on their part to become
permanent residents here."
  In the late nineteenth century, development as a concept was
both racial and climatological. First, it was held that protracted
residence in tropical regions tended to sap the energies, moral-
ity, and creative ingenuity of white persons. Second, along with
the theory that the black man was inherently politically inept was
the notion that he lacked the capacity to foster to its fullest
potential the physical resources of his economic environment. In
view of the decrease in the Caucasian population, it thus seemed
rational that the cure for Jamaica's malaise should be the injec-
tion of fresh white blood into the prevailing social system, to
bolster the perseverance of the remaining whites and to boost
their flagging energies. As the Colonial Standard and Jamaica
Despatch expressed it at the time, "we ask in all seriousness, with
the depletion which has for lengthened years been going on
from uncontrollable or other causes among our good men and
true of days of yore, does not Jamaica sorely stand in need of the
infusion in her midst of fresh blood, of men of energy and in-
domitable perseverance?"32
  With the hope that the masters of capitalism could be brought
into the island via tourism, a climate of welcome awaited foreign
capital, thanks to legislative changes that permitted aliens to own
local property on terms equal to those enjoyed earlier by British
subjects only.33 This modification of the law facilitated U.S. eco-


103






104


To Hell with Paradie


nomic overlordship, especially in the banana business. Though
on the surface the growth of tourism and increase in investment
sources diversified the island's economic base, it also widened
Jamaica's vulnerability, deepened its dependence, and length-
ened the shadow of the United States over the island.34
   Presumably it was among the affluent that would-be investors
could be found, and so at the beginning the Jamaica tourist
trade was targeted to this class of persons. The well-to-do, it was
also felt, were usually the trendsetters. Inasmuch as people like
to be fashionable in holiday resorts, it seemed a sound tactic to
concentrate in building the Jamaica tourist industry upon the
rich. Social snobbishness and racial bigotry were two fundamen-
tal ingredients of the tourist industry in Jamaica from the start.
   One effect of this overall concern to make the local environ-
ment attractive to foreigners was the contrasting neglect, on the
whole, of the local black population. While the authorities were
conspicuously occupied with the comfort of itinerant Cauca-
sians, their policy vis-a-vis providing accommodation for the lo-
cal country people, for example, who traveled to Kingston once
a week or more to market their produce, was callous in the
extreme.35 Necessity required that peasants put their vegetables
on the Kingston market early in the morning. To get there,
probably half of them had to travel distances of ten to twenty
miles, many carrying heavy head loads all the way. To meet the
requirements of the early morning market and to get some rest
after traveling such long distances, vendors usually came into
Kingston by ten o'clock the night before. These people, the ma-
jority of them women and girls, were compelled to find shelter
under appalling conditions. The plight of the country market
people was a blot on the civilization the colonial upper class
pretended to harbor:
No provision whatever is made for the accommodation of so many
hundreds who must spend the night once or twice each week in Kings-
ton. They are left to find whatever shelter they can, chiefly under open
piazzas. ... Many of them cannot even enjoy the privilege of sleeping
as they have to keep awake all night to guard against thieves. They are





The Ratooninq of the Plantation


not only exposed to the weather, but they are worried as well. There is
no doubt that many of them become ill from this exposure and want of
sleep. If they get wet on the way, a thing that happens very often, they
have no place in which to change their wet clothes. It seems cruel that
they should have no decent shelter within their means.36
  In the provision of housing, as in the provision of hostelry, the
government's neglect was glaring. While the government acted
with alacrity to guarantee the construction of elegant lodgings
for transient whites, it ignored the housing needs of local blacks.
In the capital city, Kingston, it was not uncommon to find at
night six or seven people huddled together for shelter in a hut
barely big enough for one adult.37 Overlooking these pressing
needs, the government justified its overwhelming concentration
on the foreigner's comfort by pointing to the putative benefits
tourism development was expected to bring to all Jamaicans. If
tourism were properly encouraged, the population would have
much to be grateful for, the argument ran. The hotels would all
be filled, the livery stables would do a roaring business, vegetable
gardeners would have to extend their grounds in response to
the increased demand for fresh produce, merchants would find
their trade expanding, and so on. In a manner of speaking, the
tourist dollar was like manna from heaven: "Every tourist who
lands on our shores spends money amongst us; and the money
which is thus put in circulation is the most easily acquired money
which comes into the island. The raising of our products costs
time and energy and labour. The money dropped here by the
tourists costs us practically nothing."38
  For all that, it seemed futile to hope that some of that income
that had fallen into the government's coffers might be spent on
improving the housing of the blacks. The subject of better hous-
ing for the poor was treated by the authorities with "apathetic
indifference."39 While the ruling elite hoped to stimulate con-
tact with external societies through tourism, it did little to reduce
the distances between the classes within Jamaican society itself.
  Now, according to Melville Herskovits, among the myths
about black people in the New World is the belief that they have


105






106


To Hell with Paradise


an adaptable character that can adjust to the most adverse social
situations, even to the point of lighthearted acceptance.40 In
contrast to the psyche of the American Indian (who supposedly
preferred extinction to enslavement), the black personality is
held to have accommodated itself to slavery. Indeed, a portrait
of black bondsmen as contented and carefree came into being
even in the slavery days, from the pen of apologists who had to
support their protestations that the black man was happy with
his lot.41
  The ending of slavery did not entail the destruction of this
stereotype. Instead, it was enhanced almost everywhere follow-
ing the partition of Africa, the development of Jim Crow legis-
lation in the U.S. South, and the global growth of the new impe-
rialism. To justify the subordination of the black man, the thesis
was propounded that he possessed the intellect of a child and
thus was unfit for freedom. Indeed, this thesis ran, just as it is
habitual for children to be cheerful, black people are character-
istically happy-go-lucky:
                  Quashie's always happy;
                  Quashie him don' care;
                  Happy when its gloomy;
                  Happy when its fair;
                  Nebber t'ink-what's de use?
                  Thinkin' hurt him head;
                  If him hab a backache
                  Him jus' go to bed.
                  Quashie's always happy;
                  W'y cry 'bout de grave
                  When de sun is shinin'
                  An de palm trees wave?42

  That Jamaica (the isle of sunshine) knew no care was corrobo-
rated, according to reports, by the smiling faces, joyous laugh-
ter, and blithe behavior of the blacks.43 Happy denizens of an
island paradise, the black masses of Jamaica, like the lilies of the
field, had neither to toil nor to spin to make a living, since little






The Ratooning of the Plantation


107


effort was required to maintain human sustenance in this trop-
ical Garden of Eden. To work like a "nigger" was not to work
hard but hardly. Here was a retreat where life was passed in
slothful ease and folks were on a perpetual holiday.44 Even the
hovels that were the blacks' homes were presented in fanciful
terms. Inasmuch as nature was so bountiful, housing was less
necessity than luxury:
Nature in these sunny islands is such an indulgent mother that there is
no struggle for existence. . . . In cold climates the negro can, and, as a
rule, does work as well as the white man; but he has to do so in order to
live. He must have food and clothing, and must live in a house suitable
to a cold climate . . . In his tropic home it is different. The little
clothing he requires is worn for decency rather than warmth .... an
endless supply of ripe fruit that generally grows wild, supplies his
simple wants, and like the philosopher that he unconsciously is, he takes
life easy-too easy perhaps.45
  Though, indeed, a number of black men had done well as
individuals since Emancipation, freedom had not emancipated
the mass of the black population from penury and dependence.
In the available documentation on the establishment and growth
of the Jamaican tourist industry, one recurring feature was the
outstretched palm of indigent blacks soliciting pennies from the
foreigner. This request was often preceded by an ingratiating
smile and a friendly "Good marning, buckra" or similar saluta-
tion. However, the act of begging could at times be pursued with
an "amazing" effrontery, impudence, and pertinacity.46 In a
society where the average wage remained a shilling a day in
1914, begging was inevitable. So too were massive emigrations
from among the black population to Panama, Cuba, and Costa
Rica in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.47 The
concept of Jamaica as a paradise was a fiction, widely and un-
equivocally rejected by a black population that was constrained
to abandon this so-called paradise were they to improve their
material lot in life. Jamaica was a fool's paradise, for only a fool
could entertain such notions of Jamaicans as carefree and con-
tented.48







108


To Hell with Paradise


  Had brazen antagonism been the behavioral norm toward the
tourists on the part of blacks, that no doubt would have received
greater mention by these holidaymakers in their journals. But
such irksome conduct as begging aside, few visitors voiced com-
plaints about any unfriendliness from the black masses. Sir
Harry Johnston, for example, in The Negro in the New World,
affirmed that "personally I found . . . all classes and all colours
in Jamaica exceptionally civil and obliging to the stranger." This,
he asserted, was even more of a surprise because he himself was
always prying into backyards, taking photographs of sundry
people and objects, and "often in too much of a hurry to request
permission or explain the motive." As far as Johnston was con-
vinced, the only exceptions to this deference were the Maroons
of northeast Jamaica. These, he complained, were both discour-
teous and disobliging and "inclined to levy blackmail" on anyone
who passed through their villages or sought to photograph them
and their surroundings.49
  While most first-timers to the island were impressed with what
in their fancy was the social deference of the local black people,
the repeat tripper saw diminishing deference as a societal trend
by 1914, when the foundation phase of the industry had come to
an end. For Ella Wheeler Wilcox, by her third voyage to the
colony much had altered in the attitudes of Jamaican folk to-
ward visitors. On her first trip to the island, she stated, the locals
had been remarkably polite, a present of even a halfpenny gave
delight, and a copper was fair enough reward for posing before
the camera. "Today they demand one or two shillings," she com-
plained, and "where ten gave the pleasant greeting as they
passed, one gives it now." To Wilcox, it was clear that more and
more islanders were becoming infected by the brusque manners
and materialism of the dominant group of visitors, the Ameri-
cans. "It is a curious fact that wherever American feet make a
beaten path," she lamented, "the flowers of economy, politeness
and simplicity wither and die."50
   From as far back, actually, as 1890 the cultural spoor of the
American (as businessman rather than tourist) had been mani-






The Ratooninq of the Plantation


109


fest, particularly at the North Coast town of Port Antonio. The
town was then still in its first flush of contact with American food
and figures of speech, but owing to the banana business seemed
all set to expand into "a full blown American city with all its
virtues and vices."51 By 1871 Port Antonio had a resident Ameri-
can population of 246, ten years later the U.S. population there
was 309, and in 1891, the figure stood at 363-almost all in the
banana business.52 By 1890 the Portland Parish, with Port An-
tonio as its capital, had also begun to nurture an embryonic
tourist industry and to establish for itself an anticipated preemi-
nence as "a very popular resort for winter visitors."
   Toward the turn of the century, tourist arrivals in this corner
of Jamaica numbered well over one thousand per annum. The
table below shows the volume of the tourist trade in Portland
Parish from 1901 through 1907.53
              Year                    Number of Tourists
           1901-1902                        1,201
           1902-1903                        1,785
           1903-1904                        1,437
           1904-1905                        1,673
           1905-1906                        1,592
           1906-1907                         607
(Tourism in 1903-1904 was affected by a hurricane, in 1907 by an
earthquake. In 1905-1906, only the 1906 season was recorded.)
  As a result of this high density of Americans, by 1900 Port
Antonio (the first resort town on the island) had begun to exhibit
a plethora of social problems that would also torment other
parishes as tourism expanded.
  Though the larger American presence in Port Antonio gener-
ated job opportunities, qualified locals resented the fact that
they were offered only inferior positions.54 At the Titchfield
Hotel, for example, with Baker's practice of importing Ameri-
can chefs, waitresses, and so on, only the most menial jobs were
left for the local people. Tales of atrocities committed against
blacks in the southern United States made many people sus-






110


To Hell with Paradibe


picious of the visitors, and the behavior of these Americans at
times resembled the dominance of slave owners.55 There were,
furthermore, isolated physical confrontations, where sailors
were attacked for making derogatory remarks about blacks.56 In
sum, notwithstanding that affection for American culture noted
by DeLisser,57 disaffection regarding tourism was rampant.
Across the island, black people entertained their own sentiments
about the tourist traffic, as recorded in the Leader of 5 February
1904:

Tourists! Cou ya Sah! Dem is a confusion set of people. What we want
dem for?-An what good dem going to do? All dem idle buckra drive
and ride over de mountains in dem buggy and harse wit all dem 'sur-
ance, and look down upon we poor naygurs. True, dem say dey brings
we money, but when time we eber see it? All de storekeepers dem in
Kingston and de big tabern-keeper, dem is de one dat get de money out
of dem. ... An when de tourists come up to de country and see we
working in de ground, dem is not goin' to do anything fa we, but take
picta and laugh at we. Chu! me bredder, only de buckra dem will profit.

  Though still in its infancy in 1914, the tourism industry
brought to the black masses in Jamaica the sting of racial preju-
dice. One Chas Bowlan even had the misfortune of literally feel-
ing its sting on his cheek. The incident occurred when Simeon
Grant, a visiting American who had stopped in Jamaica on his
way to Colon, somehow got it into his head that Bowlan's laugh-
ter, as Grant happened to pass, was directed to him. "You d---d
half-starved Jamaica nigger," Grant snarled as he drew his re-
volver and let fly with his fist.58 This affair symbolized the trib-
ulations that tourism brought to black Jamaicans. The black
community was invited to turn the other cheek and forgive re-
peatedly the tourists' transgressions against it.
  Quantifying the pre-World War I tourist trade in Jamaica is
not possible. There appears to be no serial data, for instance,
regarding the actual number of visitors to the island. Nor are
there statistics on the nationality of these arrivals, their length of
stay in the colony, or the occupancy rates at hotels, inns, and so






The Ratooninq of the Plantation


111


on. While the raw material for a quantitative analysis does not
appear to exist, it is still possible to form, from the contempo-
rary commentaries, some crude impressions about the size of
the infant enterprise and its secular trends. One of the earliest
islandwide statistics is found in a 1906 report by the collector
general in which, from a scrutiny of the passenger lists of steam-
ships calling at Jamaica, he estimated the tourist arrival figure
for that year at 7,000 (most probably comprising both cruise
passengers and long-staying visitors).59 As for the direct contri-
bution of the travel trade to the economy itself, he reckoned it in
the region of £70,000.
  Before the September 1910 formation of the first promotional
body in the island (the Jamaica Tourist Association), there was
little concern for collecting macroeconomic statistics on the holi-
day business. Thus, only for that period preceding World War I
do we have any serial figures regarding Jamaican tourism. The
table below lists the tourist arrivals in Jamaica from 1911
through 1914.60 The figure for 1912-1913 includes cruise ship
arrivals.
              Year                   Number of Tourists
           1911-1912                        4,023
           1912-1913                       11,318
           1913-1914                        3,000
  By 1914, there had emerged in the island of Jamaica (and in
some other portions of the Caribbean) a new kind of South
Atlantic system, with hotel chains and a fresh form of body
traffic for profit. If, in the old slavery days, Jamaica had been the
most hospitable of the British colonies, with the rise of tourism it
soon gained the reputation as the one most prone to exploit the
visitor. "For ... the persons with moderate means who go for a
change periodically, Jamaica is too expensive" ran the charge
continuously recited by 1911.61
  The plain truth, T. D. J. Farmer explained, was that "the hotel
keeper here has got to look upon the American Tourist as an
easy mark."62 Many Americans reputedly preferred to shun Ja-






112


To Hell with Paradibe


maica and go to Nassau, Bermuda, or Barbados, where prices
were said to be much lower.63 Hence the falloff, recorded in the
table above, during the 1913-1914 tourist season. Lewis Clem-
ens, secretary of the Canadian Travel Club and representative
of the Jamaica Tourist Association in Canada, claimed, "I do not
think that the average hotel rates in Jamaica are complained of,
but the large hotel rates are certainly driving the people on to
Barbados, who would rather pay the difference in ocean fare
and spend a longer time on shore where the rates are not so
steep. I think about 25 per cent of the people I have sent on
to Jamaica this winter have gone on to Barbados."64 In its
greed, Jamaica, it seemed, was apt to kill the goose that laid the
golden egg.
  Perhaps the tourists were the economic victims of the early
trade, but the black masses were, unmistakably, its social casu-
alties. The color question had always hung over Jamaica, but
with the growth of tourism it festered further, for the industry
revitalized distinctions of color that had faded with the wide-
spread planter destitution since Emancipation. Sired within the
structures of plantation society, tourism in Jamaica bore from its
inception all the socioeconomic features of its geniture and in
essence soon became a new kind of sugar. As things stood "only
de buckra dem" profited.65 It is a sad irony that tourism spread
unsavory external influences all over this Caribbean island, 145
miles long and, in the language of the tourist brochures, a smile
wide.







                         Chapter 7


                Paradise on the

                Auction Block

     A tourist resort, which does not advertise its attractions
     intelligently and persistently, is like a horse that winks in the
     dark-the horse itself knows that it is winking, but no other
     living creature in the world does.
            -Anonymous, in the Jamaica Guardian, 16 January 1909





            o T WITHSTANDING the expectation that the Ja-
            maica International Exhibition of 1891 would pro-
            pel the takeoff of tourism in the island, one of the
            biggest obstacles to growth in the number of vaca-
tioners to Jamaica was still, at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, the dearth of information abroad concerning the colony.
Once the exhibition had come and gone, the ad hoc committee
formed to promote Jamaica overseas disbanded, and no organi-
zation was left to sustain the publicity it had generated or to
extract the maximum advantages from the tourism possibilities
it had opened up.' There was no specific organization to main-
tain Jamaica before the gaze of the globe-trotter. Nine years
after the exhibition, at the end of the nineteenth century, the
island still lacked both a tourism policy and a tourism agency.
  If, in the nature of modern tourism, advertising a place is
critical in stimulating a demand for it, this is even more impor-
tant when the resort in question is a new one, as was Jamaica
when the twentieth century began. In typical laissez-faire fash-
ion, the colonial government insisted that the business of selling
the island to overseas travelers was "one best left to private en-


113






114


To Hell with Paradise


terprise."2 But Jamaican private enterprise, in classic colonial
style, lacked the wherewithal and the cooperation to achieve
such an end, however desirable they considered it.
  Some of the media, like the Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-
American Herald, even felt that there was no need for an or-
ganized tourist bureau in a colony the size of the island.3 In
the paper's contention, were such a body established it would
achieve little that could not be accomplished anyway by simply
publishing pamphlets or leaflets. Jamaica's supreme need in tour-
ism, it continued, was not an information office but improved
facilities for guests-good boardinghouses and sanatoria, more
modern hotels, cheaper and better domestic transport, et cetera.
Until the accommodation and conveyance questions were settled
satisfactorily, a tourist bureau would be of little or no use to
either the colony or its visitors, the paper postulated. In the
words of another tabloid, the Leader, "What is more ridiculous
than inviting people to come to dinner and setting before them a
dish of herbs?" Kingston, for instance, did not even have a the-
ater or much else to entertain visitors. Jamaica, the paper ar-
gued, should first get its own house in order before inviting
guests.4
  With this lack of enthusiasm for a tourist bureau articulated
by major opinion makers, it is not surprising that the gestation
of such a body was slow. It was not until almost two decades after
the 1891 exhibition, in fact, that any organization came into
being. In the interim, in spite of the basic tourist potential of its
natural assets, Jamaica lingered in the minds of several persons
abroad as simply "a place or kind of machine into which you
empty planters and niggers at one end, and draw out rum,
sugar, and molasses at the other."5 The Caribbean islands at-
tracted international attention only when there was some catas-
trophe, like the 1902 eruptions of Mount Pelee in Martinique
and of the Souffriere in St. Vincent or the 1907 earthquake that
demolished Kingston. "Poverty stricken islands, barren of riches,
planted somewhere in some tropical sea. .. . That," one En-





Paradibe on the Auction Block


115


glishman affirmed, "is all that is generally known of the great
islands of the Caribbean Sea."6
  This information vacuum on Jamaica was filled, if at all,
through the proliferation in print of travel anecdotes recounting
the island's delights as a winter resort for northerners and per-
haps serving to woo a few would-be travelers to the colony.7 Of
course any prospective visitor first had to shed the preconcep-
tion that the island was swarming with dangerous reptiles and
wild animals. These travelogues assured the timorous that Ja-
maica was a land free from poisonous snakes, the mongoose
allegedly having devoured all of them. Nor should trippers fear
fever, as that had now become an anachronism, considering the
discoveries regarding the etiology of the disease. Finally, the
local black people gave no cause for disquiet. Jamaica, it was
held, was a fecund island where anything once planted in the
ground grew in the most prolific manner. Thus the sting of
hunger had no place in the character of domestic class relations
on the island.
  If food, clothing, and shelter were assuredly satisfied in this
most genial setting, so too was personal safety.8 The white
woman visitor had no need to fear the possibility of rape. To
begin with, the Jamaican police and law courts were held to be
effective as deterrents. It was claimed, moreover, that the is-
land's blacks had internalized an "almost divine affection" for
the white woman because during the reign of a woman they
became freedmen.9 Above all, Jamaicans were quite different
from their black brethren in the United States, where life was
unsafe and lynch law was "a necessary evil." In Jamaica, in con-
trast, the social situation was acclaimed as the polar opposite of
that in Mississippi: "Rape does not occur in Jamaica because
there are many black women with whom the bruitish negro can
have companionship. It is a hilly country where every Jack can
have his Jill, and where many neglect to go to a clergyman or a
magistrate before living together."10 Given this supposed ease in
satisfying sexual appetites, Jamaica's "best crop," so the travel-






116


To Hell with Paradie


ogues claimed, was the production of "piccaninnies." So benign
was nature that it did not visit the islanders with epidemics se-
vere enough or earthquakes calamitous enough to carry off the
"superfluous nigger babies." I1 With such guaranteed benevo-
lence of nature and the ostensible friendliness of the people,
Jamaica was touted as the ideal vacationland.
  Apart from the stereotyped docility of the people, their man-
ners, superstitions, idiosyncracies, and modes of thought were
invaluable to instituting and developing tourism. One of the
most entertaining recreations in Jamaica, was observing the
"bruitish" blacks in their habitat.12 A trip to Jamaica was like a
visit to a huge zoo to watch herds of black-skinned bipeds. The
black Jamaicans were observed as primitives.
  A memorable spectacle for the sightseer was to observe the
Jamaican black at "feeding time." "There is a great licking of
lips, rolling of eyes and heavy munching by strong jaws."'3
When he had succeeded in gorging himself, the negro's grace
was then said: "thank you, me fadder, fe all me na swallow.
Hope we may lib, fe nyam smo' (to eat some more) tomorrow."14
Equally worth the while of the nature-loving white tourist was to
view the mating habits of the blacks. The scenes of such intimate
encounters were framed in tropical moonlight, waving palm
trees, and flashing fireflies. On Forrest's and Henderson's rec-
ommendation, the voyager to Jamaica could become a voyeur as
he pursued the anthropological delights of the island in their
most delicate detail: "For an accurate picture of the love scenes
you must visit the island of rivers and take your place in one of
those quiet corners of the banana field and wait for George and
Jemima, or James and Mrs. Agostiss R-I cannot describe the
scene. Go to Jamaica and see it for yourself."15
   The black people of Jamaica were depicted in these accounts
 as curios, like the objects they made to sell to the tourists.
 Though the sociology of the black inhabitants was described ad
 nauseam by itinerant scribes with a professed concern for pro-
 moting tourism, it was their sociability that was the real promo-
 tional key. This is well illustrated by the controversy that arose






Paradie on the Auction Block


117


over the film that the British and Colonial Kinematograph Com-
pany attempted to shoot in the island in 1913. The story broke
when, in mid-January, a representative of one of the local tab-
loids visited the site of the company's operations. The reporter
saw some scenes acted with such realism that he began to won-
der what effect the picture would have on the people overseas
who saw it.16
  Since New Year's Day the Kinematograph Company had been
shooting local scenes for the film, which featured an uprising in
which black rebels decide to besiege and burn the home of a
white missionary. The company director recruited a group of
laborers from a nearby plantation and instructed them to bring
along their cutlasses and forks. The fictive uprising was por-
trayed as taking place on a day when "Lieutenant Daring," an
officer on one of His Majesty's frigates, happened to be at the
house paying court to the missionary's daughter. Though Dar-
ing, the hero of the story, time and again warded off fierce
attacks by the insurgents, the whites were rescued only after the
brave girl managed to escape on horseback and return to the
house with help.
  So great was the outcry from some sections of the public when
the company's doings were printed in the newspaper in question
that the project apparently had to be discontinued. Reverend
Ernest Price, principal of Calabar College, felt that when the
publics of England and America saw the film they would believe
that the black people of Jamaica were bloodthirsty and that
white islanders lived in dread of their lives, finding relief only by
the fortuitous presence of any passing man-of-war. 17 The film
would be most injurious to the infant tourist industry; it was not
the type of advertising that Jamaica needed. Another irate Ja-
maican made the point with more force:
I know of some countries where such a libel on their inhabitants would
never be allowed to leave their shores. If it is a criminal offense for a
man to publish pictures defamatory of another, ought it not to be so for
a Company which libels a whole island? We know of the ignorance and
the gullibility of the average foreigner as regards things West Indian. I









To Hell with Paradibe






118


To Hell with Paradibe


hope the Government of Jamaica will exercise a rapid censorship on
this and similar attempts to belittle the people of this island, and will
order the destruction of the series of pictures to which attention has
been directed.18
  Even the least insinuation that the people were discontented
or that the tourist could suffer some insecurity of life or limb was
incompatible with the goal of making Jamaica a winter spa for
white folk from Europe and North America. The vaunted image
of the contented Jamaican masses was, however, undermined by
the frequency of begging. This was particularly true in the ur-
ban areas, where begging posed a persistent source of vexation
to the visitors.19 By 1913, begging abounded almost everywhere
on the island. At Castleton Gardens, for example, even little
children could be found standing by the gates and pestering
the tourists, as they entered or exited, for a threepence or a
shilling.20
  Bad as mendicancy was for Jamaica's image, the behavior of
curio sellers was no better. By the end of the first decade of the
twentieth century, the city of Kingston was overstocked with
these peddlers. While one could not complain about the desire
of these vendors to turn an honest penny, their zeal in pursuing
a living was so excessive that the public felt something had to be
done to regulate their activities. They swarmed everywhere,
"dogging the steps of the harassed visitor,"21 insisting that their
victims buy Job's tears, liquorice seeds, lace bark, puffs, and
postcards. They were said to become abusive when their wares
were rejected.
  The streets teemed with another set of activists-those youths
who foisted themselves as guides upon touring parties from
cruise ships that stopped at Kingston for a few hours. It was
astounding the ludicrous things these self-imposed conductors
imparted to the visitor as "reliable information." To the Daily
Gleaner it seemed absolutely necessary that a system of licensing
be instituted, so that the business of showing visitors around
could be limited to competent and professional guides.22 Such a






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system, the paper claimed, would not only prevent visitors from
being pounced upon by idlers eager to earn easy money but
would ensure that the tourists received information that was
at least fairly accurate. When they departed it would be with
a somewhat more favorable impression of Jamaica and its
populace.
  All told, the masses must be stopped from such unsavory
practices as begging and harassing the tourists, and this S. C.
Burke, the supernumerary magistrate of Kingston, solemnly re-
solved upon. One Monday morning in February 1912, for ex-
ample, "a section of the ignoble army of vagrants, popularly
known as beggars," was arraigned before Burke. Among those
arrested was an old woman named Rose Ann Walters, who might
have been sent to jail like her fellow "craftsmen," if not for her
impassioned appeal. The constable who arrested her claimed that
she attacked the tourists:
  "People going fromJamaica will probably be thinking that it is a land of
beggars," the Magistrate rejoined.
  "Do, massa, do, gie me a chance," the old woman pleaded, while tears
rolled down her cheeks.
  "No, no," the Magistrate retorted. "The first thing you people teach
your children is to say, 'beg you a quattie, massa.' All these things must be
stopped."
  "Do, massa, have mercy on the poor old woman," was the persistent
supplication. "Do, bucky massa."
  "Well, you are an old woman," the Magistrate concluded, "and I will
give you a chance, but the next time you will go straight down to the
Penitentiary."
  "I am going to start locking up everybody else" was the proclamation as
the old woman left the dock.23

  So intolerable did the situation become by 1913 that the au-
thorities launched a crusade against curio vendors, "street arabs,"
and others who pestered the tourists. The police put on special
duty a few constables in plainclothes to keep a close watch for
such proceedings, and Burke fined, or more readily confined,






120


To Hel with Paradise


any adult brought before him for that offense. Juveniles con-
victed on such a charge had an option of six strokes with the
tamarind rod.24
  In the advancement of Jamaica as a holiday resort the colonial
administration played an influential role. The entry of visitors
into a territory, their safety, the import of goods, and questions
pertaining to investment by foreigners all, of course, fall within
the normal function of government. It was felt that the govern-
ment ought to encourage the infant tourist trade by reducing the
import duties on a long list of items used by hoteliers as well
as householders. Critics of Jamaican hotels insisted that their
charges were too high, and this was said to be having a consider-
able adverse effect upon the tourist industry.25 But how could
hotel charges be low when the import duties on foodstuffs, wines,
spirits, and other consumer goods were "extraordinarily high"?
The corrective seemed obvious enough: "Jamaica will never
become a popular winter resort for northern travellers until the
cost of living is reduced. . . . When our tariff is as low as that of
Bermuda, the Bahamas, Barbados and other islands, and our
hotel charges are correspondingly reduced, then-but not till
then-will Jamaica be visited every winter by crowds of health
and pleasure seekers."26
  Yet the government was reluctant to do more for the infant
enterprise than pass incentive legislation for building and equip-
ping hotels on the island. This had been first done in 1890 as part
of the preparations for the Jamaica International Exhibition held
the following year. In April 1904, the government once again
enacted legislation to foster hotel development in the island.
Through Law 15 of that year, persons erecting a hotel of more
than forty bedrooms were allowed an import license that permit-
ted materials for establishing and equipping the edifice to be
brought into the colony free of duty. Such persons were also
exempted for ten years from increased taxation of hotel build-
ings. Though this law lapsed on 30 June 1907, it was revived in
1910 and again in 1914 so that some of its provisions might be
extended to three hotels then under construction.27





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  Such support for the erection of hotels was far from enough to
absolve the authorities of the blame that they were idle and
unenergetic in promoting Jamaica as a holiday resort. On this
subject the Jamaica Guardian, for example, was explicit: "What
has our Government done to popularise Jamaica as a winter
resort among Americans and Canadians, or even to let them
know that there is such a resort so close to their doors? It has done
nothing-absolutely nothing.""28
  Local dissatisfaction with the quality of government support
for the infant tourist industry was of some years standing. There
was repeated animadversion, for example, at Governor Blake's
refusal to grant an annual subsidy to Colonel Headley Plant to
promote tourist traffic to the island.29 During the 1890s, when
Cuba was caught up in the renewed nationalist struggle against
Spanish rule, martial law had prevailed for some time in Havana.
Colonel Plant, who had been instrumental in pioneering the
tourist industry in Florida, had also been in business taking
American tourists to Cuba.30 With the growing turmoil there,
however, Plant was forced to find an alternative island resort and
chose Jamaica. Around 1894 he approached the colonial legisla-
ture with a business proposition, whereby in return for an annual
subsidy of £2,000 for five years-all of which would be spent in
advertising the attractions of Jamaica in the United States-he
would commit himself to running a regular service of luxury
steamers between Key West and Kingston. In addition, he would
endeavor to build up a big tourist trade for the island.
  In Jamaica, many influential people considered this a splendid
offer, particularly when it seemed that the colonel was also inter-
ested in entering into the hotel enterprise there. It was antici-
pated that after five years or so of advertising by Colonel Plant the
tourist traffic would be on such firm footing that the annual
subsidy would no longer be necessary. But Governor Blake ap-
parently felt that, with Cuba closed to him, Plant would bring his
tourists to Jamaica whether he got a subsidy or not. In defiance of
advice to the contrary, the governor turned down Plant's pro-
posal. The colonel's boats did come to Jamaica, but only for






122


To Hel with Paradbe


a brief while, since Nassau was soon "discovered." When Sir
Henry Blake realized that Jamaica was not indispensable in the
winter travel business it was already too late.31
  Given the government's laissez-faire stance, it was left to pri-
vate individuals who desired to advance the colony as a resort
to band themselves into an organization, which might itself act to
promote the island and might also pressure the authorities to do
the same. The first tentative moves to form such a body date from
around mid-1903, when a public meeting was held in the rooms
of the Merchants' Exchange to devise practical methods for regu-
lating and protecting the tourist traffic. At this gathering the
participants unanimously agreed that this business was "one of
the greatest importance to the material welfare of the Island"
and that a tourist board should be established with a paid execu-
tive as director.32 This meeting even included a discussion about
the means to raise the finances necessary for funding the pro-
jected office. It wound up with a resolution that the chairman
appoint a fifteen-man committee (with power to add to their
number) to continue the work begun in drafting a plan for a
tourist association.
   In February 1904 the Merchants' Exchange convened an even
grander meeting in Kingston, impelled by a deepening sense of
urgency regarding the advancement of tourist traffic.33 A disas-
trous hurricane in 1903 had gravely affected the banana and
tourist trades of the colony, laying bare the frailty of the economic
order in Jamaica. "Tourists can only come here," the tabloids
pointed out, "if there are the steamships to bring them; and the
hurricane has had the effect of putting the overwhelming ma-
jority of the fruit steamers out of service." Under the pressure
of economic dislocation, however, and spurred by the suffer-
ing engendered by the temporary rupture of external com-
munications, the value of tourism had become "thoroughly
appreciated."34
   Early in February 1904, the mass meeting of gentlemen inter-
ested in developing the tourist traffic convened under the aus-
pices of the Merchants' Exchange. At this gathering a consensus





Paradise on the Auction Block


123


plan for founding a tourist bureau crystallized.35 The proposed
bureau would register hotels and lodging houses throughout the
island and keep a record of all livery stable keepers. It would
consider measures to foster hotel construction and perhaps inter-
cede with government in that respect. Both the central govern-
ment and the parochial boards were to be induced to take an
interest in the tourist traffic. The value of lighting the streets in
several towns should be urged upon both of these authorities,
and something had to be done to improve the water supply, so
that when visitors to the country wanted a bath they would not be
impeded because the water was locked off.
   It was recommended that the proposed bureau should be put
under the management of an intelligent man with good address
and that he should be well paid.36 The parties at the bureau
should be thoroughly disinterested and unbiased in favor of any
hotels. The bureau would also use the services of a few ladies, who
could offer suggestions periodically to hotel managers, lodging
house keepers, and others as regards entertaining guests with
as much as possible of the produce and products of the coun-
try. Finally, regarding the question of funding, all at the meeting
realized that they could not rely entirely upon the public purse to
make this proposal a success.
  By February 1904, therefore, the tourist industry in Jamaica
was poised to embark on a new phase in its growth, one of
sustained promotion via an association of interest groups. This
association was an index of the new prestige of the holiday busi-
ness. Even the colonial government felt enough persuaded of its
significance to bestir itself in the circumstances and pass the
Hotels Law in April 1904.
  Despite the solemn speeches about the value of the industry,
however, the merchants made no perceptible moves to imple-
ment the proposals that had germinated in the February 1904
convention. "This isJamaica all over," one paper declared. "A big
outcry-great bustle and excitement-marvellous and imprac-
ticable projects-and then silence as unbroken as that of the
grave."37 Nor did the drought of tourists in the aftermath of the






124


To Hel with ParadLie


1907 earthquake alter this state of things. The infant tourist
industry continued to suffer from promotional apathy until, at
last, in September 1910 the Jamaica Tourist Association became a
reality. Reporting on the incarnation of this body the tabloids
prophesied: "We shall not be surprised if, in future years, the
15th September, 1910, will be looked upon as the beginning of a
new era in the history of the tourist trade of the colony.""38
  The primary purpose of the Jamaica Tourist Association was to
enhance the claims of the colony as a health and pleasure resort at
home and abroad and to give "reliable" information to both
prospective visitors and those already holidaying in the island.
Membership in the organization was open to all persons inter-
ested in developing the tourist traffic of the colony; and because
the active cooperation of as many people as possible was desir-
able, membership was in the names of individuals, not firms.39
There was no entrance fee, but all members were required to pay
an annual subscription of twelve shillings to aid in the work of the
association.40 Every year a general meeting was held at which the
members elected a committee to take care of business for the new
year, including a president, treasurer, and secretary. The secre-
tary was responsible for managing affairs at the association's
headquarters and may have received a stipend, and the other
offices were honorary.
  The headquarters of the Jamaica Tourist Association was
in downtown Kingston and was well equipped with reference
books on Jamaica and the entire West Indian archipelago. Picture
postcards, pamphlets, folders, steamship information, and other
bits of information were displayed at the office. The ordinary
routine at headquarters entailed answering all enquiries per-
sonally or by mail, which kept the secretary and his assistant
busy. Information given by the association was free of charge.
It is proof of the growing outreach of the association that, by
April 1913, it established branch information offices at Port An-
tonio, Montego Bay, and Mandeville. By 1914, the association
had even acquired representation in Canada and the United
Kingdom.41





Paradibe on the Auction Block 1


Founded in 1910, the Jamaica Tourist Association not only had branch offices
in Montego Bay and Mandeville but abroad, in England and Canada, by
1914.
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.

  One of the first acts of the Jamaica Tourist Association was to
make its existence and functions known to the visitor. Framed
placards were hung in the different railway stations, in stores,
and in other public places inviting visitors to make use of the
association's office for information about the island. A large
number of printed postcards were sent abroad to the different
steamship offices and tourist agencies, with a request that when
intending visitors wrote for information about Jamaica, the
agency would, along with its literature, send a card inviting the
recipient to write for data to the association's office in Jamaica.42
Thanks to this mode of advertising, it was subsequently claimed
that the association was in receipt of enquiries from prospective
visitors and settlers from all parts of the world and on all
subjects.43
   To finance its work the Jamaica Tourist Association depended


125






126


To Hell with Paradbe


heavily upon the subscriptions of its members, but the size of its
membership and the readiness with which members paid the
subscription were far from satisfactory. Five months after the
inception of the association, membership stood at 100;44 six
months later it was merely 120. With an annual subscription of 12
shillings per person, this meant a mere £72 to carry on the work
of the association, assuming that all the members had paid up.
This was not the response anticipated by the president of the
association, because in his view there ought to have been at least
400 on the rolls by then.45 Instead of improving, it appears that,
over time, the financial position of the association may have
grown worse. In 1914, for example, although 73 new members
joined the association and paid the required subscription, this
brought to 76 the total number of members in good financial
standing.46 Clearly, such paucity of funds retarded the work of
the association.
   Fortunately, ever since the association's inception the govern-
ment usually reserved for it a provision of around £300 on the
annual estimates. This amount was considered by the association
to be "totally inadequate" for the effective advertising of the
island. In 1911, the second year of its operation, the body asked
that £2,000 be placed on the estimates for promotional work,47
but this request was rejected by the government. With such
constraints of finance there were severe limitations upon what the
association could do.
   Nonetheless, the organization showed itself most active and
alert to every chance to expose Jamaica overseas as a haven for
vacationers. At the end of its first year of operation, the tourist
association issued an illustrated guide book on Jamaica contain-
ing data on places likely to be visited by sightseers, tidbits on the
island's history, and information on its folklore. Five thousand
copies of this guide book were published and distributed, free of
cost, to visitors and to people abroad. In the subsequent edition
for the 1912-1913 tourist season, 7,500 copies were published;
for the 1914 and 1915 seasons the figure mounted to 10,000.48
   Beside its annual guide book, a number of other publications






               Paradise on the Auction Block              127

were issued by the Jamaica Tourist Association. For the 1913-
1914 tourist season, for example, ten thousand illustrated leaflets
entitled Come to Jamaica were printed by the association and dis-
tributed overseas. An equally large number of leaflets was also
printed for distribution among visitors on incoming steamers at
Port Royal. Entitled Welcome to Jamaica, these offered helpful
information on such subjects as customs procedure, porterage,
and the rates of buses and taxicabs, and listed hotels and boarding
houses. According to the president of the association, this leaflet
was much appreciated by visitors.49
  In the pursuit of its objectives the Jamaica Tourist Association
brought its attention to bear upon such diverse questions as the
licensing of motorcars plying for hire, the provision of signposts
along the country roads, and the preservation of the island's
natural beauty spots.50 Beginning in 1913, the association even
instituted a daily weather report service between Jamaica and
North America, which proved "distinctly successful" in impress-
ing the tourist with the contrast in weather conditions. The Spe-
cial Weather Report Service operated from January to March
and was arranged with the Direct West India Cable Company,
Limited. Cables giving the temperature and weather conditions
in New York, Montreal, and Halifax were sent daily to Jamaica
and published in the local press. The weather conditions in
Jamaica were cabled each day to New York and published in the
New York Herald and the New York Sun. The cost of this service in
1914 was £20. Of this amount, £18.6.6 was subscribed by the
merchants and others in Kingston and £ 1.13.6 was paid out of the
funds of the association."
  The association was not intent on selling Jamaica only as a
winter resort. On the contrary, opportunities for developing
summer traffic were readily seized, and even academic institu-
tions abroad were tapped as a potential source of visitors. Litera-
ture was circulated among students and teachers recommending
Jamaica as a place to pass their vacation.52 When in August 1914 a
party of English schoolteachers visited the island, "the best
efforts" of the organization were invoked so that their stay in the







128


To Hell wit Paradibe


colony might be "as instructive and enjoyable as possible."53 The
idea was to iron out the fluctuations in the infant industry, since
from the very start seasonality had been a problem.
  Overseas there were opportunities to advertise the island via
various exhibitions and these the association pounced upon. In
1912, for example, the association sent two exhibits at large.54
One went to the Travel and Vacation Exhibition in New York,
and the other was displayed at the Toronto Exhibition. The ex-
hibits included large framed photographs of some of the island's
beauty spots and an album containing pictures of the principal
hotels and boardinghouses in Jamaica. There was also a large
map depicting the motor roads in the island and places of interest
seen en route, the latter represented by inset views. Participation
in expositions drew attention to the island and advanced its claims
for international recognition as the ideal vacationland.
  The courage of the Jamaica Tourist Association in attempting
so much with so little at its disposal was much to the credit
of E. Astley Smith, a Kingston merchant-proprietor who spe-
cialized in the sale of sports equipment and was the association's
first president. Smith believed in Jamaica's potential as a tropical
island resort so much that, almost a decade before the founda-
tion of the Jamaica Tourist Association, he set up his own pri-
vate agency catering to the interests of overseas visitors.55
Smith's Tourist Information Bureau was a room set aside in his
store with picture postcards, guides, curios, and other items on
sale. There he gave information to the visitors free of charge,
and organized excursions and tours for small parties wishing to
visit various parts of the country. Smith, on his own initiative,
kept a list of hotels and lodging houses in and around Kingston,
noted complaints made against establishments, and informed
those inns with discredits against their names.56 As the tourist
association's president (and subsequently its secretary), Smith
tried to move the mountains in the path of the island's realiza-
tion of its potential.
  In selling Jamaica as a tropical winter resort, numerous steam-
ship companies also played a significant part. After 1901, the Im-








ADV ERTISEMENTS.


       THE T'OURISTS'


           Informotion Bureau,

        106, Jfarbour S treet, Jfingstoi.


      Call at the only Tourist Bureau in Jamaica for all information
      concerning the Island. This Bureau is the only Establishm9nt
      which has studied the interests of Visitors-Many Testimonials.
      Kindly call and spend a few minutes looking round. You may
      possibly see something which may fill a future requirement. If
      not, the welcome is just as hearty. -

          - - Outfittirtjg   Deparht     eqt: - -

      Suits made to Measure within 24 Hours
              ASTLY             SMITI1'S 9
                  -UP-TO-DATE AND RELIABLE-

       GUIDE TO JAMAICA
                    --PRICE * ONE SHILLING.
     Blue Mountain Coffee, in 5, 10, 15 and  Curios.
        2651 Bags.              Fruits & Preserves of all Descriptions
     Guides; Maps.              Despatcbed to apy part of 4eq World.
     Pictorial Postcards, 9d. dozen.  Developing and Printing Plates and
     Views of the Island.       Films-A Specialty.
     Cigars of Different Brands. Excursions to Blue Mountain Peak.
             Or -Address all Communications to
     E_ ASTLETY' f S                         ITII,
           106. Harbour Street, KINGSTON, JA.


E. Astley Smith ran the Tourists' Information Bureau from his store in
Kingston. Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.






130


To Hell witb Paradise


perial Direct Line, for example, assumed management of two of
the principal hotels in the colony and did its utmost to encourage
passenger traffic from England to the island. Actually, with such
zeal did the company exert its efforts to this end that theJamaica
Guardian, though taking cognizance of Sir Alfred Jones's gross
failures in the banana business, acknowledged in a 1909 issue the
deep interest that he had displayed vis-a-vis the colony's tourist
trade:
whatever criticisms may be passed on the manner in which Sir Alfred
Jones has fulfilled his commercial obligations to the colony, he has done
infinitely more than the contract calls for in the matter of advertising
Jamaica as a winter resort, and encouraging English tourists to come
here. Sir Alfred may not have proved the benefactor to our fruit trade
that he was expected to do; but he has spent money lavishly in bringing
the scenic and climatic attractions of this Island to the notice of his fellow-
countrymen. ... It is only fair to state that in this respect he has far ex-
ceeded his duty; and due credit should be given to him for it.57
Notwithstanding Sir Alfred's efforts, his company's attempts to
develop a large English clientele for the Jamaica tourist trade
were unsuccessful. It was upon North America that Jamaica re-
lied for its tourism, and it was mainly North American travel
agents and shipping companies that were prominent in advertis-
ing the island overseas.
  On different occasions between 1910 and 1914, varying sums
of money were granted to internation travel and shipping com-
panies to advertise the island abroad. At the time the Jamaica
Tourist Association was established, the sum of £300, for ex-
ample, was granted to the firm of Thomas Cook and Son to
popularize the island as a resort.58 Of this sum, £200 was sub-
scribed by the merchants of Kingston and £100 by the govern-
ment. Seven months later, in April 1911, another foreign firm
received funds to publicize Jamaica, when the government,
urged on by the tourist association, granted £150 to W. G. Foster,
a key figure in the tourist trades of Florida and Cuba.59 The
strategic intent behind these tactics was to secure the patronage
of highly skilled advertisers with an already established network





Paradise on the Auction Block


1351


of travel bureaus throughout the North Atlantic. What Cook
and Sons had long been in Europe, Foster was to travelers on the
American continent-their guide and adviser.60 Gaining the
good offices of Cook and Foster seemed likely to prove "of much
more service to this colony than the spending of a similar sum on
Jamaican exhibits at some obscure exhibition, where the name
'Jamaica' is forgotten within a week of its closing."61
  Even without a subsidy, some of the steamship lines that did
business with Jamaica advertised the island on their own account.
The United Fruit Company, for example, periodically issued a
pamphlet entitled Jamaica: The Summer Land, which brought to
the attention of the traveling American public the varied attrac-
tions of the island. This company was one of the first interested in
developing a summer tourist traffic to the colony. Because the
summer temperature ofJamaica is much cooler and more exhila-
rating than in many parts of the United States, the idea was
postulated to induce American schoolteachers and pleasure
seekers to spend their summer holidays on this island. In 1912,
the United Fruit Company arranged for an excursion service
between New York and Jamaica during the months of June to
September "at special reasonable rates."62 That effort to initiate a
summer traffic was the last act in the drama of the evolving tourist
business of Jamaica before the outbreak of the First World War.
  By 1914, then, Jamaica had buried its past ignominy as a
godforsaken tropical island spurned by the wise traveler. Instead,
with its promotional paraphernalia in gear, the colony sought to
consolidate its image as the new Riviera just when completion of
the Panama Canal promised a future with much more in store for
the travel trade. Concomitant with the economic evolution of the
colony was the gestation of a veritable tourism psychosis, which
held it libelous-almost treasonous-to revile the climate of the
island, physical or social, so engrossed had the community be-
come with the accumulation of tourist dollars.63
  By 1914, this preoccupation had permeated all social strata to
the extent that, in Kingston for example, during the tourist
season it was "altogether impossible" for black or colored Jamai-















LI I-o. 4_          KlurGSTON AM r A, SA TURD




          O                    G


a z     1:4 C.


Drawing depicting the obstacles facing the early tourist industry in Jamaica.
Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.





              Paradbe on the Auction Block               133

cans to get a hackney carriage driver to pick them up, so rapt
were these city Jehus with pursuing the tourist dollar.64 Some
half a century earlier, Sewell, describing the economic behavior
of people in the capital toward strangers, noted that "the Kings-
tonians remind me much of the Bahama wreckers. Having little
or nothing themselves, they look upon a steamer-load of Califor-
nia passengers, cast away in their harbour for a night or a day, as
very Egyptians, whom it is not only their privilege but their duty
to despoil."65 By 1914, this observation held true for the entire
island.









  Part Two


THE AFTERMATH








                        Chapter 8


                  Resurrection

                  and Revival




     F THE generation before World War I saw the Jamaican
     tourist industry in its infancy, that after 1919 watched it
     attain its adolescence. But in the beginning, after peace
     came in 1919, visitor arrivals were well below the numbers
of the prewar period.1 In a sense this reduction in tourist traffic
was only a reflection of the radical rupture in the island's com-
munication links during the war. Up to 1914, there had been
two steamship companies transporting English trippers to and
from the island in well-equipped steamers. By 1919, however,
steamers from the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company were no
longer crossing these waters with passengers from England, that
being left to the firm of Elders and Fyffes (a subsidiary of the
United Fruit Company).2 As for the North American trade,
there had been at least three passenger outfits connecting Ja-
maica before 1914. Five years later, apart from the White Star
Line and the Canadian Pacific Railway, whose cruise ships came
this way, regular weekly communications were the virtual mo-
nopoly of the United Fruit Company. Jamaica was under the
stranglehold of two firms-the UFC and its subsidiary, Elders
and Fyffes. Since freighters from both had been requisitioned
during the Great War and some had been lost to enemy action,
tonnage to Jamaica was naturally smaller after 1919 than it had
been earlier.
  Were the Jamaica holiday trade to assume anything like its
prewar level, it was felt that the colony should, in the circum-
stances, subsidize other companies to increase steamship facili-


137








                         Chapter 1


                   Introduction




       AM A I CA I S a small island situated off the southern tip of
       the Florida peninsula in North America. Located at 170 to
       180 north latitude and 76' to 780 west longitude, it is about
       4,000 nautical miles from London but just 1,500 miles
from New York and 1,100 from New Orleans. Because of its
proximity to the United States a strong pull has long been felt
in Jamaica from its continental neighbor; and indeed, though
the political, economic, and cultural predilections of the ruling
classes in Jamaica were riveted upon Britain during the colonial
past, the countervailing influence of the United States was
always seductive. By 1900 the island found itself at the very
epicenter of the geographical sphere of U.S. interests in the
Caribbean. Given its locus among Caribbean Basin territories,
Jamaica holds a place of especial significance in the study of
regional problems. As one author remarked with perspicacity in
an 1898 publication, in this island the most typical Caribbean
Basin questions can be viewed in microcosm by the research
analyst.
The island is almost at the exact centre of the great American Mediter-
ranean. It lies just half-way between Galveston and the mouth of the
Orinoco, the southern point of Florida and the northern part of South
America, the eastern end of the Antilles (St. Thomas) and the western
indentations of the Gulf of Honduras, and the most northern of the
Bahamas and the Gulf of Atrato. This position is important from political,
geographic, biologic, and geologic points of view, and makes the island a typical
base of study for one interested in Antillean problems. 1
   Physically, Jamaica is a most beautiful place, and today it is an
internationally renowned tourist resort. But it was not always






158


To Hell wit Paradibe


ties.3 Beyond that, a great publicity campaign was imperative to
bring Jamaica once more to the attention of the holidaymaker.4
With its limited resources, though, the Jamaica Tourist Associa-
tion was underequipped to manage that big push in advertising.
Since the eruption of the war the association had faced official
indifference and neglect. At one time the government had voted
the sum of £250 per year for the work of the association. During
the war, that had sunk to £50, then to £10, and finally to noth-
ing.5 Now that hostilities were over, the association itself needed
a subsidy if there was to be a resurrection of the tourist trade to
the colony.
  While the Jamaica tourist trade languished in the doldrums
immediately after the First World War, elsewhere holiday travel
was noticeably on the increase with the beginning of peace. The
Canadians, for example, by 1920 were spending an estimated
$20 million each winter at vacation resorts in the United States,
in places like California and Florida. This $20 million, it was felt,
could well be diverted into the coffers of Britain's West Indian
colonies if communications with Canadian ports were developed
with a view to making the islands "the winter playground for
Canadians."6 Possibly no other country in the world generated
as large a proportion of tourists per capita as did Canada, the
Canada-West India Magazine claimed, basing the explanation for
this upon, first, the general prosperity of the people and, sec-
ond, the climate.7 Canadians in the postwar era were, more and
more, taking their holidays in the winter. Their employment was
often seasonal (like growing grain, for example), occupying
them in the summer and leaving them free for the winter.
Thousands of Canadians had begun taking winter vacations in
the warmer climates to the south (in Florida, California, etc.),
unaware of what the West Indies had to offer.
  If the Canadians were spending millions, the Americans for
their part were spending billions on holiday travel at home and
abroad in the early postwar years.8 In Florida, for example, by
1926 the seasonal influx of winter visitors from inside and out-
side the United States numbered, as a norm, well in excess of the






Resurrection and Revival


139


state's resident population. These visitors annually spent a sum
of money ranging from $600 million to $1 billion. Similarly,
California by 1928 could consider its golden sunshine to be
worth more in currency than its oil or, for that matter, the gold
that had lured so many in a previous era. Overseas, this holi-
day mania was reflected in a surge in foreign spending by
American trippers, from an estimated $175 million in 1909-
1910 to around $770 million by 1927. In France alone, for ex-
ample, there were 220 thousand American tourists by 1925, with
a total expenditure reckoned in the region of $226,160,000.9
Such was the outlay in Europe by U.S. holidaymakers that Presi-
dent Hoover declared in 1928 that their overseas expenditure
was enough to cover "the entire amount" of that continent's
annual debt payments to the United States.o0
  Were Jamaica to cash in on this travel bonanza, it had to get its
house in order-that is, develop such natural assets as the min-
eral baths, improve the general condition of Kingston, the gate-
way of the island, expand the accommodations in the colony,
provide funds for overseas publicity, and, interest more ship-
ping companies in putting Jamaica on their itinerary."l To ad-
vance all this, there was appointed by law on 10 July 1922 a body
known as the Tourist Trade Development Board. Much as a
precedent existed in the Jamaica Tourist Association, this new
body was a novel departure in that it was the first promotional
team constituted by government fiat. Since the tourist associa-
tion itself had been lobbying for some time for such a body,
from the outset there was close collaboration between both en-
tities. While two members of the Tourist Trade Development
Board sat upon the committee of the Jamaica Tourist Associa-
tion, the board enjoyed on its seven-member executive board
the services of the honorary secretary of the association.12 Ini-
tially, according to Law 15 of 1922, under which it had been
established, the Tourist Trade Development Board was to re-
main in force for just three years. Legislation was enacted in
1925, however, to provide for the development board's con-
tinued functioning, and in 1926 the Jamaica Tourist Association






140                To Hel with Paradbe

was amalgamated with it.13 In fact, the development board was
not abolished until 1955, when the Jamaica Tourist Board was
set up in its stead.
  Now, although after 1914 the Jamaica tourist industry tetered
on the brink of "an almost complete cessation," by 1923 the tide
had turned and visitors were again calling at the colony. 14 What-
ever the vicissitudes of the holiday traffic since the Jamaica In-
ternational Exhibition of 1891, it had still been a vehicle for
bringing into the island, over the years to 1925, a sum that one
guesstimate totaled at £3,500,000.15 There were also instances
where individuals came to the colony at first as visitors and later
acquired "a permanent interest" in it through investment and
settlement.16 Because of the postwar increases in health and
pleasure travel on the part of North Atlantic nations, the Ja-
maica tourist industry was felt to be far more capable of contrib-
uting to domestic economic growth than it had in the past. In
1924, the tourist trade was positioned in fourth place among the
island's industries. Contemporary projections, however, postu-
lated that the trade could readily be expanded to assume first or
second place as a source of income to the island, provided that
the infrastructure of amenities were developed and adequate
publicity measures were procured. The table below lists the chief
trades in Jamaica in 1924.17

                Fruit               £2,131,555
                Sugar                 911,812
                Coffee                203,882
                Tourist trade          158,540
                Coconuts               139,851
                Cocoa                  138,315
                Dyewoods               117,711
                Rum                    80,903

  In contrast to before 1914, when Jamaica's mountain air fig-
ured at the top of her appeal to tourists, in the interwar years it
was sea- and sunbathing that surged ahead as her prime allure.
Throughout the North Atlantic by the early 1920s, the virtues of






                  Resurrection and Revival                141

the sun were sung by growing numbers of physicians and sur-
geons convinced that heliotherapy would prove to be "one of the
greatest therapeutic agents of the future."'8 At sanatoria in
parts of Europe and even in England extraordinary cures were
effected by sun treatment, and indeed, the famous English osteo-
pathologist, Herbert Barker himself, found that several weeks of
sunbathing in the Caribbean "has left me in a state of wonderful
health, strength and rejuvenation." One British tycoon wanted to
see facilities established in Jamaica for people to take "altogether
sun-baths" (i.e., nude sun baths) and announced his own willing-
ness to invest in the holiday business with an outlay for a giant
hotel complex to be erected at Montego Bay.'9 In an era that had
begun to-glorify the suntan, there was unbridled optimism that
Jamaica could benefit from tourism even to the tune of £1 million
per year, comprised as follows:20

1,000 Visitors staying 4-6 months, (average 5 months)
  at, say, £40 per month                             £200,000
2,000 Visitors for periods of from 1 to 3 months (average
  6 weeks), at £15 per week                          £180,000
4,000 Visitors, 1 to 4 weeks (average 2 weeks),
  at £20 per week                                    £160,000
5,000 Cruise Tourists, about 2 days, (some accommodated
  on board whilst in Port), at say £7 per head    £ 35,000
5,000 Summer Visitors of 5 days to 4 weeks-average of
  about £25 per head                                 £125,000
17,000                                               £700,000
1,000 Permanent Residents at an average of
  £300 per annum                                     £300,000
                                                    £1,000,000

  The Jamaican tourist trade never attained such dimensions
during the pre-World War II period. While most government
officials were not unenthusiastic about tourist trade develop-
ment, there were still some (such as the governor, Sir Henry
Stubbs, and Sir Arthur Jelf, his colonial secretary) who seemed
peeved at the prospect that the colony might be transformed






142


To Hell with Paradie


into "a nation of hotel-keepers."21 Whether or not the governor
approved of tourism, the question of its development was ne-
glected. For the most part the funds allotted to the Tourist
Trade Development Board by the governors were far too little
for it to carry out its work.22 The explanation for this lay not so
much in the prejudices of individual governors toward tourist
trade development as in the question of who should finance it-
private entrepreneurs or the government.
  Some circles felt that provisions to advertise Jamaica should be
made primarily by private enterprisers rather than by the gov-
ernment, as it was the former, particularly the hoteliers and the
gasoline and automobile dealers, who received the lion's share of
the benefits from the existing trade. Since these organizers
found tourism so desirable, it was in their interests to take the
initiative and advertise the island themselves, the argument
went.23 The private entrepreneurs, for their part, felt that the
greater the business done between themselves and the visitors,
the greater was the sum of money that accrued to the govern-
ment. They claimed that the whole island benefited, as it turned
out to be chiefly a matter of the cash first passing through their
hands (the so-called multiplier process). From their viewpoint,
the responsibility of advertising the island, therefore, lay with the
government and not its corporate subjects.
  The issue was eventually settled by a decision to make the
tourists themselves finance the promotion of tourism in the is-
land. According to Law 16 of 1935, "a Law to impose a duty on
passengers transported to Jamaica by ship or aircraft," a tax of
ten shillings was imposed on those visitors who remained in the
island beyond three days, and one of four shillings was imposed
upon those whose stay was shorter. The object of the tax was to
obtain funds specifically for advertising the island abroad and
for otherwise promoting the tourist traffic. By the end of the
tourist season of 1939, a mere four years after the introduction
of this tax, £43,041 altogether had been collected from it.24
Tourist trade development in the island was given a tremendous






                 Redurrection and Revival                 143

boost by the substantial increases in funding accruing to the
Tourist Trade Development Board after 1936, as the following
table shows. It lists government grants to the Tourist Trade
Development Board from 1923 through 1938.25

              1923              £2,630
              1924-1926           1,000, each year
              1926-1929           1,250, each year
              1929-1931           1,500, each year
              1931-1936           1,000, each year
              1936-1937          7,000
              1937-1938         10,459
(Funds for 1936 through 1938 were granted from passenger duty
collections.)

  Although Jamaica was not deluged by tourists to the point
where its traffic was worth £1 million per year, tourism never-
theless grew steadily during the interwar period. By the end of
this period, tourism occupied third place in export value, after
bananas and sugar, and was "conservatively estimated" to earn
for Jamaica half a million pounds each year.26 As indicated in
Table 1, between 1922 and 1937, there was an unbroken pro-
gression in the numbers of visitors to the island. Of the 65,269
visitors in 1937, 66 percent came from the United States, 25
percent from Great Britain, and about 9 percent from Canada
and the rest of the world.27
  Considering the widespread economic depression during the
1930s, this steady growth in the number of visitors to Jamaica
was remarkable. In the opinion of the secretary of the Tourist
Trade Development Board, the explanation for it lay largely in
the successful publicity overseas promoted by the board itself as
well as by some of the steamship companies and travel agen-
cies.28 The departure of England from the gold standard was
also significant, as it offered the opportunity to advertise the
island in "certain other countries" to the greatest good.29 Fi-
nally, the increases in tourist arrivals were to some extent a







To Hell with Paradibe


TABLE 1. TOURIST TRADE IN JAMAICA,
                1922-1940


Year
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940


Stopover
Visitors
  1,872
  2,734
  3,114
  3,378
  3,668
  4,016
  3,906
  4,850
  4,461
  4,079
  5,062
  6,360
  5,149
  6,192
  6,886
  10,432
  9,908
  7,493
  4,319


Cruise
Tourists





7,951
8,208
10,550
13,763
21,726
22,474
27,669
26,994
34,113
43,608
49,007
54,837
52,782
42,413
10,828


Total





11,619
12,224
14,456
18,613
26,187
26,553
32,731
33,354
39,262
49,800
55,893
65,269
62,690
49,906
15,147


         SOURCES: Tourist Trade Development Board, Reportfor the
         period from lstJanuary, 1936, to 31st March, 1937; Ministry of
         Trade and Industry, Ministry Paper 4 (April 1954), app. 9.
           N. B. Stopover visitors applied to tourists remaining over
         three days in the island. Cruise tourists included all visitors
         remaining three days and under. (A record of cruise tour-
         ists was not kept until 1926.)

happy reflection of a growing intra-empire sentiment and travel,
as Britishers were evidently becoming alive to the idea of "seeing
the Empire first."30
  No less consequential were the effects of international politics
in explaining the continued growth of the Jamaican tourist traf-
fic despite the economic turbulence of the 1930s. For instance,
with the grave unrest in Cuba that accompanied the overthrow
of Machado in 1933, a great part of the tourist traffic to Havana
was temporarily deflected to its neighbor, Jamaica.3' In another
example, the leisured classes of Europe and America had for


144







many years passed the winter in Italy. With its Mediterranean
climate and magnificent art treasures and historical monuments,
Italy had long been one of the principal tourist centers on the
Continent. But following the development of Italian fascism
and the growth of the conflict with Ethiopia, this portion of the
Mediterranean became uncomfortable for tourist travel. No
doubt it was possible that Jamaica gained part of the trade that
Italy lost.32 Whatever the reason, one out of every four visitors
to the island in 1937 came from England.
  With the steady growth of the tourist traffic to Jamaica in the
interwar years came a steady development of the facilities avail-
able to visitors. Actual figures on the growth of hotel accommoda-
tion are hard to come by, but Gisela Eisner states that between
1910 and 1930 the number of hotels and boardinghouses in
Jamaica increased by over 100 percent from 54 to 114.33 This
reflected a deepening interest by the local private sector in the
hotel business. Many of the structures established for tourists
were Jamaican Great Houses transformed into hostels by adding
new rooms and installing more up-to-date appliances.34 With the
golden age of sugar in the distant past, a number of the ancient
landed families saw a new era of profit making looming on the
horizon, thanks to tourism. In view of the growing profitability of
the holiday industry since 1923, local capital resolved not just to
increase the extent of its involvement in the enterprise but, if
possible, to develop it for their exclusive benefit.
   Before 1914, a considerable amount of the capital invested in
the hotel industry had been acquired from sources overseas.
The belief at the time had been that tourism in the island could
be developed only by providing large, elaborate hotels for the
visitors. In the postwar years, however, this began to change. In
Montego Bay, for instance, then emerging as a resort, the gen-
eral feeling was that small hotels of, say, ten to twenty rooms
would better serve the needs of the growing tourist traffic than
some gigantic building erected by a large company.35 Small
hotels would be homelike and more in keeping with the local


Redurrection and Revival


145





146


To Hell with Paradise


surroundings, and there was no reason in the world why they
could not be as comfortable and as efficiently run as a large
establishment. Besides, their overhead expenses should be con-
siderably less, and they were likely to be more viable, when busi-
ness slackened in summer, than a large enterprise. Finally, if
need be, some small hotels could even close during the off sea-
son without doing any damage to the tourist trade.36 As one
gentleman asserted, "We want no Titchfield or Myrtle Bank
here [in Montego Bay] but small hotels that will pay their way
and keep open all the year round."" 37 Many popular resorts had
started in a modest fashion and then grown to fame and opu-
lence, and Montego Bay could do likewise.
  For many years, local entrepreneurs had solicited government
support with a view to increasing hotel accommodation but had
met with little success. At Montego Bay, for instance, there were
only three popular hotels in 1925 to take care of the tourist
traffic, and these had a total of only about seventy-six rooms.38
Some years earlier there had been only one or two lodging
houses of the old Jamaica type. For many years after the war,
government had procrastinated on the question of hotel accom-
modation, but it eventually responded with the passage of the
Jamaica Hotels Aid Law, Law 10 of 1936-itself an amended
version of the Jamaica Hotels Law of 1904. Under the terms of
this new enactment, hotel proprietors were permitted to import,
free of duty, building materials, furniture, and equipment for
any new hotels or for the reconstruction or enlargement of exist-
ing plants, provided that the building contained not less than ten
bedrooms when completed.
  The government also initiated a scheme whereby any hotel
proprietor who wanted to enlarge his plant, or alternatively,
to build a new one, might apply for a free grant not exceeding
1.5 percent per year for seven years on the capital outlay. Expen-
diture under this head was provided out of passenger duty col-
lections and was limited to a total of £1,500 per year for seven
years.39 What this really represented was a free grant to hotel
proprietors of 1.5 percent per year on sums up to £100 thou-






                  Resurrection and Revival                 147

sand. At last, it seemed, government had begun to give the tour-
ist industry something of the "New Deal" that the Tourist Trade
Development Board had long been urging. That, however, fore-
boded a continuation of the old deal for black Jamaicans. Given
its accompanying discriminations of race and class, in the con-
temporary assessment of one columnist, "this tourist trade boom
is the greatest encouragement for the development of an in-
feriority complex that the island has ever suffered."'4
   In the years before World War I it had not been too difficult for
dark-skinned Jamaicans traveling between New York and the
colony to obtain accommodation on a ship or to secure decent
treatment while on board. At the time, active competition existed
between the Royal Mail Line, Hamburg American Line, United
Fruit Company, and the many small steamship outfits plying that
route. In the post-World War I years, however, the situation had
changed dramatically, in that the United Fruit Company came to
exercise a virtual monopoly over the passenger service between
the city of New York and Jamaican ports. With the growth in
popularity of the Caribbean cruise trip among Americans, it
became exceedingly difficult for black Jamaicans to secure rea-
sonably humane treatment on ships belonging to the company.
Though most persons kept silent about it,41 this racism was visible
to all who traveled on the company's steamers, so blatantly was it
carried out. The following is a concise account of the situation
that had developed in the postwar period:

Whenever a coloured passenger applies at the office of the United Fruit
Company for a berth he or she is told that all the cabins are gone except
those located in the stern of the boat where the vibration of the pro-
peller makes it a none too comfortable voyage. Besides, the cabins are
smaller and less comfortable.
  Should the intended passenger be a bit suspicious and step outside
and use the telephone to inquire about booking, the same clerk, now
unable to see the colour of the questioner, will tell him that cabins are
available in the very sections which he had just been told were already
booked up. It is rumoured that a similar condition prevails in Kingston.
  If he returns and protests he meets with adamant resistance. ... On






4                  To Hell with Para,dbe

recognized as such. At one time diseases were so rampant in the
Antilles and the mortality rate so high that travel to (or residence
in) the region was thought by whites to be quite unwholesome.2
Yet, whatever the historical reputation of the Caribbean with
regard to salubrity, by the turn of the twentieth century the im-
age of the area had undergone so drastic a transformation that
these shores were instead lauded as eminently desirable places
to visit. So much, for instance, had Barbados become a vacation
resort by 1911-1912 that the colonial secretary was obliged to
note in his report, "the colony owes much of its increasing pros-
perity to the visitors who stay in the island."3 These came not
only from North America and the United Kingdom but from
South America as well, particularly from Brazil.4
  The Bahamas likewise had been emerging as a rich man's
paradise as far back as 1873, when it had recorded its largest
tally so far of visitors, with nearly five hundred arrivals.5 The
takeoff of Bahamian tourism occurred, however, in the 1890s,
when Henry Flagler, who had brought the Florida East Coast
Railway to Miami, turned his attention to Nassau, where he not
only purchased but built hotels.6 Still another boost for Baha-
mian tourism came in 1895 when the second independence war
broke out in Cuba, diverting to these nearby isles the hundreds
of Americans who had been in the habit of visiting Havana. As
for Cuba itself, one American tour organizer alone, Colonel
H. B. Plant, brought some 20,000 visitors to the island each
winter season prior to the outbreak of the 1895 rebellion.7 In
short, from Barbados to the Bahamas, Cuba to Bermuda, by the
early twentieth century these islands began to be transformed
into playgrounds for itinerant Caucasians in search of health
and enjoyment.8 Once tropical plantations, purportedly unfit
for white residence, these islands were being touted as veritable
gardens of Eden.
  Placed in historical perspective, the growth of tropical island
tourism was but the spillover into these parts of the passenger
traffic until then confined to a holiday circuit in the North Atlan-
tic. Modern tourism owed its gestation to the industrial revo-






148


To Hell with Paradie


the ship itself the coloured passengers are often asked to eat and leave
the dining saloon BEFORE the rest of the passengers and have to hurry
through their meals within a specified time. If they refuse to co-operate
in their own humiliation they will find that they are segregated at the
tables and put by themselves in some out of the way corner. On the ship
itself some of the crew treat the coloured passengers with disdainful
discourtesy.42

It should be noted, nevertheless, that the United Fruit Company
was not exceptional in this respect. If it was the biggest offender,
that was because it controlled the bulk of the passenger service
between the United States and Jamaica. In some respects the
United Fruit Company might even have seemed more "genero-
us" in its policy toward black people than the Standard Fruit
Company. The latter, it appears, absolutely refused to accept
colored passengers on their boats.43
  The colored person was unwelcome in the hotels as well as on
the boats.44 Nor was the position any better when the proprietor
or manager himself happened to be colored. In general no noise
was made publicly about color discrimination in the hotels or in
the wider Jamaican society,45 but the color complex was there all
the same. For instance, prior to the emergence and development
of Montego Bay as a tourist resort, it had been the age-long right
of the people to bathe at the beautiful White Sands Beach, the
pride of the township. Apart from the scenic beauty of Montego
Bay, its greatest attraction as far as visitors were concerned was
that incomparable stretch of white sand bordering the famous
Doctor's Cave. This beach was the general property of the public
and therefore under the control of the municipal authorities,
the parochial board of St. James. The Doctor's Cave itself
was the property of an exclusive bathing club that bore the
same name. For years the Doctor's Cave Bathing Club had been
trying to get exclusive rights to the White Sands, but it was not
until the mid-twenties or thereabouts that this attempt really
blossomed.46
  First came a notice from a commissioned land surveyor claim-
ing ownership of the White Sands Beach in the name of the






























Montego Bay (1924).


Doctor's Cave, Montego Bay (1924).
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.






150


To Hell with Paradise


bathing club. The club had no evidence to support this conten-
tion. Indeed, they had no idea where the land they actually
possessed began or ended, as no diagram accompanied the title
that they produced.47 It might generously be assumed that they
made a "mistake" in claiming parochial property as their own.
  Having failed in this respect, the bathing club next sought
to gain control of the beach by leasing it from the parochial
board.48 The White Sands, they claimed, was one of the most
valuable assets of Montego Bay from the tourist point of view.
Unfortunately the place was not always all that could be desired,
as order and decency were at times absent, due to the lack of
effective control of the beach. If this absence of regulation con-
tinued, they argued, tourists would not be likely to frequent the
place, and thus the entire tourist trade of the town would be
endangered. In fact, what many members of the club feared,
though they did not publicly say so, was that the visitors would
be driven away if the place were left open to all and sundry.49
Their ostensible public-spiritedness in seeking the protection
and development of the economic interests of the community as
a whole was a fig leaf behind which they sought to cover their
naked desire for control of the White Sands Beach to satisfy
their own prejudices.
  Naturally the public was not prepared to relinquish its rights
without a struggle, and the attempt of the Doctor's Cave Bathing
Club to encroach upon the privileges of the people caused quite
a stir. It seemed to some that the matter revolved around issues
no higher than those of color and class. According to the North-
ern News, for example, the rights of the general public were
neither for rent nor for sale; more, the board had no moral
authority to lease the public rights to any select group of people.
"The beach is public property and not for any exclusive section
of the community. The beach is also not belonging to any
Church to be disposed of at will. Let all these facts be distinctly
understood at once," the paper cautioned from the outbreak of
the question.50
  The beach was a material asset to the town and ought to be






                 Redurrection and Revival                151

well managed. While in a technical sense the bathing club com-
mittee was better qualified to do that than the parochial board, it
was unacceptable on purely social criteria. A compromise was
reached wherein the White Sands Beach was to be managed by a
joint committee consisting of three members of the parochial
board and a like number from the Doctor's Cave Bathing Club
Committee.51 Such a body, it was felt, could best provide for the
improved administration of the place and at the same time pro-
tect public rights and privileges. But what occurred in actual
practice was rather different.
   It had, for example, been the habit for people from humble
walks of life to shelter among the trees and there divest them-
selves of their clothing before going on to the beach for a bath.
To discourage such persons from using the beach any further,
the bathing club committee had all the trees on the site cut down
without even consulting the parochial board.52 Furthermore, a
bathhouse that had stood on the beach and that could have been
used as a screen was moved to a position where it could not serve
the same purpose. Under the umbrella of the joint committee,
the bathing club thus set about to run the place exclusively to
its own taste. This behavior was, of course, condemned at a
subsequent meeting of the parochial board, but despite such in-
dications of the trend within the bathing club committee, a pro-
posal to lease the premises to it came up again in the parochial
board.53
  In a meeting of the board at the beginning of May 1927, the
chairman suggested that the board should rent the place to the
bathing club, as it was a great asset to the town and ought to
be well cared for. Again the proposition was turned down. How-
ever, it was clear that, despite the existence of the joint commit-
tee, the matter of the management and control of the White
Sands Beach was far from settled. With tourism, the White
Sands Beach had become of inestimable commercial value,
whereas the rights of the people were clearly (in some circles) a
trivial question of sentimental value.54 The grand finale of the
whole affair eventually came when, in April 1929, regardless of





152


To Hell with Paradise


public feeling on the issue, the parochial board resolved to lease
the White Sands Beach.55 This lease to the Doctor's Cave
Bathing Club Committee was to run for twenty-one years, and
the rental was set at £25 per annum, payable half yearly. The
covenant of the lease stipulated that the public had the right to
use the sands for promenading and the water for bathing, pro-
vided that persons so doing were decently dressed, decently be-
haved, and paid whatever fee was charged by the bathing club
for the privilege of using the property. Furthermore, no dis-
crimination was to be made among the various users of the
beach.56 In view of the reputation that the club had acquired,
public misgivings that these conditions might not be respected
were not without foundation. As it stood, the lease in effect
legitimized discrimination on the basis of class while rejecting its
application on the grounds of color.
  The tourist trade was not only dehumanizing, it was demor-
alizing, it seems. It brought to the island the "standardised frip-
peries of Palm Beach" along with the canned entertainment of
Hollywood-its values and vulgarity. Critics vigorously con-
tended that tourism cheapened the morals of Jamaican youth,
who mimicked the observed behavior of the American tourists
with drinking, smoking, and public "necking."57 Prostitution too
had mushroomed throughout the chief ports of the island, com-
pliments of the holiday business. Reports had it that Montego
Bay was besieged by "an epidemic of homosexuality" by 1940.58
  Little as the local population benefited from the morality of
the tourists, it had even less to gain from them as models of
manners and courtesy. The bulk of Americans who visited the
island were arrogant, ostentatious, and coarse, and many Jamai-
cans themselves assumed such traits.59 "The more energy is de-
voted in Jamaica to making the Island 'attractive' to tourists in
the methods that are commonly understood to be inviting to
them (night clubs, 'Lidos', etc.), the less attractive does the
Blessed Island become," one former governor confessed.60 Con-
fronted by the foreign exchange preoccupations that had engen-
dered this seeming tradeoff between popular dignity and the






                  Resurrection and Revival                 153

tourist dollar, critics of public policy were left with little recourse
other than the passive resistance of satire and caricature:
Montego Bay ... is one gigantic farce. But Jamaicans believe there is
something in it all. In Kingston they congregate in horrible little night-
clubs a beetle would be too fastidious to frequent. They assume
the bovine loud aggressiveness of the tourist manner. They mortgage
their properties to buy expensive cars. They give themselves grave-
yard faces by dancing all night or slim to resemble their celluloid film-
heroines...
  Jamaicans have a genuine and glorious sense of humour when they
are not over-awed. When will they use it? When will they take off the
blinkers of a self-assumed inferiority and, looking at these preposterous
car-loads of commercial rats on the spree, of melodramatic baby-faces
and fleshy lobsters-when will they look and lift up their voices in one
magnificent roar of mirth?61

  The social reality of what tourism brought, of course, was far
from a laughing matter. All over the island it elicited an out-
break of touting, begging, and multifarious forms of parasitism.
Even children hardly able to walk hurled abusive epithets at
visitors when their demands were not met.62 Proof of the degree
of the problem is evidenced from the court records of Kingston.
Between December 1936 and September 1937, 630 persons were
apprehended and prosecuted in petty sessions for selling on the
streets. In each case the charge was the result of visitors being
pestered in downtown Kingston. Altogether, 504 convictions
were recorded, and total fines amounted to £98.5.6-that is,
four shillings per person convicted.63 As for begging from
cruise passengers, fifty-two arrests were made in the capital city
during 1937, and of these, forty defendants were convicted and
fined a total of £9.12.6. Tourism created an interaction between
the overwealthy of the earth and its wretched, and with it there
sprang to life sundry odious and degrading behavioral patterns
among the Jamaican masses. The pearl of the Antilles was, in the
language of one local publication, "a perverted hell."64
   Advocates of tourist trade development had always claimed
that the industry would win enormous profits. But for whom?





154


To Hell with Paradise


And at what price? Looking back, in the opinion of some observ-
ers the trade was of benefit primarily to a few hotel keepers, but
these were not wont to invest their profits within the colony,65
nor were they famous for paying high wages to their staff. The
opposite pertained, where "in Jamaica, we pay our own people,
the labourers, less than anywhere else in the world, and charge
the visitors more!"66 The colonial government did receive a fair
amount of income each year from the tourist tax, but this money
was spent primarily on projects advertising the island abroad
or on schemes for improving facilities for visitors. Almost none
of these receipts, it seemed, was spent on relieving conditions
among the masses of the people and thereby making their lives
in the colony less uncomfortable.67
   A little seasonal employment had been derived from the de-
velopment of the tourist trade, but persons who earned money
just during the tourist season could only be adversely affected by
the other months of idleness. To crown it all, it was suspected
that businessmen had a tendency to mark up the prices of their
goods during the tourist season, in which case the native himself
was also a victim of this particular kind of opportunism fueled
by tourism.68 The colony at large, it was claimed, was being ex-
ploited for the sake of certain vested interest groups, local and
foreign-the hoteliers, the merchants, the car rental and trans-
portation agencies, and so on. To the bulk of the population the
value of the tourist trade was practically nothing, many a critic
contended.
  At the close of the interwar period the Jamaican tourist indus-
try had developed neither social legitimacy nor, among large
segments of the population, even economic credibility. Yet Ja-
maica had already begun to anticipate the eventual coming of a
new era, when people would be able to travel from New York to
Kingston and vice versa by air. The arrival in the island of the
American Clipper during November 1931, with Charles Lind-
bergh and its designer, Igor Sikorsky, on board, was an event of
great significance for Jamaica.69 Given its trade dependency, the
welfare of Jamaica's citizens had always been closely connected






                 Resurrection and Revival                155

with the quality of the transportation facilities at its service.
From the standpoint of tourism, the most important feature
of the visit of the American Clipper was its demonstration of
the speed with which the island could be reached, bringing
the colony closer to the homes of holidaymakers. "One often
hears business people say that they do not want to be far away
from home. This has been the drawback with Jamaica in the
past," Philip Olley, secretary of the Tourist Trade Development
Board, protested.70 Without question it would take a few years
before air routes to the island were built up and Jamaica could
receive an augmented tourist traffic via this medium. "But,"
Olley exulted, "the point is that we know now that it is possible
and only a matter of time."
  Just as the pre-World War I years in Jamaica concluded on a
note of optimism that the opening of the Panama Canal would
be a great boost to the colony's tourism, the pre-World War II
era closed with an analogous sentiment. Thanks again to its
geographical position, the feeling was that this time around Ja-
maica would boom through the development of aviation. When
he landed in the island in 1931, Lindbergh had pointed out that,
in terms of any putative air routes between North and South
America, the fastest of these would necessarily pass through
Jamaica. The colony lay in the way, as it were, and was therefore
expected to become a critical connecting point between both
continents.71 In any case, with its location just a few hours by air
from the shores of the United States, the population of which
luxuriated in the highest income per capita on this planet, it
seemed indeed Jamaica's manifest destiny to become "God's
paradise for tourists." In 1928 a total of 14,456 persons visited
the island; but a mere ten years later, on the eve of the Second
World War, the number of visitors stood at 62,690-an increase
of 430 percent (see table 1). The advent of the airplane patently
promised more. First, however, the colony needed to get its
house in order, as it turned its gaze skyward in anticipation of
this second coming by tourists that aviation portended.








                        Chapter 9


          The Second Coming




          E FORE the outbreak of the Second World War, inso-
          far as Jamaica had been a favorite holiday retreat for
          westerners, it had been so for the wealthy almost ex-
          clusively. It was not until December 1930, when Pan
American World Airways first linked Jamaica with the outside
world via its Clipper service, that Jamaica began to emerge as a
leading destination for the average middle-income vacationer.
According to the Daily Gleaner, mass tourism in the island com-
menced with the appearance of Pan Am.' The airline did not
just invest in the creation of links between the island and the
mainland, but through its advertising campaigns in newspapers,
magazines, posters, film travelogues, et cetera, actively pro-
moted Jamaica as a tourist mecca. The story goes that the airline
company was only three years old when on 2 December 1930 it
inaugurated service through Kingston on its Miami-Panama
route. With its original four-engine Commodore flying boats or
seaplanes, Pan Am carried twenty passengers per trip from
Kingston to Miami in about six hours.2 A quarter of a century
later, however, Pan Am's Clippers were carrying two or three
times as many people twice as speedily to the island.
  When the company began operating in Jamaica at the end of
  1930 it had four employees, but by 1955 its personnel at the
Kingston office numbered sixty-two, and at Montego Bay the
staff amounted to a dozen.3 By 1955, Kingston was only three
hours distant from Miami by daily round-trip Clipper flights.
Jamaica was on two main Clipper routes-one between Miami
and Puerto Rico and the other between Miami, Colombia, Vene-
zuela, and Trinidad and Tobago. Indicative of Pan Am's interest


156





The Second Cominq


157


in the promotion of Jamaica was the fact that the island was
featured among twelve countries on the pages of its 1955 cal-
ender, which was distributed all over the world. Proof too of Pan
Am's desire to bring mass tourism to Jamaica was its willing
participation in 1950 in initiating the first "Know Jamaica"
tour-a scheme that brought over one thousand travel agents
and travel editors on familiarization visits between 1951 and
1953.4 Finally, there was PAA's practice of "installment travel"
(10 percent down, up to twenty months to pay)-an initiative
that by 1954 had made Jamaica accessible to many who would
otherwise have lacked the financial means to visit the colony.5
  Before 1940 there was no landing field in Jamaica, and so
when Pan Am began its operations in 1930 the company used
Sikorsky Clippers and continued that practice throughout its
first business decade on the island. In the heat of World War II,
in 1940, the military authorities in Jamaica started the construc-
tion of an adequate airport on the Palisadoes Peninsula south of
Kingston harbor. Following the completion of this field, it be-
came technically feasible for other aviation companies to open
links with the island, and among the first to do so was the Royal
Dutch Airlines (KLM).6 Using diplomatic channels, a request for
a permit was made and received, thus permitting KLM on 19
August 1941 to land its first airplane on the island.
  On that first flight KLM carried among its passengers the
personnel managers of all the oil companies engaged in refining
in Curagao. The idea was for them to see for themselves the
many attractions offered by Jamaica: good hotels, beautiful
scenery, and cool mountain air-things not found in Curagao,
and especially appreciated by the Dutchmen there since they
could not repatriate to wartorn Europe for their holidays. Sub-
sequent to this maiden flight, so many employees and their fami-
lies from the Dutch oil companies flocked to Jamaica via KLM to
spend their vacations that the airline, in October 1941, increased
the number of its weekly flights between Cura§ao and Kingston
from one to two.7
  Besides PAA and KLM, the British Overseas Airways Corpo-





                        Introduction                         5

lution and the need it engendered for periodic relief from the
psychological stresses and strains of the factory system and ur-
banism.9 Facilitating this imperative for the occasional holiday in
quieter and healthier surroundings was the growth of mecha-
nized transport, which was making substantial strides forward at
that time. Perhaps the greatest revolution in transportation since
the inventions of the wheel and the sail was the creation of the
steam engine, and through it the railway and steamshipping.
Steam, which had played such a dynamic role in the industrial
revolution, on being applied to transport in the nineteenth cen-
tury made it possible for far more people to travel, and travel far
more cheaply, than before. As the demand for travel grew the
tour operator made his appearance, a reflection in itself of the
quickening pace of life.'10
  The earliest and most renowned of these agents was Thomas
Cook. In 1841 he embarked upon his career as a tour organizer
and arranged an excursion by train from Leicester to Lough-
borough for 570 trippers at a return fare of one shilling per
person." A decade later Cook was arranging travel and ac-
commodation for 165,000 visitors to-the Great Exhibition in
London. Following that, he initiated trips to the Continent, be-
ginning with the Paris Exhibition of 1855. Such was his success
that 20,000 people participated in Cook's tour to the Paris Ex-
hibition of 1867 and over 75,000 to the exhibition of 1878. By
1866, Cook ventured into transatlantic tours with the organiza-
tion of his first trip to the United States. It was from this devel-
oping holiday enterprise, therefore, that some individuals in the
1860s felt Jamaica could gainfully benefit, by promotion abroad
as a health spa.12
  That tourism as a phenomenon first materialized with the in-
dustrial revolution is demonstrated by the fact that the word
itself had not existed in the English language before then.13 In
the manufacturing centers of the U.S. northeast, around 1800,
where Puritanism held sway, a lust for recreational travel (i.e.,
tourism) was considered something morally reprehensible-as
sinful as alcohol and as aberrant as sexual fantasy.14 But a






158


To Hell with Paradise


ration (BOAC) also played an active role in the postwar promo-
tion of Jamaica's beaches and other resort charms. In May 1952,
BOAC's stratocruiser brought to Jamaica on a six-hour, nonstop
flight from New York about sixty of the leading travel agents
and hotel personalities in the United States.8 The intent of this
initiative was to promote the island's summer tourist traffic,
which in the years after World War II had begun to assume a
significance that it had not before possessed. In 1948, for ex-
ample, 42 percent of the tourist traffic occurred in the months
of May through September, as compared with only 23 percent in
1938. In 1951, the proportion of business represented by the
summer trade stood in the region of 39 percent of the overall
traffic.9 It was BOAC's hope that, by bringing a select who's who
of the big names in travel and showing them the island's equable
summer climate, it could contribute to the generation of a year-
round tourist trade. Though there was no higher motive than
the expansion of business for its carriers, BOAC's salience in
seeking to enlarge the summer market was not without substan-
tial macroeconomic merit. As one observer remarked at the
time, "the importance of the summer trade cannot be exagge-
rated ... taking into account the spread of employment in the
industry and the all-the-year-round tourist spending which cir-
culates throughout the whole economy."' 0
  While prior to the Second World War visitors to Jamaica had
arrived almost exclusively by sea, in the years after the war it was
by air that most tourists came. By the mid-1950s the island was
serviced by eight international airlines-PAA, KLM, Trans Can-
ada Airlines, Delta, Avianca, Avensa, BOAC, and British West
Indian Airways (BWIA). So brisk was the volume of business
conducted by these airlines that between 1954 and 1957 all saw
fit to increase their regular schedules to Jamaica." With this rise
of air transport in the postbellum years came a dramatic shift in
the centers of Jamaican tourism. Port Antonio, the island's lead-
ing banana port, had once been its leading tourist resort. After
1945, however, Port Antonio sank into the background as a
travel destination because it lacked an airfield and was, consider-






The Second Coming


159


ing its mountainous environs, unable to build one. Montego Bay
rose into preeminence, thanks in part to the airstrip laid out
there during World War II. That the air rather than the sea had
become the mode of travel in the Jamaican tourist industry by
1950 is revealed by the following travel statistics, which list Ja-
maica tourist arrivals from 1951 to 1960, by mode of travel.12
                 Year        Air         Sea
                 1951        78%         22%
                 1952         81          19
                 1953        78          22
                 1954        67          33
                 1955         71         29
                 1956         73         27
                 1957         71         29
                 1958         72         28
                 1959         72         28
                 1960         69         31

   In the postwar years the Jamaican tourist industry grew by
such leaps and bounds that by 1951 it had already become sec-
ond only to sugar in economic significance to the islanders.'3 In
1949 its reported value was £2.7 million; in 1950, £3.2 million; in
1951, £4 million; by 1957 it was worth almost £10 million and still
rising in value (see table 2). On the eve of international conflict,
in 1938, the annual number of visitors to the island stood at
62,690. Barely six years, in 1951, after the cessation of hostilities,
it had risen by about 50 percent to 93,626. Despite fleeting re-
versals in 1954 and 1957, by 1960 the yearly arrivals figure was
some 240 percent of that of 1951, such was the momentum of
tourism development in the postbellum period (see table 2). If,
in international perspective, the 1950s, and 1960s were a verita-
ble golden age of a global tourism boom,14 in that gilded era
Jamaica's North Coast was literally its gold coast, pulsating with
tourism development. Among the British West Indian islands,
Jamaica was the acclaimed leader in establishing mass tourism.
Since it lay on the doorstep of the United States, it came consid-
erably faster to the fore as a pleasure destination for mass recre-







To Hell with Paradie


TABLE 2. JAMAICA TOURIST ARRIVALS AND
    ESTIMATED EXPENDITURE, 1945-1960


       Long Stay
       (more than
Year    3 days)


1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960


3,625
6,461
10,653
12,860
13,720
17,983
24,799
24,532
28,100
36,377
45,318
50,960
58,480
65,689
72,326
80,420


Short Stay
(3 days
and less)
  30,745
  34,145
  42,817
  48,971
  54,908
  56,909
  68,827
  80,254
  93,632
  76,431
  76,831
  110,426
  102,195
  103,756
  118,977
  146,525


           Percentage
           Distribution
        Long     Short
Total    Stay    Stay


34,370
40,606
53,470
61,831
68,628
74,892
93,626
104,786
121,732
112,808
122,149
161,386
160,675
169,447
191,303
226,945


12
19
25
21
20
24
26
23
23
32
37
31
36
39
38
35


88
81
75
79
80
76
74
77
77
68
63
69
64
61
62
65


SOURCES: Annual Report of the Jamaica Tourist Board, Year Ended 31st March, 1960
(Kingston, 1960), pp. 6-7; Annual Report of the Jamaica Tourist Board, Year Ended
31st March, 1961 (Kingston, 1962), pp. 6-7; John Jones, "Tourism as a Tool for
Economic Development with Specific Reference to the Countries of Jamaica,
Trinidad and Guyana," Ph. D. diss., University of Florida, 1970, p. 220.



ationers than Trinidad or Barbados.15 Also, being larger than
the others, it had more miles of beaches available for building its
burgeoning hotel industry upon. By 1960, Jamaica had passed
the quarter-million mark for annual tourist arrivals, and as table
2 details above, their expenditure was a record high of over
£13,600,000.
  Perhaps the most striking characteristic of these statistics is not
the growth in the annual totals of Jamaica's tourist arrivals but
the changing composition of the island's long-stay and short-stay
visitors. Between 1950 and 1960, for instance, long-stay visits
grew by nearly 447 percent, from 17,983 to 80,420. In these
same years the short-stay category experienced a much smaller


160


Estimated
   Tourist
Expenditure






£3,266,540
£4,022,476
£4,249,172
£4,860,135
£5,196,805
£6,718,190
£8,876,230
£9,837,125
£10,166,820
£11,478,180
£13,616,700






The Second Coming


161


increase of 257 percent, from 56,909 to 146,525 (see table 2).
Though the long-stay visitors category was evidently the faster
growing segment of the Jamaica tourist trade, it continued to
constitute the smaller proportion of the total visitor traffic until
1965. In this year, for the first time ever, long-stay visitors came
to comprise the bulk of arrivals, accounting for 59 percent of the
total (see table 3). This development heralded the coming to full
maturity of the Jamaica tourist industry, since it is the long-stay
as compared to the short-stay vacationer who establishes the
basis for viability in the holiday business. As though to mark that
"coming of age," as tourist trade officials termed it,16 1965 was
also the year in which tourism surpassed the declining sugar
industry as a foreign exchange earner in the economy.17
  Allied to the postwar surges in the numbers of Jamaican tour-
ist arrivals was the mushrooming of the island's tourism plant
and infrastructure. So ebullient was the growth in capacity in the
hotel industry that it outpaced the annual rate of growth in
visitor arrivals between 1955 and 1962, for example.18 In 1950
Jamaica had 1,040 hotel rooms, or a total bed occupancy of
1,680.19 By 1962, however, the island possessed 74 hotels, 46
guest houses, and 106 resort cottages that together represented


          TABLE 3. JAMAICA VISITOR ARRIVALS AND
                 TOURISM FINANCE, 1959-1968
       Long Stay Short Stay          Estimated Tourist  Tourist Board
       3 nights   (less than           Expenditure,    Budget,
 Year  and more)  3 nights)  Total    in U.S. $1,000 in U.S. $1,000
 1959    72,326   118,977   191,303      28,000           840
 1960    80,420   146,525   226,945      40,320           980
 1961    76,000   148,492   224,492      40,880          980
 1962    78,468   128,352   206,838      36,668         1,126
 1963    80,939   121,390   202,329      37,800         1,462
 1964    97,230   134,960   232,190      43,680         1,733
 1965   175,769   124,489   300,258      64,960         2,338
 1966   212,673   132,615   345,288      78,400         2,870
 1967   219,547   113,291   332,838      79,800         3,157
 1968   239,961   156,386   396,347      87,800         3,264
 SOURCE: Jamaica Tourist Board Annual Report 1968/69.






162


To Hell with Paradisbe


a tourist capacity of about 7,000 beds and a gross investment of
some £20 million. Between 1945 and 1962, the number of hotels
in the island increased twofold. Before the war, in the North
Coast town of Ocho Rios, for example, where there had been
but one notable hotel, in the late 1940s a brand new holiday
resort suddenly emerged with the building there of a nucleus of
hotels and beach cottages.20 Almost everywhere miscellaneous
services materialized in response to the bustling numbers of
tourist arrivals. Free port shops proliferated, as did nightclubs,
sports facilities, car-rental agencies, and so on. It is also note-
worthy that, by 1960, tourism had ceased to be the one-season
affair it had been before the war and became a year-round
commerce.
   In contrast to the past, when Jamaica's tourist clientele came
from the moneyed classes, the advent of air transport opened up
Jamaica to mass travel, making it imperative that the island ad-
just its marketing appeal to a wider range of vacationers, a lot of
whom were budget conscious. To accommodate this shift from
class to mass, a formula was adopted in the early 1960s that
reorganized the industry on a twelve-month basis with two dis-
tinct economic time spans: the winter and the summer sea-
sons.21 Winter season ran from 16 December to 15 April and
targeted the rich, who are financially capable of holidaying at
this time of year. The summer season followed immediately
after and catered to middle-income holidaymakers lured to Ja-
maica by the drastic reductions in hotel rates, sometimes as
much as 40 percent, that took place during the period from 16
April to mid-December of each year. Whereas the major prewar
hotels operated for about twenty weeks a year, by 1950 the oper-
ating period had extended to thirty weeks, and by 1954 it was
even longer-some forty weeks per year. By Jamaica's indepen-
dence in 1962 the hotels no longer closed their doors at all.22
  Crucial as private sector decision making was in fueling the
process of Jamaica's postwar tourism development, the contri-
bution of government should not be underestimated. One factor
that had certainly helped to energize Jamaica's postwar expan-





The Second Cominq


163


sion had been the Hotels Aid Law of 1944.23 Passed to replace
the earlier laws that expired in 1943, the new legislation gave
numerous financial concessions for the construction of resort
hotels. Among these were the waiving of customs duties on im-
ports of building materials and various items of hotel equipment
(including furniture, linen, silverware, kitchen utensils, etc).
Hotel proprietors were also permitted, for income tax purposes,
to set off against revenue from their hostelries one-fifth of the
capital expenditure upon the operation "in each of five years of
an eight year period."24 At the time of independence in 1962,
this law (periodically extended) was still in force, having to its
credit attracted into the building of the island's tourism plant
substantial American, Canadian, and British capital, along with
local investment.
  It was to the Hotels Aid Law of 1944 that Jack Pringle, presi-
dent of the Montego Bay Hotel Association, attributed the
breakneck speed with which this North Coast town developed in
the postwar era. For 1958 alone, he credited the Hotels Aid Law
of 1944 with securing the capital expenditure of well over £2
million on hotel construction.25 Pringle quantified tourism
growth, thanks to the Hotels Aid Law of 1944, in this section of
the island between 1946 and 1956 in terms of the statistics
shown in table 4.
  Another significant measure taken by the government to en-
hance tourism development was the setting up of a more sophis-
ticated organization to attend to the industry's needs and
promote Jamaica overseas. Since 1922, the promotion of Jamai-
can tourism had been in the hands of the Tourist Trade Devel-
opment Board, a body with limited membership appointed by
the island's governor. The board had been financed partly by
passenger duties and partly by annual government grants.
Though the resources of the board had been increasing, they
were still inadequate to meet the potential of the postwar era,
wherein rising incomes and cheaper air fares meant that more
and more people were finding it possible to come to Jamaica. By
1952, the Tourist Trade Development Board had lost much of






164                 To Hell wit   Paradibe

      TABLE 4. TOURISM STATISTICS IN MONTEGO BAY,
                         1946 and 1956
                                                      Percentage
                                                      Increase,
                                1946       1956       1946-1956
Accommodations in hotels
  (rooms available)               229       1,350        489.5
Weekly salaries paid to workers
  (excluding managerial and
  executive staff salaries)     £216       £5,870      2,617.5
Annual water rates paid to
  parish council                 £211      £8,318      3,842.0
Other annual taxes paid to
  parish council               £1,158     £26,290     21,702.5
Workers employed (excluding
  managerial, executive, and
  entertainment staff)          c. 200      1,587        693.5
SOURCE: Daily Gleaner, 4 March 1959.


its original dynamism. "At present most of the people actively
engaged in the industry regard the board as ineffective and they
accordingly take little interest in its activity," a mission of the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development re-
ported in September of that year. "Only a board directly repre-
sentative of the industry can be expected to promote tourism
with maximum vigor and effectiveness," it added, urging that
the development board be reconstituted.26 This recommenda-
tion was implemented when, by Law 61 of 1954, authorization
was granted for the creation of the Jamaica Tourist Board.
  A notable feature of the new board was its representation.
Membership was offered to most of the private interest groups
involved in tourism-hoteliers, shipping and airline representa-
tives, ground transportation and travel agents, and the like.
Government too had a voice, as it had the privilege of appoint-
ing nominees to represent the state sector. The new body oper-
ated under the auspices of the Ministry of Trade and Industry
and was supported by annual grants from the government trea-
sury. In addition to a generous subvention each year, the tourist





The Second Coming


165


board was given special borrowing powers. Such dispensations
enabled it to maintain its head office in Kingston, augment full-
time staff, and open sales offices in New York, Miami, Chicago,
and London.27 With these resources it immediately launched a
blitz campaign of advertising and promotion to stimulate travel
to the island. In fact, in April 1955, when the tourist board was
inaugurated, the target it instantly set for itself was to double the
island's tourist business within five years.28 In terms of both
tourist arrivals and visitor expenditure, that goal was achieved
by 1960, as table 2, above, reveals.
  If Jamaica's new board of tourism planners intended to ex-
plore fresh promotional methods, it decidedly did so in its sub-
scription (however hesitant) to a regional, rather than a purely
insular, approach to tourism development. The possibilities of
tourist travel within the Caribbean Basin as a whole had been
perceived by many at least since the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, but it was not until 1945 that a regional approach to tour-
ism development was accepted or appreciated. Near the end
of World War II, the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission
(subsequently called the Caribbean Commission) undertook a
survey to assess the potential value of the West Indian islands as
vacation resorts and reported its findings in a 1945 publication
entitled Caribbean Tourist Trade-A Regional Approach.29 Tourism
in the islands of the Caribbean Basin had grown from 45 thou-
sand visitors in 1919 to a high of 204 thousand in 1937. Apart
from lapses in 1922-1923 and 1932-1935 (years of globally
depressed economic conditions), the interwar period had wit-
nessed a sustained growth in Caribbean tourist arrivals.30
  It was to accelerate this trend that the Caribbean Tourist Asso-
ciation (CTA) was founded, funded by subscriptions from those
member countries that incorporated it within a year or two of
the 1945 study. The Caribbean Tourist Association comprised
the British, French, and Dutch territories in the West Indies, as
well as the island nations of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic. In addition to research, the association conducted
publicity programs for the entire archipelago, thus complement-





166


To Hel with Paradise


ing the microlevel efforts of each territorial tourist board. Ini-
tially, Jamaica held only observer status at the annual meetings
of the CTA, but in 1958 it decided to become an affiliate mem-
ber. As explained by a spokesman of the Jamaica Tourist Board
at the time, the reason for joining the CTA was that "this organi-
zation is a very useful and valuable one, and with the present
state of Caribbean development and unification, Jamaica should
not be the only West Indian territory outside the ranks of the
completely regional body."31 Notwithstanding such verbiage,
Jamaica's decision to become a member of the CTA was not
motivated by some newly felt regionalism in the outlook of the
Jamaican powers that be. Rather, the stimulus seems to have
been the expressed desire of many vacationers to partake in
island hopping, and that required some measure of regional
cooperation, were Jamaica to maximize its gains from this seg-
ment of the travel market.
  It was not horizontal but vertical integration that came to
characterize Caribbean tourism in the years after 1958. Placed
in a global perspective, such an outcome is not surprising.
Throughout the world, tourism continued to advance during
the decade after 1958, and 1967 was designated by the General
Assembly of the United Nations as International Tourism Year.
Tourism accounted for a turnover of $14.1 billion in 1968 and
emerged thenceforward as the world's foremost trade item, its
market value greater than oil, steel, copper, or any other com-
modity.32 The evolution of jet travel spurred this progression of
tourism, along with the rise in the discretionary incomes of
North Americans and Europeans and the introduction of char-
ter flights and package tours by airlines and travel agencies.
Given the multiple elements that a visitor plant entails and the
potential for earning huge incomes, international tourism thus
became a major magnet for transnational investment all over the
planet.33 Hand in hand with this came increasing concentration
of ownership.
  A case in point concerns the U.S. airlines. In 1966, after hav-
ing invested millions of dollars in jumbo jets, U.S. airline com-





The Second Cominq


167


panies began to tighten their grip on the tourist market, buying
up hotel chains and building travel accommodations for their
clientele. The precedent for this had been set in the immediate
postwar era when, in 1945, the president of PAA, Juan Terry
Trippe, established the Intercontinental Hotel Corporation to
build hotels along Pan Am's routes.34 A quarter of a century
later, that was the standard practice of firms in the airline busi-
ness. For example, Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1968 pur-
chased the Hilton International hotel chain; United Airlines in
1970 bought the world's largest hotel syndicate, Western Inter-
national; and American Airlines and Eastern Airlines owned
and operated hotels in various countries by the early seventies.35
In the Caribbean, the presence of these and other transnational
conglomerates was manifest in the string of Hiltons, Holiday
Inns, Intercontinental Hotels, Sheratons, and so on across the
region. Undoubtedly tourism did bring an increase in the gross
national product. Yet was Jamaica the nation that enjoyed this
ostensible increase in the GNP?36
  Inasmuch as Jamaica is endowed by nature with a superb
climate, spectacular scenery, and gorgeous sand beaches, it was
in the opinion of many the obligation of the government to do
all in its power to enhance the cash value of the island as a
playground for tourists. In 1959-1960, the government had
granted to the Jamaica Tourist Board as its annual subvention
the sum of U.S. $840 thousand to carry on its operations, the
minister of trade and industry having repeatedly expressed him-
self as being "more than satisfied with the work of the Tourist
Board.""7 But after the great leap forward in the fifties and the
record high number of visitor arrivals in 1960, holiday traffic
suddenly fell by almost 11 percent between 1960 and 1963 (see
table 3). To reverse this decline, the Jamaica Tourist Board was
streamlined by the designation, in 1963, of a full-time director of
tourism, a veritable industry czar, since the person so appointed
also assumed the post of president of the Jamaica Tourist
Board. Besides this, the government allocated an even bigger
amount of funds for the board to carry out its functions. When






6


To Hell with Paradie


quarter of a century later, change had commenced with the
inception of tourism in the Catskill Mountains, for example, and
the erection there of a huge hotel on the crest of a ridge with a
majestic view of the Hudson Valley.'5 The clientele for this hotel
were the social elite of New York and Philadelphia, who voyaged
for eight hours up the Hudson River by steamboat and then
rode a rugged twelve miles by stagecoach to experience the hos-
pitality of this first-rate establishment and bask in its splendid
setting.
  As time passed, the taboos against tourism steadily faded, and
by the post-Civil War years, the holiday traffic was no longer
just domestic but international. Already some 40,000 U.S. citi-
zens and alien residents were traveling annually to foreign coun-
tries in the 1860s and 1870s, and 100,000 traveled abroad in the
1890s.16 Scarce wonder that some in Jamaica tried to capitalize
on this burgeoning enterprise. Though tourism was a novel
form of traffic between Jamaica and its republican neighbor,
trade per se was nothing new for the two. Commercial inter-
course between them dated back to over a century before U.S.
independence.17
   Money also was becoming more mobile in the United States
toward the end of the nineteenth century. By 1900, it was evi-
dent that throughout the British West Indies in general the
United States was displacing the United Kingdom as the domi-
nant trade partner, taking, for example, over two-thirds of these
territories' traditional export, sugar.'s Jamaica itself by 1900 was
the target of one of the most intensive U.S. economic penetra-
tions hitherto in the Caribbean Basin. Its railway, for one thing,
was in the hands of an American syndicate named the West
India Improvement Company. That firm also possessed 74,443
acres of the best Crown lands locally, having acquired these
under the terms of an agreement made with the colonial govern-
ment wherein it received one square mile of land for each mile
of rail laid down.'1 Hundreds of acres of land in Jamaica
had been bought up by American agribusinesses like the Boston
Fruit Company. By the 1880s the banana had become Jamaica's





168


To Hell with Paradibe


in 1964-1965 the trade bounced back, the government's annual
spending on the tourist board was as much as U.S. $1,733,200-
more than twice the outlay in 1959-1960.
  Since the numbers of long-stay visitors had, by 1965, come to
surpass that of the short stays in Jamaica, and since the tourist
trade in the main showed a profit margin superior to that of any
other government investment, the tourist board could by then
feel assured that the vitality of the industry was more secure
than ever before. Following an estimated visitor expenditure in
1964 of U.S. $43,680,000 (see table 3), the board could with
confidence announce that for every dollar it was disbursing the
tourists for their part were spending $25. Further, it could boast
that the amount earned by tourism for Jamaica in 1964-1965
was, all in all, the equivalent of over 75 percent of the island's
balance of trade deficit.38 When, in the four-year period be-
tween 1964 and 1968, Jamaica's visitor arrivals figure expanded
almost twofold and estimated tourist expenditure more than
doubled, the tourist board was delirous with self-adulation, as
table 3 suggests.
  Another indication of the maturation of the tourist industry
by the mid-1960s was the sudden proliferation of sundry organi-
zations representing the various sectors of tourism. Since its
genesis in the late nineteenth century, the intrinsic condition of
the Jamaican tourist industry had been disorganization, except
for the successive bodies formed to market the holiday product.
In 1961, however, the hotel operators formed the Jamaica Hotel
and Tourist Association (JHTA) to tackle the common problems
of hotels and to represent the interests of hoteliers to the tourist
board and to the Jamaican government.39 The JHTA had an
elected council and a permanent staff overseen by a general
manager. Villa and apartment owners also set up a special inter-
est organization, the Jamaica Association of Villas and Apart-
ments (JAVA). Formed in 1967, JAVA acted as a clearinghouse
for the rental of privately owned villas and apartments.40 Other
special interest groups created were the Jamaica Association of
Travel and Tour Agents (JATTA), the U-Drive Operators As-





The Second Coming


169


sociation, an In-Bond Merchants Association, miscellaneous taxi
operators' associations, and so on.41 Whatever differences ex-
isted within and between these organizations, a united front
usually surfaced in the face of any challenges to the tourist econ-
omy's total image, so substantial were the investments jeopar-
dized. From the viewpoint of such vested interests it was, if not
sheer seditiousness, most unpatriotic to criticize the holiday busi-
ness in any fundamental way.42
  Its seeming monetary successes notwithstanding, Jamaicans
from all walks of life continued, well beyond the island's inde-
pendence, to harbor a substantial ambivalence toward tourism,
some seeing it as, at best, a necessary evil and some not even
seeing it as necessary. Many Jamaicans persisted in regarding
tourism as a new form of imperialism. The director of tourism
admitted in a 1966 interview that "the biggest problem that we
are facing isn't 'selling' Jamaica to the tourist, but 'selling' tour-
ists to the Jamaicans."43 So worrisome was the extent of un-
friendliness, disagreeableness, and downright aggressiveness
stalking the streets of Jamaica that in November 1969 the min-
ister of trade and industry appointed a Montego Bay Liaison
Committee to investigate the hostility in the island's main tourist
city. While Montego Bay could claim the dubious distinction of
being the first to form a committee to inquire into the inhos-
pitality of its residents, Kingstonians for their part were said to
have been so unamiable for so long that "anything short of mass
psychological brainwashing would be a waste of time."44 Among
the causes of this lack of rapport between the locals and the
tourists was the feeling that festered among the former of some-
how being excluded by the holiday business. "It is as if one part
of Jamaica were reserved for Jamaicans, and the other part for
tourists, and both are separated by a forbidding and confusing
screen," the Daily Gleaner editorialized.45
  However great the financial benefits brought by the travel
trade, many in the island still felt as if their birthright was being
bartered for a mess of pottage. That was certainly the sentiment
regarding the fate of the island's best beaches. As explained by






170


To Hell with Paradbe


one commentator, under British law private landownership of
beaches is demarcated by the normal high tide watermark; be-
low that lies the public domain.46 While in England this ensured
a sizable public preserve because the tide in some places goes in
and out for nearly a mile, in the Caribbean (where there is little
tide) it had different ramifications. Colonial Jamaica had been
subject to English law, and many beaches had become private
property.
  Before the increasing tourist traffic had placed a premium on
the beaches, few proprietors had bothered to enforce their
property rights by shutting out casual bathers and fishermen;
but not so after 1945. With the postwar tourist explosion, several
of the good beaches were converted into private enclosures by
hotels and clubs, provoking much public resentment. It is per-
haps noteworthy that, in 1955, the same year in which the recon-
structed tourist board began its operations, the government set
up a Beach Control Authority. Though the function of this body
was to grant licenses for the use of the foreshore and to secure
the interests of "John Public" in some measure,47 it was of little
avail in stemming the exclusion of the ordinary folk from some
of the best beaches.
  As late as 1971 that situation was not rectified, in spite of the
tourist board's claims that the prerogatives of the people were
not up for sale. On the contrary, a mounting crisis was exposed
by one observer in a 1971 analysis of public estrangement from
the holiday business.

Where is the Jamaican holiday-maker in all this? Fifteen years ago if
you were black you were nervous about going to one of our big hotels
because you weren't sure of your reception. At the rate things are
going, the ordinary Jamaican cannot take his family for a holiday to any
of our developed resort areas. He can't afford it. If he doesn't want
hotel accommodation butjust a safe swim on a good beach, he finds that
large chunks of the island's beaches are closed to him.
  Here and there on the North Coast one sees signs put up by the
Beach Control Authority saying "Reserved as a Public Bathing Beach."
Usually they are not the best kind of beach available in the area.






The Second Coming


171


  I believe that fundamentally it is wrong to have our beaches locked
away by private interests and guarded against Jamaicans by armed
guards. Jamaica is a small country-our shore line is not unlimited. The
day could come when the ordinary Jamaican doesn't know what a good
beach looks like!48
  Throughout the years there had been many voices criticizing
the hell-bent quest for the tourist dollar and exposing the hid-
den social menaces it entailed. For instance, in April 1959 the
lord bishop of Jamaica cautioned that the tourist industry
should be changed by the island rather than the island changed
by the tourist industry.49 This caveat had been ignored. As more
and more men with capital saw a gold mine in tourism, it seemed
incontestable that the interests of the people would be given
short shrift. Still, on at least one subject-casino gambling-
Jamaica was not bowled over by those who were, in this case liter-
ally, wheeling and dealing. Even the 1959 loss of Havana as the
gambling capital for tourists in the Caribbean did not entice
Jamaica into catering for this market. A firm line was drawn
against these dens of iniquity by church, state, and community
organizations in the island. "Once you've got gamblers you've got
gangsters-and that's that," the director of tourism vouched.50
  A most disturbing feature that accompanied mass tourism
around the Caribbean Basin was its solicitation of a wide range
of undesirable fringe businesses like gambling, drug trafficking,
prostitution, and the like. Jamaicans had actively resisted casino
gambling, but the authorities were a dismal failure as far as
halting the spread of other social menaces like prostitution and
narcotics dealing. As jet travel brought hordes of tourists to
Jamaica, both pimp and peddler found a bigger market wherein
to ply their professions. The state of affairs rapidly degenerated
until, in the early seventies, the visitor could hardly walk through
the streets ofJamaica at any time without being pestered by either
the prostitute or the pusher. The classic attitude among the
Jamaican multitudes was to view the teeming numbers of tourists
as idle whites who were "over-rich, over-sexed, and over here."5'
Critics of tourism and all it entailed thus denounced it as a






172


To Hell with Paradise


"prostitute's trade," nicknamed it "whorism," and decried it as
sheer "trafficking in human flesh."52
  The gigolo psyche was not the monopoly of scufflers and
loudmouths but manifested itself even at the highest levels of
the society through what seemed to be coded messages in adver-
tising Jamaica's tourist product. For instance, when in 1968 Ja-
maica inaugurated a national carrier to cash in on the profits
to be made in taking visitors to and from the island, it gave
the airline the somewhat suggestive sobriquet, the Love Bird.
These Love Birds brought throngs of northerners to what a 1968
Jamaica Tourist Board advertisement portrayed as literally a
fantasy island, where visitors could rent whatever the heart de-
sired-a villa, a maid, a cook, a nanny, a gardener-whatever.
This isle of romance was alleged to be under a covenant of
innocence, at least environmentally. "In a world of bad air, poi-
soned water and litter, there are still a few virginal places," the
Jamaica Tourist Board solicited trippers in a 1971 advertise-
ment. "Enjoy Quickly!"53
   Thus, thousands of tourists pounced gleefully upon this ex-
otic island to enjoy the vaunted gratifications that, it was
claimed, its virginal je ne sais quoi provided. Success was mea-
sured in heads counted on arrival at Jamaican ports, and by that
measure the tourist industry had done marvelously. Once upon
a time the atmosphere in Jamaica had been almost that of a
South Sea island asleep in the sun, but by the dawn of the inde-
pendence era in 1962 the genie of modernization was manifest
everywhere, released by the arrival of mass tourism.54
   The big hotel owners, travel agencies, and others profited
 from tourism. Its benefits were also alleged to trickle down to
 the so-called village boys-"the barefoot boys from country vil-
 lages in Jamaica who today are respected, well paid, well-shod
 members of the industry, in the hotel service and the entertain-
 ment trade."55 Thanks to tourism, one writer maintained in a
 1955 article, these village folk were able to "learn sanitation" and
 expand their social expectations. Proof of the said change in
 vistas was their reluctance in the North Coast areas to work for












                                       Jamaica's rent-a-villas
                                       come with rent-a-cooks,
                                            rent-a-maids,
                                            renteannannies,
                                          rent-a*gardeners,
                                       and even rent-a-cars.

                                       You can rent a lovely life in
                                     Jamaica by the week.

                                       It starts with a country house or
                                     beach eottage or hilltop hideaway
                                     that comes equipped with gentle
                                     people named Ivy or Maud or Mal-
                                     colm who will cook, tend, mend,
                                     diaper, and launder for you.

                                       Who will "Mister Peter, please"
                                     you all day long, pamper you with
                                     homemade coconut pie, a d m i r e
                                     you when you look "soft" (hand-
                                     some), giggle at your jokes and
                                     weep when you leave.

                                       A kind of Nannyhood for
                                     Grownups, actually.

                                       They'tl spoil you.

                                       But you'll also spoil vourself.

                                       For more about renting the Life
                                     You wish You Led, see your local
                                     travel agent or Jamaica Tourist
                                     Bouzaia New York, Miami, San
              SFrsando, Loms Angele, Chicago
                                     Toronto or Montreal.

    This an abbrevlated version of an orilinal Jamaica Tourist Board advertisement


Advertisement by the Jamaica Tourist Board (1968). Courtesy of National
Library of Jamaica.






174


To Hell with Paradise


the old pittance as pimento pickers or to serve the Jamaican elite
as houseboys and maids when they could earn higher wages
at hotels. "Jamaicans, who ten years ago [at the end of World
War 11], had nothing to look forward to save years of poverty in
isolated mountain villages, are now becoming self-respecting
earners in an expanding business, tourism."56
  Yet in many quarters doubts lingered as to whether the cash
windfall wrought by tourism might not result in the ensnare-
ment of the people within some new species of thralldom. In the
slavery era, the peaceful folk who later formed the mountain
villages had been legally bought and sold as chattel. But judging
from the Jamaica Tourist Board promotions in the late sixties,
for example, one discernible index of progress was that, in mod-
ern times, working hands could be procured for service through
rental rather than purchase. According to the rhetoric of the
tourist board, from these mountain hamlets came scores of Ja-
maica's hotel workers-"gentle people named Ivy or Maud or
Malcolm who will cook, tend, mend, diaper, and launder for
you.... admire you when you look 'soft' (handsome), giggle at
your jokes, and weep when you leave."
  This portrait of the "village boys" as happy hewers of wood
and drawers of water for whites was a virtual recreation of the
Quashie image by Jamaica's tourism gurus to complement the
paradisal landscape that they marketed. Taking a cue from tour-
ist board propaganda, in April 1971 one local agency advertised
that it could furnish these "gentle people" for long-term labor
leases and invited visitors to select from among its stocks whom-
ever they might wish to procure for toil back home: "ATTEN-
TION! ATTENTION! VISITORS: American and Canadian
tourists and other visitors and business people to the island, visit
McCartney Legal Services Bureau, 14 Retirement Road, Cross
Roads, Kingston 5, and select any category of domestic and
other farm workers you are interested in to work with you in
your homeland. Phone 69835."57
  No part of Jamaica exhibited the manifold problems inherent
in postwar tourism development as much as did Montego Bay,






The Second Cominq


175


the holiday capital of the island. Nicknamed by the locals "the
little Republic" because it was so saturated with U.S. citizens,
Montego Bay was more like a little Miami than a part of Jamai-
can territory. Though Jamaica may have been a British colony
until 1962, in many of its shops prices were quoted not in pound
sterling but in U.S. dollars, and often change was returned in
U.S. currency as well.58 To many locals that quote-the-dollar
technique in hotels, restaurants, and stores appeared as another
way of saying, if you are not spending dollars, you are not welcome-
thereby excluding a category of Jamaicans.59
  It was the local person who felt like an alien rather than the
holidaymaker from abroad, for blacks were not welcome in the
principal establishments of Montego Bay and its environs. "I
found a bit of this coolness," one author wrote of a November
1955 incident, "when I walked into a big hotel for tea later in the
afternoon. There were very few guests but I was made to wait an
unnecessarily long time. And the price of my pot of tea made me
wonder whether I was paying a 'colour tax' as well." 60When it
came to service in a restaurant, for example, persons of color-
particularly Jamaicans-experienced the greatest difficulty in
catching the waiter's eye. That apparently was not because per-
sons of color were less generous as tippers. "As to service that
one Jamaican might perform for another Jamaican," the island's
first director of tourism offered in explanation back in 1966, "I
think this is the attitude: Why should I, since I am on the bot-
tom, turn myself into a step on the ladder of this other Jamaican
who is progressing?"61
  Given the country's past, it was unlikely that the postwar tour-
ist industry in Jamaica would create any but the peculiar am-
bience it in fact did, neoplantation enterprise that it intrinsically
was. As more and more whites swooped down upon this sup-
posedly idyllic spot for a holiday in the sun, diverse problems
surfaced throughout the island. It was not holidaymakers alone
who descended upon Montego Bay and the other resort centers;
hard on their heels came the big developers and the land specu-
lators. Crusaders for the tourism enterprise had contended that








its natural assets were inexhaustible, unlike bauxite, for ex-
ample. Yet they were decidedly not inalienable. With colossal
caravansaries springing up to accommodate the rising numbers
of tourists, and with the superrich beginning to purchase winter
residences in Montego Bay, land prices shot way up in an orgy of
speculation. In the end, with the vast territorial transfers and the
denationalization that occurred through land sales, Montego-
nians, for example, were left with little more than an intense
feeling of claustrophobia and a sense of being less and less the
masters of their own land.
  The member of Parliament for the Montego Bay area, in an
address to the House of Representatives of Jamaica, gave voice
to such sentiments in his constituency when he warned of the
grave situation created by the tourist industry:

The foreign interests have come down like Philistines in Montego Bay
and they have bought hundreds and thousands of acres of land. The
town is circumscribed and surrounded, and in a little while there will be
no room for the middle class people and people in the low income
bracket. It is a situation that Government needs to examine. It is a
serious situation. Between Montego Bay and Falmouth most of the
lands are bought up by foreign interests and in a little while when we
are arriving from Montego Bay to Kingston, we will be passing through
foreign land."62

  And so, in its desire to win popular endorsement and support,
the Jamaican tourist industry found itself faced with as much of
a dilemma in the second half of the twentieth century as it had at
its beginning in the late nineteenth. The government sought
to do everything in its power to bring to all Jamaicans an aware-
ness of the benefits of tourism, and in 1970 teaching tourism to
schoolchildren as part of the social studies curriculum was ex-
plored as one possible way to gain social approval for the indus-
try.63 To the government, the tourist industry was the frontline
of Jamaica-the place where the outside world and the visitor
got their first and often most lasting impression of the island.
Since the hotels were the main places where Jamaica's guests


To Hel witb Paradbe


176






                    The Second Coming                    177

were accommodated, part of the struggle for the social legiti-
macy of tourism entailed winning the hearts and souls of the
workers in the industry.
   The opening of the Jamaican Hotel School in Kingston in
 1969 was considered "a major achievement," as it was expected
 to improve not only the proficiency of workers in the hotel in-
 dustry but their morale as well. In order to establish the school,
 the government leased the premises of the Hotel Casa Monte,
 invested a large sum of money in modifying it, and built class-
 rooms and dormitories on the compound.64 It then turned the
 facility over to the tourist board to operate. In the classrooms
 students were exposed to theory and in the hotel to practical
 training. By November 1973, the school had produced some six
 hundred graduates for the hotel and catering industry. These
 had been required to pass the external examinations prepared
 by the American Hotel and Motel Association.65
   As the authorities saw it, Jamaicans had to become tourist
minded.66 The Jamaica Tourist Board agreed and in January
1969 launched its Meet the People program. Copied from a pro-
ject started in Denmark after World World II, under this scheme
any visitor who desired to meet Jamaicans had merely to contact
the Meet the People desk at the tourist board office. There, the
names of Jamaicans interested in making the acquaintance of
foreigners were kept on file, thus enabling visitors to be matched
with local individuals who had similar (for example, professional
and recreational) interests.67 Through such contacts it was hoped
that some of the tensions that plagued the relations between for-
eigners and locals would be eased. That was also the logic of the
various Tourism Matters to You campaigns:
                Who benefits from Tourism?
                You. Me. Everyone....
                The more tourists we have,
                the more money Jamaica earns.
                And the more we have for all. ....
                By being here they are helping us
                to build our country.68





                        Introduction                       7

largest export crop and was shipped exclusively to U.S. markets.
As for the island's import trade, U.S. goods (footwear, glass-
ware, hardware, iron, agricultural tools, furniture, etc.) had
begun to supplant British brands.20 In all, perched on the geo-
graphical periphery of the United States, by the close of the
nineteenth century Jamaica seemed ready to succumb to the
status of an economic appendage.
  In spite of the fact that the economic bonds between Jamaica
and the United States tightened, the social relationship between
the two became more strained. The nadir was reached by 1912
when the relationship had so deteriorated that one Jamaican
described the United States as a "social enemy but commercial
friend.""21 Paramount in this perception was the color question,
which nowhere else in the North Atlantic was manifested with as
much vehemence as in the American republic.22 Although Ja-
maica itself was not free from the problem of caste (a legacy of
slavery), it was not under a regime of lynch law, as was a large
part of the United States, where approximately 1,700 blacks
were lynched from 1885 through 1894. There also, this "blind,
wicked unreasonable race prejudice" (to use Reverend C. A.
Wilson's term) further took the lives of some 1,100 black victims
between 1900 and 1917.23
  The Southern way of thinking was fast threatening to engulf
the nation in general. Following the United States' adoption
of a policy of imperialist expansion into the Pacific and the
Caribbean in 1898, the spread of belief in the so-called in-
feriority of tropical peoples served to bolster the existing justifi-
cations and myths of Southern states regarding race.24 Amid
this background of mounting chauvinism, as the United States
assumed the "white man's burden," a new aspect in the relations
between Yankees and Caribbean Creoles came with the incep-
tion of tourist travel to these islands. Jamaica was center stage in
this development, as it was among the earliest of the West Indian
islands to host the moneyed leisure classes from Europe and
North America.
  While in most export businesses producers and consumers are






178


To Hell witb Paradise


  Despite all that had transpired in tourism development since
World War II, it was still a question in some quarters whether
tourism was "helping to build" Jamaica's economy, much less its
society. The government was convinced that tourism was to the
national credit, and so the authorities busied themselves with
such legislation as the Hotel Incentives Act of 1968, expanding
the realm of incentives and granting generous tax holidays to
excite even greater construction fervor in the hotel sector. In
consequence, between 1969 and 1973 room capacity doubled,
and villas and apartments expanded the range of accommoda-
tion available.69 In January 1970, the government made entry
stipulations for visitors to Jamaica so low that it boasted of hav-
ing perhaps the most liberal entry requirements on the planet.70
That, for its part, enabled the industry to pass the half-million
visitor mark by 1973.71 However liberal Jamaican entry laws did
become, the structure of the Jamaican economy also ensured the
most liberal outflow of whatever monies tourism brought into
the island.72
  Jamaican tourism, in the final analysis, reflected a colossal
contradiction. On the one hand, postwar tourism development
was meant to relieve the problems of Jamaica's colonial past.
On the other, tourism reinforced many essential features of
that original condition and entrapped the island in the clasp of
neocolonialism.








                        Chapter 10


                    Conclusion




         ETTER Must Come. It's Time For a Change. With
         such slogans as these the People's National Party (PNP)
         of Michael Manley won the February 1972 national
         elections in Jamaica by a landslide. Given tourism's
past, it is remarkable that the development plans of the Manley
regime envisioned this change for the better as comprising not
less but more tourism. With the gravity of the island's balance of
payments predicament, and with its acutely high level of unem-
ployment, the Manley government felt that it had little real eco-
nomic option other than to accept tourism and to urge that the
nation as a whole acknowledge its intrinsic economic value.1
  While change away from the tourist industry was not en-
visaged, the regime was committed to changing numerous un-
salutary features within it, thereby activating tourism's fullest
potential as a developmental engine. After the PNP had held
power for just under half a year, P. J. Patterson, the minister of
trade and tourism, was constrained to warn the Jamaican popu-
lace in August 1972 that the holiday business was on the verge of
crisis.2 "I AM WELL AWARE THAT it has become fashionable
in certain circles to dismiss the tourist industry and to spend all
the time in condemning its social effects," the minister said. "I
prefer to take the positive view that these are problems we can
control, particularly once we take the decision-as I now take-
to put the industry in our own hands-to manage it as we see fit
to determine its shape and direction."3 He unveiled a package
of measures aimed, first, at delivering the tourist trade from its
immediate difficulties and, second, at laying down a new blue-
print for tourism development in the island.


179








  For some time, actually, the idea of a new tourism had been
gestating in the Manley administration, but prior to the minis-
ter's announcement on the subject in August 1972, the public at
large seems to have had little inkling of any intended change of
approach. To start with, the new tourism called for a fundamen-
tal change in the historic social tenor of the Jamaican industry.
In the past, the local folk had been shut out of the tourist hotels
and beaches. In this climate of exclusion there had naturally
been little fondness for tourism among the ordinary people.
Indeed, maintaining the industry in an atmosphere of isolation
from the masses of the population had built up a store of resent-
ment against it, and this was one of the key factors that brought
tourism, by 1972, to what the minister termed "a point of col-
lapse." A new tourism could only be constructed, it would seem,
in a social context where the Jamaican people were given a new
deal.
  As the minister visualized it, there were at least three cardinal
principles to be observed, if tourism was to become all that it
could be. First, "We must be careful to distinguish service from
servility. They are not to be confused." Second, "We must not in
our advertising demean the status of our people or compromise
their dignity as human beings." Third, "the only sort of tourism
we will have is one devoid of all forms of racial discrimination or
social snobbery."4 In light of these guidelines, the Manley re-
gime sought to develop domestic tourism, for example-some-
thing that had been negligible prior to this initiative. The object
here was to remove some of the barriers that had long existed
between the tourists and the Jamaican public, thus allowing for
a greater interchange between both groups. It was in this re-
gard that the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, as well as
the Jamaica Tourist Board, began negotiating with hotels, villa
owners, and operators of visitor attractions to obtain special
rates for locals desiring to spend their vacations on the island.5
In addition, the tourist board entered into discussions with the
Jamaica Civil Service and with business groups to give local vaca-
tions as production incentives and rewards to their staff.


To Hel with Parade


180






Conclusion


181


   Finally, in keeping with the concept of a new tourism, the
government expressed an intent to create a number of amenities
in the country, especially in the resort areas, that would be open
to enjoyment by all. Though parks and other recreational facili-
ties were to be provided primarily for Jamaicans, the idea was to
make these so attractive that they would appeal to visitors as well
and become meeting points where both locals and visitors could
socialize.6 Social exchange, as the regime saw it, was as impor-
tant as foreign exchange.
  That the government was indeed committed to creating a new
tourism was made clear when, on 3 December 1975, the minister
presented before the House of Representatives a forty-three-
page charter for the future development of tourist traffic in
Jamaica. Entitled "Growth Through Integration," the docu-
ment left no doubt that the government's goal was to inte-
grate the tourist trade into the fabric of the Jamaican society
and economy.7 Integration meant broadening the racial base
of Jamaica's holiday clientele by capturing a big slice of the
African-American travel market. It also meant harmonizing
tourism with the local culture; hoteliers were urged to hire Ja-
maican musicians and cultural performers, for example, instead
of importing foreign entertainment at great expense. Likewise,
hoteliers were urged to stop decorating their rooms with prints
of paintings from Europe or other countries and to display in-
stead the work of Jamaican artists.8
  Clearly the public also needed to enjoy some tangible material
benefit, if successful integration of the tourist traffic were to be
effected. To ensure this, small businessmen and craftsmen, for
instance, were to be brought more into the mainstream of tour-
ism through the establishment of more craft markets, craft stalls,
and craft production centers in the principal tourist areas.9
Greater participation of local people in the enterprise as small
entrepreneurs and not just as workers was one of the primary
goals of the new tourism.
  Attainment of the growth element in the slogan "Growth
Through Integration" meant supplying vacationers with a much






182


To Hel with Paradise


improved tourism product. A more efficient service was imper-
ative at the hotels. From the start, the minister proclaimed it his
intention to appoint a Man of Standards-that is, a hotel inspec-
tor whose job it would be to assess the quality of the accommoda-
tion and service available at the various hotels. Where hotels
consistently failed to meet required standards of service, the
minister vowed to revoke their operator licenses.'0 Beyond that,
ensuring product excellence meant augmented training, staff
seminars, and the like for hotel personnel. Finally, if the tourism
product had deteriorated, it was in part owing to the mounting
misdeeds against visitors when they ventured outside the hotel
environs. Hand in hand with the effort to create a new tourism,
therefore, went an intensified campaign to weed out crime and
persuade the nation that the tourist industry was essential to its
survival. 11
  Whereas the 1950s and 1960s had been a golden age of tour-
ism, the 1970s were an age of gall and wormwood. Though the
Manley regime had set tourism the herculean task of earning
more and more foreign exchange, between 1974 and 1977 it
earned less and less. In U.S. dollar terms, Jamaican tourist trade
earnings in 1974 were $132.9 million; in 1975, $128.5 million; in
1976, $105.8 million; and in 1977, $72 million.'2 In visitor ar-
rival statistics, stopovers declined by almost 40 percent between
1974 and 1977; meanwhile, the figures for cruise passenger ar-
rivals between 1975 and 1977 dropped by almost 20 percent (see
table 5 below). It is indicative of how calamitous the decline of
the tourist industry was during the Manley period that, at the
end of his administration's tenure in office in 1980, the number
of stopovers was, on the whole, lower than it had been at the
start in 1972.
  Miscellaneous internal and external factors help to explain the
spectacular slippage that tourism suffered during the 1970s.
Already, even before the PNP's accession to power in 1972, the
writing was on the wall for the profitability of the hotel industry.
In consequence of the building orgy that occurred in the later
part of the sixties, tourist accommodation found itself growing





Conclusion


183


at a faster rate than visitor volume. For example, between 1969
and 1972 stopover visitors had increased by 47.3 percent, but
during that same period, room capacity had grown by over 60
percent.'" This, together with the fact that the average length of
stay of visitors to Jamaica had declined by 7 percent, precipi-
tated a fall in the room occupancy percentage, from 62.1 per-
cent in 1969 to 48.9 percent in 1972.14 In fact, even though
Jamaica had welcomed growing numbers of tourists annually, in
1971, after six years of continuous decline in room occupancy
percentage, the president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist As-
sociation warned of possible bankruptcies among many of the
nation's hotels should the current trend remain unchecked.'5 It
needed only the energy crisis that erupted in late 1973 to push
the Jamaica hotel industry over the edge.
  Throughout the world, the onset of the energy crisis after the
  1973 Arab-Israeli war dealt the travel trade a grievous blow, as
airfares were pushed up owing to the steep increase in oil prices.
Accompanying the rising energy costs was an inflationary spiral
everywhere, including inside the United States and Canada,
which together accounted for 87 percent of Jamaica's tourist
market in 1972.16 With stagflation haunting the First World
countries, these societies became cautious about spending money
on such leisure activities as travel overseas. What is more, the
United States and Canada, while they form the source of Ja-
maica's largest visitor market, are also among its strongest rivals
in the field of international tourism. One reason why Jamaica's
tourism languished in the midseventies was precisely the heavy
spending within the United States on its See America First pro-
gram, as a means of keeping the travel dollar at home." Many
U.S. citizens were unwilling to venture abroad at a time when
there were myriad attractions connected with the bicentennial
celebrations of U.S. independence to keep them in the country.
Canada was also spending copiously on its own tourist industry
in the early seventies, and Montreal was the locus of the 1976
Olympic Games.
  Jamaica felt the effects of all this in the precipitous drop its






184


To Hell with Paradbe


stopover tourism suffered from 1975 to 1977 and again in 1980
(four of the eight years that Manley was in power). Much as the
shortcomings of its tourism infrastructure contributed to this
(through unreasonable prices, lousy service, crime, political vio-
lence, et cetera), by far the most salient reason for the travails of
Jamaica's tourism under Michael Manley was the country's for-
eign policy. In the era of the cold war, the diplomacy of non-
alignment and relations with Cuba that Manley opted for was
hardly compatible with the strategy of tourism development that
his regime supported. As one critic expressed it:

EVERY GOVERNMENT has a sovereign right to decide what its for-
eign policy will be. . . . As is its right, this Government opted for a shift
in the very cordial relations which traditionally existed between the
United States and Jamaica, towards an alliance with Cuba. . . . COMES
the inevitable payoff-as naturally as night follows day. American in-
vestments for Jamaica dry up; the American press burn us at the stake;
our tourist industry, which is almost totally sustained by the American
market, begins to die on its feet, and we find that the world has sud-
denly become a much more difficult place to make our way in.18

   Yet if Manley's new tourism did not succeed in catapulting the
industry to the heights hoped for, it did change the image of the
enterprise, at least for a while. "We set out to break the old elitist
pattern in which tourist hotels were like enclaves, shut away
from the local population by psychology as much as by price,"
Manley later boasted, claiming success in this endeavor.19 The
emergence of a substantial domestic market for holiday facilities
was a highlight of the Manley era (1972-1980). This develop-
ment was encouraged by his government's Domestic Holiday
Program, its tight foreign exchange restrictions on travel abroad
by Jamaicans, and the Discover Jamaica promotional campaign
by the tourist board to entice locals to spend their vacations in
the island. Actually, some 131,089 Jamaicans stayed in the is-
land's hotels in 1977, for example-a figure equal to 49.5 per-
cent of the total foreign stopover arrivals for that year.20
  Jamaica may have faltered in the international travel market,






Conclusion


185


but it made notable strides in domestic tourism during the sec-
ond half of the 1970s. The local vacationer may have proved to
be the vital difference between a profit and a loss position for
many hotels. The irony, however, is that these two sides of the
tourist business appear perhaps to contradict more than they
complement each other. If, on the one hand, the domestic holi-
day market flourished while the external demand for Jamaica's
tourist facilities floundered during the 1970s, on the other hand,
when international demand recovered in the 1980s, domestic
tourism literally went to the wall. The outcomes of the repeated
currency devaluations that Jamaica suffered during the 1980s
were quite dissimilar regarding the domestic and international
demand for the island's hotels. Thus, whereas devaluation
lowered the actual costs of food and drink for foreign guests at
the hotels, it caused prices for these items to soar more and more
beyond the pockets of local clientele, shutting many out again.21
As it was in the beginning, so in the end; for the multitude of
Jamaicans, there remained no room in the inn.
  Since 1981, the external demand for Jamaica's tourism has
grown rapidly, and for some years now the industry has sur-
passed bauxite as the prime earner of foreign exchange for the
country. In 1987, total visitor arrivals exceeded the one million
mark for the first time (see table 5). In that year gross visitor
expenditure was estimated at U.S. $595 million, whereas in 1980
it had stood at U.S. $241.7 million.22 Considering the havoc
wrought by Hurricane Gilbert in September of the following
year, not many individuals thought it likely that Jamaica would
soon host another million-plus visitors, yet it did so in 1988, and
the upward spiral of numbers continued into 1989 and 1990. By
1990, gross visitor expenditure was estimated at U.S. $740 mil-
lion, or nearly 25 percent more than the 1987 figure, and total
arrivals were almost 20 percent higher than in 1987. Within a
generation, between 1970 and 1990, Jamaica's tourism had
grown by some 300 percent, as table 5 shows.
  In retrospect, Jamaica's tourism had come a long way since
1950. Yet large as these figures were in 1990, they were still not






186                 To Hell with Paradibe

           TABLE 5. VISITOR ARRIVALS TO JAMICA,
                            1970-1990

Year     Stopover Visitors Cruise Tourists Armed Forces   Total
1970        309,122          86,247         19,351        414,720
1971        359,323          66,366         22,875        448,564
1972        407,806          71,450         14,232        493,488
1973        418,257          91,450          7,703        517,410
1974        432,987          92,675          5,064        530,726
1975        395,809         150,433          7,016        553,258
1976        327,706         141,494          1,514        470,714
1977        264,921         120,982           611         386,514
1978        381,818         148,644          2,402        532,864
1979        426,540          159,577         7,454        593,571
1980        395,340          133,423        14,325        543,088
1981        406,355          139,672         5,851        551,878
1982        467,763          194,430         8,009        670,202
1983        566,151         210,153          6,639        782,943
1984        603,436         231,039          9,299        843,774
1985        571,713         261,508         13,495        846,716
1986        663,593         278,507         12,521        954,621
1987        738,827         292,156          6,651       1,037,634
1988        648,873         367,732          3,688       1,020,293
1989        714,771         444,054          4,411       1,163,236
1990        840,777         385,205         10,093       1,236,075
SOURCES: Ministry of Mining, Energy and Tourism, Annual Travel Statistics 1987,
p. 8; Ministry of Tourism, Annual Travel Statistics 1990, p. 9.


enough for some Jamaicans. In comparison, the Virgin Islands
had fewer than 50,000 visitors a year during the early 1950s but
by 1988 their tourism had expanded to over 2 million cruise-ship
travelers and long-stay visitors.23 Considering its proximity to
the international tourist markets, Jamaica was sitting on a veri-
table gold mine and should therefore have been doing better,
former president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association,
Gordon 'Butch' Stewart, felt. Hawaii, with a population of
1 million persons, was by the late 1980s attracting more than
6 million tourists per annum, while Jamaica with its population
of 2.5 million attracted only 1 million. Provided common sense
reigns, the possibilities facing Jamaican tourism were innumer-
able, Stewart opined.24





Conclusion


187


  One hundred years after tourism made its official debut at the
Jamaica International Exhibition in 1891, the industry has
evolved to a point where, with the collapse first of agriculture,
and then of bauxite, it finds itself the lifeblood of the Jamaican
economic system. While in economic terms the tourist trade has
reached new heights, so have its accompanying social problems.
For example, in 1987 a small beachfront hotel on Jamaica's
southern coast circulated an advertisement that invited visitors
to partake of its nudist facilities and discover "the uninhibited,
the unspoiled and uncovered beauty of Jamaica" in a discreet
setting free from "gawking."25 According to the twelve-page,
foldout color brochure published by the hotel, its facilities in-
cluded a freshwater pool with an adjacent bar and dining area
"for your full measure of sun, sea, sand, libation and food." The
ad was withdrawn after several persons in the tourist trade in
that area expressed shock and disgust at the publication.26 Still,
the policy of nudism, per se, was not withdrawn by the hotel's
administration, because naturism or nudism is big business in
the world of modern tourism. It is nothing new in Negril, for
example, where (with absolution from a financially strapped
government) bathing in the buff is sanctioned on some stretches
of public beach.
  To lure more tourist dollars into their coffers, not only did a
few Jamaican hotels commence catering to naturists or nudists,
but some hotels solicited business from the many high rollers
who play games of chance. "We're doing something fabulous to
do the country proud," was how tourism specialists summed up
their November 1989 plan to introduce gambling into Jamaica's
tourism product.27 According to their proposal, chambers
equipped with slot machines were to be set aside as so-called
games rooms within as many hotels as desired them. For several
years previously, slot machines had been outlawed because of
the government's qualms about the impact of gambling on the
morals of the public. Still, by a ministerial order of 17 November
1989, permission was given to hoteliers to operate these devices
on their premises for the entertainment of their guests. To those





TO HELL WITH

PARADISE
A History of the Jamaican
Tourit Industry
FRANK FONDA TAYLOR
Pitt Series in Latin American Studies

    N THE COURSE of the nineteenth
    century, Jamaica transformed itself
    from a pestilence-ridden "white man's
 graveyard" to a sun-drenched tourist par-
 adise. Deftly combining economics with
 political and cultural history, Frank
 Fonda Taylor examines this puzzling
 about-face and explores the growth of the
 tourist industry into the 1990s. He argues
 that the transformations in image and
 reality were not accidental or due simply
 to nature's bounty. They were the result
 of a conscious decision to develop this
 aspect of Jamaica's economy.
   Jamaican tourism emerged formally at
an international exhibition held in the
island in 1891. The international tourist
industry, based on the need to take a
break from stressful labor and recuperate
in healthful and luxurious surroundings,
was a newly awakened economic giant. A
group of Jamaican entrepreneurs saw its
potential and began to cultivate a tourism
psychology which has led, one hundred
years later, to an economy dependent
upon the tourist industry.
  The steamships that carried North
American tourists to Jamaican resorts
also carried U.S. prejudices against

         (continued on back flap)


mwftwarww$tlbBe


4






8                   To Hell with Paradise

separated and seldom interact face-to-face, the unique feature
of tourism as an export staple is that the tourist must come in
person to the spot to partake of the product. According to one
Jamaican analyst, feelings of race hatred generally accompanied
Americans abroad.25 Back in 1860, well before the Jamaica tour-
ist industry began, William Sewell had complained of this. In
response to the naked racism exhibited during visits by Ameri-
can sea captains, for example, Sewell remonstrated that "the
feeling here [in Jamaica], and in all the British West Indies,
against America and Americans owing to just such bad taste and
brutality, is bitter in the extreme."26 Jamaican blacks, however,
barely differentiated between Americans and other Caucasian
passersby. Facing the universal racism of whites of that time,
they responded with a general indifference and a perceptible
disdain for the occasional foreigner. Another visitor to the colony
in 1861-1862 was snubbed time and again in his encounters with
local blacks:

  "Can you tell me, my good man, where I can buy some tobacco?" was
the query I addressed to a large black, who was busily employed in
eating a piece of sugar-cane.
  "Tobacco," he drawled out.
  "Yes, tobacco; for smoking."
  "Why, dere's some to be got up dere," he said, in a tone which pretty
clearly showed that he disliked being questioned-(certainly it was very
hot, lazy weather, but that does not affect a negro)-pointing with his
hand up the street, but in such an indefinite way that "up dere" might
mean the church steeple or the blue mountains in the distance.
  "Well, where? Up this Street? This side of the way?"
  He looked at me with a sort of sleepy stare, grunted out "Yes; 'spose
so," and resumed his attentions to the sugar-cane.
  I had similar good fortune with two others I addressed. After that I
did not dare ask any more questions. It is disagreeable to be snubbed,
even by a black man.27

   When the tourist industry emerged a generation later in
Jamaica, one hurdle in its path to success was the manifest
xenophobia of the typical black islander. Compounding this di-






188


To Hell with Paradibe


who feared that this order might open the door to casino gam-
bling in Jamaica, it was no retreat from the stand of earlier
governments on that subject. Compared to a games room with
its array of slot machines, a casino by definition was a more
complex undertaking, characterized by a variety of table games
like blackjack, Nevada craps, poker, and roulette.
  In the 1990s, tourism may have acquired a new status as the
backbone of the Jamaican economy, but a host of old problems
continue to haunt the industry at almost every turn. For in-
stance, among the grassroots people in Jamaica the feeling per-
sists that the average man is excluded from a fair share of the
financial benefits derived from the tourist business.28 Citizens in
the resort areas see the enterprise as imposing manifold social
costs upon the residents of these localities. As listed by one Ja-
maican analyst, the social downside to tourism includes drug
trafficking, prostitution, pimping and hustling, high prices,
acute housing shortages, overcrowded streets, police harassment
of vendors and small traders, water and pollution problems, and
environmental sewage.29 Whereas visitors may speak raptur-
ously about Jamaica as a holiday paradise, the locals still look
askance at the tourist industry and all its works. Moreover, many
of the employees in the hotel trade still complain of feeling
exploited and underpaid.30
  In all, the primacy that sugar once held in the Jamaican eco-
nomic system has long been handed over to tourism. It is ironic,
then, that "just as the soils of many formerly fertile areas of the
world have become exhausted or totally removed by exploitation
without thought to the future, so are many tourist areas being
ruined by thoughtless exploitation.""31 This caveat, issued some
years ago by one student of Jamaican tourism, pertains with
even more poignancy to this island nation in the 1990s.













APPENDIXES
   NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
    INDEX










      Appendix 1




WELCOME TO THE TOURISTS

Here's a welcome to the tourists
On this fair West Indian Isle,
May you find the skies above you
Just one bright eternal smile;
May the mountains and the valleys,
And the climate, and the sea,
Prove as full of balm and beauty
As you fancied they would be.
But remember in your seeking
After pleasure, this one thing:
You will find no more contentment
Anywhere than what you bring.
If you take your pack of troubles
Always with you while you roam,
You might better save your money,
And your time, and stay at home.
So just drop it in the ocean
As you sight this summer port,
And come smiling into harbor
With a heart for any sport.
Just forget the snows and blizzards,
And the worries left behind,
Meet the Eden of Jamaica,
With an Eden of the mind.

SOURCE: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, quoted in Sailing
Sunny Seas. Chicago: W. B. Conkey, 1909, p. 54.


191






AppendiL 1


AN ARGUMENTUM BOASTANDUM

MYRTLE BANK LOQUITUR

If Constant Spring were Myrtle Bank,
It might aspire to highest rank,
But Myrtle Bank o'er Constant Spring,
Reigns all supreme as Hotel King!

For Myrtle Bank is on the sea,
Enjoying breezes cool and free,
While Constant Spring is miles away
And no sea breezes o'er it play!

And Myrtle Bank is close to town,
Near Rail, near Bank, Cars up and down,
Buses each moment-nothing wanting
To make its standing all-enchanting!

And once a week the Kingston Band,
Plays sweetest strains within its stand,
While menus of the daintiest food
Supply its guests with all that's good!

In short, it stands that Myrtle Bank
With Tourists holds the highest rank,
And Constant Spring-good of its kind,
Must be content to stand behind.



CONSTANT SP  ING ANSWERETH

Must I indeed? I don't admit
That all your brag my merits fit,
For though your sea breeze may be rare
'Tis nothing like my mountain air!

And Myrtle Bank, when breeze is high,
Has dust that blinds all passers-by,
While Constant Spring is ever green,
For dust ne'er lies on verdure green!

And Constant Spring tho' far from town,
Has Cars that run oft up and down,


192






Appendix 1


But once located there each guest
Forgets the town and stays to rest!

And if there be no Kingston band
To play upon its sea side strand,
Sweet Mountain birds the whole night long,
Warble their notes in native song!

In short bold Constant Spring declares
That it stands Primus inter pares
Its cuisine's FRENCH, and Myrtle Bank
Must only claim a LYNCH law rank.

SOURCE: "Your Neighbour," quoted Colonial
Standard and Jamaica Despatch, 6 June 1892.



DE TOURIST

Deys a pile a' millionaire!
Massy bra, dem nuf dis 'ear.
Ebery one bring motor car
Fe dribe when dem want go far.
You tink tourist no hab money?
Top me massa, you too funny.

Ebery one you see come out
Nebber lef' New York wid out
Couple tousan' poun' a' cash-
Gole an' silvajus as trash.
Ef you want see somet'ng bra,
Go hotel an' see, me bredda.

Billiard ball 'pon table roll;
Man dah tek dem hat ketch gole;
Dolla bill dah tun napkin;
Gole an' silva mek hat pin;
Di'mon 'pon dem finger res,'
'Pon dem shut-front numberless.

Walking stick mek out a' gole,
Dem eat out a' silva bole;
Nuttin but champagne dem drink;
Lard, me bredda, wha' you tink?


193






194                      AppendI 1

                Wan Jew man ben tell me say
                "Some get tousan' poun' a day."
                When dem tired fe stan yah
                Dem go back dah 'Merica,
                From deh back to Englan' Town;
                All de whole wull dem go roun.'
                Dem don' hab no time fe wuk
                Yet you see dem nebba bruk.
                A which-part dem get dem money
                Only Gawd can tell-no' me.
                When dem pass we in de day
                Brukkin stone along de way
                Some a' dem tek photograph
                Den dem look 'pon so laugh.
                Listen wha' I gwine go tell:-
                "Is we pitcher dem dah sell
                When dem go dah furrin lan'
                Show dem how black nayga stan'
                Don't you see dem all hab tac'
                Why dem come yah in a flack."
                We can't betta, bra, we cuss,
                Jus' as well we bear de wuss.
                All we hab fe do yerri
                Is fe lib till we bury
                Den we all meet ober dere
                Where divishan is quite fair.

                SOURCE: Norman Palmer, Toll Gate,
                quoted in Jamaica Times, 2 March 1912.








                    Appendix 2



The following is from Public Opinion, 29 January 1938.

                     PUBLIC OPINIONS
       OBTAINED BY THE ENQUIRING REPORTER

                           Question
       What do you think of the tourist trade in
                connection with Jamaica?


Replies
  Mr. T. A. Aikman-Journalist, Kingston. 'It can be of great benefit to
Jamaica economically. A lot of persons are against it, but I feel that a lot
more should be done to foster it, and not only by Government, but all
interested in the progress of the country.'
  Dr. R. S. Hall-Physician, Orange St., Kingston. 'I don't think there
is much in it. All the noise of the council re Holiday Tourists, and where
were they? These Americans getting $10 to $25 per week can barely
afford to make the trip, and when they do come, they neither spend
much nor stay any time, and I am sure that won't do us much, if any,
good.'
  Mr. L. A. Thoywell-Henry-Merchant, 107 Water Lane, Kingston. 'I
think it a very good thing for Jamaica, if the comforts of the citizens and
the finances of the country are not sacrificed to make it a success.'
  Mr. Rupert Meikle-Accountant, Port Maria. 'The Tourist Trade is
de-Jamaicanizing the Jamaicans. By this I mean they (the Government)
are endeavouring to subordinate things of more vital interest to the
Island community for the seeming benefits of this Tourist Trade, and
in the last analysis, how many people in Jamaica are benefited from this
Tourist business?'
  Mrs. Morris Knibb-Teacher, Woodford Park, Kingston. 'I do not
think it has been very profitable to this Island. Discrimination has been
already evident, and the greatest good is not being done for the greatest
number, and the improvement of our masses should be a first thought
of the Government, and not the tourist in the question of expenses.'


195






196                        Appendix    2

  Rev. E. McLaughlin-Councillor, St. Andrew. 'From a matter of
publicity the Tourist Trade, if properly handled, is good so that people
will come and see what we are; but in an undeveloped country such as
we are, the Tourist Trade simply benefits a small section of the commu-
nity, that is, the parties with whom the tourists do immediate trade. If
the Government of the country is tourist-minded and will use the Tour-
ist Trade for the development of the country's resources, then it will
bring distributed good to the population. It is, however, distressing to
know that even where government support is given, neither native
foods nor native labour is being utilised, except in very menial posi-
tions. This cannot be of use to us.'
  Mr. Victor Bailey-Teacher, Gayle. 'In my opinion the Island is being
exploited in order to benefit certain sections of the Island's business
groups. The intelligent observer of the trend of present day tourists'
activities can come to no other conclusion than that special arrangements
have been made by Government to cater to merchants and transporta-
tion agencies; hence the circulation of money expended by tourists is
confined to a very small section of the taxpayers and this money seems to
go out of the island for dry goods and gasoline. The Island's public
questions are ignored during the tourist season by the daily press in
order to give useless and ill-considered interviews from people whose
opinions matter very little and affect the Island less. The only kind of
tourist who is of any intrinisic value to this country is the one who stays
for a season, and he refuses to be called a tourist.'
  Mr. K. G. Hill-Journalist, Kingston. 'A menace to the country. How
can you expect us to develop into a nation if all our interests are to be
subjected, as they are, to the interests of foreigners who don't care a
damn about us except to use us to fill their recollections of the natives of
some undeveloped Island which they have visited for sheer sport and
pleasure? Develop the tourist trade and perhaps you may have a 'na-
tion' of waiters. We will become more servile and be further away from
self-government. I am glad to observe a substantial decrease in the
revenue yielded by the passenger tax.'
  Mr. A. R. Hart-Articled Clerk, Kingston. 'I think that the pecuniary
advantages to the few hotel keepers and taxi drivers hardly outweigh
the advent in Montego Bay of the barren sport of homosexuality and
the sharpening of colour prejudice.'
  Mr. O. A. Isaac-Henry-Ex-Teacher. 'I think it's a damn good thing,
only I am not so sure that the resultant benefits are as widely diffused as
they might be.'
  Mr. R. W. Thompson-Journalist, Kingston. 'I think it's very use-
ful, and as one of our best minor industries, should be given every
encouragement.'






                           Appendix 2                           197

  Miss E. C. Collymore-Stenographer, Kingston. 'I think it's good
and in no way detrimental to the country.'
  Mr. Percy J. St. A. Reid-Secretary, Jamaica Contract and Carriage
Association, Kingston. 'The Tourist Trade is in a bad state of affairs
owing to the lack on the part of Government in seeking advice from the
right parties who are directly connected with the transportation of tour-
ists on their arrival in the island. For that reason the Association is
formed to bring forcibly to Government the horrible state of affairs
now existing generally in connection with the Tourist Trade; and they
desire to submit a definite means whereby the drivers could exist by way
of a standard scale of charges, as also proper and adequate parking
places, and to assist the police in keeping proper regulations among the
drivers so as not to slur the good name of the Island.'
  Mr. H. S. Burns-Restaurateur, Octavian Coffee House, 86 Slipe
Road, Cross Roads. 'The Tourist Trade could be of incalculable benefit
to the island provided that we do not sacrifice the liberty of our people
and their national spirit to foreign influence.'





Introduction


9


lemma, the years after 1870 witnessed a new imperialist move-
ment and the partitioning of the African continent, alongside
which a new pseudoscientific racism developed to rationalize
white hegemony over the tropical world at large. The "damned
niggers" with whom the Caucasian tourists had to deal were no
less sensitive about their freedom in 1900 than they had been
two generations earlier when Sewell, for example, had visited
the area.28 What these black sensibilities meant for the burgeon-
ing tourist industry constitutes one of the major preoccupations
of this study.
  There were numerous complications inherent in any attempt
to found a tourist trade in Jamaica. To begin with, the island had
to transform its feared reputation as a white man's graveyard
into a new renown as a vibrant health resort. It was also neces-
sary to breach the traditional anti-Americanism of black Jamai-
cans if the island was to emerge as a playground for visitors from
the mainland. What was the character of the interplay between
Jamaican society, with its much vaunted absence of Jim Crow
regulations, and the American tourists, cultural vectors of a so-
ciety steeped in racial segregation? What was the role of the
tourist industry in the economic history of the colony, and how
did this relate to questions of economic transformation and de-
velopment? What, finally, was the legacy of the infant holiday
trade? It is with such questions that this work is concerned.
   The study presented in the following chapters is a historical
 expose of tourism in its various economic, social, and political
 manifestations. Though primarily focused upon the past, its op-
 tic is not narrowly historical, for many of the dilemmas this book
 delineates are today still unresolved. The backside of the con-
 temporary tourism in the Caribbean continues to function as "a
 bastion of last resistance to social change."29 One author por-
 trays some of the issues in question today in these terms:
 Tourism has become a trap for the Caribbean people. It has deepened
 the economic dependency of the region, chiefly on the United States,
 and has caused deep psychological and cultural damage.... Tourism
 has grown to become the largest single industry in the Caribbean. But it











                              Noted






                       Chapter 1. Introduction
    1. Robert Hill, Cuba and Porto Rico, with the Other Islands of the West Indies (New
York, 1898), p. 186.
    2. Rupert Boyce, Health Progress and Administration in the West Indies (London:
John Murray, 1910); Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class
in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (New York: Norton, 1972), chap. 9.
    3. Quoted in Otis Starkey, The Economic Geography of Barbados: A Study of the
Relationships between Environmental Variations and Economic Development (Westport:
Negro Universities Press, 1971), p. 132. On the beginnings of this, see G. J.
Sutton Moxley, An Account of a West Indian Sanitarium and a Guide to Barbados
(London, 1886).
   4. Starkey, Economic Geography of Barbados, pp. 131-32.
   5. Paul Albury, The Story of the Bahamas (London: Macmillan Education
Limited, 1975), p. 223.
   6. Ibid.
   7. Jamaica Post, 21 March 1898.
   8. See chapter 2.
   9. A. Burkart and S. Medlik, Tourism: Past, Present and Future (London:
Heinemann, 1974), p. 5 ff.; George Young, Tourism: Blessing or Blight? (Middle-
sex: Penguin, 1973), pp. 18-19.
   10. Burkart and Medlik, Tourism, pp. 14-16.
   11. Peter Murphy, Tourism: A Community Approach (New York: Methuen,
1985), p. 19. On Cook's exploits, see Edward Swinglehurst, The Romantic ourney:
The Story of Thomas Cook and Victorian Travel (London: Pica Editions, 1974); also
see Louis Turner and John Ash, The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the
Pleasure Periphery (New York: St. Martin's, 1976), chap. 3.
   12. See chapter 2.
   13. Burkart and Medlik, Tourism, p. 3.
   14. Albury, Story of the Bahamas, p. 219.
   15. Murphy, Tourism: A Community Approach, p. 18.
   16. J. G. Bridges, "A Short History of Tourism," in International Travel and
Tourism: Readings Book, Examination, part 4 (Washington: Institute of Certified
Travel Agents, 1967), p. 4.
  17. Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: The Trade between North America and the
West Indies before the American Revolution (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968).
   18. R. W. Beachey, The British West Indies Sugar Industry in the Late 19th Century
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 128. As for Jamaica, some 83 percent of its sugar
was sold in the United States in 1890. Gisela Eisner,Jamaica 1830-1930: A Study
in Economic Growth (London: Manchester University Press, 1961), p. 273.


199







200                     Notes to Pages 6-14

   19. Lord [Sydney] Olivier, Jamaica, the Blessed Island (London: Faber and
Faber, 1936), pp. 248-49.
   20. Eisner, Jamaica 1830-1930, p. 268 ff.
   21. Louis Meikle, Confederation of the British West Indies versus Annexation to the
 United States of America: A Political Discourse on the West Indies (London: Sampson
 Low, Marston, 1912), chap. 12.
   22. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1955); Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem
and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper, 1944), p. 449.
   23. Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture, Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of
Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 249; James Olson,
The Ethnic Dimension in American History, vol. 2 (New York: St. Martin's, 1979),
p. 301; C. A. Wilson, Men with Backbone, and Other Pleas for Progress (Jamaica:
Educational Supply, 1913), p. 80.
   24. Woodward, Strange Career, pp. 54-56; Thomas Gossett, Race: The History
of An Idea in America (New York: Schocken, 1965), chap. 13.
   25. Meikle, Confederation Versus Annexation, chap. 9.
   26. William Sewell, The Ordeal of Free Labor in the British West Indies, 2nd ed.,
 1862 (London: Frank Cass, 1968), p. 207.
   27. N. B. Dennys, An Account of the Cruise of the St. George on the North American
and West Indian Station, during the Years 1861-62 (London: 1862), p. 92.
   28. For this, consult issues of the black nationalist Jamaican newspaper,
Jamaica Advocate, January 1900-December 1905.
   29. Herbert L. Hiller, "Tourism: Development or Dependence," in The Rest-
less Caribbean: Changing Patterns of International Relations, edited by Richard Mil-
lett and W. Marvin Will (New York: Praeger, 1979), p. 54.
   30. Tom Barry, Beth Wood, and Deb Preusch, The Other Side of Paradise:
Foreign Control in the Caribbean (New York: Grove, 1984).


           Chapter 2. The Deliverance from Hellshire
    1. For instance, see map of the island of Jamaica dated 1894 in Frank Cun-
dall, ed.,Jamaica in 1895: A Handbook of Information for Intending Settlers and Others
(Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1895). In the course of the twentieth century
one may note a reversion to the use of the old name "Hellshire." This reversion
is a telling affirmation of the strength of confidence that the island has come to
enjoy internationally as a tourist resort, and thus it needs no longer rebut,
through its nomenclature, obsolete notions about its climate.
    2. Jas [James] Johnston, Jamaica, the New Riviera: A Pictorial Description of the
Island and Its Attractions (London: Cassel, 1903).
    3. Edward Bancroft, A Sequel to An Essay on the Yellow Fever: Documents that the
Fever Called Bulam, or Pestilential, Has No Existence as a Distinct or Contagious Disease
(London 1817), p. 248. On the region's health history, see Boyce, Health Progress.
    4. Gall's News Letter, 4 February 1896.
    5. Quoted in Frank Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies 1700-
 1763 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1967), p. 389.
    6. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 334.
    7. Ibid.







                        Note d to Paged 14-18                            201

    8. Boyce, Health Progress, pass.
    9. William Lempriere, Practical Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Ja-
maica as They Occurred between the Years 1792 and 1797, vol. 1 (London, 1799),
pp. 91-93.
   10. H. Harold Scott, A History of Tropical Medicine, vol. 1 (London: Edward
Arnold, 1939), p. 85.
   11. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 53.
   12. On the health history of the army, see S. E. Maunsell, Contribution to the
Medico-Military History ofJamaica: A "Retrospect" (Kingston, 1891).
   13. George Frederick Bone, Inaugural Dissertation on Yellow Fever and on the
Treatment of That Disease by Saline Medicines, with an Appendix by Hugh Bone
(Edinburgh, 1846), p. 21. Also see Boyce, Health Progress, pp. 17-18.
   14. Eisner,Jamaica, 1830-1930, p. 128.
   15. John Hunter, Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica; and on the
Best Means of Preserving the Health of Europeans in That Climate (London, 1788),
p. 23. Izett Anderson, Yellow Fever in the West Indies (London, 1898), pp. 1-3. Of
19,676 men sent to the British West Indies in 1796, no less than 17,173 (i.e., 87
percent) died within five years, according to Lowell Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter
Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1833 (New York: Octagon, 1977), p. 32.
   16. Hunter, Observations, p. 23.
   17. Ibid.
   18. Ibid.
   19. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 53. Also see Anderson, Yellow Fever in the West Indies,
p. 5. For comparative data on tropical fever within a wider sphere, see Philip D.
Curtin, "Epidemiology and the Slave Trade," Political Science Quarterly 83 (1968):
201 ff. Also see K. G. Davies, "The Living and the Dead: White Mortality in West
Africa, 1684-1732," in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative
Studies, edited by Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 85-89.
  20. Boyce, Health Progress, p. 6.
  21. Hunter, Observations, p. 58.
  22. James Lind, M.D., An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates.
With the Method of Preventing Their Fatal Consequences. To Which Is Added, an Appendix
Concerning Intermittent Fevers and a Simple and Easy Way to Render Sea Water Fresh,
and to Prevent a Scarcity of Provisions in Long Voyages at Sea, 5th ed. (London, 1792),
pp. 130-31. This letter, dated 24 October 1762, was written to Dr. Lind.
  23. Rupert Boyce, Mosquito or Man? The Conquest of the Tropical World
(London: John Murray, 1910), p. 18.
  24. Bone, Inaugural Dissertation on Yellow Fever, p. 18.
  25. Lempriere, Practical Observations, pp. 6-9, 58. Also see Hunter, Observa-
tions, pp. 31, 33.
  26. Edward Long, The History of Jamaica. Or General Survey of the Ancient and
Modern State of That Island: With Reflections on its Situation, Settlement, Inhabitants,
Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government, 3 vols. (London, 1774), vol. 2,
p. 514.
  27. Boyce, Health Progress, pp. 7, 23.
  28. Roger Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795-
1815 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979), p. 4.







202                    Noted to Pages 18-25

  29. Long, History of Jamaica, vol. 2, pp. 505-506.
  30. Bone, Inaugural Dissertation on Yellow Fever, p. 19.
  31. Ibid.
  32. Boyce, Health Progress, p. 23.
  33. For a word of caution as to this figure, see Douglas Hall, Free Jamaica
1838-1865: An Economic History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959),
pp. 102-103.
  34. Robert Baird, Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America
in 1849, vol. 1 (London, 1850), p. 157.
  35. Charles Plummer, A Concise Catechism of the Geography, History, Soil, Climate
etc., etc., of the Island of Jamaica and Its Dependencies (Kingston, 1862), lesson 11.
  36. James Scott (Commissioner of Health), Papers Relating to the Present Sani-
tary State of Kingston (Kingston, 1874).
  37. Ibid.
  38. On the Public Medical Service, see A. C. Sinclair and Lawrence R. Fyfe,
comp., The Handbook of Jamaica for 1887-88. Comprising Historical, Statistical and
General Information Concerning the Island (Kingston, 1887), pp. 157-59.
  39. Scott, Papers.
  40. Eisner, Jamaica 1830-1930, pp. 341-42. On the earlier situation as re-
gards quarantine, see Mary Elizabeth Thomas, "Quarantine in Old Jamaica,"
Caribbean Studies 4, no. 4, (January 1965): 77-92.
  41. Ibid.
  42. Eisner, Jamaica 1830-1930, p. 340.
  43. Maunsell, Contribution, pass.
  44. C. J. Bartlett, "A New Balance of Power: The 19th Century," in Chapters in
Caribbean History 2 edited by Douglas Hall, Elsa Goveia, and Roy Augier (Kings-
ton: Caribbean Universities Press, 1970), p. 68. For the earlier period, see Rich-
ard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 (London: Frank Cass,
1963).
  45. Maunsell, Contribution, p. 34.
  46. This is a system under which excreta is mixed with dry earth or ashes.
"Where there is no general system of water-carriage sewage, an earth closet will
in careful hands give perfect satisfaction," Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th ed., vol.
23, p. 737.
  47. Anderson, Yellow Fever, p. 3.
  48. Charles Singer and E. Ashworth Underwood, A Short History of Medicine
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1962).
  49. Scott, History of Tropical Medicine, vol. 1, p. 356. Also see Boyce, Mosquito or
Man? p. 27.
  50. W. T. Prout, "Malaria," in Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology,
edited by Ronald Ross, series T. M., vol. 3, no. 4 (17 November 1909),
pp. 478-81.
  51. Ibid., p. 476 ff.
  52. "Far from being hotbeds of pestilence and disease, we found Colon and
Panama most enjoyable Cities .... the States have purified the Augean stables,
and life on the Canal Zone now proceeds smoothly and safely. The American
portion of Panama, with its Hotel Tivoli, is fast becoming a favourite halting-







                       Noted to Pages 26-32                            203

place for tourists." R. M. Overend and Walker Overend, Wintering for Invalids in
the West Indies (London: Spottiswoode, 1910), p. 60.
  53. Reprinted in the Daily Telegraph and Jamaica Guardian, 2 February 1912.
  54. C. Ernest Fayle, A Short History of the World's Shipping Industry (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1933), chap. 9.
  55. Boyce, Mosquito or Man? p. 120.
  56. Singer and Underwood, Short History, p. 188.
  57. Boyce, Health Progress, p. 80.
  58. James Phillippo, The Climate of Jamaica (London, 1876), p. 5.
  59. David King, The State and Prospects ofJamaica: With Appended Remarks on Its
Advantages for the Cure of Pulmonary Diseases, and Suggestions to Invalids and Others
Going to That Colony (London, 1850). Also see William Wemyss Anderson, Ja-
maica and the Americans (New York, 1851).
  60. Anon., A Winter in the West Indies and Florida: Containing General Observa-
tions upon Modes of Travelling, Manners and Customs, Climates and Productions, with a
Particular Description of St. Croix, Trinidad de Cuba, Havana, Key West, and St.
Augustine as Places of Resort for Northern Invalids (New York, 1839), p. 173.
  61. Anderson, Jamaica and the Americans, p. 6.
  62. King, State and Prospects of Jamaica, p. 225. In this context consider, for
example, the Prospectus of the Jamaica Mutual Life Assurance Society (1844).
Generally an amount was charged in excess of the premium in England. The
amount in excess was determined by the length of residence within the tropics,
those who had resided for over five years paying a smaller amount. An extra
premium also had to be paid if a sea voyage were undertaken. This was to cover
the additional risk, and the money had to be paid before the risk was incurred.
See Prospectus of the Jamaica Mutual Life Assurance Society, with the Rules and Regula-
tions to be Observed by Parties Desiring to Assure, and the Table of Premiums Adopted by
the Society (Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1844), p. II.
  63. King, State and Prospects of Jamaica, p. 227.
  64. Pares, Yankees and Creoles p. 3. See also Richard B. Sheridan, "The British
Sugar Planters and the Atlantic World, 1763-1775," in Eighteenth Century Florida
and the Caribbean, edited by Samuel Proctor (Gainesville: University of Florida,
1976), pp. 5-6; and see Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1964), p. 112.
  65. Albury, Story of the Bahamas, p. 220.
  66. For example, see W. Husbands, "The Genesis of Tourism in Barbados,"
Caribbean Geography 1 (1982): 107-120.
  67. See chapter 6.
  68. Phillippo, Climate of Jamaica, pp. 33-34.
  69. Johnston, Jamaica, p. 7.
  70. Nothing as such was new about this recommendation. In the past, medical
doctors had time and again advised that the best time for newcomers to arrive in
the Caribbean was during the months of the dry season. Benjamin Moseley, for
example, advised in a 1789 publication, "the time for the greatest rains, and the
greatest heat, on the continent, as well as in the islands is between the months of
April and November: and the greatest degree of dryness and coolness is during
the months of December, January, February, and March. This is the season







204                     Notes to Pages 32-38

when people, who can choose their opportunity, should arrive in the West In-
dies; and this is the season when military operations should be carried on there;
and also when ships of war, or troops, should be sent out to relieve, or supply,
any station or garrison, that the men might be seasoned to the climate, before the
time of the greatest heat advancing, and the setting in of the rains, and un-
healthy season." Another advantage of these months, Moseley pointed out, is
that they are outside the hurricane season. Benjamin Moseley, A Treatise on
Tropical Diseases; on Military Operations; and on the Climate of the West Indies, 2d ed.
(London, 1789), pp. 8-9.
   71. Quoted in Charles Rampini, Letters from Jamaica, the Land of Streams and
Woods (Edinburgh, 1873), p. 160. Of Barbados, for example, around the mid-
seventeenth century, Starkey stated: "Mosquitoes, flies, ants, and cockroaches
were prevalent pests. Furniture was set in water-filled containers to keep crawl-
ing insects off the bed and tables; shelves were hung by tarred ropes; sugar was
put on one side of the room or table to attract ants and flies from the occupied
portions." Starkey, Economic Geography of Barbados, p. 60.
   72. Colonial Standard and Jamaica Despatch, 16 April 1895.
   73. Ibid.
   74. Sydney Olivier, "The Land of Rest," in The Book of Jamaica, edited by
Francis Dodsworth (Kingston: Sollas and Cocking, 1904), p. 17.
   75. "Jamaica as a Health Resort," Lancet, 7 December 1907.
   76. Ibid.
   77. Lancet, 16 November 1907.
   78. Ibid.
   79. Prout, "Malaria."
   80. Ibid., pp. 492-93.
   81. For example, Bessie Pullen-Burry,Jamaica As It Is, 1903 (London: Unwin,
 1903), p. 39; and Dodsworth, ed., Book of Jamaica, p. 105.
 82. See chap. 6 in particular.
 83. Jamaica Times, 27 July 1912.


               Chapter 3. God's Agents in Paradise
    1. James Stark, Stark's Jamaica Guide (Illustrated): Containing A Description of
Everything Relating to Jamaica of Which the Visitor or Resident May Desire Information
(London, 1898), p. 42.
    2. Ibid.
    3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Sailing Sunny Seas (Chicago: Conkey, 1909); also,
Johnston, Jamaica.
    4. On the Jamaican economy after Emancipation, see Hall, Free Jamaica; also,
Eisner, Jamaica; and Philip Curtin, Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical
Colony, 1830-1865 (New York: Atheneum, 1975).
    5. On this concept consult Sidney W. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (Chi-
cago: Aldine, 1974), pp. 151-52. Also see S. W. Mintz and Douglas Hall, "The
Origins of the Jamaican Internal Marketing System," Yale University Publica-
tions in Anthropology 57 (1960).
    6. W. K. Marshall, "Notes on Peasant Development in the West Indies since
1838," Social andEconomic Studies 17 (1968). For details specific to the development







                       Notes to Page 139-49                           205

of the fruit culture in Jamaica, consult United States Consular Reports: Fruit Culture
in Several Countries. Reportsfrom the Consuls of the United States, in Answer to a Circular
from the Department of State, on the Cultivation of Oranges, Lemons, Olives, Figs and
Raisins in Their Several Districts, no. 41V2 (Washington, June 1884), pp. 789-801.
    7. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 379.
    8. Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labor pp. 223-24, emphasis added.
    9. N. W. Simmonds, Bananas, 2d ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1966),
p. 313.
   10. Douglas Hall, Ideas and Illustrations in Economic History (New York: Holt,
 Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), p. 56.
   11. Ibid., chaps. 4 and 5.
   12. Ibid. See, as well, Simmonds, Bananas, p. 313 ff. In particular see C. F.
 Batchelder and W. D. Bradstreet, "Tropic Gold: The Story of the Banana Pi-
 oneer Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker" (mimeo inscribed "For the West Indian
 Reference Library of the Institute of Jamaica ... ," 1951).
   13. C. A. Wilson, Men of Vision: A Series of Biographical Sketches of Men Who
Have Made Their Mark upon Our Time (Kingston: Gleaner, 1923), p. 46.
   14. For general insights on the impact of such developments, see R. D.
 McKenzie, "The Concept of Dominance and World Organization," American
 Journal of Sociology 33, no. 1 (July 1927).
   15. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 379.
   16. Ibid.
   17. Batchelder and Bradstreet, "Tropic Gold," pp. 49, 74.
   18. Ibid., p. 56.
   19. For example, see Simmonds, Bananas, p. 317.
   20. Stacy May and Galo Plaza, The United Fruit Company in Latin America (New
 York: National Planning Association, 1958), p. 6.
   21. Olivier, Jamaica, chap. 31. On the domination of the United Fruit Com-
 pany generally, see May and Plaza, United Fruit Company; see also, Charles Kep-
 ner and Jay Soothill, The Banana Empire: A Case Study of Economic Imperialism
 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1967); and Charles Wilson, Empire in Green and
 Gold: The Story of the American Banana Trade (New York: Holt, 1947).
   22. Colonial Standard and Jamaica Despatch, 12 February 1892.
   23. A. C. Sinclair and Laurence R. Fyfe, comp., Handbook ofj amaica for 1889-
 90 (Kingston, 1889), p. 264.
   24. Ansell Hart, "The Banana in Jamaica's Export Trade," Social and Economic
 Studies 3, no. 2 (September 1954).
   25. Stephen Hill, comp., Who's Who in Jamaica, 1916: A Biennial Biographical
Record Containing Careers of Principal Public Men and Women of Jamaica (Kingston:
Gleaner, 1916), p. 214.
   26. Batchelder and Bradstreet, "Tropic Gold," pp. 69-70.
   27. Johnston, Jamaica, pp. 19-20.
   28. Batchelder and Bradstreet, "Tropic Gold," p. 70.
   29. See for example, Rampini, Letters from Jamaica, pp. 52-54; also see John
 Amphlett, Under a Tropical Sky: A Journal of First Impressions of the West Indies
 (London, 1873), p. 143. For more details, see chap. 5, this volume.
   30. Batchelder and Bradstreet, "Tropic Gold," p. 87.
   31. Ibid., pp. 76-77.







206


Notes to Paged 49-58


  32. Johnston, Jamaica, p. 11.
  33. Ibid.
  34. Sydney Olivier, "Recent Developments in Jamaica: Internal and Exter-
nal," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 64, no. 3,291 (17 December 1915): 82.
  35. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 83.
  36. Telegraph and Guardian, 21 August 1911.
  37. On Jones's problems in the banana business, see Olivier, "Recent Develop-
ments," p. 83; also, Olivier, Jamaica, pp. 381-86.
  38. Olivier, Jamaica, pp. 381-86.
  39. Frank Thistlewaithe, The Great Experiment: An Introduction to the History of
the American People (London: Cambridge University Press, 1961), p. 214.
  40. Harold Faulkner, American Economic History, 8th ed. (New York: Harper,
1960), p. 392. On economic growth in the United States, consult Samuel Hays,
The Response to Industrialism 1885-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1957), pp. 6-15.
  41. Young, Tourism: Blessing or Blight? p. 24.
  42. Jamaica Post, 7 May 1890.
  43. Jamaica Post, 28 December 1892.
  44. Letter from "Hope" to Jamaica Post, 22 May 1891.


                   Chapter 4. Jamaica Awakens
    1. "Memorial from the Inhabitants of the City and Parish of Kingston to His
Excellency the Governor, praying for the Revival of Steam Communication be-
tween Kingston and New York, with Certain Correspondence relating thereto," in
Minutes of the Legislative Council of Jamaica, in a Session Begun on the 31st Day of
December, 1870, (during the Administration of Sir John Peter Grant, K.C.B.) and Pro-
rogued by His Excellency on 23rdJune, 1871, Appendix No. IX (Kingston, 1871).
   2. See chap. 3.
   3. S. P. Musson and T. Laurence Roxburgh, comp., Handbook of Jamaica for
1891-92 (Kingston, 1891), p. 570. Also, report of an interview between Sir
Henry Blake and a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald, Jamaica Post,
17 May 1890.
   4. Ibid.
   5. C. Washington Eves, "Jamaica and Its Forthcoming Exhibition" (a paper
read before the foreign and colonial section of the Society of Arts, 15 May 1890),
reported in the Jamaica Exhibition Bulletin 1, no. 8 (28 June 1890). For details on
the regulations regarding the Jamaica Exhibition of 1891, see "Consular Reports
on Commerce, Manufactures, Etc.," Reports from the Consuls of the United States No.
114, March 1890 (Washington, 1890), pp. 428-33.
    6. Ibid.
    7. Jamaica Post, 10 May 1890.
    8. Ibid.
    9. This lack of perception of the local resource potential is well brought out
by Sewell, though his emphasis is on the failing of the planter class. See Sewell,
Ordeal of Free Labor, p. 223.
   10. Jamaica Post, 10 May 1890.
   11. Eves, "Jamaica and Its Forthcoming Exhibition," loc. cit.







Noted to Paged 58-68


207


  12. Jamaica's postemancipation history is riddled with yearning for such cap-
tains of industry. For example, see Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labor, p. 275.
   13. Op. cit., p. 576.
   14. The gestation of this idea is treated in chapter 6.
   15. Jamaica Post, 17 May 1890.
   16. Sir Henry Blake, "A Letter to the People of Jamaica," Reprinted in A. C.
Sinclair and S. P. Musson, comp., The Handbook ofJamaica for 1890-91 (Jamaica,
1890), p. 549.
   17. On the quality of the current hotel accommodation, see Rampini, Letters
from Jamaica, pp. 52-54. Also see Amphlett, Under a Tropical Sky, p. 143.
   18. Editorial, Jamaica Post, 15 August 1890. Also see E. E. Prichard, letter to
the editor, Jamaica Post, 13 August 1890.
   19. Ibid.
   20. Colonial Standard and Jamaica Despatch, 25 April 1890. (Hereafter cited as
Colonial Standard.)
   21. For example, the Tri-Weekly Budget, 10 May 1890; also, Colonial Standard,
 27 May 1890.
   22. Anon., The 'Hotels Scheme' Examined ... Supplemented by Remarks on the Rail-
 way (Jamaica, 1893).
   23. Jamaica Post, 3 March 1890.
   24. Jamaica Post, 10 May 1890.
   25. This and other popular suspicions were reported in Jamaica Post, 2 May
 1890, and Colonial Standard, 8 April 1890.
   26. Blake, "A Letter to the People of Jamaica," loc. cit.
   27. Ibid.
   28. 2 Kings 20:1, Gall's Newsletter, 3 January 1890.
   29. Gall's Newsletter, 13 September 1890.
   30. Tri-Weekly Budget, 1 January 1891.
   31. Report of a sitting of the legislature, Jamaica Post, 5 March 1891.
   32. Colonial Standard, 22 January 1890; also, Colonial Standard, 3 March 1890.
   33. Ibid.
   34. On the inauguration of the exhibition, see Villiers Stuart, Adventures Amidst
 the Equatorial Forests and Rivers of South America; Also in the West Indies and the Wilds of
 Florida. To Which is added Jamaica Revisited. (London, 1898), app., chap. 2. Also, see
 Musson and Roxburgh, Handbook ofJamaica for 1891-92, p. 577.
   35. Musson and Roxburgh, Handbook of Jamaica for 1891-92, pp. 578-79.
   36. Ibid., p. 578.
   37. 4 May 1891. According to the Colonial Standard, 2 July 1890, the size of the
 deficit was £4,548.5.6. Against this could be placed the value of the exhibition
 building and its appurtenances.
   38. Musson and Roxburgh, Handbook of Jamaica for 1891-92, p. 580.
   39. 4 May 1891.
   40. Colonial Standard, 15 March 1892.


                    Chapter 5. "Ho-tel Me Not"
    1. Anon., "Old and New Hostels ofJamaica: The Old Fashioned Inn and the
 Modern Hotel," Planters' Punch, no. 3 (1927), p. 3.





10                  To Hell witb Parade

is an industry out of control, where the costs often outweigh the benefits
and where the benefits often go to foreign firms. Being somebody else's
playground has meant that the Caribbean's fishermen have become
beach boys, its farmers have turned into waiters, and the TNC hotels
are defining the local culture.30
How that all began is discussed in part one of this study. Part two
discusses the legacy bequeathed to subsequent generations of
Jamaicans.







208


Notes to Page 68-80


    2. Anthony Trollope, The West Indies and the Spanish Main (New York, 1860),
 pp. 24-25.
    3. Samuel J. Capper, "Trip to the Tropics" (newspaper excerpts dated Janu-
 ary to March 1887, at the National Library of Jamaica).
    4. "Old and New Hostels of Jamaica," p. 3. Also see Rampini, Letters from
Jamaica, pp. 52-54.
    5. Amphlett, Under A Tropical Sky, p. 143.
    6. For example, Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labor, p. 201.
    7. "Old and New Hostels of Jamaica," p. 3.
    8. Amphlett, Under A Tropical Sky, p. 140, 141.
    9. Great Britain, Public Record Office, C. 0. 137/468, Advance of money for
 erection at Kingston of an Hotel on the American principle, Grant to Holland,
 15 Nov. 1872.
   10. Ibid.
   11. Ibid.
   12. "Consular Reports on Commerce, Manufactures, Etc." Reports from the
 Consuls of the United States No. 113, February 1890 (Washington, 1890), p. 193.
   13. Colonial Standard, 7 May 1890.
   14. Colonial Standard, 27 May 1890.
   15. Ibid.
   16. Tri-Weekly Budget, 10 May 1890.
   17. For example, Anon., The 'Hotels Scheme' Examined.
   18. Letter from "Trachanus" to the Jamaica Post, 24 March 1893.
   19. Musson and Roxburgh, Handbook of Jamaica for 1891-92, pp. 495-96.
   20. Joseph Ford and Frank Cundall, The Handbook of Jamaica for 1914 (Ja-
 maica: Government Printing Office, 1914), p. 512.
   21. Jamaica Post, 1 June 1891.
   22. Colonial Standard, 17 July 1891.
   23. According to Musson and Roxburgh, Handbook of Jamaica for 1891-92,
 pp. 495-96, debentures to the extent of £30 thousand were issued under the
 terms of the Hotels Law in the instance of the Myrtle Bank Hotel. As regards the
 Constant Spring, the amount guaranteed was £16,750. The Moneague Hotels
 Company, on the other hand, issued debentures to the extent of £7 thousand.
 These figures differ somewhat from those found, for example, in the Hotels
 Law of 1893 (Law 23 of 1893). Nevertheless, as a proportion of the total amount
 actually issued in debentures, the combined figure for both the Myrtle Bank and
 Constant Spring hotels was still about two-thirds.
   24. Colonial Standard, 25 April 1891.
   25. Ibid.
   26. S. P. Musson and T. Laurence Roxburgh, The Handbook ofJamaica for 1895
(Jamaica, 1895), p. 482.
   27. S. P. Musson and T. Laurence Roxburgh, comp., The Handbook ofJamaica
for 1897 (Jamaica, 1897), p. 484. Also, Jos. Ford and A. C. Finlay, comp., The
Handbook of Jamaica for 1905 (Jamaica, 1905), p. 469.
   28. Colonial Standard, 1 February 1892.
   29. Ford and Cundall, Handbook of Jamaica for 1914, p. 512. The year 1914
is considered to terminate the foundation phase of Jamaican tourism because
of the outbreak of World War I. More specifically, however, it was anticipated







Notes to Page 80-86


209


that the industry would attain new and greater dimensions following the open-
ing of the Panama Canal. See Dodsworth, The Book of Jamaica, p. 105.
  30. Advertisement, Colonial Standard, 25 January 1890.
  31. Colonial Standard, 17 July 1891.
  32. Anon., The 'Hotels Scheme' Examined, pp. 8-9.
  33. Ibid.
  34. Letter from "An Old Jamaican," Colonial Standard, 1 September 1893.
  35. Ibid.
  36. This is summarily treated in Frank Taylor, "The Birth and Growth of the
Jamaica Tourist Association," Jamaica Journal no. 4 (November 1987-January
1988): 40-44.
  37. Jamaica Post, 27 April 1894.
  38. Tri-Weekly Budget, 21 June 1892.
  39. "The Hotel Business in Kingston: A Bad Outlook,"Jamaica Post, 22 Febru-
ary 1899.
  40. Mortimer De Souza, A Tourists Guide to the Parishes ofJamaica, Together with
An Account Descriptive of the Jamaica Exhibition (Kingston, 1891), p. 9.
  41. Anon., The 'Hotels Scheme' Examined, pp. 7-8. The old Myrtle Bank Hotel
referred to was owned by James Gall of Gall's News Letter. It was sold in May 1890
to the Kingston Hotels Company for £3,500. Upon purchase, the building was
demolished and a new and commodious structure erected on the site. On Myrtle
Bank before 1890, see Anon., "Old and New Hostels of Jamaica." p. 4. The Park
Lodge was another old hotel in Kingston.
  42. "Scientific Notes," Gall's News Letter, 20 November 1895. These criticisms
are strikingly reminiscent of Trollope's. See Trollope, West Indies, pp. 24-25;
also see, Leader, 2 January 1904.
  43. Gall's News Letter, 12 January 1895.
  44. "Ruthless Changes at Myrtle Bank," Jamaica Post, 13 January 1899. Also
see Gall's News Letter, 13 January 1899. On the depressed state of the economy at
the time, see West India Royal Commission Report (London, 1897).
  45. Jamaica Post, 13 January 1899.
  46. See chapter 1. Also see "Our Trade with Jamaica," New York Times,
  10 November 1896.
  47. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 382.
  48. Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 10 January 1903 (extracts from
an official report on the condition and progress of Jamaica dated 30 September
1902). This, however, is at variance with the figure, put forward by Johnston, of
approximately £30 thousand. See Johnston, Jamaica, p. 11.
  49. Minutes of the Legislative Council of Jamaica. In a Session Begun on the 4th Day
of February, 1902, and Adjourned sine die on the 4th Day of November 1902 (during the
Administration of His Excellency Sir A. W. L. Hemming, G.C.M.G.), pp. 3-4.
  50. Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 10 January 1903 (extracts from
an official report, dated 30 September 1902, on the condition and progress of
Jamaica).
  51. Ibid. Also, see Collector General's Report, Supplement to the Jamaica Gazette,
from January to December, 1902, vol. 25, no. 1 (Kingston: Government Printing
Office, 1903), p. 58.
   52. Leader, 19 February 1904.







210


Noted to Paged 86-95


   53. Leader, 22 April 1904.
   54. "General Revenue and Tourists," Jamaica Guardian, 25 January 1909.
   55. Johnston, Jamaica, p. 20.
   56. Jamaica Times, 31 October 1908.
   57. Joseph C. Ford and Frank Cundall, comp., The Handbook of Jamaica for
 1912 (Jamaica: Government Printing Office, 1912), p. 554.
   58. Daily Gleaner, 27 January 1905.
   59. A. Lopez and J. Petras, eds., Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans: Studies in History
and Society (New York, John Wiley, 1974); J. R. Benjamin, The United States and
Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880-1934 (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1977), Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the
Caribbean, 1492-1969 (London, Andre Deutsch 1970).
   60. T. L. Roxburgh and Jos. C. Ford, comp., The Handbook of amaica for 1901
(Jamaica: Government Printing Office, 1901), p. 518.
   61. Advertised in Mortimer De Souza, Jamaica: The Land of Perpetual Sun-
shine ... (Kingston: Mortimer C. De Souza, 1912-13); H. G. DeLisser, Twentieth
Century Jamaica (Jamaica: Jamaica Times, 1913), app. p. xxix.
   62. Leader, 2 January 1904.
   63. Daily Gleaner, 5 January 1905.
   64. Capper, "Trip to the Tropics."
   65. Trollope, West Indies, pp. 25-26.
   66. Frank Bullen, Back to Sunny Seas (London: Macmillan, 1905), p. 60.
   67. Gall's News Letter, 9 February 1895.
   68. Bessie Pullen-Burry, Ethiopia in Exile: Jamaica Revisited (London: Unwin,
 1905), p. 26.
 69. R. M. Overend and Walker Overend, Wintering for Invalids in the West
 Indies (London: Spottiswoode, 1910), p. 51.
   70. Gall's News Letter, 12 January 1895.
   71. On these techniques of passive resistance at an earlier era in the history of
Jamaica, see Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins,
Development and Structure of Negro Slavery in Jamaica (London: Granada, 1973),
p. 260. Also, consult Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston:
Beacon, 1958), p. 99 ff.
  72. A. W. Farquharson, letter to Colonial Standard, 16 December 1892.
  73. "Old and New Hostels, of Jamaica," p. 4.
  74. Ibid.
  75. Infra, chap. 6.
  76. "Those who are inclined to undervalue the character of the West Indians
tax them with ostentation and self importance. The charge must in part be
admitted; but let not these imperfections be exaggerated or too severely repre-
hended, when the virtues of benevolence and hospitality are so strikingly their
concomitants. From the prevalence of the latter virtue, there is not a tolerable
inn throughout all the West Indies." Thus claimed Bryan Edwards in The History
Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. To Which Is Added an
Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo. Abridged from the
History by Bryan Edwards, Esq., (London, 1798), p. 126.
  77. Trollope, West Indies, p. 28.







                       Noted to Pages 93-101                             211

  78. Frank Tatchell, The Happy Traveller. A Book for Poor Men (London: Me-
thuen, 1924), p. 251.
  79. Ibid., p. 258.


          Chapter 6. The Ratooning of the Plantation
    1. Robert Renny, An History ofJamaica with Observations on the Climate, Scenery,
Trade, Productions, Negroes, Slave Trade, Diseases of Europeans, Customs, Manners,
and Dispositions of the Inhabitants. To Which Is Added, An Illustration of the Advan-
tages, Which Are Likely to Result from the Abolition of the Slave Trade (London, 1807),
pp. 216-17.
   2. Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial of the British Colonies in the
West Indies, 3 vols., 3d ed. (London: 1801), p. 9.
   3. Anon., "Old and New Hostels of Jamaica," p. 4.
   4. Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, vol. 2, pp. 281-82.
   5. J. Stewart, An Account ofJamaica and Its Inhabitants (London, 1808), p. 153.
   6. Quoted in Williams, Capitalism & Slavery, p. 83. For a critical analysis of
absenteeism, see Douglas Hall, "Absentee Proprietorship in the British West
Indies, to about 1850," in Slaves, Free Men, Citizens: West Indian Perspectives,
edited by Lambros Comitas and David Lowenthal (New York: Anchor, 1973),
pp. 105-35.
    7. Stewart, Account of Jamaica, p. 175.
    8. Ibid., pp. 178-79.
    9. Ibid., p. 188.
    10. Curtin, Two Jamaicas, p. 53.
    11. Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, vol. 2, p. 10 n.
    12. Renny, History of Jamaica, pp. 216-17. In particular, Anon., Marly; or A
Planter's Life in Jamaica (Glasgow, 1828), p. 14.
  13. Stewart, Account of Jamaica, p. 152.
  14. Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class, p. 7 ff. Patterson, Sociology of Slavery, p. 50.
  15. Anon., Marly, p. 215.
  16. Patterson, Sociology of Slavery, p. 274.
  17. Renny, History of Jamaica, p. 215.
  18. Curtin, Two Jamaicas, p. 53.
  19. See chapter 3.
  20. This the white majority in the legislature sought to do by restricting the
number of people eligible for the suffrage and by control of the qualifications
required for entry into the legislature. See Curtin, TwoJamaicas, chap. 9. Accord-
ing to William Sewell, in 1860 there were fifty thousand freeholders eligible for
the vote, but because of the ten-shilling tax that the Jamaica legislature levied on
the vote to discourage the participation of the freeholders, the actual number of
voters did not exceed three thousand. Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labor, p. 258.
  21. Bedford Pim, The Negro and Jamaica. Read before the Anthropological Society
of London, February 1, 1866, at St. James Hall, London (London, 1866), p. 35.
  22. Thomas Milner, The Present and Future State ofJamaica Considered (London,
1839), p. 3.
  23. Arbuthnot J. G. Knox, "Race Relations in Jamaica, 1833-1958. With Spe-







212


Noted to Paqes 101-05


cial Reference to British Colonial Policy." Ph.D diss., University of Florida,
1962), p. 202.
  24. Trollope, West Indies, p. 123.
  25. Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labor, p. 254. Douglas Hall informs that the assembly
that was elected in 1863, however, had but ten colored members and thirty-seven
whites. Hall, Free Jamaica, p. 251.
  26. John Henderson, Jamaica. Painted by A. J. Forrest (London: Adam and
Charles Black, 1906), chap. 14.
  27. Daily Telegraph and Jamaica Guardian, 30 September 1911.
  28. Jamaica Advocate, 1 November 1902.
  29. On the background of the Montego Bay riots see Jamaica Advocate, 12
April 1902. It should be noted that while the rank and file in the police force
were black, the officer corps was white. In the police force of the times, no black
or colored man could "go beyond the position of Sergeant Major" (Daily News, 15
June 1911). A large part of the animosity that existed between the black popula-
tion and the colonial police might have stemmed from a conviction on the part of
the populace that the repressive actions of the police were in response to the
dictates of the white power structure. In this context, attention should be paid to
words allegedly used by one of the men involved in the Kingston riots of 1912.
The same man was convicted of assaulting Governor Olivier with a stone during
one of the frays. This rioter allegedly cried out: "White give black authority to
shoot and I am going to take two before they kill me" (Jamaica Times, 16 March
1912). The attitude of the black Jamaican toward the laws made by the British
colonial government is summed up in the early twentieth century by one local
author:

  He regards them as something outside and apart from himself. They are
  something imposed upon him which he is sometimes inclined to think of as
  oppressive. The laws are "buckra laws," laws made by white men; and
  though he knows that white as well as black men are supposed to obey them,
  he is never quite sure that the white men will not be specifically favoured in
  some way. He doubts the absolute impartiality of the law. (H. G. DeLisser, In
  Jamaica and Cuba (Kingston: Gleaner, 1910), p. 113.

  30. Knox, Race Relations in Jamaica, pp. 233, 317.
  31. Curtin, Two Jamaicas, p. 105 ff. "A hundred Anglo-Saxon colonists would
benefit Jamaica infinitely more than a thousand coolie immigrants"-see the
Colonial Standard, 26 March 1895.
  32. Ibid.
  33. Clinton Black, History of Jamaica, 3d ed. (London and Glasgow: Collins
Clear-Type Press, 1965), p. 204.
  34. See chapter 1, for example.
  35. "Our Country Market People" (a paper read at a meeting of the Kingston
Ministers Association), reported in Jamaica Post, 13 January 1892.
  36. Ibid.
  37. Gall's News Letter, 6 November 1890.
  38. Editorial, Jamaica Post, 21 March 1898.
  39. Gall's News Letter, 6 November 1890.







Noted to Paqes 106-14


213


   40. Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past, p. 1.
   41. Curtin, Two Jamaicas, p. 67.
   42. Poem by "Tropica" (M. O. Walcott) in A Rainbow of Rhyme, compiled by
 Cecil McIntosh (Kingston: Gleaner, 1918), p. 29.
   43. Guide Issued by the Jamaica Tourist Association (1914/15) (Kingston: Mor-
 timer C. De Souza, 1914), p. 4.
   44. For example, Trollope, West Indies; also, Thomas Carlyle, "Occasional
Discourse on the Nigger Question," Fraser's Magazine 40 (London, December
1849).
  45. Extract from The Field, reproduced under "What Is Said of Us," Gall's
News Letter, 26 June 1895.
  46. Complaint made by "a distinguished English jurist," for example. See
Daily Gleaner, 1 February 1913.
  47. On migration, see Malcolm Proudfoot, Population Movements in the Carib-
bean (Port of Spain: Caribbean Commission, 1950).
  48. "Drifting Whither? The Fool's Paradise in Which We Are Living," Tele-
graph and Guardian, 17 June 1911.
  49. Harry Johnston, The Negro in the New World (London: Methuen, 1910),
p. 279.
  50. Wilcox, Sailing Sunny Seas, p. 136.
  51. Special correspondent, "Through the Land of Streams," Jamaica Post,
  17 January 1890.
  52. Beryl Brown, "A History of Portland," M.A. thesis, University of the West
Indies, Jamaica, 1974, p. 166.
  53. Ibid.
  54. Ibid.
  55. Ibid.
  56. Ibid.
  57. DeLisser, In Jamaica and Cuba, p. 97.
  58. "News of the Week," Jamaica Times, 25 April 1908.
  59. Supplement to the Jamaica Gazette, from January to December 1906, vol. 29,
no. 9 (Kingston: Government Printing Office, 1907), p. 142.
  60. E. A. Smith, president, Jamaica Tourist Association (JTA), in a letter to
Daily Gleaner, 22 May 1913. Also, "JTA Annual Report of 1914,"Jamaica Times,
24 October 1914.
  61. For example, "Advertising Jamaica," the Daily News, 2 May 1911.
  62. T. D. J. Farmer, "Some Plain Truths. Why Tourists Do Not Come," Daily
Chronicle, 6 March 1914.
  63. Telegraph and Guardian, 9 February 1911.
  64. Letter, Daily Chronicle, 23 March 1914.
  65. "What Jeremiah Thinks," Leader, 5 February 1904.


           Chapter 7. Paradise on the Auction Block
   1. Colonial Standard, 30 July 1891.
   2. Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 18 February 1904.
Quoted from correspondence between Mr. A. Smith and the government on the
subject of a tourist bureau for Kingston.







214                   Notes to Pages 114-22

    3. Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 10 February 1904.
    4. Leader, 2 January 1904.
    5. Norman Rankin, "Jamaica, Past and Present," Canadian Magazine of Poli-
tics, Science, Art and Literature 11 (1898): 419.
    6. Henderson, Jamaica, p. 2
    7. For example, Pullen-Burry, Jamaica As It Is, p. 3, makes it clear that her
purpose in writing the book is to present something "which may be of use to
people contemplating a visit to Jamaica."
    8. Charles K. Needham, "A Comparison of Some Conditions in Jamaica
with Those in the United States," Journal of Race Development 4, no. 1 (October
1913).
    9. Ibid.
    10. Ibid., pp. 200-201.
    11. Pullen-Burry, Jamaica As It Is, p. 27.
    12. Ibid., passim. Also see Henderson,Jamaica. For like suggestions regarding
 another West Indian island, see Moxley, Account of a West Indian Sanitarium,
 p. 162.
   13. Henderson, Jamaica, p. 87.
   14. Rampini, Letters from Jamaica, p. 164.
   15. Henderson, Jamaica, p. 86.
   16. Daily Gleaner, 28 January 1913.
   17. Daily Gleaner, 29 January 1913.
   18. J. W. Graham, letter to Daily Gleaner, 1 February 1913.
   19. Jamaica Post, 16 May 1892. So extensive was begging, in fact, that one
 visitor even claimed that the black people of Jamaica were socialized as beggars
 and that as soon as a Jamaican child learned to talk he would supplement his first
 words with a request to the stranger for a "quattie." Allan Eric (Charles Willis)
 Buckra Land. Two Weeks in Jamaica. Details of A Voyage to the West Indies Day by Day,
 and A Tour of Jamaica, Step by Step (Boston, 1897), p. 19.
   20. Daily Gleaner, 1 February 1913.
   21. For example, see Jamaica Times, 30 May 1914.
   22. Daily Gleaner, 1 February 1913.
   23. Daily Telegraph and Jamaica Guardian, 6 February 1912.
   24. Daily Gleaner, 20 January 1913.
   25. Telegraph and Guardian, 9 February 1911.
   26. Ibid.
   27. Ford and Cundall, Handbook of Jamaica for 1914, p. 512. Also, Daily Chron-
 icle, 18 March 1914.
   28. "General Revenue and Tourists," Jamaica Guardian, 25 January 1909.
   29. For example, Colonial Standard, 15 January 1895; Jamaica Post, 21 March
 1898; and Daily Gleaner, 17 January 1913.
   30. Plant claimed that in the winter of 1894, for example, he took 50 thousand
 visitors to Havana. Gall's News Letter, 27 March 1895.
   31. Jamaica Post, 5 February 1898. For a sample of business opinion at the
 time, see "Shall They Have A Subsidy? The Plant Line of Steamers. Opinions of
 A Number of Representative Business Men on the Subject," Jamaica Post,
 5 March 1894.
   32. Royal Jamaica Society of Agriculture & Commerce and Merchants' Exchange,







Notes to Paged 122-33


215


Twentieth Annual Report of the Council, for the Year Ending 31st May, 1903. Presented
at A General Meeting, Held on Thursday, the 29th September, 1904. (Jamaica: Colonial
Publishing, 1904), p. 7.
  33. For a full report, consult Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Her-
ald, 10 February 1904.
  34. For example, Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 2 Febru-
ary 1904.
  35. Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 10 February 1904.
  36. Ibid. Actually, over a decade earlier quite similar suggestions had been
forwarded in a letter from "An Old Jamaican" to Colonial Standard, 1 September
1893.
  37. Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Herald, 16 March 1904.
  38. For example, Telegraph and Guardian, 17 September 1910.
  39. "Local Tourist Association. Appeal for Funds to carry on Work Taken in
Hand," Telegraph and Guardian, 3 November 1910.
  40. Jamaica Times, 5 November 1910.
  41. Guide Issued by the Jamaica Tourist Association (1914/15).
  42. Letter from   E. Astley Smith to Telegraph and Guardian, 18 August
1911.
  43. Jamaica Tourist Association Annual Report, 1914, Jamaica Times, 24 Oc-
tober 1914. (This journal carries the full text of the president's report.)
  44. Jamaica Tourist Association Committee Meeting, Telegraph and Guardian,
13 February 1911.
  45. Letter from E. Astley Smith (E.A.S.) to Telegraph and Guardian, 18 August
1911. Smith was the first president of the association.
  46. Jamaica Tourist Association Annual Report, 1914.
  47. Jamaica Tourist Association Committee Meeting, Jamaica Times, 13 Janu-
ary 1912.
  48. Jamaica Tourist Association Annual Report, 1914.
  49. Ibid.
  50. Jamaica Tourist Association Committee Meeting, Jamaica Times, 26 April
1913.
  51. Jamaica Tourist Association Annual Report, 1914.
  52. Jamaica Times, 7 September 1912.
  53. Jamaica Tourist Association Annual Report, 1914.
  54. Jamaica Times, 7 September 1912.
  55. Advertisement in Daily Gleaner and De Cordova's, 25 February 1901.
  56. E. Astley Smith, letter to Jamaica Daily Telegraph and Anglo-American Her-
ald, 17 March 1904.
  57. Jamaica Guardian, 25 January 1909.
  58. Telegraph and Guardian, 17 September 1910.
  59. Telegraph and Guardian, 29 April 1911.
  60. Telegraph and Guardian, 27 April 1911.
  61. Ibid.
  62. Daily Telegraph and Jamaica Despatch, 15 April 1912.
  63. For example, examine the lot of the Kinematograph Company, described
in chapter 7.
  64. Daily Gleaner, 22 February 1913. On earlier criticisms, see Jamaica Daily







216                   Noted to Paged 133-41

Telegraph and Anglo American Herald, 24 January 1905; also, "Jamaica's Friend,"
letter to Daily Gleaner, 24 February 1905.
   65. Sewell, Ordeal of Free Labor, p. 174.


              Chapter 8. Resurrection and Revival
    1. "Getting the Tourists to Come Again," Daily Gleaner, 15 February 1923.
    2. Shirley Robertson, "Maritime History of Jamaica in the 20th Century,"
Symposium on Caribbean Economic History, 7-8 November 1986, University of
the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica (mimeo). Also see Herald, 28 October 1922.
    3. Herald, 28 October 1922. For data on the United Fruit Company's policy
regarding the tourist traffic to Jamaica, see "Jamaica Is at the Mercy of the Great
United Fruit Company," Herald, 19 May 1923.
    4. For the list of requirements for the island's tourist trade development
drawn up by William Wilson, chairman of the Tourist Trade Development
Board, consult "Special Tourist Trade Supplement," the Herald, 18 October
1924.
    5. "The Jamaica Tourist Association," Jamaica Times, 29 May 1920.
    6. "We Might Get That Twenty Million if We Attract Canadian Tourists,"
Jamaica Times, 22 May 1920.
    7. The Canada-West India Magazine (July 1924), extracts reproduced in
"Special Tourist Trade Supplement," the Herald, 18 October 1924.
    8. Preston Slosson, The Great Crusade and After, 1914-1928 (New York: Mac-
millan, 1930), pp. 237-50.
    9. Ibid., p. 249. In European countries taken together, American visitors at
this time numbered in the region of half a million persons. See Foster Dulles,
America's Rise to World Power, 1898-1954 (New York: Harper and Row, 1963),
pp. 141-42.
   10. Slosson, Great Crusade, p. 249.
   11. Tourist Trade Development Board (Jamaica), Report and Accounts for Fi-
nancial Year, 1st April, 1923, to 31st March, 1924 (Kingston: Government Printing
Office, 1924).
   12. Extracts from Tourist Trade Development Board Annual Report to 31
March 1923, in "Special Tourist Trade Supplement," Herald, 18 October 1924.
   13. W.A. Cover, comp., The Handbook ofj amaica for 1939, (Kingston: Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1939), pp. 594-95.
   14. Herald, 10 March 1923; and Daily Gleaner, 15 February 1923.
   15. Philip Olley, "The Tide of Travel Is on the Permanent Increase and
Jamaica Should Seek to Get Her Share of the Tourist Traffic," Jamaica Mail, 23
September 1926. Olley became secretary of the Tourist Trade Development
Board in April 1923 and remained in this post throughout the interwar period.
   16. Philip Olley, "The Tourist Trade of Jamaica," Jamaica Review 1, no. 3
(October 1925): 17. Also see "Special Tourist Trade Supplement," Herald, 18
October 1924.
  17. "Special Tourist Trade Supplement."
  18. "Our Sun Baths," Daily Gleaner, 2 March 1925.
  19. Daily Gleaner, 3 March 1925.
  20. "Special Tourist Trade Supplement."







Note to Pagqe 142-48


217


  21. Editorial, Jamaica Times, 6 May 1933; also see editorial, Jamaica Times,
10 February 1934.
  22. By way of comparison, Bermuda's 1924 tourist trade development grants
amounted to over £50 thousand-Olley, "Tourist Trade of Jamaica," p. 18. For
its part, the government of the sister colony of the Bahamas had pledged itself to
expend on tourism development at least £35 thousand per year for a ten-year
period, according to Herald, 10 March 1923.
  23. On this debate, see Jamaica Times, 21 March 1931.
  24. Interim Report on post-War Tourist Trade Development in Jamaica (Kingston's
Tourist Trade Development Board, 1944), p. 17.
  25. Cover, comp., The Handbook of Jamaica for 1939, pp. 594-95.
  26. The Jamaica Tourist Trade Development Board and the Tourist Trade
Convention Committee, Survey and Report on the Potentialities of the Tourist Industry
of amaica, With Recommendations for post-War Development (Kingston: Government
Printer, 1945), p. 2.
  27. Ibid.
  28. See Jamaica Times, 9 September 1933.
  29. Tourist Trade Development Board, Reportfor the Year Ended 31st December,
1931 (Kingston: Government Printing Office, 1932), p. 4.
  30. The following resolution relating to travel within the British Empire was
introduced by the Jamaican delegate at the Thirteenth Congress of Chambers of
Commerce (London, 1933) and was unanimously adopted by the meeting. It
states: "The Congress, impressed with the potentialities of tourist traffic as a
means of strengthening friendly relations and establishing business connections;
and recognising the economic importance of what is virtually an industry, em-
phasizes the desirability of British citizens spending their holidays, whenever
possible, in British countries, and calls for the general adoption of the slogan
'Travel within the Empire"' (Tourist Trade Development Board, Report for the
Year Ended 31st December, 1933, [Kingston: Government Printing Office, 1934,]
p. 4). For more on Jamaica's role and interest in promoting intra-empire tourist
travel, consult Daily Gleaner, 22 October 1937.
  31. Editorial, Jamaica Times, 5 October 1935.
  32. Editorial, Jamaica Times, 21 December 1935.
  33. Eisner, Jamaica 1830-1930, pp. 287-88.
  34. The Jamaica Imperial Association Report for the Year 1927 (Kingston: Jamaica
Imperial Association, 1928), p. 23.
   35. "Special Montego Bay Supplement," Herald, 30 May 1925.
   36. "The Thing to Do," Daily Gleaner, 27 February 1925.
   37. "Special Montego Bay Supplement."
   38. Ibid. Also see Daily Gleaner, 27 February 1925.
   39. The Annual General Report of Jamaica, together with the Departmental Reports
for 1937 (Kingston: Government Printing Office, 1939), p. 31.
  40. Una Marson, "The Tourist Menace," Public Opinion, 16 October 1937.
  41. "United Fruit Company in Jamaica: What Island Would Be Without It
and Some of Its Drawbacks," reprinted from Boston Chronicle in Herald, 29 March
1924.
  42. W. A. Domingo, "Discrimination on Steamships," Public Opinion, 20 No-
vember 1937.









   Part One


THE FOUNDATION
    PERIOD







218                   Noted to Paged 148-56

  43. Ibid.
  44. For passing references to this, see Jamaica Critic, October 1926. Also see
letter, Daily Gleaner, 29 August 1923. By way of recollection, see Reverend
Sam Reid, "Tourism in Jamaica: Another Point of View," Daily Gleaner, 15 May
1971.
  45. The apparent reason for this was that "in certain quarters in Jamaica it is
not thought polite to speak on the race problem, because in some people's
imagination race prejudice is below the dignity of polished, educated ladies and
gentlemen." Herald, 28 June 1924.
  46. Northern News and Provincial Advertiser, 6 February 1926 (hereinafter,
Northern News).
  47. Northern News, 15 February 1926.
  48. Northern News, 25 December 1926.
  49. Northern News, 13 November 1926.
  50. Northern News, 9 January 1926.
  51. Northern News, 25 December 1926.
  52. Northern News, 9 April 1927.
  53. Northern News, 7 May 1927.
  54. See, for example, R. L. M. Kirkwood, "Develop Our Tourist Trade,"
Public Opinion, 7 September 1940.
  55. Daily Gleaner, 6 April 1929. For some indication of public feeling on the
matter, see Northern News, 20 April 1929.
  56. Daily Gleaner, 6 April 1929.
  57. Marson, Tourist Menace.
  58. "The Philosopher Views the Passing Show," Public Opinion, 28 May
  1938.
  59. For instance, letter from K. R. P., Public Opinion, 17 April 1937.
  60. Olivier, Jamaica, p. 11.
  61. Letter from K. R. P.
  62. Letter, Daily Gleaner, 15 March 1938.
  63. Daily Gleaner, 14 March 1938.
  64. Jamaica Labour Weekly, 10 September 1938. For similar sentiments, see
"The Tourist Evil," extract from Waters of the West by Kenneth Pringle, in Public
Opinion, 27 August 1938.
  65. Letter from K. R. P.
  66. G. St. C. Scotter, "Buying the Tourist," Daily Gleaner, 18 May 1938.
  67. Marson, Tourist Menace.
  68. Ibid.
  69. Philip Olley, "Our Roads Are ... Air Roads," Jamaica Times, 28 Novem-
ber 1931.
  70. Ibid.
  71. "A Connecting Link," editorial, Jamaica Times, 28 November 1931.


                 Chapter 9. The Second Coming
    1. Daily Gleaner, 19 May 1955.
    2. Ibid.
    3. Ibid.







Notes to Page   157-65


219


   4. Ferdie Martin, "Public Relations-A Need of Our Tourist Trade," Daily
Gleaner, 9 March 1954.
   5. "What the Hicks Report Did Not Say about Jamaica's Tourist Industry,"
Daily Gleaner, 6 June 1955.
   6. L. F. Bouman, K.L.M's Caribbean Decade: The Story of the Operations of Royal
Dutch Airlines in the West Indies since 1934 (New York: Rogers-Kellog-Stillson,
1944), pp. 67-68.
   7. Ibid.
   8. Theodore Sealy, "Jamaica's Gold Coast," Daily Gleaner, 6 May 1952.
   9. "The Economic Development of Jamaica." Report by a mission of the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Washington, D.C.,
September 1952), p. 108. Mimeo.
  10. Sealy, "Jamaica's Gold Coast."
  11. Daily Gleaner, 1 April 1957.
  12. Annual Report of the Jamaica Tourist Board, Year Ended 31st March, 1961
(Kingston, 1962), p. 8.
  13. "Economic Development of Jamaica," p. 108.
  14. Maxine Feifer, Tourism in History: From Imperial Rome to the Present (New
York: Stein and Day, 1985), chap. 8; Louis Turner, "The International Division
of Leisure: Tourism and the Third World," World Development 4, no. 3, (March
1976): 254. On the Caribbean, see John Bryden, Tourism and Development: A Case
Study of the Commonwealth Caribbean (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973),
pts. 2 and 3.
  15. For example, while stay-over visitors to Jamaica numbered 122,149 in
1955, the figures for Trinidad and Barbados were 22,083 and 23,243. While
tourist revenue amounted to nearly £7 million for Jamaica in 1955, it was
£1,041,666 for Barbados. See Financial Times, 8 June 1956.
  16. Jamaica Tourist Board Annual Report 1964-65 (Kingston: Government
Printing Office, 1965), p. 4.
  17. Jamaica Tourist Board Annual Report 1965-66 (Kingston: Government
Printing Office, 1966), p. 5; Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Journal (April 1970):
20; Daily Gleaner, 20 January 1966.
  18. Daily Gleaner, 23 July 1963; Owen Jefferson, The Post-War Economic Devel-
opment of amaica (Kingston: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Univer-
sity of the West Indies, 1972), p. 173.
  19. "Economic Development ofJamaica," p. 110. "What the Hicks Report Did
Not Say."
  20. "Independence Supplement-2," Daily Gleaner, 21 July 1962.
  21. Ibid.
  22. "What the Hicks Report Did Not Say." Also see "Independence Supple-
ment-2."
  23. Ross Pearson, "The Geography of Recreation on A Tropical Island: Ja-
maica," Journal of Geography 56 (January 1957): 15-16.
  24. Ibid., p. 16.
  25. Daily Gleaner, 4 March 1959.
  26. "Economic Development of Jamaica," p. 110.
  27. The Jamaica Tourist Board and the Jamaica Information Service, Our
Tourist Industry: Facts on Jamaica, series no. 30 October 1972, p. 4.







220                   Notes to Paged 165-72

  28. Daily Gleaner, 1 April 1957.
  29. Caribbean Commission, Caribbean Tourist Trade-A Regional Approach
(Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1945).
  30. Ibid., p. 109. Also see Robert Voyles, The Tourist Industry in the Caribbean
Islands Area Development Series No. 6 (Miami: Bureau of Business and Eco-
nomic Research, University of Miami, 1956), pp. 29-30.
  31. Daily Gleaner, 2 September 1958.
  32. Feifer, Tourism in History, p. 219 ff. Also see Daily Gleaner, 28 April 1966.
  33. Tom Barry, Beth Wood, and Deb Preusch, Other Side of Paradise,
pp. 77-78.
  34. Mary Vaughan, "Tourism in Puerto Rico," in Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans,
edited by A. Lopez and J. Petras, p. 273.
  35. Ibid.
  36. On this issue, see Barry, Wood, and Preusch, Other Side of Paradise,
p. 75 ff; Jefferson, Post-War Economic Development, p. 178; Iserdeo Jainarain,
Trade and Underdevelopment: A Study of the Small Caribbean Countries and Large
Multinational Corporations (Guyana: Institute of Development Studies, 1976), p.
307.
  37. For example, Daily Gleaner, 18 January 1957.
  38. Jamaica Tourist Board Annual Report 1964-1965, p. 4.
  39. Jamaica Tourist Board and the Jamaica Information Service, Our Tourist
Industry, p. 5.
  40. Jamaica Tourist Board Annual Report 1968-69 (Kingston: Government
Printing Office, 1969), p. 2. Also see, Jamaica Tourist Board and the Jamaica
Information Service, Our Tourist Industry, p. 5.
  41. Jamaica Tourist Board and the Jamaica Information Service, Our Tourist
Industry, p. 5.
  42. Niger Cooley, "Of This and That," Daily Gleaner, 5 May 1965.
  43. A. W. Maldonado, "Tourism in Jamaica: Dollar Bonanza," El Mundo
(Puerto Rico), 28 December 1966. Translated and reproduced in Jamaica Tour-
ist Board, "From Jamaica" (n. d.), p. 9. Mimeo.
  44. Anthony Ashley, "Renewed Antipathy Towards Tourism," Daily Gleaner,
16 November 1969.
  45. Daily Gleaner, 25 June 1964.
  46. Edwin Chapman, "Problems of Tourism in Jamaica," in Tourism in the
Caribbean: Essays on Problems in Connection with Its Promotion (Netherlands: Royal
Van Gorcum, 1963), p. 128.
  47. Ibid.
  48. Sam Reid, "Tourism in Jamaica: Another Point of View," Daily Gleaner,
15 May 1971.
  49. Alvin Wint, "Don't Block Out the Sea," Daily Gleaner, 7 April 1959.
  50. Cleveland Amory, "Jamaica's Old Boy with the New Ideas," Saturday Re-
view, 10 October 1964, p. 57.
  51. Turner and Ash, The Golden Hordes, p. 15.
  52. Ibid., p. 193. Also see Jay Munroe, "The Milking Shed," Sunday Gleaner,
21 October 1962.
  53. Quoted in Herbert Hiller, "Escapism, Penetration, and Response: In-







Noted to Paqed 172-81


221


dustrial Tourism and the Caribbean," Caribbean Studies 16, no. 2 (July 1976):
101-02.
  54. Mary Carley, Jamaica: The Old and the New (New York: Praeger, 1963),
p. 104.
  55. Susan Lewis, "Tourism and the Village Boys," Daily Gleaner, 27 September
1955.
  56. Ibid.
  57. Daily Gleaner, 7 April 1971.
  58. Chapman, "Problems of Tourism," p. 129. Also see editorial, Daily
Gleaner, 29 July 1961.
  59. Ibid.
  60. Peter Abrahams,Jamaica: An Island Mosaic (London: Her Majesty's Statio-
nery Office, 1957), pp. 228-29. Also see Chapman, "Problems of Tourism,"
p. 126.
  61. Maldonado, "Tourism in Jamaica," p. 9.
  62. Jamaica Hansard. Proceedings of the House of Representatives ofJamaica. (Pub-
lished by Authority.) Session, 1968-1969, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 139.
  63. Daily Gleaner, 13 November 1970.
  64. Jamaica Tourist Board Annual Report 1968/69, p. 1.
  65. "Homemaking Guide," Jamaica Daily News, 21 November 1973.
  66. For example, see the statement of the deputy prime minister and minister
of finance, Donald Sangster, to the JHTA convention, as reported in Daily
Gleaner, 26 June 1964.
  67. Tourism Supplement, Daily Gleaner, 5 July 1970, p. LI.
  68. Ibid., p. XXXI.
  69. Agency for Public Information, Jamaica, Jamaica: Tourism in A Nutshell
(Kingston: Agency for Public Information, 1980), p. 4.
  70. See Daily Gleaner, 22 January 1970.
  71. Agency for Public Information, Jamaica, Jamaica: Tourism in A Nutshell,
p. 4.
  72. Jefferson, Post-War Economic Development, p. 178.


                      Chapter 10. Conclusion
    1. See, for example, Jean Holder, comp., Caribbean Tourism: Policies and Im-
pacts. Selected Speeches (Barbados: Caribbean Tourism Research Center [CTRC],
1979).
    2. Speech delivered to the Montego Bay Community, on 12 August 1972, by
Minister of Industry and Tourism P. J. Patterson. Reproduced in two parts in
Daily Gleaner: pt. 1, Daily Gleaner, 17 August 1972; pt. 2, Daily Gleaner, 18 August
1972. A digest of this speech as well as the minister's speech two weeks later at
Ocho Rios can be found in P. J. Patterson, Tourism An Essential Plank of Our
Development (amaica Tourist Board, n.d.).
    3. Daily Gleaner, 17 August 1972.
    4. Patterson, Tourism An Essential Plank of Our Development.
    5. Daily News, 14 July 1974. Also see Daily News, 27 November 1975.
    6. Sunday Gleaner, 28 December 1975.







222                   Noted to Pages 181-88

    7. Ibid.
    8. "People Must Become Involved in Tourism says P. J. Patterson," Daily
Gleaner, 5 December 1975.
    9. Sunday Gleaner, 28 December 1975.
    10. Daily Gleaner, 18 August 1972.
    11. Ibid. Also see, Daily Gleaner, 17 August 1972. According to Tourist Direc-
tor, Eric Abrahams, the opportunity cost of crime was an average of $30 million
per year in the early 1970s. Daily Gleaner, 18 May 1974.
   12. Daily Gleaner, 11 February 1979.
   13. Eric Abrahams, "Tourism in Jamaica," Sunday Gleaner, 22 April 1973.
   14. Ibid. For statistics on room occupancy, see Jamaica Tourist Board and the
Jamaica Information Service, Our Tourist Industry, p. 6.
   15. Daily Gleaner, 3 July 1971.
   16. Kempe Hope, Economic Development in the Caribbean (New York: Praeger,
 1986), p. 45.
   17. Dermot Dusey, "Discover Jamaica-Now," Jamaica Daily News Holiday
Guide, 14 July 1974. Adrian Robinson. "We Offer More," Jamaica Daily News,
7 November 1975.
   18. "Tourism: Foreign Policy Fatality," Daily Gleaner, 16 September 1976. On
the events of the era, consult Michael Kaufman, Jamaica Under Manley: Dilemmas
of Socialism and Democracy (London: Zed, 1985); and Clive Thomas, The Poor and
the Powerless (New York: Monthly Review, 1989).
   19. Michael Manley, Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery (London: Third World
Media, n.d.), p. 94.
  20. Ben Henry, "The State of Domestic Tourism," Daily Gleaner, 9 August
1985.
  21. Ibid. Also see Butch Stewart, "On Hotel Prices," Daily Gleaner, 13 Septem-
ber 1985.
  22. Ministry of Mining, Energy and Tourism, Annual Travel Statistics 1987,
p. 6; Ministry of Tourism, Travel Statistics-Jamaica 1980, p. 4; Ministry of Tour-
ism, Annual Travel Statistics 1990, p. 7.
  23. Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and the
Carib to the Present (New York: Facts on File, 1992), p. 254.
  24. See Jamaica Record, 15 November 1988.
  25. Daily Gleaner, 15 August 1987, carries a report on this.
  26. Daily Gleaner, 25 August 1987. Also see Margaret Morris, "Nudism Is Big
Business!" Sunday Gleaner, 30 August 1987.
  27. Jamaica Record, 26 November 1989.
  28. Carl Stone, "A Socio-Economic Study of the Tourism Industry in Ja-
maica," Caribbean Affairs 4, no. 1 (January-March 1991): 11.
  29. Ibid., pp. 7, 8.
  30. Ibid., p. 16.
  31. Brian Hudson, "The End of Paradise: What Kind of Development for
Negril," Caribbean Review 8, no. 3 (summer 1979): 32.









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Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. Sailing Sunny Seas. Chicago: Conkey, 1909.
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Anderson, Izett. Yellow Fever in the West Indies. London, 1898.
Bancroft, Edward Nathaniel. An Essay on the Disease Called Yellow Fever,
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Bone, George Frederick. Inaugural Dissertation on Yellow Fever and on the
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Boyce, Sir Rupert William. Health Progress and Administration in the West
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Hunter, John. Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica: and on the
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Index


Advertising, for tourism: campaign
  of, after 1870s, 55; censorship of,
  117-18; cost of, 142; debate over
  public funding for, 142-43; erotic
  messages of, 172, 174; foundation
  of bureau for, 113-15, 123;
  government indifference toward,
  113-15, 122, 124; government
  support for, 121, 126, 142-43;
  importance of, 81; by Jamaica
  Tourist Association, 126-33; by
  Jamaica Tourist Board, 140, 164,
  166-67, 174, 177, 180; and
  promotion of Jamaica as health
  spa, 13, 20, 27, 29, 31-35; racist
  sterotypes in, 174-75; regulation
  of, 117-18; slow beginnings of, 81,
  113-15, 124-33
Air travel, 154-59, 162-63, 166
American Airlines, 167
American Hotel and Motel
  Association, 177
American Hotels Company, 75
Amphlett, John, 69
Anderson, William, 27, 29-31
Anglo-American Caribbean
  Commission, 165
Arab-Israeli war (1973), 183
Avensa, 158
Avianca, 158

Bahamas, 4, 29-30, 72-73, 120
Baird, Robert, 20
Baker, Eugene, 61
Baker, Lorenzo D., 40, 42-43, 46,
  48, 50-51, 53-54, 109
Banana export industry: attempt to
  extend to Great Britain, 84;
  cultivation of, 37-39; and
  government encouragement of
  white property ownership, 104;
  and hurricane of 1903, 122;
  Jones's failure in, 130;


  monopolistic practices of, 41-42,
  48; as origin of Jamaican tourism,
  37-38, 46, 48, 50-51; risks of, 41-
  42; seasonality of, 52; and U.S.
  market, 6-7, 39-40, 109
Barbados, 4, 29-30, 112, 120, 160
Barker, Herbert, 14
Beach Control Authority, 170
Beaches, 140-41, 169-71, 180, 187
Beauperthy, Louis Daniel, 24
Begging, 107-08, 118-19, 153
Bermuda, 112, 120
Blacks: advertised as "primitives,"
  116; alleged docility of, 115-16;
  alleged poor manners of, 108;
  alleged sexual harmlessness of,
  115; beaches closed to, 148-52; as
  beggars, 107-08, 118-19;
  discriminated against as steamship
  passengers, 147; emigration of,
  107; growing political power of,
  99-104; hostility toward hotel
  service among, 69, 89-93, 175;
  inadequate housing for, 104-05,
  107; as innkeepers, before 1890,
  69; poverty among, 107; as
  proportion of population in
  colonial times, 98-99; racist
  stereotypes of, 105-07, 115-18,
  174-75; and resentment of U.S.
  racism, 7-9, 36, 69, 110; self-
  sufficiency of, 38-39; as victims of
  hotel industry, 112. See also
  Emancipation; Race relations;
  Racism; Slavery; Whites
Blake, Henry, 55, 59, 62, 73, 81, 121
Blue Mountains, 86
BOAC. See British Overseas Airways
  Corporation
Bone, George, 17, 19
Boston Fruit Co., 37
Bowden Hotel, 89
Bowlan, Charles, 110


233







234


Index


Boyce, Rupert, 22
British and Colonial Kinematograph
  Company, 117
British Overseas Airways
  Corporation (BOAC), 157-58
British West Indian Airways, 158
Burke, S. C., 119
BWIA. See British West Indian
  Airways

California, 138-39
Canada, 138, 143, 183
Canadian Pacific Railway, 137
Canadian Travel Club, 112
Canary Islands, 50
Capper, Samuel J., 68
Caribbean Commission, 165
Caribbean Tourist Association
  (CTA), 165-66
Casa Monte Hotel, 177
Castleton Gardens, 118
Chequesset Inn (Wellfleet, Mass.), 50
Cholera, 14, 19, 22
Clemens, Lewis, 112
Climate: celebrated as healthful, 13,
  27, 29; economic benefits of, 58,
  61; featured in advertising, 127-
  28, 131; threats to health of, in
  plantation era, 95, 103
Constant Spring Hotel: additions to,
  75; alleged mismanagement of,
  78-80; cuisine of, 80, 83; financial
  failure of, 82, 87; leased by Elder,
  Dempster, and Co., 85; poor
  service at, 83, 91; and racist
  tensions between staff and guests,
  91; temporary closure of (1891),
  78
Constitution, 100-03
Cook, Thomas, 5
Costa Rica, 107
Craig, Robert, 63
Creoles, 82-84
Crown colony government: aid to
  hotel industry from, 120, 123, 126,
  146-47; and constitutional change
  (1866), 101-02; contribution to
  developing tourism of, 121, 126,
  162-65, 167-68; legislature of,
  100-01, 103-04; and support for
  advertising tourism, 121, 126,
  142-43


Cruise industry, 26-27. See also
  Steamships; Tourism
CTA. See Caribbean Tourist
  Association
Cuba: civil war in (1933), 144; closed
  to tourists after 1959, 171; and
  conquest of yellow fever, 24-25; in
  CTA, 165; emigration to, by
  Jamaican blacks, 107; relations
  under Manley with, 184; as rival
  resort area, 55, 131; war of
  independence in (1895), 4
Cultural life, 75, 96-97
Curagao, 157

Death rate. See Mortality rate
DeLisser, Herbert G., 110
Delta Airlines, 158
Direct West India Cable Company,
  Ltd., 127
Disease, 14, 18, 22-24, 33, 115. See
  also Fever; specific diseases
Doctor's Cave Bathing Club, 148-52
Doctor's Cave Beach, 148
Domestic Holiday Program, 184
Dominican Republic, 165
Dropsy, 14
Drug trafficking, 171, 188
Dunn, Richard, 14
Duty-free shops, 162
Dysentery, 14, 22

Earthquake of 1907, 124
Eastern Airlines, 167
Economy, benefits of tourism to, 30-
  31, 53-54, 58, 61, 140, 154, 166.
  See also Hotel industry; Tourism
Edwards, Bryan, 93, 94, 98
Eisner, Gisela, 145
Elders and Fyffes Company, 137
Elder, Dempster, and Company, 50,
  52, 84-85, 87, 89, 91
Emancipation (1838), 38, 93, 99-104
Epidemiology, 30, 32
Espeut, W. B., 78-79
Eyre, Edward, 101

Farmer, T.D.J., 111
Farrar, Archdeacon, 62
Fawcett, W., 56-57
Fever, 14-19, 22-24, 115. See also







Index


  Malaria; Ship's fever; Typhoid
  fever; Yellow fever
Filaria, 25
Finlay, Carlos, 24
Flagler, Henry, 4
Florida, 131, 138
Foreign investment, 58-59, 66, 72
Forrest, A. J., 116
Foster, W. G., 131
Franc, Carl Augustus, 40

Garbage disposal, 14, 21-22
Gambling, 171, 187-88
George, Prince of Wales, 64, 66
Grant, John Peter, 21, 72-73
Grant, Simeon, 110
Great Britain: attempt to lure
  tourists from, 51, 85-87, 130;
  political control over Jamaican
  affairs by, 100; tourists from, after
  World War I, 143, 145
Great House era, 89-97, 145. See also
  Plantation economy; Plantation
  society; Slavery

Haiti, 101, 165
Hamburg American Line, 147
Havana, 171
Hawaii, 186
Healthshire Hills, 13, 20
Hellshire Hills, 13, 20
Hemming, A.W.L., 85
Henderson, John, 116
Henderson, Reverend, 57
Herskovits, Melville, 105
Hilton International Hotels, 167
Holiday Inns, 167
Hoover, Herbert, 139
Hotels: chains of, 11; converted from
  plantation houses, 145; cuisine of,
  80, 83; exclusion of natives from,
  104-05, 180; foreign staff of, 83,
  87, 89, 91; high room rates of, 80,
  111-12; inferiority of, before
  1890, 68-69; inspection system
  for, 182; listed with Tourist
  Information Bureau, 130;
  mismanagement of, 78-80;
  occupancy of (1920s), 145- 46;
  occupancy of (1950s), 161-62;
  oversupply of (1969-1973), 178,
  182-83; poor service at, 69, 72,


235


  83, 89-91; staffing problems of,
  82-83, 175; unstable demand for,
  74-75; U.S. management of, 83,
  87
Hotel construction: government
  incentives for, 120-21;
  government support for, 74-75,
  163; in 1890s, 59-62, 74-82; in
  1930s, 146-47; in 1940s, 163; in
  1950s, 161-62; in 1960s, 178,
  182-83; pioneered by banana
  industry, 37; as stimulus to labor
  market, 83
Hotel Incentives Act of 1968, 178
Hotel industry: establishment of, 46,
  48, 50; poor integration into
  economy of, 91-93; relaxed
  import duties for; 120, 123;
  renewed optimism about, after
  1904, 85-87; seasonality of, 52;
  training for service in, 176-77
Hotels Aid Law of 1944, 163
Hotels Law of 1904, 123
Hunter, John, 15-16
Hygiene, 14, 21-22. See also Disease

Imperial Direct Line, 50-51, 84-85,
   130
Import duties, 123, 126, 129, 146-
  47, 163
Imports, 7, 39, 54
In-Bond Merchants Association, 169
Insects, 13, 32-33
Integration. See Blacks; Race
  relations
Intercontinental Hotel Corporation,
   167
International Bank for
  Reconstruction and Development
  (World Bank), 164
International Tourism Year (1967),
   166
Italy, 145


Jamaica Association of Travel and
  Tour Agents (JATTA), 168
Jamaica Association of Villas and
  Apartments (JAVA), 168
Jamaica Hotel and Tourist
  Association (JHTA), 168, 180, 183,
  186







236


Index


Jamaica Hotels Aid Law (1936), 146-
  47
Jamaica Hotels Company, 75
Jamaica Hotels Law of 1890, 60-61,
  73-75, 78-81, 81-82, 86
Jamaica Hotels Law of 1904, 86, 146
Jamaica International Exhibition
  (1891), 55-67, 73, 78, 81, 113,
  120, 187
Jamaica Tourist Association, 81,
   124-31, 138-39
Jamaica Tourist Board, 140, 164,
   166-67, 174, 177, 180
Jamaican Assembly, 100
Jamaican Civil Service, 180
Jamaican Hotel School, 177
Jamaican Legislature, 101, 103-04
Jamaican Ministry of Trade and
   Industry, 164
JATTA. See Jamaica Association of
  Travel and Tour Agents
JAVA. See Jamaica Association of
  Villas and Apartments
Jelf, Arthur, 141
JHTA. See Jamaica Hotel and
  Tourist Association
Johnston, Harry, 108
Jones, Alfred, 50-52, 84-87, 130

Kindleberger, Mr., 39
King, David, 27, 29
Kingsley, Charles, 22
Kingston: air service to, 156; alleged
  moral deterioration of, 153;
  cultural poverty of, 114;
  earthquake in (1907), 87, 114; as
  headquarters for tourist industry
  board, 124, 165; hostility to
  tourists in, 169; hotel construction
  in (1890s), 60, 75; improvements
  urged for, 139; peasant market of,
  104-05; in plantation era, 73, 96;
  purification of water system of
  (1870s), 22; riots in (1912), 102; as
  site of Jamaica International.
  Exhibition (1891), 64, 66; souvenir
  vendors in, 118-19; taverns in, 69;
  unsanitary conditions in, 21-22, 80
  Kirngston Hotels Company, 75, 79
  KLM. See Royal Dutch Airlines

Land speculation, 175-76


Laveran, Charles Louis Alphonse, 24
Law 61 of 1954, 164
Leprosy, 24
Leslie, Mr., 14
Liguanea Waterworks, 22
Lindbergh, Charles, 154-55
Long, Edward, 18

Malaria, 14, 17, 24-26, 35
Mal rouge, 14
Malvern, 34
Mandeville, 124
Manley, Michael, 179-82, 184
Maroons, 108
Martinique, 114
Maunsell, S. E., 23
Meet the People program, 177
Merchants' Exchange, 122
Military, stationed in Jamaica, 15-17,
  22-24
Milk River, 34-35
Milner, Thomas, 100
Mineral springs, 31, 34-35, 61
Moneague Hotel, 75, 79, 86
Moneague Hotels Company, 75
Montego Bay: air service to, 156,
  159; alleged moral deterioration
  of, 153, 174-76; development of,
  82, 141, 145-46, 148-50, 174-76;
  hostility to tourism in, 169; tourist
  bureau in, 124
Montego Bay disturbances (1902),
  102
Montego Bay Hotel Association, 163
Montego Bay Liaison Committee,
  169
Morant Bay Rebellion (1865), 21,
  101-02
Mortality rate: from malaria, 24-26;
  among military personnel, 15-18,
  23-24; in plantation era, 4, 14-19,
  98
Mosquitoes, 17, 24-26, 34-35
Mountains: difficulty of building
  airports in, 159; healthful
  properties of climate of, 17, 20,
  27; as home for freedmen after
  Emancipation, 100; resort potential
  of, 61, 86, 140
Mrs. Watson's Hotel, 82
Myrtle Bank Hotel, 75, 78-80, 82,
  85, 87







Index


Nassau, 72-73, 112, 122
Negril, 187
Newcastle, 23, 31
North Coast, 159, 170, 172, 174
Nott, Joseph Clark, 24
Nudism, 187

Ocho Rios, 162
Oil industry, Caribbean, 157
Olivier, Sydney, 33, 39, 42

PAA. See Pan American World
  Airways
Palisadoes Peninsula, 157
Panama, 107
Panama Canal, 23, 35, 133
Pan American World Airways (PAA),
  156-58, 167
Papine, 23
Pares, Richard, 29
Park Lodge Hotel, 82
Passenger taxes, 142, 146, 163
Payne's Hotel, 82
People's National party (PNP), 179,
  182
Plague, 19
Plant, H. B., 4, 121
Plantation economy, 38-39, 42, 89-
  93, 102, 175. See also Sugar
  industry
Plantation society, 89-97, 111, 145.
  See also Great House era; Slavery
Plummer, Charles, 20
PNP. See People's National party
Port Antonio, 44, 46, 87, 124, 158
Portland Parish, 44, 109
Price, Ernest, 117
Pringle, Jack, 163
Property rights, 103-04
Prostitution, 152, 171-72, 188
Public health, 21-22. See also
  Disease; Fever; Hygiene;
  Sanitation; Sewage disposal;
  Vaccinations
Pullen-Burry, Bessie, 91

Quarantine laws, 22
Queen's Hotel, 75, 78, 79-80

Race relations: after Emancipation,
  93, 98-104; Manley's attempts to
  improve, 180-81; and U.S.


237


  African-American tourists, 181. See
  also Blacks; Emancipation; Racism;
  Slavery; Whites
Racism: and alleged inferiority of
  local hotel staff, 82-83, 89-93;
  denounced by Manley, 180-81;
  exacerbated by gains in blacks'
  political power after Emancipation,
  98-104; as factor in poor hotel
  service, 89-93; intensified by
  tourism, 36, 112; and stereotyped
  images of blacks, 174-75; toward
  blacks on steamships, 147-48;
  among U.S. visitors, resented by
  Jamaicans, 7-9, 36, 69, 110. See
  also Blacks; Emancipation; Race
  relations; Slavery; Whites
Ragatz, Lowell, 99
Railway, Jamaican, 6
Rape, as nonthreat, 115
Recreational facilities, for natives,
  181
Renny, Robert, 94, 98
Richmond, James, 63
Rio Cobre Hotel, 75, 78, 79
Roads, 40, 59, 96, 128
Ross, Donald, 25
Royal Dutch Airlines, 157-58
Royal Mail Line, 147
Royal Mail Steam Packet Company,
  137
Royal Mail Steamship Company, 51

St. Andrew Parish, 23, 75
St. Ann's Bay, 82
St. Catherine Hotels Company, 75
St. Catherine Parish, 13
St. Clair, A. C., 56
St. Thomas, 86, 89
St. Vincent, 64, 114
Sanitation, 14, 21-22. See also
  Hygiene; Public health; Sewage
  disposal
Santa Cruz Mountains, 86
Scurvy, 19, 26
Sewage disposal, 24
Sewell, William, 8-9, 39, 42, 133
Sharpe, T. H., 62
Sheraton Hotels, 167
Ship's fever, 18
Sikorsky, Igor, 154
Sikorsky Clippers, 157








                         Chapter 2


         The Deliverance from

                      Hellshire

     Insects are the curse of tropical climates. ... In a moment
     you are covered with ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your
     flesh.... Flies get entry into your mouth, into your eyes,
     into your nose; you eat flies, drink flies, and breathe flies.
     Lizards, cockroaches and snakes get into your bed; ants eat
     up the books; scorpions sting you on the foot. Everything
     bites, stings or bruises.... Such are the tropics!
                                            -Sydney Smith




     N T H E southwestern corner of the parish of St. Catherine
     in Jamaica stands a range of hills once called the Hellshire
     Hills because of their proximity to extensive malarial
     swamps. By the close of the nineteenth century, however,
these hills had acquired the new name of Healthshire Hills-a
change symbolic of the radical alteration that had transpired in
informed thinking about the climate of the island and its natural
environment in general.' Whereas Jamaica's erstwhile reputa-
tion had been as a graveyard for white folks, by 1900 it had
cultivated renown as a white man's sanatorium. In fact, one
promoter proudly boomed it abroad as "the new Riviera."2 In
the past the holiday history of the island had been in the reverse,
as it had been the fashion for residents to flee their so-called
fever-inducing environs and seek temporary refuge abroad in
cooler climes from time to time.3 By 1900, though, it had be-
come "the patriotic duty" of these same elites to wipe away the
attitude that Jamaica was nothing other than a final resting place
for any foreigner hapless enough to go there.4


13







238


Index


Slavery, 7, 38, 97-104
Smallpox, 19
Smith, E. Astley, 128, 130
Smith, Sydney, 32
Souvenir vendors, 118-19, 153
Special Weather Report Service, 127
Sports, 33
Standard Fruit Company, 148
Standard Steam Navigation
  Company, 43
Steamships: and advertising for
  Jamaican tourism, 130; and
  banana industry, 41-43, 48;
  discrimination against black
  passengers on, 147-48; improved
  health for travelers on, 26;
  increase in, after World War I,
  137; technological advances of, 5,
  26-27; water storage problems on,
  26
Stewart, Gordon, 186
Street lighting, 123
Stubbs, Henry, 141
Sugar industry, 30, 38-39, 42, 161
Sunbathing, 140-41

Taverns, 68-69, 82
Thomas Cook and Son, 131
Titchfield Hotel, 46, 50, 87, 89, 109
Toronto Exhibition (1912), 128
Tourism: and air travel, 156-59,
  162-63; alleged destructive impact
  on morals of, 152-53, 171-72,
  187-88; and banana trade, 37-38,
  46, 48, 50-51; and conquest of
  disease, 14, 21-24; designed to
  attract rich whites, 104; and
  development of steamship travel,
  5, 26, 43, 130, 137; and economic
  development, 30-31, 53-54, 58,
  61, 140, 154, 166; and exclusion of
  natives from hotels and beaches,
  148-52, 180-81, 188; as "export,"
  7-10; as form of "imperialism,"
  169; hostility toward, among
  natives, 69, 89-93, 109-10, 169,
  175; impact on retail prices of,
  154; and Jamaica International
  Exhibition (1891), 55-67, 73, 78,
  81, 113, 120, 187; and land
  speculation, 175-76; and licensing
  of tour guides, 118-19; and long-


  stay visitors, 160-61, 168; under
  Manley administration, 176-82;
  monopolistic practices of, 166-67;
  in 1900s, 109-11; in 1920s, 140,
  143-45; in 1940s, 165; in 1950s,
  159-62, 165; in 1960s, 166, 168;
  in 1970s, 182-84; in 1980s, 185;
  organization of, as industry, 163-
  70; origins in Port Antonio of, 44,
  46; passenger taxes on, 142, 146,
  163; and planters' reputation for
  hospitality, 94-97, 99, 111; as
  product of industrial revolution,
  4-6; and racism, 102-05, 148-52;
  regional approach to, 165; seasonal
  fluctuations of, 52, 128, 154, 162;
  and service skills taught in schools,
  176-77; and sport, 33; summer
  promotion of, 131, 133, 158, 162.
  See also Advertising, for tourism
Tourist Information Bureau, 130
Tourist Trade Development Board,
  139, 142, 155, 163
Trans Canada Airlines, 158
Trans World Airlines (TWA), 167
Travel and Vacation Exhibition
  (1912), 128
Treves, Frederic, 22
Trinidad, 160
Trippe, Juan Terry, 167
Trollope, Anthony, 68, 90, 93
TWA. See Trans World Airlines
Typhoid, 14

U-Drive Operators Association, 168
United Airlines, 167
United Fruit Company: and
  advertising for Jamaican tourism,
  131; foundation of, 43; monopoly
  of, 43, 51-52, 84-85, 87, 89, 137,
  147, 148; and Titchfield Hotel, 87,
  89
United Nations, 166
United States: African-American
  visitors from, 181; air travel from,
  155; citizens of, living in Jamaica,
  109; crude manners of visitors
  from, 108-10, 152; economic
  hegemony in Caribbean of, 6-7, 9,
  84-87, 89, 103-04; hotel staff
  imported from, 83, 87, 89; lynch
  laws of, 115; as main source of







Index


  tourists, 52-53, 55-56, 83, 85-87,
  130, 138-39, 143, 155; as major
  market for banana exports, 39-40,
  43; racism among visitors from, 7-
  9, 36, 106, 109, 115; rival tourist
  areas of, 138, 183; as target of
  advertising, 121; tourists from
  (1960s-1970s), 175, 183
Up Park Camp, 23
Vaccinations, 22
Vernon, Edward, 16
Virgin Islands, 186
Walters, Rose Ann, 119
Ward, Colonel, 79
Washington, George, 29
Waterloo Hotel, 82
Water: contamination of, 14-15, 18,
  22, 34-35, 44; in Kingston, 22; at
  mineral springs, 31, 34-35, 61; in


239


  Port Antonio, 44; purification of,
  22, 26, 123; on shipboard, and
  disease, 26
Western International Hotels, 167
West India Improvement Company,
  6
Whites: belief in racial supremacy of,
  99-104; declining population of,
  98-99, 102-05; impact of
  plantation culture on, 94-102;
  subject to disease, 98-99, 103
White Sands Beach, 148-52
White Star Line, 137
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 108
Wilson, C. A., 7
World Bank, 164
World War I, 137-38

Yaws, 14
Yellow fever, 14, 18, 22-24, 33, 61









Pitt Latin American Series
JAMES M. MALLOY, Editor




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Argentina Between the Great Powers, 1936-1946
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Joseph Smith

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Louis A. Pgrez, Jr.

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The Expulsion of Mexico's Spaniards, 1821-1836
Harold Dana Sims
The Mexican Republic: The First Decade, 1823-1832
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Mexico Through Russian Eyes, 1806-1940
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Oil and Mexican Foreign Policy
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Voices, Visions, and a New Reality: Mexican Fiction Since 1970
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Peter Blanchard
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The Last Cacique: Leadership and Politics in a Puerto Rican City
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A Revolution Aborted: The Lessons of Grenada
Jorge Heine, Editor
To Hell with Paradise: A History of the Jamaican Tourist
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Frank Fonda Taylor
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         (continued from front flap)

people of color. "To Hell with Paradise"
illustrates the problems of founding a
tourist industry for a European or U.S.
clientele in a society where the mass of
the population is poor, black, and with a
historical experience of slavery and colo-
nialism. By the 1990s, tourism had
become the lifeblood of the Jamaican
economy, but at enormous social cost:
enclaves of privilege and ostentation that
exclude the bulk of the local population,
drug trafficking and prostitution, soaring
prices, and environmental degradation.
No wonder some Jamaicans regard
tourism as a new kind of sugar.
  Taylor explores timely issues that have
not been previously addressed. Along the
way, he offers a series of valuable micro
histories of the Jamaican planter class,
the origins of agricultural dependency
(on bananas), the growth of shipping and
communications links, the process of race
relations, and the linking of infrastructur-
al development to tourism. The text is
illustrated with period photographs of
steamships and Jamaican tourist hotels.

FRANK FONDA TAYLOR is Director
of Black Studies at Boston College.


Jacket design by Gary Gore


--   -         4    4' '






14


To Hel with Paradibe


  In spite of its scenic charm, Jamaica indeed was once among
the most insalubrious spots under the sun. Such actually was
the death toll of whites in the colony at one point that Leslie,
writing in 1740, observed that numerical estimates purported
that the entire white populace perished once every seven years.
"No doubt the multitude that dies would soon leave this place a
Desart," he bewailed, "did not daily Recruits come over from
Great Britain."5 Everywhere in the Antilles, a shortened life
expectancy was the norm up to the late nineteenth century.
Though the archipelago as a whole could lay claim to being the
sugar bowl of the world, it also endured infamy as "the cradle
of fevers" and was little else besides "a demographic disaster
area."6 "Everyone seemed caught up in a race between quick
wealth and quick death." Dunn remarked, "The spectre of death
helps to explain the frenetic tempo and mirage-like quality of
West Indian life-gorgeously opulent today, gone tomorrow."7
  Each new arrival had to run a virtual gauntlet of fever, by dint
of which he who survived was considered seasoned or accli-
matized. Epidemic was endemic. Besides malaria, yellow fever,
and other strains of distemper, the familiar disorders included
dropsy, dysentery, leprosy, mal rouge, cholera, typhoid, and
yaws. Despite this state of affairs, little was undertaken in the
field of hygiene to fortify the health defenses of the colonists.8
Contaminated drinking water was common. As for sanitation,
there was an almost complete disregard for the fundamentals.
The roads in each island port were littered with refuse. No
regulations existed to enforce the safe disposal of sewage. Under
cover of darkness the contents of chamber pots were simply
strewn in the streets.9 Decaying animal carcasses cluttered the
ditches and lay strewn along the principal highways. Were it not
for scavengers like the vulture, the pig, and the pariah dog, West
Indian towns would in those times have been hardly habitable. 10
A decided lifesaver was the sunshine, which is so powerful a
bactericide that (to paraphrase a later governor of Jamaica) its
purifying efficiency controlled what would otherwise have been
an even more stupendous death toll.'1





Supplement to We Nfrican Warld


* T0U'IV0 . F
,I,ND PLEA'SU


a-


-reat natural beauty,
ed by the medical
riding and driing
I and fishing.
D- M V RTLE DA"


                                         -0
                      P.S "* I 'F';l R &  C'A 0
          Elder, Demp.ter &i? Co. adertisement, 1907.

University of Pittsburgh Press
P I T T S B U R G H , P A.    1 5 2 6 0


ISBN 0-8229-3754-9


AXM9, 19M,






The Delverance from Hellbshire


15


   High as the mortality was among civilians, it was even higher
among military troops. In their lodgings, men garrisoned in the
region were "huddled together as an intelligent farmer would
never crowd his pigs."'2 Atop the roofs of their dwellings were
tanks that stored drinking water throughout the long dry season
for continued consumption even after it had become foul. Open
cesspits were also in service on these premises and were seldom
cleaned or emptied. Rancid bread, rotten meat, a scant supply of
vegetables, and a surfeit of rum formed their daily diet. All in
all, conditions in camp did not befit human habitation. But when
soldiers fell ill, as was inevitable, the hospital provided no health
haven; it was just marginally better than the barracks. 13 In the
circumstances, the high average death rate among the troops-
121.3 per thousand between 1817 and 1836, for example-is
not surprising. 4
  The fevers were inescapable. Everyone had an encounter with
them, and none more than the newcomers. In their case the very
first fever contracted was commonly called acclimatization fever.
It was among these novitiates that the mortality was highest, as
the statistics attest.'5 John Hunter, an eighteenth-century medi-
cal practitioner who studied the diseases of the army in Jamaica,
writes that the Eighty-eighth Regiment, for instance, lost about
one-third of its men during its first year in the colony (1780) and
nearly one-fifth in the second. The regiment remained for four
months on the island after the end of the second year, till it was
drafted, and in that time one-eleventh of the men were lost to
disease. Altogether, within two years and four months about 44
percent of the regiment's complement had died.'6 The lot of-
the Eighty-fifth Regiment was worse: 42 percent of the men
died-in 1780, their first year in the colony. Within the next
eleven months rather more than 7 percent passed away. The
Ninety-third Regiment landed with a great number of its troops
sick after the long and exhausting voyage. Within six months
of their disembarkation over 50 percent died, and of the re-
mainder only 71 soldiers were fit for service. The Ninety-fourth
Regiment was also very sickly on board the transports, and some






16


To Hell with Paradiie


of the men even died during the voyage. They landed 531 men,
but by the end of the first year over 50 percent were dead. In the
second year 14 percent of the remainder died. At the end of two
years and four months only 14 percent altogether were fit for
service.17 One factor behind this tale of woe was thought to be
"the great and sudden heat, which renders the body feeble and
languid." Hunter believed, however, with regard to these ill-
nesses, "it is chiefly to be ascribed to this circumstance, that the
human frame acquires by habit a power of resisting noxious
causes. ... Hence Europeans, after remaining some time in the
West Indies, are less liable to be affected by the causes of fevers
than on their first arrival." 8
  It was this degree of mortality among the military that ce-
mented on these territories their reputation as graveyards for
Europeans.'9 Fever was an invisible assailant that lay in wait for
prey among Caribbean combatants, influencing the outcome of
the military missions in the region. For instance, in 1741 the
British government ordered Admiral Edward Vernon to take
Cartagena, the Spanish stronghold on the Main. On that expedi-
tion some 13,000 troops were dispatched but of this number
8,431 men expired from fever, thus causing the assignment to
be abandoned.20 Even the successful accomplishment of a mis-
sion was little cause for celebration, as the real challenge con-
fronting troops was not in the might of their antagonists but in
the seemingly invincible fevers and fluxes. The story is told that,
in the course of the American War of Independence, 5,000 of
the bravest troops in the world took possession of the island of
St. Lucia. In their clashes with adversaries the losses in killed and
wounded were small, yet at the end of a year hardly a man was
alive from that original number.21 One soldier expressed great
joy, in a letter from Cuba dated October 1762, that with the
grace of providence he was still alive.
I think myself extremely happy in being among the number of the
living, considering the deplorable condition we are now in. You will
hardly believe me, when I tell you, that I have only 33 men of my
company now alive, out of 100 when I landed. Our regiment has lost 8






The Deliverance from Hellbbshire


17


officers, and 500 men. They mostly died of the fluxes and intermitting
fevers, the general diseases here. The other regiments have lost in
proportion. We are now very sickly, as you may imagine, when out of 17
batallions here, we cannot muster 600 men for duty. The appearance of
this country is most beautiful, and its natural advantages are many; yet
a man's life is extremely uncertain, as many are in health one morning,
and dead before the next.22

  High as the mortality rate was in these islands, it was felt there
was very little that could be done to reduce it. The popular
conception was that the fevers were the necessary evil of tropical
countries. In these regions the warm, wet climate gives rise to
extensive, luxuriant vegetation, and there is always a consider-
able amount of fermenting organic matter. The thinking of the
time held that the fever was generated by a certain malignity in
the tropical atmosphere.23 The very designation malaria, or bad
air, attests to the old assumed association between the fever and
the atmosphere. The disease was not considered contagious in
the ordinary use of the term; that is to say, it was not believed to
be transmitted from person to person by contact. Contraction
was presumed to be through inhalation of foul emanations from
the earth, water, or air in the victim's vicinity. In the tropics the
white man thus considered his health menaced by miasmas and
was unaware that the mosquito is the real pathogenic vector.
  Given this nightmare theory about envelopes of bad air or mi-
asmata, the logical prescription for the restoration of health to
the afflicted lay clearly in their removal from the fever-inducing
environs. Dr. George Bone, for instance, was not unique in ad-
vising that "it is the removal from foul air, whether stagnant or
rushing with great force, which prevents yellow fever."24 Trans-
fer of the troops to the surrounding mountains was accordingly
recommended in Jamaica. The hills, it was felt, were healthier
due to an absence there of heat and water in the right combina-
tion necessary for generating noxious exhalations.25 In the hills,
too, when rain fell it tended to run off through gullies and
valleys toward the foothills, washing away any decayed vegetable
and animal matter and thus purifying the atmosphere. On the















PITT LATIN AMERICAN SERIES





18


To Hell with Paradise


plains, by contrast, everything was foul. Rainwater collected
there and formed stagnant pools; rivers became slow, sluggish,
and sometimes even stationary; above all, it was there that the
marshes were located. It was believed that placing troops in
the hills would elevate them beyond the perpendicular range of
the lowland miasma.
  If the hills seemed a more salubrious site for the military, they
were no less so for the plantocracy. The settler-planter-historian
Edward Long was quite emphatic on that score. At his insistence,
gentlemen who could afford a horse or carriage would be well
advised to erect residences in the hills, whereto they could retire
at nightfall when their business in the lowlands was done.
"Throughout this island, wherever we turn our eyes, it appears
crowded with hills and rising grounds ventilated always with a
free and salubrious air, that we cannot but condemn those per-
sons who choose low, damp, and sultry hollows, for their con-
stant residence; and who often suffer from the ill effects caused
by such situations, without discerning the real source of their
bad health."26
  On sea as on land fever stalked man, since it was just as prone
to be propagated there as ashore. So habitual was the distemper
aboard every ship, warship or merchantman, that yellow fever
under one of its many aliases was called "ships' fever" and the
tropical latitudes as a whole "the yellow fever zone."27 Ships'
fever took the lives of some 11 percent of the troopers who
embarked for the West Indies between October 1776 and Feb-
ruary 1780. According to the findings of one modern study, of
the 8,437 men who composed the twelve regiments dispatched
to the West Indies during that period, 931 persons perished in
passage.28 The learned Edward Long suggested that such tran-
sit losses were perhaps owing to "noxious exhalations, raised
during long continued calms, when the water, not being agitated
as usual by the trade winds is subject to become corrupt near the
surface, where it is less charged with salt, to preserve it from
stinking."29 Fever nonetheless was only the most frequent com-






               The Deliverance from Hellbhire              19

 plaint at sea. Another affliction that spread rapidly was the
 plague, given the high density of rats aboard seagoing vessels.
 Scurvy was also common-the scourge of the mercantile marine
 and navy.
   Whereas the distemper on land was considered the result of
 natural forces, the consensus among the medical faculty was that
 at sea it was due in the main to artificial causes. In his Inaugu-
 ral Dissertation on Yellow Fever of 1846 Dr. Bone, for example,
 pointed out that due to technological defects there was a ten-
 dency for miasmas to be mechanically generated upon ships in
 the tropics. In these regions, he explained, the small steamers
 became hot ovens, not scientifically ventilated. In consequence,
 as bilge water and the oozing from the boilers collected with the
 filth, sulphur, slush, and tar in the hold, it gave rise to "a poi-
 sonous and suffocating air."30
   For those on land the removal from foul air was prescribed;
for seafarers the remedy was to remove the foul air itself. No
substantial difference of principle marked these two prescrip-
tions. Rather, "the same principle applies to a foul ship; the crew
should be removed from herto a healthy situation, and the vessel
should be thoroughly cleaned."31 Learned works were therefore
produced in which the types of cargo most likely to stimulate a
deadly miasma were specified. It was not uncommon either for
entire cargoes on an infected ship to be dumped into the deep or
for freighters on which there had been frequent outbreaks of
fever to be scuttled and sunk.32
  Civilians had come to the Caribbean before the late nine-
teenth century in quest of El Dorado, not Elysium. Each year the
fevers claimed numerous lives; many of those intrepid enough
to set sail for these parts perished in passage. High as the death
toll was from fever, it was augmented by random epidemics like
smallpox or cholera. In Jamaica alone, as late as 1851, an epi-
demic of cholera claimed the lives of possibly 30,000 on the
island.33 And yet, despite this situation, a view in contrast to the
traditional belief that the island was just a graveyard for Euro-






20                  To Hell wit Paradbe

peans had begun to manifest itself beginning in the mid nine-
teenth century. Robert Baird remarked, for example, on his
return to England from Jamaica and the West Indies:
I have, since my return from the voyage of which these volumes contain
a brief record, observed a growing tendency in the public mind in this
country to regard Jamaica as a place of sanitary resort and as likely, if
not to supersede, at least greatly to interfere with the island of Madeira
in that respect, and certainly truth compels me to admit that there are
few places to which an invalid from Europe could go with better hope
of benefit than to the salubrious island of Jamaica.34

   The attempt made in the second part of the nineteenth cen-
tury to promote Jamaica as a health spa was, in the circum-
stances, a revolutionary departure, as it sought to overthrow the
old conception of the colony's climate and replace it with a radi-
cally different orthodoxy. Charles Plummer's Concise Cathechism
of 1862 enshrined the doctrine of this new creed. According to
this early apostle of tourism, the island's climate was "generally
healthy," its atmosphere invigorating rather than fever induc-
ing, and if the malarial lowlands were avoided, a sojourn in the
hills of Jamaica would provide relief and cure for sundry ail-
ments. From then on, this depiction of Jamaica as Healthshire
was to become the creed of a growing band of converts. In fact,
in the long run it was to dispel the old view of the island as
Hellshire:
   Q. Is Jamaica unhealthy on account of its Heat?
   A. Certainly not.
   Q. What then occasions unhealthiness in the Island?
   A. The miasma which is generated in low-lying, swampy and marshy
      districts, from decayed animal and vegetable matter in a state of
      decomposition.
   Q. Is Jamaica generally healthy?
   A. It is; and in some particular localities such as the Santa Cruz
      Mountain districts, the climate is said to be the healthiest in the
      world. The Northside is generally healthier than the Southside.
   Q. Is the climate of Jamaica efficacious to the sufferer from certain
      diseases?






The Deliverance from   Helibsire


21


  A. Yes: and Jamaica offers a welcome home to persons in whom, from
     hereditary or other causes, there exists a tendency to scrofulous
     disease or pulmonary consumption. To the sufferer from rheu-
     matism and gout the prospects of relief are most cheering.35
  While historically there had always been some criticism of the
state of public health in Jamaica, this in general had been to little
avail. The island's assembly government regarded issues of pub-
lic health to be a private rather than a public sector matter.
Throughout the urban areas, for instance, mountains of refuse
accumulated in the yards of householders and yet were subject
to removal only at the option of these individuals and at their
personal expense. Such cost considerations must have conduced
to these premises remaining as health menaces.36 Public facili-
ties for disposal of the dead were woefully wanting. In Kings-
ton, for example, a major health hazard was the overcrowding
of city graveyards; from want of space, bodies were piled
one upon the other, to the extent that sometimes many corpses
rested too near the surface.37 It was only in the years after
the Morant Bay Rebellion (1865) and the constitutional change
that ensued from government by local assembly to direct crown
rule, that substantive efforts were made to address these prob-
lems. Beginning with the administration of Sir John Peter Grant
metamorphosis occurred. First governor under the new con-
stitution, Grant in 1868 founded the public medical service
on the island and launched a new era in the colony's health
history.38
  First off (though until almost the last decade of the nineteenth
century the miasmatic or telluric theory continued to hold sway)
the new government launched a crusade against garbage and
filth-albeit with the wrong premise of presumed health gains
through reduction of stench. A sanitation revolution, ushered in
by Grant, occurred in Jamaica from about 1870 onward. The
showpiece of achievement was the city of Kingston, long the
dirtiest and most malodorous town on the island. By the early
1870s Kingston was engaged in a massive cleanup campaign and
in institutionalizing mechanisms for sustaining the momentum






22


To Hell with Paradie


that had been initiated.39 Besides tackling the garbage problem
and the clearance of drains, another forward step for Kingston
was the conversion of the May Pen Estate into a cemetery (1874).
The other burial grounds were closed, and the traditional prac-
tice of intramural internments was terminated.
  From its inception the watchword of the new era in Jamaican
health was prevention. Early efforts were made to establish gen-
eral vaccinations among the population and institute and en-
force more effective quarantine laws.40 City officials founded
a potable water system and addressed the disposal of human
waste. Historically, Jamaicans drew water from rivers and wells,
most of which were probably saturated with decayed excreta. In
1871, however, the Kingston and Liguanea Waterworks were
purchased by the government, remodeled, and outfitted to pro-
vide filtered water of fairly good standard. By the end of the
century nine other parishes had also come into possession of
waterworks, while Kingstonians received an additional supply of
piped water from the Constant Spring reservoir. By 1895 King-
ston was equipped with a street sewage system, and the task of
linkage with private residences had begun.4'
  Summing up the practical significance of these developments,
Rupert Boyce in his 1910 publication Health Progress and Adminis-
tration in the West Indies noted that it was thanks to them that
cholera and dysentery had been arrested and yellow fever cur-
tailed. The result was that, though the normal death rate itself
did not appear to fall below a figure of 23-24 per 1,000, it
nonetheless did not rise much above that, as was so common-
place previously when killer diseases had rampaged.42 The
Antilles began to undergo the transition to a region of healthy
tropical resorts so alluringly depicted by Charles Kingsley, Sir
Frederic Treves, and others.
  In the ranks of the military, as among the civilian population,
there were striking improvements in health prospects.43 By
the first quarter of the nineteenth century the West Indies had
ceased to be the war theater and the darlings of empire they had
once been.44 Throughout the nineteenth century there were





              The Deliverance from Hellbhire              23

continuous reductions in the numbers of troops stationed in
Jamaica. This initially occasioned some improvement in the
health of the army, since overcrowding, for example, ceased to
pose a problem. Equally significant, the reductions in strength
led to the abandonment of the more unhealthy military stations
in the vicinity of swamps. But despite that initially promising
outlook, things continued to stagnate up to the last third of
the nineteenth century. Effective measures to promote health
among the troops were not in fact set in motion until around the
same time as those among the civilian population.
  Under the supposition that yellow fever was unknown at a
height of 2,500 feet above sea level, in 1841 the white troops had
been moved to Newcastle, a newly constructed barrack on the
hills of the parish of St. Andrew. The troops relocated to this site
trusted blindly in the theory of elevation limit, as though that
in itself could guarantee protection against tropical ailments.
"The distinction had not been clearly made between Malaria, i.e.
'Marsh Miasm' . . . and 'Civic Miasm'-the Miasm of people,
their habitations and surroundings," Maunsell contended.45 In
their ignorance the troops took with them to Newcastle primitive
standards of hygiene and sanitation. Around their quarters un-
wholesome cesspits abounded, into which liquid and solid excre-
ment were ejected. There were few arrangements for removal
of surface refuse, and the system of drainage was most deficient.
But it was not until 1868 that redress began, despite the ruling
of a royal commission a decade earlier that the duties of army
medical staff included not simply curative but preventive mea-
sures as well.
  The commission urged the periodic inspection of hygenic
conditions in camp, but in Newcastle no concrete steps were
taken until 1867, when a further outbreak of fever (this time at
Cuzco, 11,000 feet high in the Andes) finally shattered the myth
of the elevation limit. In 1869 the dry earth system of conser-
vancy was established at both Up Park Camp and Newcastle.46
In 1874 a "camp of isolation" was erected at Papine, where
infected troops could be placed under quarantine. Improved






24


To Hell with Paradie


nutritional standards, provision of better barrack room accom-
modation, and attention to the physical and psychological needs
of the men all contributed to a drastic diminution in the death
rate among troops. From an average of 121.3 per thousand
between 1817 and 1836, mortality declined to an average of
11.36 per thousand between 1880 and 1889. These statistics in-
dicate the deaths from all causes, but in the first period the
deaths attributed to fever were 101.9 per thousand, and in the
last a mere 4.3 per thousand.47
  Although people remained unaware of the real causes of the
fevers, the second half of the nineteenth century saw a remark-
able (though slow) advance in scientific knowledge regarding the
etiology of these diseases.48 In 1848, for the first time, Joseph
Clark Nott of Alabama forwarded the hypothesis that the mos-
quito was in some way connected with the transmission of fever.
Nott was ignorant about exactly how the insect transmitted
fever, however. The French scientist Louis Daniel Beauperthy
was another early proponent of the view that the mosquito is in
fact the vector of malaria.49 Beauperthy, though suspecting the
means of transmission, mistakenly believed that the poison was
extracted from extraneous decomposing substances, and like
Nott, the thought that humans themselves might be the source
of infection did not occur to him. No further progress was to be
made for a generation.
  The first genuine breakthrough in human knowledge regard-
ing the etiology of fevers was made by Charles Louis Alphonse
Laveran. In 1881, Dr. Laveran, while serving with French troops
in Algeria, discovered a tiny protoplasmic body in human blood,
which having attacked the red cells became larger, acquired a
black pigment, and underwent certain changes that bore a re-
markable similarity to the various stages in an attack of malarial
fever.50 Subsequent inquiry following on Laveran's disclosure
revealed that this parasite could be transmitted from person to
person through injections of blood. But while Carlos Finlay of
Cuba (like Beauperthy previously) contended that it is the mos-
quito that is the vector of this parasite, Finlay was regarded as a






The Deliverance from Helbbire


25


mere theorizer, if not a crank. Belief in the old miasmatic con-
ception persisted-many held to the view that the protozoal
organism was bred in swamps, that it was capable of aerial trans-
mission, and that it entered the human body through inhalation.
It was left to Professor Ronald Ross in 1895 to conclusively dem-
onstrate that it is a special type of mosquito, a member of the
subgroup anophelinae, that is the sole vector of the parasite that
causes malaria.51
  The sequel to this advance was an unprecedented spate of
investigations into the possible role of the mosquito in sundry
other tropical ailments. Following Ross's findings it was proven,
for instance, that Filaria (a blood worm said to be the cause of
elephantiasis) entered the human body via the proboscis of the
culex mosquito. But of special significance was the breakthrough
in the etiology of yellow fever (1900) by a team of U.S. scientists
working in Cuba. The stegomyia (Aedes) mosquitoes were at last
discovered to carry that disease, and thereafter measures were
assiduously employed to exterminate the species. As a result of
this growth in knowledge, humanity acquired a greater power
over the tropical environments of the world and, indeed, in a
number of these places virtually erased yellow fever and ma-
laria. The locus classicus of achievement in this regard is per-
haps the instance of the Panama Canal Zone, where in the 1880s
several thousand men died of malaria and yellow fever during
the abortive De Lesseps endeavor to construct a transisthmian
canal. Yet, thirty years later the construction of modern hotels
had begun, Panama suddenly having been transformed into a
tourists' asylum.52
  The Panama Star and Herald tells the story as it had unfolded
by the winter months of 1911-1912:
We think it is safe to refer to the tourist incursion now as a rush. Five
years ago they came in twos and threes; three years ago they mounted
to scores; within the past two years they came in hundreds. Although
the city of Panama has made no bid for visitors, the name Panama has
been advertised abroad probably more than any other. The canal con-
struction and the extraordinary progress in sanitation and hygiene






26


To Hell with Paradibe


accomplished on the Isthmus have been instrumental in awakening
interest in the place and an increasing stream of visitors is the natural
result.53
This occupation of Panama by throngs of tourists just before the
First World War was made possible only by advances in the
theory and practice of tropical medicine and by the offensives
these permitted against diseases throughout the Caribbean
Basin. Thanks in particular to the advent of piped water supply
systems, the population no longer needed to use barrels, drums,
and other open containers, favored breeding grounds of the
yellow fever transmitter stegomyia.
  While on land the development of piped water supplies had
dealt a deathblow to the Aedes aegypti mosquito, at sea this
scourge was suppressed through advances in nautical tech-
nology.54 In the old days, before the invention of the steam
condensing plant, the custom had been to carry fresh water in
casks that were often leaky and frequently contained stegomyia
larvae, which developed during the voyage into the winged crea-
ture. All that was necessary for an outbreak of yellow fever on
board was for an infected laborer or someone else from shore to
come aboard, or alternatively for some member of the ship's
crew to contract the disease while on shore leave. By feeding on
the blood of the infected individual, every mosquito on the ship
would soon become infected, and within a short time most of the
crew would be down with the fever. Development of the steam
condensing plant, however, eliminated the need for water stor-
age on board ship and thus reduced the likelihood of outbreaks
of fever at sea.55
  In voyages to the Caribbean islands so considerable a decline
occurred in the incidence of maritime illness in the late nine-
teenth cetury that transoceanic travel was transformed from a
hazardous affair into something even glamorous. With the re-
duction of the length of ocean voyages through the growth of
steamshipping, scurvy, for example, ceased to be a problem.56
By 1880 the wooden schooners plying to Caribbean shores in-
creasingly began to be displaced by steam vessels of iron and






The Deliverance from Hellsbire


27


steel. Lighter, stouter, secure against leaks in the keel, and less
liable to becoming infested with insects, the iron or steel ship was
in every way a more healthy unit.57 Compared to wooden ves-
sels, which were limited in length to about three hundred feet,
steel permitted almost any length of keel. Sturdier, safer, and
swifter ships meant that travel by sea was comfortable and plea-
surable for the weak and the strong, the old and the young. For
the first time, the voyage to the Caribbean assumed a therapeu-
tic dimension, and passenger cruise tours to the region began.58
  At the onset of Jamaican tourist traffic it was the cool, brac-
ing air of the mountains, rather than the island's white sand
beaches, that was advertised abroad as the key attraction for the
visitor. In part this was the logical extension of the practice of all
sane people up to the turn of the twentieth century to avoid the
noxious miasmas of the coastal areas. It was also due to the belief
that Jamaica's mountain regions promoted health, especially for
sufferers of a variety of ailments. Earlier in the nineteenth cen-
tury the hills had merely been considered healthier than the
plains; by the close of that era, they were purported to be
healthful in themselves.
  Among the earliest to eulogize Jamaica as a health spa were an
English visitor, the Reverend David King, and a former assembly-
man for the parish of Portland, William Anderson.59 It was
inconceivable at the time of emancipation that any sane person
could have considered Jamaica a health spa. According to one
itinerant around that time: "I have heard it [Jamaica] recom-
mended as a resort for invalids, but, on the contrary almost
everyone, in general terms, pronounces it unhealthy."6  By
1850, however, an apparent volte-face had begun. People like
Anderson, seized with a sudden appreciation of the physical
attributes of the island, were prepared to recommend it to
Americans, for example, as a place close to home with a "genial
climate" where they could sojourn during the winter months.
Jamaica, Anderson felt, was the perfect retreat to which the
mainland could send invalids for asylum in the winter: "Its prox-
imity must be of peculiar interest to that class in the United




















































This advertisement by Elder, Dempster and Company shows how Jamaica had
changed by the end of the nineteenth century from a white man's graveyard to
a health resort. Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.





              The Deliverance from Helbbshire              29

States whose constitutions are unable to endure a severe winter
climate. Pulmonary patients who go sufficiently early to Jamaica,
almost invariably obtain relief and restoration to perfect health
and ability for every kind of exertion."61
  Anderson was following in the path of Reverend David King,
who a year earlier, having passed the winter in Jamaica, had
written in more or less the same vein. In his publication King
condemned both the classification of the colony among the un-
healthy regions of the earth as well as the exaction by insurance
companies of a large premium from any client who visited it.62
The impression abroad that Jamaica was a white man's grave
was in King's view a gross distortion. As to what he had wit-
nessed there himself or had learned from conversations with
physicians, many diseases fatal in Britain were unknown in the
island or found only in modified and gentle forms. If mor-
tality due to fevers was high, King contended, it was driven up
through imprudence, fast living, and intemperance. In any case,
the fevers followed a seasonal pattern, and the winter months in
the northern hemisphere coincided with the healthiest time of
year in Jamaica. In all, "I could not learn of an instance where an
invalid or any of his friends coming to Jamaica to spend a single
winter there had died of fever."63
  The historical paradox is that, in spite of the traditional con-
sensus of opinion about the unhealthiness of the islands, as far
back as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there had actu-
ally been some measure of tourism to these parts. In his Yankees
and Creoles, Richard Pares says that, in the eighteenth century,
the sickly of North America and the sickly of the West Indian
colonies of Great Britain had visited each other's homes in
search of relief. For instance, Barbados had sent to Philadelphia
its hard drinkers, with their "carbuncled faces, slender legs and
thighs and large, prominent bellies," and young Major George
Washington had accompanied his sick brother in 1751-1752 to
that island.64 By 1740 the Bahamas enjoyed a rather premature
reputation as a health resort for invalids from the mainland. In
North America, where the ailing sometimes found the winter





30


To Hel with Paradie


months debilitating, the Bahamas seemed a sort of sanctuary.65
Neither the magnitude nor regularity of this early tourist traf-
fic was enough, however, to institutionalize it as an industry at
that period of Antillean history. If there was any prerequisite
for the conversion of that fortuitious trickle of visitors into a
sustained torrent, it was the transformation of the epidemiologi-
cal environment.
  But while it was one necessary factor in the institutionaliza-
tion of tourism in Jamaica, epidemiological change alone was
not sufficient. Tourism develops as an industry only when
there is a strong economic incentive to do so, as the history of
Barbados discloses. Tourism there, as in Jamaica, was first or-
ganized in any economically meaningful way only as a conse-
quence of the changing local economic conditions in the last
half of the nineteenth century. When sugar from Barbados lost
its preferential treatment on the British market in the middle
to late nineteenth century (ostensibly because the sugar islands
could no longer compete with cheaper and higher quality pro-
ducers elsewhere), the Barbadian product experienced a pre-
cipitous decline in value. As sugar earnings fell, estate land
went down in appraisal, and several properties were trans-
ferred to Chancery or otherwise went out of business. Given
the epidemiological transition and the economic decline, it is
little wonder that some planters and merchants soon seized
upon tourism as a logical alternative (or supplement) to sugar.
Thenceforth, the long-standing reputation for hospitality that
the island had acquired since the midseventeenth century was
renovated and converted into something that the elite could
cash in on.66
  Well before Barbados, Jamaica had taken the lead as the scene
of pioneering efforts by private individuals to peddle the island
abroad as a rendezvous for vacationers To understand how it
was possible for this development to predate any substantial
change in the island's health situation, it is instructive to look at
the objectives of those early protagonists of tourism, focusing in
particular on Anderson's 1851 pamphlet entitledJamaica and the






              The Deliverance from Helbhire               31

Americans. Anderson's real intent in writing was to attract men
and money from the United States to aid in the postemancipa-
tion reconstruction of the economy of the island. To attract
these factors of production, not only promises of high invest-
ment returns were necessary but also assurances regarding the
entrepreneurs' health and physical well-being-hence Ander-
son's transparent emphasis on Jamaica's "genial climate." One
recurrent rationale for promoting tourism lay in the expecta-
tions expressed by Anderson, and others like him, that tourism
might serve as an indirect developmental mechanism pumping
fresh capital into the island and perhaps infusing it with fresh
supplies of white blood. Basic to the encyclical of these acolytes
of tourism was the view that the visitor, exposed firsthand to the
colony's potential, might be induced not only to invest but per-
haps to settle there.67
  Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century a new
propaganda about Jamaica as tropical spa was spread abroad for
the first time, in the hopes of attracting a stream of visitors (and
potential investors) to the island. The sick in the North Atlantic
population were urged to pursue their prospects of recovery in
Jamaica's highlands. There one would find dry mountain re-
treats pleasing in panorama and invigorating in atmosphere,
ideal for the hypochondriac and dyspeptic. Alternatively, there
were moist localities, such as Newcastle, suitable for the nervous
and for those who suffered from a parched and irritable con-
dition in the lungs.68 Jamaica felt it had a product to offer
unrivaled by any other spa. "The clear, rare atmosphere of
our higher elevations, I venture to affirm will do more for the
individual than Egypt, Mentone, Nice, or the Riviera for Euro-
peans, and California, Nassau, Bermuda, or Florida for the
American."69
   It was not the salt waters of the Caribbean Sea that were first
extolled in the infant days of the Jamaica tourist industry but the
flow from the island's springs-chalybeate waters for the feeble
and mineral baths for persons afflicted with gout or rheu-
matism. Abroad, the winter months meant for invalids "confine-






32


To Hell with Paradibe


ment, imprisonment and death." With its perpetual summer
Jamaica offered a haven, boasting few days in the year when
some form of outdoor exercise cannot be taken. The winter
season was advertised as the best time to visit the island, because
the nightmare theory of the miasma had not yet been aban-
doned. The danger period for the fevers was commonly held to
be the rainy season, when numerous foul-smelling pools of stag-
nant water formed. The winter months in the northern hemi-
sphere coincide with the dry spell in the Caribbean, which was
perceptibly the healthiest time of year. Advocacy of the north-
ern winter as the season for tourists was thus in part a reflection
of the current thinking on matters relating to health in the
region.70
  To develop tourism there was, in addition to the epidemio-
logical hurdles, a host of entomological obstacles to grapple
with. In the popular stereotype, the tropics were home to
myriad winged or crawling insects, loathsome if not noxious and
inclined to bite, bruise, or sting their human victims. "Every
second of your existence you are wounded by some piece of
animal life that nobody has ever seen before," Sydney Smith
mused. These insects swarmed everywhere. "All this reconciles
us to our dens, bogs, vapours, and drizzle. .. to our old British
constitutional coughs, sore throats and swelled faces," Smith
added.71 It hardly seemed an inspired locale for health spas,
and yet Jamaica by the closing decades of the nineteenth century
was eager to dispel the stigma and miasma that had been its
historical lot and launch a novel future as the new Riviera.
  The advent in 1895 of the first English cricket team to tour the
Caribbean was a decided windfall. Considering the immense
popularity of the sport at that time, the tour gave tremendous
impetus to the efforts to portray the region as a resort for health
and pleasure. According to the manager of the team, their deci-
sion to visit the Caribbean had been credited with a courage
associated only with youth and recklessness, and when team
members were leaving, their friends had generally bade farewell
as if they never expected to be reunited.72 In their schoolbooks






              The Deliverance from Helshbbire

the players had read that these islands harbored all kinds of
horror. They were led to expect to be rendered listless by the
thousands of insects that fed upon the blood of Englishmen.
They were warned that the climate would kill them within a few
days of their arrival; that the hot sun would give them sun-
stroke; and, if the sun spared them, that they would die of
yellow fever. Instead, the cricket team discovered that the longer
they stayed in Jamaica the better they were physically.
  In point of fact, their manager said, while the team had been
luxuriating in these climates, the metropole back in England had
been gripped by an epidemic of influenza and rheumatic sick-
ness. The sole thing that might have killed the cricketers on tour
was not the sun, the mosquitoes, or the yellow fever, but the
excessive and indulgent welcome the team had received every-
where. One Jamaican journal, reflecting on the words of rapture
that came from the manager, described the tour of 1895 as a
"missionary cricket campaign."73 Alongside the reports on these
matches in the English dailies many were startled to read of the
salubrious and scenic character of the colonies. The belief in
Jamaica was that the cricket tour would go far in projecting the
Caribbean area as a fashionable winter spa.
  The lesson of the cricket tour was that other sporting pastimes
could as readily be pursued by the vacationer in Jamaica for
health or pleasure. The golfer, for example, need only bring
along his driver, putter, and mashie; Jamaica would supply the
caddie. But sports aside, there was little diversion to ease the
tedium of a stay on the island. "Some people might be bored
here- possibly," Olivier wrote.74 "There is no Casino: no music:
no drama: not much to be done in the evenings: no antiques or
architecture, no work of human art worth looking at ... except
the ornamental Gardens of Hope, King's House and Castleton."
Still a trip was well worth it, it was claimed. Jamaica was the
model retreat for rest, if not recreation.
   However plentiful the postulates about the island's attributes
as a health spa, these must be scrutinized in any inquiry into the
subject and their worth determined. A series of articles penned





34                 To Hell with Parade

by an anonymous visitor and published in the Lancet every three
weeks, from 5 October to 28 December 1907, examines the
colony's claims to recognition as a resort. Central to Jamaica's
resort aspirations were its mineral baths. Yet, if the Milk River
bath was representative, the facilities provided were "entirely
inadequate to the needs of anyone acutely ill."75 To begin with,
the springs were located in a low-lying malarial district, which
was terrorized by sandflies and where "the mosquitoes came up
in thousands at sunset." No soda water was obtainable at the site,
and to quench their thirst, guests relied upon water from the
river, unboiled and passed through an ancient drip stone. The
sanitary arrangements were ill-ventilated earth closets under a
house in a sort of dark cloister. As for the bathhouses, these
were gloomy and ill-ventilated. "The redeeming feature of the
whole place was the bath itself."'76
   Bad as things were at Milk River, at Malvern in the Santa Cruz
 Hills they were no better. Owing to its dry climate, suitable for
 sufferers from rheumatism and pulmonary complaints, Malvern
 had the potential of becoming the chief health resort of the


Bathhouse and lodging house at the famous Milk River Mineral Spring.
About thirty visitors could be accommodated at a time. Courtesy of National
Library of Jamaica.





The Deliverance from Hellsbire


35


Jamaican highlands. As at Milk River, however, the facilities
offered were totally unfit for delicate patients.77 At one hotel,
the drinking water was supplied from a large uncovered tank
that stored rainwater collected from the roof of the house. In-
side it floated a thick coat of duckweed that, it was believed, kept
the contents of the tank cool. Nor was the water boiled before
being drunk but simply passed through a drip stone. The diet
offered at the house was "monotonous" and the sanitation was
"distinctly unsatisfactory." All this notwithstanding, it seemed
"a fair sample" of the public accommodation in the district.78
   More useful in evaluating the validity of Jamaica's claim as a
health resort is the evidence offered by Dr. W. T. Prout in his
survey on malaria in Jamaica at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury.79 Dr. Prout noted in his study that, despite the break-
through in the etiology of tropical fevers, the population in
Jamaica continued to demonstrate a gross ignorance about the
life history and habits of the mosquito. Nor did the scientifically
informed do enough to translate knowledge into action. Accord-
ing to his estimate, the death rate from malaria from 1898 to
1907 had been lowered to 4.4 per 1,000 of the population. How-
ever, the average percentage of malarial deaths to total deaths
was 19.7 percent-approximately one-fifth of the deaths in the
island were still caused by malaria. In absolute terms, 4,094
deaths in the colony were attributable to malaria in 1907, while
the combined mortality for the preceding ten years was 34,695.80
Jamaica, in fact, was by no stretch of the imagination a health
spa, despite the claims of tourism protagonists. Inadequate
antimosquito measures and the seeming scarcity of clean, com-
fortable lodgings in most of the Jamaican countryside were ap-
parently in 1907 still a brake upon the evolution of the island
into an authentic health resort.
  The first flush in the history of the Jamaican tourist industry
came to an end in 1914. That year saw the termination of the
foundation phase, in part because of the outbreak of World
War I. The year also marked the opening of the Panama Canal,
an event that seemed to augur entirely new and unprecedented






56                  To Hell with Paradise

dimensions for tourism in the years to come.81 While an un-
disputed rise in health, hygiene, and science was in motion,
socially an accelerated process of putrefaction threatened to en-
gulf the island with the rise of tourism.82 This encompassed
more than an accentuation of the color question in the colony,
though perhaps that seemed the most prominent of the myriad
aspects of the social question. The Jamaica Times felt constrained
to warn in one of its issues:
Of two things there can be no doubt, first, that with the entrance of
wealthy American tourists here we must look for attempts to introduce
into Jamaica the colour discrimination on ships, in hotels and even in
churches that disgraces the United States. That is one fact. The other
fact is that at any cost, whether it means the loss of money, the hamper-
ing of trade, having to dare and curb powerful business interests and
corporations or whether it costs even more than this, we must keep out
of this country this colour line policy. We must keep it out as we are
struggling to keep out the Plague.83








                        Chapter 3


               God's Agents in

                      Paradise

     I am sure that the Boston Fruit Company is one of God's
     agents to right some of the ills of that beautiful island.
                                          -N. S. Hopkins




            IVEN the local traditions of easy hospitality, the
            Jamaican tourist industry, when it emerged in the
            late nineteenth century, encountered a warm recep-
            tion among local men of capital, who welcomed the
wealthy white transients from abroad by making the colony as
much a home away from home as possible. These local entrepre-
neurs, however, were not the parents of the infant enterprise.
Tourism was sired by American banana traders, who had made
the island a major base of operations. It was on the banana boats
that the first vacationers from North America were brought to
Jamaica. Near the end of the nineteenth century the Boston
Fruit Company alone, for instance, counted in its service sixteen
steamers plying the sea-lanes between Jamaica and the ports of
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.' With vessels
departing almost daily for the United States, no other West In-
dian island enjoyed as frequent communication with the main-
land as Jamaica.2 In addition to ferrying visitors to and fro,
banana companies were pioneers in providing modern hotel
accommodations for these guests.
  It was due to the banana that paradise was rediscovered in the
form of Jamaica. Here, according to the brochures, was Eden
resurrected: an island world devoid of blizzards or snow, of


37




    To Hell with

PARADISE

       A History of the
   Jamaican Tourist Industry


   FRANK FONDA TAYLOR






   UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
        Pittsburgh and London






58


To Hel with Paradise


worry or hurry; here was a province of pleasure, leisure, laugh-
ter, and love everywhere.3 Because the saga of the banana is
cardinal in any chronicle on early Jamaican tourism, it is dis-
cussed in this chapter along with the unfolding tourism.
  Throughout the colonial history of Jamaica there was a
marked difference in the role of the hills and that of the plains
in shaping the economic, social, political, and cultural destiny of
the island. Before the complete manumission of the slaves in
1838, the lowlands had been the indisputable base of Jamaica's
wealth. With Emancipation, however, many of the properties
there sank into ruins, while in the hills progress was soon in
evidence.4 A large number of freedmen retreated there and
were able to acquire land easily since it had not been preempted
by the sugar plantations, thanks to topography. One salient fea-
ture of the slave system was that it inhibited the development of
a native peasant class. This evolved in the post-Emancipation
period. At best, before freedom slaves had been a protopeasan-
try.5 It was manumission that, like a midwife, delivered this
fledgling socioeconomic form from the womb of a plantation
system wracked with the acute labor pains that followed the
collapse of slave-driven production.
  The most mountainous part of Jamaica is in the east. There
too is the heaviest rainfall, owing to the influence of the prevail-
ing northeast trade winds. The eastern parishes of Jamaica are
noted for their fertility, and provided that proper drainage is
created and correct cultivation methods followed, conditions
there are ideal for banana production. This part of the island
was the cradle of the banana business. That peasants were pro-
ducing this staple for export little over a generation after Eman-
cipation indicated the extent to which they had consolidated
themselves in the intervening years.6 It was also proof of the
tremendous physical and economic suitability of the banana to
that form of agrarian organization.
  As a crop the banana is most amenable to peasant production.
It not only matures quickly and is relatively easy on the soil, but





39


God's Agents in Paradbe


the waste from the plant is itself a good manure. Bananas are
not as labor- and capital-intensive as sugar, nor do they require
semiprocessing before export; a general simplicity typifies their
cultivation. Before Emancipation, the crop had been used as
food for the slaves; after Emancipation, to plant it was in Sydney
Olivier's words, "a backwood's 'nigger business.' " A former gov-
ernor of Jamaica, Olivier pointed out that the old planter class
could never have accomplished the feat of fathering the banana
industry in Jamaica because it was, in essence, impotent.7
  Sewell, in like manner, had earlier revealed the economic de-
bility and entrepreneurial lethargy of the local planter regime:
They cry out at the high price of labor, and pretend they can not grow
corn, when corn is grown at five times the cost in the United States and
exported to Jamaica at a handsome profit. They import beef, and
tongues, and butter, though this very parish of Manchester offers ad-
vantages for raising stock that no portion of America possesses. They
import mackerel, and salmon, and herrings, and codfish, though Ja-
maica waters abound in the most splendid kind of fish. They import
woods, though Jamaica forests are unrivaled for the variety and beauty
and usefulness of their timber. They import tobacco, though their soil
in many districts is most excellent for its growth. The negroes, who have
never been taught these things, are learning them slowly by experience, and a
gradual decline in certain articles of import demonstrates that they now raise on
their own properties a very large proportion of their own provisions.8
Because of that constitutional inability of the planter class to
acquire what Kindleberger has termed a "capacity to trans-
form," the banana industry in Jamaica was piloted by the freed-
men-people whose energies had been liberated from the
inhibiting mentality of the sugar sector. In the years after 1870,
what until then had been mere "nigger business" underwent a
transformation into big business. Behind this metamorphosis lay
the growth of the North American market for the fruit.
   During the second half of the nineteenth century, the densely
populated U.S. eastern seaboard provided a rich and growing
market for agricultural produce. For some time prior to 1868





40


To Hell with Paradise


this market had become familiar with the small red Cavendish
banana from Cuba. The Gros Michel had also appeared in New
York since 1866, when Carl Augustus Franc, a steward on a
Pacific mail steamer, successfully took a few stems from Panama
(then a part of Colombia) to New York.9 Encouraged by the
profits he made, Franc soon set up a firm to engage in a regular
trade in bananas, apparently the first venture of the kind.'0
When in 1868 the Jamaican banana made its debut in the export
trade via Captain L. D. Baker, it thus encountered an embry-
onic market in the United States that appeared open to further
development.
   That the early banana trade concentrated exclusively on the
 U.S. market derived to a large extent from the nature of the
 fruit itself. Bananas are highly perishable, and cargoes could not
 be shipped the long distances to the United Kingdom and the
 European markets until steam power reduced the time spent on
 the voyage and refrigeration prolonged the life of the fruit. The
 product required a market within fairly easy reach, both geo-
 graphically and in terms of the current trade policy of its gov-
 ernment. Such as outlet was found in the northeastern cities of
 the United States. In addition, many of the sea captains in the
 early trade were Americans. Considering this, and given the lack
 of British metropolitan restraints on colonial commerce with
 foreign nations, the U.S. market was the natural target of the
Jamaican staple.1"
  Many problems accompanied the establishment of this early
enterprise. For instance, without proper roads the fruit cannot
reach the wharves in prime condition. Careful handling was
necessary during the loading and off-loading of the transports,
given that bruised fruit degenerates rapidly. Furthermore, at
the time that the trade started most of the bottoms employed in
West Indian-North American trafficking were sailing ships,12
subject to adverse winds and often unpunctual and unreliable. It
was impossible to coordinate the other operations in the indus-
try-the cutting and carriage to the ports-with the irregular





God's Agents in Paradise


41


arrival of these vessels. The early industry was unpredictable,
particularly in the sprint to the overseas market, as the cargo
could be spoiled before it reached its destination if the winds
were unfavorable and the carrier becalmed. It was always a race
against time. "Quantity, quality, despatch" was thus the maxim
of the fortune seeker in this commercial endeavor.13
  Time brought technological advances that facilitated the fur-
ther development of the trade. The growth of steamshipping
after the mideighties brought both regularity and rapidity in
transport. As the sailing schedules of steam ships were more
predictable, ground operations could be better timed to the ar-
rival of the vessels, thereby shortening the time previously spent
in connection with the turnover of the freighters. The cable and
radio telegraph systems aided the process by allowing greater
speed in transmitting directions and market information. The
telephone further accelerated business operations.14 Finally, by
1900, the introduction of controlled ship refrigeration pre-
served the fruit and enabled its shipment farther afield.
  There was a lot of money to be made in the early export trade
and the enterprise was quite competitive at its beginning. The
essence of the contest, however, was to destroy competition, as
the stronger vied to eliminate their weaker trade opponents by
crushing attempts at rivalry. In the struggle for control of the
banana trade only the fittest could survive, and two methods in
particular were employed.15 One was to outbid the rival buyer
of fruit from the local growers and deprive him of supplies. The
best counter to this was to possess lands of one's own and thus be
assured of an independent supply source. The second tactic was
to undersell the other contenders in the U.S. market. The logic
of the competition in all instances was to eliminate trading oppo-
nents and establish a monopoly.
   Bananas are heavy, bulky, and perishable. Importing the fruit
therefore demanded not only a substantial capital investment in
shipping but also large reserves of capital to cushion against the
risks inherent in the commerce. The form of competition that






42


To Hell with Paradie


characterized the trade was thus from the outset oligopolistic.
Though there had been a few local merchant enterprisers in-
volved, these were handicapped from the start because they
lacked the command of enough capital to meet the trade's re-
quirements and the strenuous competition. To a large extent
this stemmed from their inability to draw upon local private
capital for support in their ventures. Sydney Olivier has ex-
plained why: "When I first knew Jamaica, banana-growing was
still despised as a backwood's 'nigger business,' which any old-
time sugar planter would have disdained to handle, or, if
tempted by undeniable prospects of profit, would have thought
an apology was required." 16
  The Jamaican merchant enterprisers in the banana business
had to contend with profound prejudices as well as that peculiar
economic lethargy that Sewell had noted. It was owing to this, in
addition to the bitter struggle for the trade, that these merchants
finally failed. Foreigners in contrast faced no such constraints,
and so were able to amass financial fortunes while local conser-
vatism kept their Jamaican competitors in the traditional eco-
nomic groove.
  In the competition for dominance in the Jamaican banana
business, Lorenzo D. Baker, a Massachusetts sea captain, proved
the fittest. Captain Baker was without doubt the most outstand-
ing enterpriser in the early banana traffic. Conditioned by his
boyhood upbringing in the fishing industry, his outlook was very
much that of a gambler. But Baker was also adroit in choosing
good men to work for him and organizing their talents in the
most efficient manner.17 His energy was indefatigable, his per-
sonality compelling, and he possessed sterling business acumen.
Because he was non-Jamaican, Baker was less subject to the in-
fluence of the plantation culture and its censure. To top it all, he
was able to draw with assurance upon the funds of friends and
associates overseas for the capital reserves that conduct of the
trade necessitated.18
  From the outset it was Baker's ambition to dominate, develop,






God's Aqents in Paradise


43


and control the banana business. To do so he had to be strate-
gically established in the successive stages of the enterprise-in
production, transportation, and distribution. To acquire a reli-
able source of supply and better equip himself competitively, he
purchased extensive lands in Jamaica, settled there, and became
a banana producer. In the sphere of transportation Baker was
also able to gain supremacy. By his formation of the Standard
Steam Navigation Company (1884), he obtained an organization
to transport the fruit. As for the marketing end, he was able to
develop a highly efficient system of distribution in the United
States and thus gain a competitive advantage.19 It was to the
credit of his entrepreneurial spirit, sagacity, foresight, and limit-
less energy that Baker accomplished all that he did. A veritable
Cortez of his time, Baker had landed on a strange shore, sensed
treasure there, and succeeded in carrying off the golden cargoes
in his holds.
  Baker's culminating feat was the formation of the United
Fruit Company in 1899. This was a giant combination of the
major firms in the banana business, and it dominated every as-
pect of the enterprise internationally. A mammoth corporation
of continental proportion, the United Fruit Company was con-
solidated with a capitalization of $20 million.20 Not only did it
own large plantations for growing fruit in Jamaica and Central
America, it had over sixty steamers to carry its produce to U.S.
markets. Thenceforth oligopolistic competition was crushed.
The history of the banana trade in Jamaica during the next
three decades was to be in the main a record of attempts to break
the monopoly of the United Fruit Company.21
  For a time prior to the development of the banana trade,
communication links between Jamaica and the United States
had been waning. This, however, was remedied by the growth of
the banana market, for that intercourse brought more regular
and rapid transport to connect both island and mainland.
Thanks to steamshipping, less than five days separated Boston or
Philadelphia from the land of perpetual summer. With a return






44


To Hell with Paradbe


fare for travelers from Boston to Port Antonio costing about £12
($60) per person in 1892, it was not surprising that the tourist
traffic blossomed.22 With the building of larger, better, and
more comfortable steel boats in the late nineteenth century, the
tourist trade thus became a valid economic adjunct to the ba-
nana business.
   In the extreme northeast of Jamaica lies the parish of Port-
land-the foremost banana land in the island. It rises from the
seacoast to the highest peak of the Blue Mountains and is known
for its fertility and beautiful scenery. Port Antonio, the chief
town of the parish, possessed two of the finest and most secure
harbors in the island, with accommodation for large seagoing
vessels. By 1889-1890, Port Antonio was also in possession of a
reservoir "with very good water" and a piped water supply.23 It
was here at Port Antonio that the first resort area of any signifi-
cance developed in Jamaica, and for many years it dominated
the island's infant tourist traffic. The close connection between
Port Antonio's banana business and its early prominence in the
holiday trade is clear from the oral testimony given by an infor-
mant some years ago. According to his recollection, "in the early
days of the Jamaican fruit trade the weekly sailings out of Port
Antonio exceeded the weekly sailings out of Liverpool."24 The
extent of traffic in those days is corroborated by Who's Who in
Jamaica, which wrote of Lorenzo Baker in 1916, the first year of
its issue: "He materially assisted in bringing tourists to the is-
land. About 30 steamers with a total average tonnage of 20,000,
each capable of carrying upwards of 50 passengers, reach Port
Antonio every week from Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore or
New York."25
   Captain Baker was, characteristically, among the first to dis-
 cern the potential for tourism that Port Antonio, his head-
 quarters, possessed. As he and his associates expanded local
 operations, they required greater accommodation for their
 growing management staff. Tourists soon began to make
 the trip on Baker's banana boats. He resolved to build a hotel,












United Fruit Company,
    MAIL STIA MIFRS.
Wee lg~ ailins    to and f ro_M






       BOSTON, - - - - -
    PHILADELPHIA,
       NEW YORK, and
       BALTIMORE. - -
   - - Steamers are Equipped with - -
Electric Light and Modern Improvements,
   - - and they carry Stewardesses.- -
FPO PARTICULARS APPLY TO;
      UNITEI) FRUIT COMPANY,
                  PORT ANTONIO, JAMAICA.
            -OR
      UNITED FitU-IT COMPAN17,
                     KINGSTON, JAMAI'A.


Modern sea transport made holiday cruises to the Caribbean feasible by 1900.
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.






46


To Hell with Paradise


choosing as its site the crest of Titchfield Hill with a delightful
view of both sea and land. Having made up his mind to con-
struct his hotel there, Baker refused to let anything or anyone
stand in his way, including a local resident who had erected a
house there and who bluntly refused to sell.26
  Baker resorted to different tactics to persuade the gentleman.
A boat was being built for the owner of the house by the same
person who constructed most of Baker's cutters. Baker connived
with the boat builder to make the terms for payment on the
vessel so difficult that the owner was obliged to surrender the
house in part payment for the schooner. Thus Baker was able to
acquire the site he desired and erect the first Hotel Titchfield on
the spot. This was little more than a boardinghouse and was
demolished a few years later, to be replaced by an impressive
building of 150 rooms and elaborate dining facilities.27 When in
1909 this was destroyed by fire, an even finer edifice was erected.
Only the first construct was the captain's private venture; the
others were company projects.28
  Just as he had sought supremacy in the early banana industry,
so Baker by his calculated entry into the hotel enterprise sought
to control, mold, and dominate it from its infancy. He integrated
all aspects of the business-bringing tourists to Jamaica as well
as lodging them and catering to them there. An analogous act in
the banana enterprise had been Baker's expansion from ship-
ping and distribution into cultivation of the fruit. He bought
land of his own to grow bananas partly because he lacked as-
surance that the peasantry would always provide a ready supply
of the fruit for his freighters. In like manner, it was because he
could not guarantee visitors first-class accommodation in exist-
ing lodges that he entered the hotel business. Baker stood to lose
the budding passenger traffic in which his boats were engaged if
there were no improvements in the quality of the accommoda-
tion offered the overseas visitor, as the standard in most public
places was poor.29 It was through his anxiety to maintain and
increase the number of visitors to the island that Baker em-
barked upon hotel keeping.









































(Top) The first Hotel Titchfield (c. 1897). Built by Captain L. D. Baker, a strict
teetotaller, no liquor was served on the premises. Liquor was also prohibited on
Baker's boats that brought tourists to and from Jamaica.
The second Hotel Titchfield (bottom) was in operation by 1904. It had some one
hundred fifty rooms and continued a policy of temperance.
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.

















                           For My Mother
                       Olga Herminia Taylor
















Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260
Copyright © 1993, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taylor, Frank.
    To hell with paradise : history of the Jamaican tourist industry /
  Frank Fonda Taylor.
      p. cm. - (Pitt Latin American series)
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    ISBN 0-8229-3754-9 (acid-free)
    1. Tourist trade-Jamaica-History. I. Title. II. Series.
  G155.J25T4    1993                                     93-1004
  338.4'7917292-dc20                                        CIP

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Eurospan, London








                 ADVERTISEMENTS.




       PORT ANTONIO, JAMAICA,
  UNITED FRUIT CO., Proprietors
           -  ACKNOWLEDGED TO BE

  TIle WOSI BOaiIII l11 Sillo lil 1149 West1 I0dgies.
               TABLE UNSURPASSED, - -  -
               MODERN SANITA'Y PLUMBING, -
               EXCELLENT SEA-BATHING, - -
               FIRST-CLASS LIVERY,- ----
  For RA TES Address.'
              -- MANAGER TITCHFIELD HOTEL, PORT ANTONIO

  Peak View Hotel Cottages

           (BRANCH OF TITCHFIELD HOTEL).



  HEALTH                      BSOGRY
          AN EXCELLLNT VIEW OF THE BLUIe
          MOUNTAIN PEAK FROM THE HOTIL.
  Elgi miles rom tile Famous HOT SPIIIS atl BTH.
             FOR RATES ADDRESS:
       PEAK VIEW HOTEL COTTAGES, BOWDEN,

A 1904 advertisement for the Hotel Titchfield andfor its subsidiary, the
Peak View Hotel Cottages, located on the other side of the island.
Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.





God's Aqents in Paradibe


49


  Baker's sally into tourism was not restricted to Jamaica but
extended into the United States. Just as he had placed himself in
the vanguard of the early Jamaican tourist industry, Baker also
pioneered the holiday trade of his Massachusetts hometown,
Wellfleet. The sixty-two-room Chequesset Inn that he built
there was operated in summer alone, with the same staff that
ran the Titchfield Hotel in winter.30 It was a tribute to Baker's
entrepreneurial foresight that he predicted that summer resi-
dents and vacationers would bring a new source of prosperity to
Wellfleet. Faith in a resort future of his hometown impelled him
to acquire summer cottages there as well as a large expanse of
undeveloped shorefront totaling some 4,000 acres.31 Raised
among fishermen, Baker had become another type of fisher-
man: his catches were tourists and his bait a holiday idyll.
  The captain and his associates were not the only persons in the
banana business to enter the hotel enterprise. In 1896 a small
group of Jamaicans, by their successes in shipping bananas in
refrigerated storage to England, demonstrated the economic
feasibility of such an undertaking. In a sequel to this, Sir Alfred
Jones, head of Elder, Dempster and Company, inaugurated in
1901 the Imperial Direct Line to bring the fruit to England. The
United Kingdom had acquired a taste for the banana, as Elder,
Dempster and Company had for some time been trading fruit in
the Canary Islands.32 The firm had its ships fitted up for the
conveyance of not only bananas but passengers and had built
fine hotels in the Canaries, pioneering these islands as health
resorts. In Jamaica, therefore, Sir Alfred's interests readily
ranged beyond banana trading. In 1901 he obtained by lease the
two principal guest houses in Kingston, spent some £30,000 re-
furbishing them, and advertised extensively to persuade En-
glishmen to winter on the island.33 Like Baker, Jones integrated
both the transportation and the accommodations of the tourist
traffic. Unlike Baker, however, Jones did not have much success
in either endeavor.
  Jones's venture into the hotel business in Jamaica was a big

















































(Top) Afternoon on the piazza of the Hotel Titchfield (1908).
(Bottom) Bathing at the Hotel Titchfield bathhouses (1908).
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.





God's Aqents in Paradibe


51


failure, although his advertising did for a while develop among
the English an interest in the island as a resort. One of the chief
factors that baffled such efforts was the distance between Ja-
maica and the United Kingdom.34 The voyage from England
took too much time out of a winter vacation. By contrast, the trip
from New York for a winter holiday, with a fortnight's stay, was
so comfortable and easy that by 1915 a number of Americans
had even erected winter villas in the colony.35 Distance aside, the
failure of Jones's hotel caper in Jamaica might have been due to
the possibility that he had overextended himself. In the opinion
of the directors of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, Jones, in
attempting to run hotels in Jamaica as well as buy and sell fruit
rather than just carry it, had taken on far more responsibility
than he was capable of handling.36
  As for the prime object of the Imperial Direct Line-the ba-
nana traffic-Jones's intervention was equally uneventful. De-
spite widespread expectations that he would be successful in this
enterprise, Sir Alfred's banana business was ill-starred from the
start. Supplies of the fruit from the big estates were largely
controlled by the United Fruit Company. The men commis-
sioned to buy the fruit and load the ships were more or less new
to the banana business.37 Further, the first shipments of the
fruit were spoiled en route. Through competition and other
setbacks, Sir Alfred was soon forced to enter into a partnership
with the United Fruit Company in order to rescue his busi-
ness from bankruptcy. Within a mere two years of the launch-
ing of Jones's transatlantic trading, the initially independent
market in England was thus subverted by the United Fruit Com-
pany's acquisition of nearly half of the shares in Jones's ba-
nana operations. At a later date the United Fruit Company
acquired even more shares in the firm and thereby seized con-
trol. The Elder, Dempster line became a mere tool of the United
Fruit Company's hegemonic hold over the island's banana
industry.38
  If monopoly was a prevailing feature of the youthful banana
business, so also was seasonality. Northern buyers of Jamaican






52


To Hel with Paradibe


fruit had little demand for it in the summer months when their
own strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, summer apples,
pears, and plums were plentiful. Shipped at any time other than
the months of November to April, bananas were a drag on the
market and fundamentally uneconomic. The banana trade and,
by extension, the tourist traffic (since the banana boats conveyed
the visitors) were both essentially winter operations. Since these
months were also the busiest time on the sugar estates, the Ja-
maican economy as a whole now found itself hyperactive during
the first part of the year and rather inert thereafter. To the dead
season in sugar production was now added the off-season in
tourism. It was, in fact, Baker who initiated the practice in some
areas of closing hotels during the summer months.
  In surveying the gestation of the banana and tourist industries
in Jamaica, close attention must be accorded to the obvious inter-
connection between both businesses and the domestic growth of
the U.S. economy in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Between 1870 and 1910 the U.S. population more than doubled,
growing from forty to ninety-two million,39 and the disposable
income of families rose as the nation mastered the intricacies of
technical civilization, thereby enabling the economy to take off.
Outputs in agriculture and industry increased phenomenally in
the last decades of the nineteenth century as the economic giant
awakened. Among industrial countries, for example, the United
States ranked fifth in the world in production in 1850 and fourth
in 1860, but by 1894 it had taken the lead globally, producing
twice as much as Great Britain and half the combined amount of
all Europe.40 It was the opportunities that this economic growth
generated that Baker was alert enough to seize; the thriving econ-
omy enhanced the effective demand for both trade and travel.
Regarding the volume and value of the latter, "it was estimated by
shipping companies that before the First World War 150,000
Americans crossed the Atlantic annually to Europe where their
expenditure was reported to be gratifyingly extravagant."49
  Jamaicans were not unimpressed with the American enter-






                  God's Agents in Parade                    53

prise that fostered such tremendous advances. TheJamaica Post
sounded infatuated: "to us all such growth in our neighbour-
hood means a better future."42 It was to American enterprise,
after all, that the rekindling of the economic life of Jamaica was
attributed, thanks largely to Captain Baker, whom many viewed
as the personification of the genius of U.S. capitalism. In the
beginning, Baker had been just passing through Jamaica, but
because he was impressed with its potential he had returned,
developed it to both his and the country's benefit, and settled
there. Perhaps other American visitors might be enticed to do
the same. Perhaps the tourist industry might prove to be an
instrument of providence to advance the economic lot of the
colony. Having mused on such possibilities, the Jamaica Post was
unequivocal about its sentiment.
The object we have principally in view, we will frankly state, is the
introduction into this country of the American element. . . . the leaven-
ing of our mass with the energy and spirit of "go" found in Americans
and found in an equal degree in no other people. They were the pi-
oneers in the regeneration of the island of which the Parish of Portland
gave the earliest signs . . . and we have great faith in seeing this coun-
try, through American enterprise and skill in agriculture, a Florida with
far greater fertility and greater beauty.43
Jamaica was thus offered as a paradise, not only for health
seekers and winter tourists but for foreign capital as well.
  But while the trend was to surrender the task and the benefits
of developing the island's resources to foreigners, a minority
opinion hoped for a revolution in local attitudes regarding Ja-
maica's economic development. The remedy for Jamaica's afflic-
tion, it held, was for the local people to take up their beds and
walk. An 1891 letter to the Jamaica Post was a clear example of
this different sentiment. Why, it asked, does Jamaica import
furniture? Why does the island not instead export to the rest of
the world furniture of exquisite construction, made from the
beautiful woods that grow abundantly in it? Why does Jamaica
depend so much upon foreigners to give impetus to local pro-





54                To Hell witb Paradise

duction and upon foreign lands for almost everything that
is consumed, whether of food or clothing? Where does loaf
sugar, for example, come from? Why is it not made in Jamaica?
Does not Jamaica say to all the world: "Come! Make use of and
grow on my wealth, for I am too stupid and too indolent to use it
myself?" Why should Jamaica sigh for second editions of Cap-
tain Baker? Why should Americans be implored to come and
develop the island's resources, so as to take out of it fortunes,
which but for an unaccountable lack of energy and determina-
tion could be made and kept by locals? Awake! Awake!, Ja-
maica!, for indeed, thou art heavy with baneful sleep.44








                         Chapter 4


             Jamaica Awakens

     The night of Jamaica's adversity has passed away; A
     brighter and a happier day has dawned upon the land.
                              --Jamaica Post, 24 December 1890
     The Jamaica International Exhibition will be a landmark in
     West Indian History . . . not only because it is a plucky
     effort to march abreast of the times, but because it is de-
     cided proof that the "dead West Indies" are not so dead
     after all.
                                   --Jamaica Exhibition Bulletin






            LTHOU G H since 1850 there had been isolated in-
            dividual initiatives to promote Jamaica as a holiday
            resort, in 1890 Jamaica was still terra incognita to
            the traveling public of Europe and the United
States. It was not until then that the first concerted campaign
was initiated to establish the tourist industry on the island. In
1870, for example, many of the parishioners of Kingston, intent
on increasing the volume of trade between Jamaica and the
North American mainland, submitted a petition to the governor
requesting that a subsidy be granted to shippers for the purpose
of establishing regular steamship communications with New
York.' This "memorial" was signed by some six or seven hun-
dred merchants, shopkeepers, and other residents of the capital.
In part, it urged that "direct steamers would induce the many
wealthy Americans, who previously visited Cuba during the se-
vere winter to seek Jamaica and open a cheap and ready road
for ourselves and families to visit America for a change." How-


55






56


To Hell with Paradbe


ever the memorial itself did not intend any new promotion of
Jamaica as a winter resort for northerners.
  The petitioners doubtlessly desired to develop trade but not
especially the tourist trade. Though there were some economic
advantages from a greater movement of persons between the
island and North American ports, the prospective returns did
not seem attractive enough to appeal to these parishioners. They
were more preoccupied with the gains from general trade be-
tween both places than with tourism specifically. It was not until
the gestation and growth of the banana business that this desire
for more contact with the United States was actualized.2
  The decision to hold an international exhibition in Jamaica in
  1891 heralded the first intensive effort to promote tourism in
the island. Although A. C. St. Clair, a Jamaican, was the first to
suggest it, the idea of holding a local exhibition began to take
shape only when W. Fawcett, the director of public gardens,
recommended it to Sir Henry Blake as a means of developing,
among the peasantry, an interest in the economic potential of the
colony.3 Both Fawcett and Governor Blake discussed the feasi-
bility of the idea and elaborated upon its original conception. The
governor felt that a display limited just to small-scale West Indian
cultivation would be undesirable, since the planter class needed
to be stirred up as much as the local peasants. It was decided,
therefore, to put on display the most improved type of machinery
suitable for use on the sugar estates. Consideration was also given
to the idea of enlarging the scale of the fair by involving the other
British West Indian islands in this unprecedented venture.
   In the words of the governor, Sir Henry Blake, who became
the moving force behind the exhibition, its principal purpose
was to educate the people, awaken them from their economic
stupor, and "stir them up and arouse their interest in the possi-
bilities of the country."4 Besides exhibits of the most up-to-date
sugar technology, the exhibition commissioners were determined
to display demonstration models depicting the most recent
improvements in the production of minor Jamaican staples. For
instance, they planned to display the newest procedures in ex-






Jamaica Awakens


57


tracting coconut and other oils by compression, the most mod-
ern methods in preparing coconut coir or fiber, and the latest
processes in extracting fibers from plants.5 Suitable for exhibit
were gadgets for curing and preparing ginger, spices, coffee,
cocoa, and anatto, as well as fruit-drying devices, small wind-
mills, turbines, and other time- and labor-saving contrivances.6
  Popular support was a prerequisite for the exhibition's suc-
cess. Speaking platforms were set up throughout the island to
inform the public of the exercise and gain general endorsement
for it. In the exhibition schema a special role was reserved for
the herbs and plants in the local pharmacopoeia. W. Fawcett, for
example, planned to display a collection of such plants, many of
which, he claimed, possessed valuable medicinal properties.7 At
an exhibition meeting in May Pen, Fawcett explained that the
substance that certain peoples of Africa use to poison the tips of
their arrows, had recently been ascertained, and when this sub-
stance was sent to England for analysis it was found to be a very
valuable drug for coronary ailments. Fawcett believed that many
of the native herbs, barks, roots, and medicinal plants in Jamaica
were similarly of great value and that people used these items
in one way or another without knowing the full range of their
potential. A further interest of his was to exhibit a specimen
of banana and plantain meal, for an old woman had recently
visited the exhibition office with a sample of bread made from
the breadfruit, and it was truly excellent. At the time, the
process of obtaining flour from the breadfruit, banana, and
plantain was unknown to the white population. But, Fawcett
submitted, these would yield a worthy substitute for imported
wheat flour that was just as nutritious. On another note, he
encouraged exhibits of samples of starches or dyes.8
  At that same meeting, a Reverend Henderson observed that,
ever since his arrival in Jamaica, he had been astounded at
the amount of marketable material wasted simply because the
people were not cognizant of its worth. He has seen valuable
berries permitted to fall from the trees and decay, while in the
same district the people were complaining of hard times and








                    Contentd






       Acknowledgments                             vii
1      Introduction                                 3

       Part One: THE FOUNDATION PERIOD
2      The Deliverance from Hellshire              13
3      God's Agents in Paradise                    37
4      Jamaica Awakens                             55
5      "Ho-tel Me Not"                             68
6      The Ratooning of the Plantation             94
7      Paradise on the Auction Block              113

       Part Two: THE AFTERMATH
8      Resurrection and Revival                   137
9      The Second Coming                          156
10     Conclusion                                 179


       Appendixes                                 191
       Notes                                      199
       Bibliography                               223
       Index                                      233






58


To Hell wit Paradbe


unemployment. In this Garden of Eden, poverty was a para-
dox.9 The exhibition, he felt, would enlighten the folk about the
unexploited value of many of their resources.10
  Beyond stimulating the existing enterprises, the exhibition's
principal objective was to generate new and promising economic
undertakings. For example, possibilities existed for making pa-
per stock from bamboo and megass, but these had heretofore
been ignored." There were plants in Jamaica yielding oils and
perfumes reputed to be rich with potential profit for both the
chemist and the florist. In sum, plans for the exhibition ex-
pressed hope that there would emerge in Jamaica a new kind of
person, who would appreciate the economic opportunities in the
island. Such people, through the application of English tech-
nology to native raw materials, would create in the colony a new
industrial dynamism and propel it along a more rapid economic
growth path.12
  One of the island's unexploited resources was its climate. The
tourist trade was one of the foremost of the new industries that
the Jamaica International Exhibition was expected to foster. As
the Handbook of Jamaica for 1891-92 explained, "the Exhibition
would bring many to Jamaica for the first time, who would make
known the advantages of Jamaica as a winter resort to others
and thus lay the foundation for a steady and increasing flow of
tourists to the Island."'" The promoters of the venture believed
that the International Exhibition would herald the takeoff of
Jamaica's tourist traffic, until then a conspicuously insignificant
element in the domestic economy. Through the International
Exhibition, the hope was, the populace would see the light and
realize that prodigious wealth was to be garnered if Jamaica
could be sold as a winter paradise to northerners.
  The real value of tourism, however, as conceptualized by even
the promoters of the exhibition, lay not so much in its income-
producing potential as in its capacity to indirectly encourage
foreign investment in the island.14 Tourism, it was anticipated,
would bring the captains of foreign industry to the colony and
expose its investment possibilities to them. If there was a general






Jamaica Awakens


59


ignorance of the island's prospects at home, considerably more
existed in the world at large.
  A premier objective of the exhibition, then, was to introduce
the colony's potential to the world outside. In an interview with a
foreign correspondent of the New York Herald, Governor Blake
made this feature of the exercise clear. At a time when U.S.
capital had begun to migrate abroad, the exhibition's function
was to publicize Jamaica's investment attractions: "The idea we
have at present is to invite everybody and to exhibit to them all
that we can produce on the island. We believe that there may be
some products very little considered just now, which may turn
out to be of great value when examined by experts.."'5 In this
manner might be laid "the foundation of exports as valuable
even as the exports of sugar or bananas." 6
  But in order to open up the Jamaican countryside to foreign
investors, proper accommodation should be made available to
the overseas visitors traveling in rural areas."7 It was alleged
that, in the past, foreigners who might have been interested in
investing in the island had been compelled to depart without
"half seeing" it, due to the difficulty of getting about in the
countryside.'8 By 1890, roads in the rural districts were much
improved and continually being extended. It was, therefore, the
lack of comfortable accommodation that apparently continued
to hinder the growth of the investment potential of the island.'9
Hotels were regarded as a panacea for the depressed economic
condition of Jamaica. As one journal observed,
Effective hotel accommodation once established with us, there is no
calculating the marked change for the better which will take place in the
future of Jamaica. At present, we are constantly retrogressing from
positive inanition. A new, intelligent, active and increasing population
will inspirit us afresh, and indulge us despite ourselves to cast off much,
if not all of our present lethargy. Jamaica is full of resources; they wait
only on the energy of men for their development. Hotels will prove the
first step to the attainment of this end.20
  Because hotels were deemed crucial to the long-run economic
development of the island and because they were required at





60


To Hell with Paradie


once to house the large numbers of visitors expected at the
exhibition, the colonial legislature enacted a law to promote
hotel building. The Jamaica Hotels Law of 1890 empowered the
colonial secretary to contract, on behalf of the government,
agreements for erecting, extending, completing, and maintain-
ing hotels in the island, on such terms and conditions as the
governor in privy council might approve. Before the colonial
secretary could enter into an agreement with any company un-
der this law, the plans, specifications, and estimates of the firm
first had to be ratified by the governor in privy council. Work on
every hotel contracted to be built, extended, or completed under
this law must also be fully finished and the building equipped
within nine months if it were one mile from the limits of Kings-
ton and if outside that perimeter within twelve months of the
law's passage. The reason for allotting a shorter time span for
hotel construction in and around Kingston was the need to en-
sure that accommodation was available in time for the opening
of the International Exhibition in January 1891.
  One of the most prominent features of the Jamaica Hotels Law
was the prodigal character of its provisions. It exempted from
import duties all building materials, furniture, and fittings
imported into the island in connection with building and equip-
ping these hotels. The government pledged the general revenues
and assets of the colony as a guarantee on the principal and in-
terest of any debentures and certificates that companies might
issue to cover the estimated cost of their undertakings. The
aggregate amount of the debentures and certificates to be issued
under this law was not to exceed £150 thousand in value. Despite
a fair amount of foreboding in some quarters over the largesse
and even the advisability of the Hotels Law, the "paternal"
government, in its wisdom, chose to ignore such criticisms.21 In
the end, however, the hotels scheme failed. Ultimately it saddled
the taxpayers with what came to be termed "the hotels loan
incubus."22
  Still, what was obvious when the Hotels Law was passed was the
fervent optimism of the time and the heady anticipation of the






                      Jamaica Awakker                          61

gains from hosting the International Exhibition. The Jamaica
Hotels Law merely attested to these extravagant sentiments. It
was because the visitor was a putative investor that he was wooed
to Jamaica. One possible area for investment from overseas was,
of course, the hotel industry itself. According to a letter that
Eugene Baker, a member of the parochial board of Portland,
wrote to the editor of one daily newspaper, an abnormally high
profit margin could be forecast for the hotel industry.
Sir,
  Kindly publish the following five reasons why Jamaica would make a
better winter resort than Florida and attract more visitors:-
  1. (a) Florida being a semi-tropical country has an uneven climate
        and is subject to frost during winter months.
     (b) Jamaica being tropical has an even climate and no frost.
     (c) A country with an even climate and no frost ought to make a
        better winter resort than a country with an uneven climate and
        frost.
  2. (a) Florida is subject to yellow fever and dengue fever.
     (b) Jamaica is not subject to yellow fever and dengue fever.
     (c) Therefore, Jamaica is more healthy.
  3. (a) Florida is a low, flat country; highest elevation about 400 ft.
        with rivers running slow and sluggish.
     (b) Jamaica is a hilly country, highest elevation 7,360 ft. Rivers run
        quiet, pure and healthy.
     (c) A hilly country with quick flowing rivers ought to be more
        healthy than a flat country with slow flowing rivers.
  4. (a) Scenery in Florida has a great deal of sameness about it and is
        very tame.
     (b) Scenery in Jamaica is diversified, picturesque, beautiful and
        wild.
     (c) Jamaica being a country with diversified, picturesque and
        beautiful scenery ought to attract more visitors than a low, flat
        country with a tame same scenery.
  5. (a) Jamaica has better roads, more valuable mineral springs and
        more natural curiosities than Florida.
     (b) Jamaica with the best roads, mineral springs and curiosities
        ought to attract the most visitors.
        I am, etc. Eugene B. Baker23






62


To Hell with Paradise


  Although the acolytes of the exhibition idea, like T. H.
Sharpe,24 had been urging the people to prepare exhibits and
compile investment data on the natural resources of their dis-
tricts, an exhibition mania never quite gripped the public.
Among the common people there were many rumors that the
exhibition's purpose was much different than that officially al-
leged. For instance, it was held that the venture was a mere
pretext to show the government what the people could do so
that extra taxes could be imposed upon them.25 Another insin-
uation was that Sir Henry Blake, the governor, had been com-
missioned by the Queen to set up the exhibition in order to find
out what the land was good for, so that she might sell it to the
Americans. A third rumor was that the governor had been sent
to the island to make the people slaves again, and the exhibition
building was a huge barracoon to which they were to be lured
and held captive.
  Confronted with this widespread suspicion and disaffection
vis-a-vis the exhibition idea, the event's promoters intensified
their campaign to publicize the real nature of the undertaking
and its considered value. It was also necessary to assure the
people that its benefits would be shared by all. According to
Governor Blake, import substitution was a prime objective of the
exercise: "We hope to find that you can make many things that
we now import, so that the money we send away to pay for these
things shall be paid to you instead for your labour."26 From the
platform, the classroom, and the pulpit, the promoters pro-
pagandized the masses and painstakingly instructed them on the
parts they were to play. Even the simplest of things, they
stressed, could be submitted for display at the exhibition. For
example: "Suitable saplings for walking sticks and umbrella han-
dles may be exhibited and a considerable trade established."27
  The role of the masses was not restricted to compiling exhibits
but also included keeping their huts and yards clean and tidy to
avoid possible pestilence. Nothing would be more injurious to
the infant tourist industry or to the success of the exhibition
than an outbreak of disease. Archdeacon Farrar of Jamaica thus





Jamaica Awakens


65


sermonized his flock, "set thine house in order."28 Cleanliness
was related not just to godliness but to the secular advancement
of the colony's macroeconomic interests. In a like crusading
spirit, the governor personally offered cash prizes to the people
of Kingston for the best-kept and best-arranged premises under
the assessed annual value of £8.29 No one responded, as the
secretary of the exhibition reluctantly admitted.30
  Under the existing system of assessing house property, the
people had little inclination to improve their premises. The house
tax militated against the development of better and nicer homes
because, as Robert Craig submitted to the legislature, when the
assessors in Kingston went on their rounds they usually assessed
at a higher rate any house that was cleaned, painted, and had a
garden in good order.31 In contrast, a better property that was
less tidily kept would be assessed at a lower rate. No wonder the
governor's scheme was a failure: nobody contended for the prize
because nobody wished to be assessed at a higher rate. While the
government offered incentives to provide better accommodation
for foreigners, insofar as the question of better housing for locals
was concerned, its fiscal practice was a distinct disincentive.
  Although the exhibition had been designed to show the world
Jamaica's capabilities and products, from the beginning an im-
plied admission of the inferiority of Jamaicans permeated the
thinking of the planners as they prepared for the event. Among
the initial errors of the exhibition commissioners was their un-
willingness to permit native contractors even the chance to com-
pete with foreign firms for the contract to erect the exhibition
building. Instead, James Richmond, engineer of the central dis-
trict, was instructed by the governor to go to the United States to
enter into a contract with some responsible firm there to con-
struct the Jamaica Exhibition building.32 In the end, however,
though Richmond received many U.S. tenders to erect and fur-
nish material for the building, these were all in excess of the
amount appropriated. At the final reckoning, therefore, the na-
tive builders rejected at the outset were the ones to whom the
exhibition commissioners were compelled to resort. As one of





64


To Hell with Parade


the local tabloids put it, "the stone which the builders rejected
has become the head of the corner."33
  Jamaica's International Exhibition opened at last on Tuesday,
  27 January 1891. An address was delivered to the Prince of
Wales, and after His Royal Highness's reply, a choir sang the
Hundredth Psalm to the accompaniment of the West India
Regiment band.34 The bishop offered up a prayer of consecra-
tion. The governor presented the Prince of Wales with a golden
key to the building, and His Royal Highness formally declared
the exhibition open, amid tumultuous applause. A fanfare of
trumpets and salute of artillery signaled the fact of the opening.
When the ceremony was over the royal party toured the exhibi-
tion buildings and grounds. The day's proceedings climaxed in a
grand ball at King's House.
   The exhibition building was an elegant structure in a Moorish
design, situated to the north of the Kingston racecourse on a
portion of the Quebec Lodge lands and the waterworks land at
Cavaliers Pen. "The general external aspect of the main build-
ing," we are told, "was graceful, light and imposing and the
beauty of the scene was greatly enhanced by the background of
magnificent hills which formed as it were, the setting of the
structure." Within the building itself, "the light and airy char-
acter of the structure with its subdued and harmonious colour-
ing, the rich, and in many cases, brilliant hues of the exhibits, the
glitter of bright metal and glass, the waving fronds of palms and
other tropical plants, and the ever moving, many coloured
dresses of the visitors, formed a scene never before witnessed in
Jamaica and which could not fail to impress."35
  Exhibits were on display from many parts of the world, in-
cluding the sister colonies of the West Indies. Jamaica itself
showed samples of the island's chief products: sugar, rums, cof-
fee, cocoa, oils and essences, roots, starches, fibers, preserves
and pickles, cabinetwork, fancy woods, gums, resins, native
wines, liqueurs, cigars, and cigarettes. The West Indian island of
St. Vincent exhibited six Caribs, who displayed their skills in
weaving baskets and other handicraft in one of the huts of the
































The Jamaica Exhibition building. Courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.






66


To Hell with Paradibe


model village set up on the exhibition grounds.36 The Scottish
court sent out a piper for the exhibition, who filled the halls of
the building with sweet strains from his bagpipe.
   On the evening of 2 May, the Jamaica International Exhibi-
 tion came to a close, a little more than three months after it had
 been opened by Prince George of Wales. In financial terms the
 exhibition was a failure, but according to the Jamaica Post, it had
 been "a foregone conclusion," in any case, that there would be a
 deficit.37 That, indeed, was the alleged norm in English or colo-
 nial exhibitions. Rather, the Jamaica Exhibition was conceived
 by its protagonists as a means of accelerating the economic
 growth of the island, and in that light was to be regarded not as a
 financial flop but as a form of investment. Moreover, in terms of
 the number of locals it had attracted, the exhibition was an un-
 qualified success. "It has been estimated that, in proportion to
 the number of inhabitants in the immediate neighbourhood and
 the city of Kingston, the Jamaica Exhibition was more largely
 attended than any preceding one in Europe or America."38
 Given exhibits like the model dairy and the model industrial
 village, many applauded the exposition as "a splendid object
 lesson" from which the Jamaican masses would benefit.
   So it was misleading to judge the outcome of the Jamaica
International Exhibition by its immediate results in terms of
pounds, shillings, and pence. The only meaningful measure for
assessing its financial denouement was on the basis of its long-
run returns. From an educational point of view the Exhibition
could only be voted a success, as it had shown the people of
Jamaica what articles they needed to develop their resources and
where these items could best be bought. The Jamaica Post
advised:
In view of the fact ... that Jamaica is being talked of throughout the
world and more especially in the U.S.A. and Canada, as it has never
been before-that the beauty of its scenery, the salubrity of its climate
and the fertility of its soil are now known . .. and that this knowledge
will undoubtedly lead to a great influx of tourists into the island every





                     Jamaica Awakens                        67

year, we think that the inhabitants of Jamaica, or rather the Exhibition
guarantors, have made a very profitable investment of their money.39
Though the exhibition itself had come to an end, the objectives
it had been designed to achieve had not disappeared. In fact,
Jamaica was said to be henceforth "on perpetual exhibition."40









                        Chapter 5


              "Ho-tel Me Not"





         RIOR TO 1891, when Jamaica hosted the Interna-
         tional Exhibition, there was no such thing as a hotel
         industry in that colony. The flow of visitors to Jamaica
         was meager, and the accommodations were, by and
large, squalid, consisting primarily of taverns in the towns and
inns in the rural areas.1 Taverns were public houses where one
could secure food, drink, and shelter. Travelers in the coun-
tryside took refuge in inns, which offered a lower level of accom-
modation than taverns. The reason for this difference in quality
was that few people spent more than one night at any of these
inns, located at more or less convenient spots along the main
roads. The inn was a mere refreshment place for man and
horse, and in general its facilities were quite elemental. The
taverns were not much better for their part. "Much cannot be
said for the West Indian hotels in general," Trollope com-
mented in his travelogue of 1860.2 According to Capper over a
quarter of a century later, in some cases the inn was "a mere
hovel."3
  To start with, the typical sitting room in these places was al-
most always in "a sorry state." At nightfall, the room was lit by a
kerosene lamp, the glare of which attracted "myriads" of winged
ants, moths, and other creatures. As for the bedrooms, moth-
eaten pillows and mattresses and a coverlet of dubious clean-
liness was the common offering. At nine, with candle in hand,
the guest normally repaired to his bedroom. There, hopes for a
fair night's rest were contingent upon the unlikely good fortune
of finding the room equipped with a proper mosquito net, fail-


68





"Ho-tel Me Not"


69


ing which one shared one's bed with insects, including perhaps a
large cockroach or two.4
  This dearth of decent accommodation congenial to the taste
of a refined person, along with the slatternly service at such
lodges, constituted before 1890 one of the biggest drawbacks to
the development of tourism in the colony. What held for Ja-
maica was just as true in her sister isles. According to John
Amphlett, for instance: "I believe that if nice comfortable hotels
were supplied and good waiters and servants procured to attend
to them, instead of the lazy and independent negroes, the West
Indies would be well frequented as a health resort."5
  The standard at public houses in Jamaica especially, and in
the West Indies in general, before the International Exhibition
of 1891 left a lot to be desired, or so visitors repeatedly railed.6
The many taverns in Kingston drew clientele from among
persons of moderate means who were not too fastidious about
some dirt or a little din. For the more exacting visitor there was
another, more expensive type of accommodation-the hall. Lo-
cated in the lower part of Kingston, these establishments had
in the past been erected as private residences by members of
the colonial elite.7 Later, however, whether through debt or
movement on the part of their proprietors to cooler and more
comfortable districts, they came into the hands of colored entre-
preneurs (often women), who converted them into hostels. De-
spite the higher tariff at the halls, the improvement in the
quality of accommodation over the tavern was marginal.
  Blundell Hall was perhaps the best hostel in Kingston in
1872 yet, as one guest confided, "if so, the others must be bad."
Ducks and poultry kept by the management inhabited a yard in
the hotel compound. Carrion crows jostled among the domestic
animals in this enclosure, likewise seeking something to de-
vour. The scullery and domestic office, as well as the stables
and first floor bedrooms, were arranged along the perimeter
of this quadrangle. As for the interior furnishing, the bed on
which our informant slept was draped with a tattered mosquito
net composed "more of holes than of netting." In consequence,



























The Moneague Tavern in 1844. Such taverns provided public accomodation
for travelers in inland towns. William Sewell in 1859-60 described the
Moneague Tavern as "the best in the island."


Located halfway between Kingston and Spanish Town, the Ferry Inn was a
well-known refreshment spot before railways developed and people stopped
journeying by coach.
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.



























Park Lodge (Kingston).


Date Tree Hall, another old hotel in Kingston (1906).
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.





72                  To Hell with Paradise

"in the morning, after my first trial of them, I discovered at least
a dozen fat well-fed mosquitoes hanging on inside the curtains,
and lazily and contentedly waving their hind legs in the air."8
   It was such reputed shortcomings in the offerings at most
lodgings in Jamaica that Sir John Peter Grant sought to remedy
during his tenure as governor. Grant's grand idea was to erect a
hotel in Kingston on the model of the best American public
houses and to establish a branch of it in the hills organized along
the separate cottage plan.9 In support of his proposal to use
public funds for this venture, Sir John argued that it was gov-
ernment's responsibility to take the initiative for constructing
the edifice. First, American speculators were not willing to build
in Jamaica since they were then receiving a high interest for
their money in their own country. Further, his proposal was not
without precedent, he contended, for in Nassau (capital of the
British colony of the Bahamas) a hotel had been constructed
with money from the public purse. Finally, local consensus fa-
vored such a hotel as a means of bringing substantial sums of
money into the colony, he claimed.

I am convinced that such a Hotel ... by supplying a want now justly
and greatly complained of, would be the certain means of inducing a
very large number of persons to come to Jamaica from the United
States, and some even from the Dominion of Canada .... In every way
an influx of strangers in easy circumstances, with the energy and love of
progress which the class of visitors that are expected are known to
possess, could not but be of infinite benefit to a colony which owes much
of its backwardness to a remarkable want of these qualities.10

  Grant's plan for the construction of the hotel was quite simple.
The land for this scheme, he suggested, should be acquired by
the government and the building subsequently erected there on
an approved plan at public expense. Next, the hotel should be
let to a firm or company that was solvent, and the lessee should
undertake to operate the hotel at a rent that would provide for
the interest on the amount expended, for fire insurance, and for
maintenance. Last, the lessee should be entitled to purchase the





"Ho-tel Me Not"


75


hotel at any time during the period of the lease. Such an ar-
rangement, he postulated, would be satisfactory to both parties.
The government would be assured of the requisite security, and
the lessee would have the option to purchase if the business were
a success.
  Governor Grant's proposal proved stillborn. When he cited
the precedent of Nassau to give further weight to his argument,
he was evidently unaware that the hotel there had been a finan-
cial failure and that, in the words of the colonial office, "very
little encouragement can be derived from this precedent." The
secretary of state for the colonies was unwilling to sanction
a similar undertaking in the case of Jamaica "without much
stronger proof than he has yet received that a similar result is
not to be apprehended."" Following this rejection of Governor
Grant's scheme, almost two decades elapsed before the colonial
government once more undertook sponsorship of any scheme
for the establishment and promotion of modern hotel businesses
in the island.
  The immediate background to the change in official attitudes
was the decision to hold an International Exhibition in 1891.
Lodging facilities in Kingston were so limited that "probably one
hundred tourists would fill all the recognized hotels in the city,"
the U.S. consul remarked in February 1890.12 To prepare for
the exhibition, the governor of the island, Sir Henry Blake, en-
acted legislation that gave a great incentive to domestic hotel
development. Under Law 27 of 1890 (the Jamaica Hotels Law),
public credit was pledged to the sum of £150 thousand to es-
tablish hotels in the island. By its terms, speculators in this enter-
prise were guaranteed an interest rate of 3 percent per annum
on their investment. All the materials needed for the erection
and equipment of the buildings were to be allowed duty-free
entry into the colony. Critics claimed that the taxpayer would
bear any losses under the conditions of the guarantee, whereas
the speculators would reap any profits. The terms of the agree-
ment were alleged to be "so temptingly generous as to stir the
flame of gambling speculation in the breast of the coolest-most






74


To Hell with Paradise


cold-blooded individual." 3 Great though the expectations were,
the government through this largesse was to become saddled
with a number of bankrupt businesses in the long run, as their
actual performances failed to yield projected results.
   Under the Jamaica Hotels Law of 1890 the taxpayers were
made to contribute generously, and not a few persons were
skeptical about the returns that the public at large would receive.
Criticism of the Jamaica Hotels Law essentially was based on the
contention that land was the foundation of all national wealth.
The infant hotel industry, it was protested, had less claim to the
grant of government concessions than longer established, land-
based enterprises like sugar and coffee.14 It would have been
more advisable for the government to grant concessions to the
sugar industry, for example, to stimulate the construction of
central factories, than invest in hotels-which are at root "non-
productive" or merely "distributive undertakings."'5 If the pub-
lic money were to be committed, it should as a rule be pledged in
that area where it could do the greatest good for the greatest
number-agriculture. In the words of one local newspaper:
To suppose that there will always be a sufficient number of strangers in
the country to keep the hotels going and even pay the 3 percent that the
Government has guaranteed is simply a fallacy. . . . Under any circum-
stance it is unfortunate, we think, that a country's prosperity should be
made dependent upon anything so evanescent and uncertain. National
prosperity must come chiefly from the earth .... Hotel keeping is but
one of the subsidiaries by which the mass of mankind earn their bread,
but not in the wildest dream can it be relied on as a source of national
prosperity.16
  Prominent among the objectors was a small number of per-
sons who were distinctly opposed to any course of action that
used public funds to benefit private and foreign corporations or
to subsidize the comfort and pleasure of itinerants from over-
seas. If, from an economic standpoint, the Jamaica Hotels Law
was at variance with the first principles of politicoeconomic sci-
ence, from a sociological stance its implied bias was no less repre-
hensible, in the view of many." As it was, the daily life of the






                      "Ho-tel Me Not"                       75

average citizen was spent in an uninspiring cycle of eating,
drinking, working, and sleeping. No intellectual diversion of any
sort varied the monotony. Should public monies be spent, it was
contended, the government, should first administer to the needs
of its own population before it catered to the caprices of tran-
sients from abroad. As one resident from St. Ann's Parish com-
plained in a letter to the Jamaica Post:
There are some few, who, like myself have the opinion firmly rooted in
their minds that the necessity for hotels on the large scale now in vogue
is purely imaginary, that the country can very well do without visitors of
the tourist class, that hotels without external surroundings to make the
country a pleasant one to sojourn in are useless and that it is necessary,
first to render the country comfortable for our own people. . . . Under
present auspices life in this country is not pleasant . . . we have no
theatres, no music halls, no picture galleries, no free libraries; we neglect
even to utilize the bountiful gifts of nature by providing large and shady
parks in our towns .... And yet with immense opportunities and re-
sources whereby to improve in these respects, we thoughtlessly neglect
them and squander large sums to raise huge edifices to accommodate
strangers.'18

  Following the Jamaica Hotels Law of 1890 a number of hotel
companies came into existence, and five modern structures were
erected to house visitors to the island.'9 In downtown Kingston
two buildings were put up, the Myrtle Bank Hotel and the
Queen's Hotel, respectively erected by the Kingston Hotels
Company and the Jamaica Hotels Company. In St. Andrew,
extra rooms were added to the Constant Spring Hotel, itself
built just recently by the American Hotels Company. At Spanish
Town, the Hotel Rio Cobre was put up by the St. Catherine
Hotels Company. Finally, at Moneague, the Moneague Hotel
was erected by the Moneague Hotels Company.
  With the exception of the Queen's Hotel, however, these
structures all turned out to be money losers, some sooner than
later.20 As early as June 1891, "the Kingston folks" were saying
that "hotel ventures are not always a Constant Spring of wealth."
Likewise, the directors of the Constant Spring and the Myrtle














































(Top) The old Myrtle Bank Hotel was owned by James Gall, proprietor of
Gall's News Letter. It was demolised after being sold in May 1890.
(Bottom) The Kingston Hotels Company, which bought the original Myrtle
Bank Hotel from James Gall, took advantage of the 1890 Hotels Law to build
on the same site this fine structure with seventy-five bedrooms.
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.















































(Top) The Hotel Rio Cobre, Spanish Town, was built by the St. Catherine
Hotels Company under the provisions of the 1890 Hotel Law.
(Center) The Moneague Hotel was constructee by the Moneague Hotels
Company, also under the terms of the 1890 law.
(Bottom) The Constant Spring Hotel was the first building in Jamaica to be lit
by electricity. Built in 1888 by the American Hotels Company, it seized upon the
Jamaica Hotels Law to erect several small cottages on the hotel's grounds.
Illustrations courtesy of National Library of Jamaica.








              Acknowledgments







TH I S BOOK has been long in gestation-perhaps too long.
The main body of the research was done between 1969 and
1971, in connection with my University of the West Indies
(UWI) Master's thesis in history, entitled "The Foundation of
the Jamaica Tourist Industry, 1890-1914." Immediately on
completion of this dissertation in 1971, the time period focused
on in my initial research became extended, when I undertook a
project on behalf of the University's Institute of Social and Eco-
nomic Research (ISER) to study the Jamaica tourist industry
between 1919 and 1939. I owe a profound debt of gratitude to
my mentor, Dr. Alister McIntyre, at present vice chancellor of
the University of the West Indies, for the opportunity to engage
in that extended study in 1971-1972, when he served as direc-
tor of the ISER. I am indebted likewise to Professor Douglas
Hall, now retired from the UWI's Department of History. It was
on Professor Hall's advice that I ventured into this hitherto un-
explored area of Jamaica's past, and with his skillful guidance as
my thesis director, brought the work to a conclusion. However,
foremost among the original contingent of persons who inspired
this work is my former wife, Ms. Regina Dumas. Her under-
standing, forbearance, and invaluable comments are cherished
memories, and her friendship a lasting treasure.
  Unquestionably it would not have been possible to have done
research of this nature without the assistance of the very kind
and helpful library staff at the Institute of Jamaica, in particular,
and at the main library of the University of the West Indies. I am
especially grateful to Miss Dunn, then at the Institute of Ja-
maica, for the assistance she rendered to me in obtaining some


vi1






78


To Hell with Parade


Bank were all chanting this mournful dirge: "Ho-tel me not."21
Actually, within a mere three months of the close of the exhibi-
tion, the Constant Spring Hotel was forced through lack of busi-
ness to shut its doors for a while.22 Despite the much-vaunted
expertise of American managers, then, neither the Constant
Spring nor the Myrtle Bank got off to a successful start. It was
almost exclusively upon the "In-Constant" Spring Hotel and the
Myrtle Bank Hotel that the brunt of public chagrin was focused.
This was because some two-thirds of the £70 thousand that the
government had guaranteed on capital invested in the five
hotels had been taken by these two buildings.23 Both establish-
ments were intended to offer the best possible accommodation
to visitors in and around the island's capital. However, by mid-
1891 it was painfully apparent that "the prospects of the Hotels
scheme are not at present particularly bright."
  Since a principal purpose of the exhibition had been to propel
a takeoff of the tourist industry, what transpired was unques-
tionably serious enough for W. B. Espeut to raise the matter at
the highest levels of government.24 At a sitting of the legislative
council on 22 April 1891, Espeut formally directed the attention
of the council to the current state of affairs in the infant hotel
business. He had strongly supported the passage of the Jamaica
Hotels Law, he said, but if quick action were not taken to erase
the unfavorable goings-on in some of the hotels, the guarantee
would be endangered and the attempt to provide comfortable
accommodation for strangers thwarted.
  Of the Rio Cobre Hotel, he claimed, he had heard nothing but
praise. He had never visited the Queen's Hotel, but at the Con-
stant Spring complaints of mismanagement were rife. The water
in the swimming pool was allowed to remain for two weeks, and
it was used by servants as well as visitors. The guests complained
of inattention and incivility, and he was told by a person promi-
nent in the shipping business that fewer tourists than expected
came to Jamaica because those who had visited the island were
so disgusted with the hotel accommodation that they discour-
aged others from coming. As regards the Myrtle Bank, there






"Ho-tel AMe Not"


79


were numerous complaints of overcharging and neglect. In-
deed, he said, a writer to the London Globe of 31 March had
been very reproachful in his remarks on both hotels. For these
reasons he felt that something should be done speedily to cor-
rect this situation.
  Espeut's comments in the legislature were revealing. Even
though Colonel Ward, another member of the council, charged
that Espeut's assertions were designed to damage the hotels, he
had to admit that the Myrtle Bank had been mismanaged.25
Originally it had an American manager and staff, but the man-
ager was in a state of maudlin drunkenness for weeks, and so
were some of the staff. They had at last been got rid of and the
hotel was, since then, well managed. The acting colonial secre-
tary observed, however, that complaints regarding poor prac-
tices at some of the hotels still reached the governor's ear, and
the government direcor had been instructed to visit them and
stay overnight at times.
  If as early as mid-1891 the failure of the hotels scheme
seemed imminent, by 1893 it had become a stark reality. From
the beginning, neither the Constant Spring nor the Myrtle Bank
had been run at a profit. Eventually, in November 1893, the
Kingston Hotels Company declared itself unable to keep the
Myrtle Bank open any longer, and the government took posses-
sion of the building.26 The legal basis for this action had been
stipulated in section 10 of the Jamaica Hotels Law of 1890,
which empowered the governor to take possession of a hotel and
its equipment upon the failure of the company either to fulfill
the terms of the contract or to pay 3 percent interest upon their
debentures and certificates for three consecutive years. Owing to
this legal provision, the Constant Spring Hotel was taken over by
the authorities two years later, and the Moneague and Rio Cobre
hotels fell into government hands in 1906.27
  Of the five hotels set up under the hotels scheme of 1890, only
the Queen's Hotel stayed afloat. Unlike the others, which catered
to foreigners, the Queen's Hotel had a local clientele of respect-
able peasant proprietors and country tradesmen who were






80


To Hell with Paradie


brought by business to town.28 By the end of the first phase of the
founding of Jamaica's tourism, (that is to say, by 1914), only the
Queen's Hotel was still operated by its original company.29
  By 1893, then, the hotels scheme was on the rocks. The Con-
stant Spring Hotel, which initially had boasted of its cuisine ("the
Culinary Department being under the management of a cele-
brated Parisian Chef, under whom there is a competent staff,
consisting of two French cooks and a Viennese baker") had be-
come a white elephant.30 The Myrtle Bank and the Constant
Spring hotels failed ostensibly because of bad management.
Their rates had been high, "if not exorbitant." The prices were
equal to the highest hotel rates in New York, but the hotels had
not offered as luxurious and diversified a menu. Guests had not
received good value for their money.31 Yet, in the opinion of
some commentators, failure would still have resulted even if
management had been better. The authorities, in their hotels
scheme, had unwittingly put the cart before the horse; they had
begun at the wrong end.
  Given the preoccupation of the authorities with establishing
a tourist business, the first thing they should have done, it
was suggested, was literally to put their own house in order.
The hotels established under the scheme of 1890 were "de-
signed, built and conducted on too large a scale for a small and
poor country." Rather than beginning with large, expensive
hotels, the government first should have improved the ap-
pearance and attractions of the island's capital and established
cheaper facilities for getting about the place. These reportedly
were among the recurrent complaints of the winter visitors:
"Tourists that have been here abhor Kingston; they think it 'a
dirty hole' where people are too prompt to take advantage of
their ignorance. . ... I have heard many say, do what you will,
until you improve your town, give us amusements, and facilities
for seeing the Country, you will never induce a large number of
Winter Visitors."32
  A program to remedy these defects, it was contended, would
not only have redounded to the benefit of the local people but





"Ho-tel Me Not"


81


ought to have constituted "the means first required" to induce
visitors to Jamaica. Suitable hotels would subsequently have
been erected, simply because it would have then been possible
to make money in the hotel business. What was more, people
would have been inclined to invest in this sector of the economy
without a government guarantee.33
  If little was offered (whether in the form of attractions in the
capital or the quality of service at the hotels) to make Jamaica an
attractive environment to the visitor, even less was done in the
first place to woo him there. The conspicuous failure of much of
the hotels scheme by 1893 was in part owing to the failure to
advertise. Following the ambitious effort at organizing the Inter-
national Exhibition, few measures of any significance were un-
dertaken to call the charms of the island to the notice of the
foreign traveling public. In the eyes of many, this neglect was by
far the most important failing in the early hotel enterprise, for
"advertising is as essential in this respect, as it is to the Manufac-
turer or Merchant who desires to introduce his class of wares to
the buyer."34 Practical proposals to sell Jamaica were put for-
ward by sundry individuals from time to time, only to fall on
deaf ears. One anonymous analyst recommended in 1893, for
example:
If we are to expect results, such as we hope for, we must spend a little
money; articles on Jamaica must be published not only in New York,
but throughout all the Northern States. Advertising of a more direct
character must be resorted to; a bureau of information must be estab-
lished, presided over by one capable of "talking Jamaica," and who
would so conduct the office as to render it an attraction for men and
ladies to visit, who would seek knowledge respecting this part of the
world on which comparatively few know anything.35
It was not until the formation of the Jamaica Tourist Association
in September 1910 that these measures were actually imple-
mented.36
  Looking back, perhaps the prime blunder in Blake's adminis-
tration was the injustice perpetrated against the people of the
colony by the passage of the Jamaica Hotels Law of 1890. At a





82


To Hell wit Paradise


time of recession in the insular economy, the tax burden borne
by the struggling people of this poor island was made heavier in
order to reduce the risks to expatriate investors in the infant
hotel business. Due to this legislation, hundreds of pounds of
public money became tied up in hotel failures. Indeed, the
colony became bedeviled by what was termed "the hotels loan
incubus."37 What should be done with these "aristocratic alms
houses," the Myrtle Bank and the Constant Spring? That ques-
tion perplexed the members of the legislative council through-
out the 1890s. At one time, for example, there was just one
lodger at the Constant Spring, and what was more, that prized
person was expected to return shortly to the United States. "One
lodger," the Tri-Weekly Budget declared, "and he is passing out,
without an immediate prospect of his place being supplied.""38
On other occasions, occupancy rates were distinctly better. At
the height of the tourist season of 1899 there were ten residents
at Myrtle Bank and sixteen at the Constant Spring. To serve this
number there was a staff of eighty "helps.""39
  Despite all the vaunting of the island's climate and its scenic
charm, the early tourist industry in Jamaica exhibited from
the start an inferiority complex regarding Jamaicans, their
capabilities, and their resources as compared to foreigners. For
example, though there had been some element of truth in the
charges levied against the public houses of Jamaica prior to the
hotels scheme, many of these charges were hyperbolic and mere
half-truths. In the words of one tourist guide, the old complaints
were in fact "not altogether deserved," for "there have always
been a number of well-conducted lodging houses, managed
somewhat after the fashion of American boarding houses."40
Such concerns as the old Myrtle Bank Hotel and the Park Lodge
were in themselves "quite worthy of the name of hotel." Creole
efficiency in the hotel industry was likewise proven at the Water-
loo, at Payne's Hotel in Montego Bay, and at Mrs. Watson's in St.
Ann's Bay, notwithstanding the limited resources with which
these all operated.41 But on the assumption of Creole incompe-
tence those hotels set up under the 1890 scheme were placed





"Ho-tel ilMe Not"


83


under U.S. management, even though local capital, private and
public, had been sunk into the enterprises.
  Under their American managers, these establishments turned
out to be fiascos. Regardless of the ascribed expertise of the
Americans in hotel management, there was little observable im-
provement in standards, in efficiency, or in organization-in
sum, in the quality of the product offered to the visitor. These
mainland managers, some guests complained, would have done
better if, instead of chasing after French or Continental cooks,
they had acquired a few good Creole cooks and provided good,
plain, Creole dishes rather than imitate those of Europe or
America and get ridiculed in the process.42
  At the Constant Spring, in spite of the American manage-
ment, callers were often compelled to chase from cellar to garret
and from office to kitchen to find someone to register them and
get them a room. Nobody would be in the vestibule to greet the
guest upon arrival. Halls and corridors were dirty; broken bot-
tles lay strewn around the entrance to the billiard room. Even as
simple a matter as a boiled egg routinely required three-quarters
of an hour to prepare. To crown it all, the servants were insolent
and firm in their refusal to know "their place."43
  Obnoxious as the hotels scheme was to its detractors, none-
theless it had generated some employment for local labor. By
1899, however, even this redeeming quality was in question. As
though the structural dependence of Jamaica upon the U.S.
vacation market and its functional dependence upon U.S. hotel
managers were not enough, the hotel industry deepened the
island's subordination by bringing in help from abroad to dis-
place the native staff. In January 1899, cooks, stewards, wait-
ers, clerks, porters, barbers, and others were all imported from
the United States to staff the hotels in the colony, irrespective
of the depressed state of the local economy.44 Since it was the
public purse that propped up the principal hotels, the plight of
the native staff was doubly grievous. As the Jamaica Post put it:
"the old staff are to tumble out, and kick stones, or else take to
the woods and cultivate in order to earn the means to contrib-





84


To Hell witb Paradbe


ute in the shape of taxes to the payment of those brought to
take their places."45 That undoubtedly was the unkindest cut
of all.
   The burning question in Jamaica as the nineteenth century
came to a close was whether the colony was to surrender to U.S.
syndicates, retain British dominance, or develop the role of the
Creole. As things stood, while the island's economy was under
American control, the reins of administration were in the hands
of the British, and under Crown government, the Creoles were
marginalized in politics. No aspect of the island's economic life
was as submissive to U.S. dictation, however, as the trade in
bananas, then the chief crop of the colony. From the beginning,
the American promoters of the trade were bent on establishing a
monopoly so as to be in a position to dictate buying prices to
banana growers on the island regardless of the selling price of
the fruit abroad. In 1899 this situation had eventually mate-
rialized with the formation of the United Fruit Company, a
gigantic corporation that dominated the enterprise internation-
ally in production, shipping, and marketing. Submission to U.S.
economic hegemonism was the price that Jamaica paid in order
to foster economic growth.46
  It was precisely to counteract this economic dependence of the
colony on the United States that the Imperial Direct Line was
instituted in 1901 between Jamaica and the United Kingdom.47
The purpose of this project was to develop a market for the
banana trade independent of U.S. monopolists and to promote
commerce generally between the colony and its mother country.
To this end the British government granted a ten-year subsidy
of £20 thousand per annum, and the colonial government did
likewise, to establish direct steamer service between the two
places. A firm called Elder, Dempster and Company operated
this venture, led by Sir Alfred Jones, chief of the corporation,
with zeal and optimism.
  In 1901, the colony believed that a messiah had come in the
person of Sir Alfred Jones to deliver Jamaica from her afflic-
tions. In that year, Elder, Dempster and Company leased from






                      "Ho-tel Me Not"                      85

the government the Myrtle Bank and Constant Spring hotels
and immediately set about improving, equipping, and advertis-
ing them. By September 1902, the company had spent almost
£20 thousand to promote its hotel business in the colony.48
Jones was seen as a savior. He planned not just to establish a new
outlet for the Jamaican banana in a market not dominated by
the United Fruit Company but also to liberate the colonists from
the hotels loan incubus by developing the tourist traffic from
England and introducing new and improved managerial skills
into running the Myrtle Bank and Constant Spring hotels. The
aura of expectancy that enveloped the undertaking was obvious
in the address of His Excellency, Governor A. W. L. Hemming,
at the beginning of the legislative session for 1902:
During the past year increased attention has been paid to Jamaica
in England. For this we are indebted to the Direct Line of Steam-
ers. . . . The Direct Line has demonstrated that fruit can be carried to
England, and its promoters have established a paying and most promis-
ing market there .... The enterprise of Messrs Elder, Dempster and
Company has also extended itself to the making known of Jamaica as a
pleasure and health resort, and Sir Alfred Jones has leased from the
Government the Constant Spring and Myrtle Bank Hotels for the pur-
pose of developing the tourist traffic. The results of this endeavour are
already promising, and I believe I shall not meet with a single dissen-
tient voice when I say that this enterprise has the elements of a great
future in it.49

   Elder, Dempster and Company had made a most impressive
debut in the Jamaica tourist business. It was reported that the
tourist traffic to the colony for the year 1902 showed an un-
precedented influx of visitors from the United Kingdom. The
newly improved hotel facilities at the Myrtle Bank and the Con-
stant Spring reportedly attracted a large number of Ameri-
cans.50 The number of visitors to the island in 1902 was held to
be greater than ever before, except for the year of the Jamaica
International Exhibition.51
   So great was the renewed optimism surrounding the hotel
business that on 10 May 1904 the government passed a new law,





86


To Hel with Paradise


the Jamaica Hotels Law, designed specifically to encourage "the
erection and equipment of efficient Hotels in this Island." With
the entry of Jones into the Jamaica tourist business, the hotel
industry was given a new lease on life. Tremendous develop-
ments were anticipated, but for the tourist industry to attain
these heights, new and improved accommodation was desirable.
Thus, the Hotels Law of 1904 was enacted.
  Under the provisions of this law, any person erecting a hotel
of forty or more bedrooms could apply to the government for
an import license, so that the materials, fixtures, and furniture
necessary to construct and equip the building could be brought
into the island free of duty. Any such hotel was exempted from
paying increased taxation for ten years from the date on which
the import license was granted.
  Of the five hotels that were erected under the Jamaica Hotels
Law of 1890, only the Moneague Hotel was built in the moun-
tains, and the full potential of mountain resorts had remained
conspicuously unexploited. In the words of the Leader, "we have
no large hotels where large hotels ought to be-one for instance
in Manchester, one in the Blue Mountains, one in the Santa
Cruz Mountains, one in the hills of St. Thomas."" The tourist
trade of the colony would never become what "it might and
could become" unless first-class hotels were set up all over the
island. Thanks to the Jamaica Hotels Law of 1904, this could
now happen: "if this anticipation is realised, the tourist trade of
the colony will be placed on a firmer basis than it has hitherto
possessed."53
  Sir Alfred Jones's entry into the hotel business had once more
inflated hopes for the possibilities of the holiday industry. But,
contrary to expectations, Jones failed dismally in his attempt to
develop the English travel market to alleviate Jamaica's heavy
dependence on U.S. visitors. This was blamed on the twin forces
of travel-distance and transportation expense. "It has to be re-
membered," the Jamaica Guardian explained, "thatJamaica is too
far distant from England ever to become an extremely popular
resort for English tourists." Apart from the cost, a fortnight's





"Ho-tel AMe Not"


87


voyage each way was required for travelers between London and
Kingston. It stood to reason that the tourist traffic from England
could never be anything but small, the paper concluded. "It is to
the winter travellers of the United States and Canada that we
must look for the bulk of our trade every season. This island is
one of the natural outlets for the residents of these great coun-
tries, if only because it can be reached in a few days."54
  The links that Jones hoped to develop between his passenger
service and his hotel business failed to flourish, quite unlike the
felicitous experience of his rival, the United Fruit Company.
United Fruit always had a full house during the winter months
at the company-owned and -operated Titchfield Hotel.55 One
might be tempted to think that Elder, Dempster's lack of success
in the hotel business was in part due to the disaster that befell it,
as the earthquake that devastated Kingston in 1907 also totally
wrecked the Myrtle Bank Hotel. The truth, however, was that
the earthquake, regardless of what it had destroyed, had defi-
nitely not demolished Jones's faith in the hotel business. Indeed,
Sir Alfred remained so committed to this enterprise that he even
bought the Constant Spring Hotel from the government the
following year.56 It was not until around 1911 that there was a
discernible volte-face in the company's attitude toward hotel
keeping. One year later things came to a head with the closure of
the Constant Spring due to financial failure.57
  Whereas the Elder, Dempster hotel business was on the wane
by 1911, that of the United Fruit Company continued to thrive.
In 1904, the United Fruit Company had taken advantage of the
newly enacted hotels law to erect on Titchfield Hill at Port An-
tonio an elaborate structure with accommodation for some five
hundred persons to replace the former edifice that had been
gutted by fire. This hotel, the company boasted, was "the finest
and most modern hotel in the West Indies."58 Not only was it
patronized by Americans, but it was owned by Americans, run
by Americans, and staffed (from chef to waitresses) by Ameri-
cans-in sum, it was totally symbolic of the new economic impe-
rialism ushered into the Caribbean by Americans.59 Nor was the