Historian Dr Estherine Adams, whose manuscript, “The Few Among the Many: Women’s Labour in British Guiana’s Jails”, won the Non-Fiction Award in the 2024 Guyana Prize for Literature, is continuing to research and write with the aim of bringing clarity to some of the narratives that form part of Guyana’s colonial history.
One such narrative involves Reverend Richard Elliott, who was credited as one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church. Another highlights Swedish plantation and slave owners in British Guiana.
“Reverend Elliott, who came to British Guiana with a lot of missionaries, and who was attached to one of the Presbyterian churches on West Coast Demerara was accused of raping a number of enslaved young women. There was this big inquiry into his actions. It had to be something out of the norm and really bad for the authorities to launch an inquiry into what he was doing,” Adams told the Stabroek Weekend in an interview on Tuesday.
