Slave bell


The Slave Bell was used to punctuate the day in slave societies.

Cape Colony

In the Cape Colony the slave bell had a distinctive archtectual-style. It was usually a large bell hung from free-standing tall white pillars or in a white arch. After the abolition of slavery in the Cape they were continuely used during the apartheid regime in South Africa as a element of the Cape Dutch architectural style without recognition that they were symbols of oppression and suffering.

Notable slave bells

La Demajagua bell, Cuba

In Cuba, on 10 October 1868, the slave bell at the La Demajagua sugar mill, in Manzanillo, was rung by the mill's owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to called assemble the people he enslaved to tell them that they are free and to invite them to join the fight for independence from Spain. This act is seen as the start of the Ten Years War.
In 1947 the Demajagua bell was bought to the University of Havana by law student Fidel Castro and other anti-government demonstrators.  When the bell was removed by the government Castro protested against it on national radio making his name widely known in Cuba for the first time. The bell was returned to Manzanillo in November 1947 and was re-installed at  La Demajagua in 1968.

The Demerara Bell

A bell, known as the Demerara Bell, was donated to St. Catherine's College, Cambridge in 1960 by a former student Edward Goodland, who worked at Bookers Sugar Estates in British Guiana. The bell was inscribed ‘De Catherina 1772’ was from the Anna Catharina plantation on the West Bank Demerara, was found in the Demerara River in the 1950s. The bell initally installed outside the porter's lodge at St. Catherine's before it was moved to an accomondation block in 1994 where it was in a prominent postition overlooking the the centre of the college. In May 2019 the governing body and students of St Catharine’s College unanimously agreed that the bell should be removed view and would eventually be donated to Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In August 2019 it was reported that the Guyanese High Commissioner Frederick Hamley Case had persuded the college to return the bell to Guyana.
Iznaga tower, Manaca plantation, Cuba