So is it too late? How can we possibly solve a problem that seems about to topple our very Government? The answer, though far from simple, is straightforward and involves three related problems.

An Alternative

Thousands of boys sit on hundreds of street corners in cities, towns and villages across the Island. What are their prospects? They can get a job for minimum wage and be poor or they can run drugs for the local “Don” and be rich. In the inner cities they don’t care if they die at twenty-five; life is cheap and in the meantime they will have a big house, a Lexus and a dozen women.

Various groups and foundations have set up training institutes and mentoring programmes: using a teaspoon to move a mountain. Sometimes they unearth a talented doctor or a shrewd business man, a mechanic who can build a car from scratch or a computer genius. But there remain thousands of intelligent children who instead turn their brains to crime.

Our inner city schools are woefully inadequate, forty or more children in a class room. The girls sit in front and try to learn; the boys sit in back and waste time. The teacher, sometimes ill-trained herself, worries about her rent money and knows that if she brings the children to order a parent with a gun or knife will visit her. When the child graduates at Grade 12 they will likely be illiterate and will join thousands of others in pursuit of a handful of jobs.

The “community leaders,” the area “dons,” nothing more than crime bosses, send the children to school, buy uniforms and books. They pay grandmothers’ hospital bills. They give jobs to the men, sometimes in legitimate companies they own. This is why our poor support them. They are doing what Government and big corporations are not.

Our schools must come back to the standards of a few short decades ago. Our big corporations need to do more community work. Our Government must put in place the tools needed for the economy to grow thereby creating new jobs. Our young boys need to know that they have the opportunity to be a success without selling their souls to the drug dealers.

An Example

Many years ago our children wanted to grow up to be like teacher or preacher. Times changed and, like all normal children, they had dreams of being doctors or lawyers or pilots. Now, these street corner boys, born into a life of hardship, learn to be realists at an early age. They know that there is little or no likelihood of this happening. They look around from their vantage point, sitting on a broken wall of an abandoned building, and what do they see? They see men driving Lexuses, BMWs and Hummers, dressed in bespoke tailored clothes and Italian shoes. But these are not businessmen, bankers and professionals for those men do not venture into these God-forsaken places. What these boys see are creatures of a different stripe. These are the people who earn their fortunes in the “import export business,” transporting cocaine from South America to North America and Europe. There is even one with the reputation of being one of the richest men in the world and who is on a list of the World’s Ten Dangerous Drug Lords. These men hand out money, not just for little luxuries, but for life’s necessities. They build community centres, they organise feeding programmes. They look good and they look rich. The boys want to be just like them. When the day comes that a job offer is extended, the boy jumps off his street corner and accepts willingly, for one day he might be the boss. The few boys who might not be willing to accept the offer do so anyway, for they know the alternative. Many may also dream of one day being the next Usain Bolt or Shaggy, but even in their youth they realise that this requires an inborn talent, not something you can learn or work towards. A mere handful might possess this talent and if they do who will sponsor them? The very same men who offer them jobs?

What are the women like in these communities? They are poor, harassed creatures, living day to day, hand to mouth, working their fingers to the bone and old before their time. Or they are perfectly turned out artificial creatures, made up, bewigged, in skin tight $10,000 outfits, parading like cattle, selling themselves to the highest bidder. There are very few “ordinary” women in these communities.

The boys hear and see a lot from their street corners. They hear of fraud in business, they hear of corrupt politicians, they see drivers speeding through red lights and policemen gun-butting, or worse, their friends for merely answering back. What they do not see is these people being held accountable. They grow up with absentee fathers or no fathers at all, they grow up with mothers who knock them to the ground for little reason. They grow up seeing and hearing everyone around them doing as they please and not having to answer for it. They are not taught nor shown the difference between right and wrong so how could they learn it?

Each and every one of us must start with our self to set the right example. We must stop “letting off a smalls” to various authorities to help our businesses run smoother. We must stop racing through street lights on amber and throwing water bottles from our car windows. We must stop asking our doctors for sick notes when we are called to jury duty. We must question our children when they get in trouble at school instead of descending on their teacher with threats. We must make that phone call when we see our neighbours’ thirteen year old daughter being regularly visited by her uncle when no one else is home. We must demand that our corrupt politicians and crooked businessmen be held accountable. And every once in a while we must smile and give a tip to the little boy or disabled man who comes to our car window begging. Once we start to do these things ourselves, it will slowly spread like a tonic through those we come in contact with.

A Watcher

My third point is less idealistic than the others. It is a cold hard fact. All of us, at one time or another, has complained about our police force. Some have called them crooked, some have called them violent. There are calls of “police brutality” over every incident. Authorities speak of retraining and rebranding. But we must face the hard truth. There are 8,000 policemen and women to maintain order for almost 3,000,000 people, or one for every 350 civilians. New York, as an example, has 50,000 police personnel, including auxiliary officers, school safety officers, etc. or one per 160 civilians. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.

Why so few? There are several reasons but one bothers me more that the others. The Police Academy at Twickenham Park was seriously damaged during Hurricane Ivan and is not yet repaired. Yes, Hurricane Ivan, six years ago! Several dorms and classrooms are unusable. The Academy therefore can only train half as many people as they should. It is reported that funding for repairs was approved several years ago but this funding has not materialised. When it rains, cadets move their beds and desks around to avoid leaks.

There are police stations across the Island, in inner city communities and small country villages, which are falling apart; stations where you risk falling through the floor, stations where women are not deployed as there are no bathrooms. The list goes on. There are stations in the deep countryside which serve many square miles yet have not even one vehicle. We will not even speak of equipment or pay. Yet we expect these men and women to risk their lives for us? They are treated  like animals yet we are shocked when a very few of them act like animals.

We need to support our men and women who have taken on this thankless job. We must demand that the Police Training School be repaired immediately. We must demand that their stations be repaired and that they are properly equipped. We must demand that they be better paid. And by the way, if you want to take it on yourself to repair a police station or buy them a vehicle, you must confront a lot of red tape otherwise it will be construed as bribery and you can be prosecuted. The only recourse is to somehow by sheer determination and a loud collective voice demand that the authorities put all these things in place. And every day we must thank the 95% of our police force who, despite all odds, remain honest and committed to their profession.

For too long we have remained in apathy while our beautiful Island has fallen apart. If we do notice things wrong then we expect “them” to fix it. But who is “them” but us, for we are Jamaica.

Inspired to do something now? Sign the Petition for Action to Restore Trust in Government.

Sunset or Sunrise? You decide!

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

The Theatre Royal after the Great Earthquake of 1907

A hundred years ago Kingston was rising from the ruins of the Great Earthquake of 1907. Col. Wray was now a middle-aged businessman himself but wealthier than his uncle could ever have imagined. He was also mindful of where his wealth started and made an offer to the city of Kingston to rebuild the Theatre Royal at his expense. This was a great relief to the Council as one can imagine the public purse would have been thinly stretched with rebuilding numerous public buildings. A competition was held for the design of the new structure and this was won by Mr Rudolph Henriques of Henriques and Sons. Ground was broken and, by the end of 1912, the new Ward Theatre, completed at a cost of 12,000 pounds, was handed over to the Mayor (coincidentally my Great Grandfather) and Council of the City of Kingston. It’s very first production, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance took to the stage from December 19^th to 21^st with tickets costing between 2 and 4 shillings.

This splendid Neo-Classical building was constructed of concrete and steel, the newest method of building after the Great Earthquake. It boasts a stage of more than 2000 square feet and seating for over 800 patrons and was designed to rival the great theatres of Europe but ventilated to suit our tropical climate. The Ward also boasts perfect acoustics and every word spoken and sung on stage carries throughout the theatre without the need for microphones.

A recent photo of the Ward Theatre

My family attended events at the Ward for four generations for, as children, my sister and I were taken to Pantomime every year as well as occasional ballets. I recall watching the very First National Pantomime at the Ward. The theatre attracted international performances from all over the world: Italian opera, Russian ballet and the latest Broadway play. Many events in Jamaica’s history also unfolded there. It was at the Ward that the People’s National Party was launched in 1938 and the Jamaica Labour Party in 1943.

The Ward started its decline in the 1970s, theatre goers went downtown less often and, in a more modern time, there was the major problem of parking. Since 1982 the Ward, once the centre of the arts, has been almost permanently closed. In 1986 the Ward Theatre Foundation was formed and they have been valiantly fighting to raise funds to maintain and refurbish the structure. The Foundation and the Centennial Committee are now trying desperately to raise US$20,000,000 to bring this magnificent old lady back to her former glory in time for her Centennial less than three years away. It would be a wonderful thing indeed if our children could experience a performance on its stage and feel the grandeur that is part of a traditional theatre for the Ward is the only one of its kind in Jamaica and, indeed, the entire English speaking Caribbean.

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

Please remember that as difficult as Taxmas may be for you, there is always someone worse off, give what you can to those less fortunate.

Don’t let the Grinch steal Their Christmas!

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

Jamaica’s motto “out of Many, One People” is all too true as, although over 90% of the population is of African heritage, we are indeed one big melting pot. From the first day Columbus set foot on Jamaican soil there have been Jews in the Island as his interpreter, Luis deTorres, was Jewish! Since then members of that faith have been an integral part of our history.

The first shipload of Jewish immigrants arrived from Portugal in 1530. As can be imagined in the heyday of the Inquisition, Jews did not fare very well under Spanish rule, though possibly marginally better than if they had remained at home in Spain and Portugal. Despite this, their enterprises did well.

At the time of the British conquest in 1655, Jews were at last allowed to worship in public and, in 1660, were granted citizenship by Charles II. At this time more immigrants arrived from other countries in the region as well as from Europe. Unfortunately, as has happened countless times in countless places, rights were given to then taken away from them over the next 180 years until finally, in 1831 Jews were granted full equality as Her Majesty’s subjects.

The Jews, who had slowly prospered before, began to thrive. In 1838 the deCordova brothers founded the Gleaner. Belisario produced his now sought after painting. By 1849 almost 20% of the House of Assembly, including the Speaker, were Jewish. Synagogues, markets and banks sprung up across the Island. The current Duke Street Synagogue was built after the 1907 earthquake by the Henriques Brothers, at that time Jamaica’s most prominent firm of architects.

Today, many of Jamaica’s most prominent and respected citizens are Jewish so to all the Henriques, Ashenheims, Matalons, deSouzas, dePasses, Melhados, Delevantes and all the others who helped lay the cornerstones of our country we wish you a very Happy Hanukkah!

The People Who Came

Jewish Jamaica

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

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Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

There is no Jamaican over the age of forty who did not grow up on Leandro cartoons. Every day for roughly half a century, in Jamaica’s oldest newspaper, two simple characters said in two sentences all we needed to know about politics, economics, world events and life in Jamaica. And he did it in patois! He may well have been the first person to put patois in writing, even before Miss Lou’s poetry.

Born in Trinidad of Guyanese parents, Urban Leandro moved with his parents to Jamaica in the early 1930s. He joined the Gleaner’s staff as a cartoonist in 1937 and there he remained for almost fifty years until 1985. He died in Kingston in 1989. Leandro chronicled an important chunk of Jamaica’s history; the early labour movement and universal suffrage, Independence and events surrounding it, the volatile politics of the 1970s and everyday life in general; but the odd thing is that we can find very little of his own history. I met the man; he lived in Barbican, next door to a boyfriend of my youth. I never got to know him though as he was very quiet and unassuming.

I was very fortunate a few years ago to have been given the opportunity to offer for sale a collection of his works spanning 1961-1986. If you feel for a tongue-in-cheek walk down memory lane and a reminder of some of the high (and low) points in our history, drop me a line and I can arrange a copy for you. The book is US$25 plus shipping and is 11″x8.5″ soft-cover format and is in black and white, as were Leandro’s cartoons. Caveat emptor: If you are not Jamaican you might not understand a single word!

If you wish a copy of Jamaica (in Pen and Ink) please use the Paypal Button below or <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0pt; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>

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Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

Happy Heroes’ Day!

On Monday 19^th October Jamaica celebrates National Heroes’ Day. Our seven National Heroes all contributed towards making Jamaica free. The eighteenth and nineteenth century ones freed us from the curse of slavery and the twentieth century ones spear-headed the Labour Movement and Jamaica’s Independence.

There are many, many other people who have contributed greatly to making our Homeland what it is today; some have had volumes written about them while others have barely a line in the annals of History. I have set myself the ambitious task of selecting only seven of these individuals to write about and have laid down only two criteria: 1.They must have done something a) to improve the lives of Jamaicans or b) improved the name of Jamaica internationally. 2) That they not be freedom fighters or politicians as all of our official heroes fall into one or both of those categories.

Chris Blackwell

In 1964 My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small hit #2 on the British Charts, this was the first time that a Jamaican song had made the Top Ten outside of Jamaica. In 1972 The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff hit the big screen. In 1973 Bob Marley and the Wailers, after eight years of popularity at home, hit the world by storm and music was never the same. Then there’s Burning Spear, Third World, Grace Jones. All of these were produced by Chris Blackwell. Not just Jamaican Music either, but Cat Stevens, Melissa Etheridge, The Cranberries and should you admire the boundless philanthropy of the hard working Bono; well, U2 is also produced by Blackwell. Outside of music, Blackwell is CEO of Island Outpost, which owns and operates several unique resorts in Jamaica and the Caribbean including Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels. Not forgetting his roots, Blackwell has been a philanthropist in his home parish of St Mary.

Edna Manley

Wife of a National Hero and mother of Jamaica’s most controversial Prime Minister, Edna Manley was so much more.  Edna Swithenbank attended art school in England and, in the early 1920s, started to produce cubist sculpture. She returned to Jamaica upon marrying Norman Manley and, while her husband shaped Jamaica’s political future, Edna shaped our art. Her cubist work became more rounded as her own style developed. In 1935 her great work Negro Aroused, inspired by the Labour Movement, shocked Jamaica and the world. Along the way she taught and mentored local artists and in 1950 co-founded the Jamaica School of Art. In 1965 she created the statue of Paul Bogle which stands in front of the Morant Bay Courthouse, the very first statue of a Black man erected in Jamaica. In 1976 the Jamaica School of Art merged with the School of Dance and the School of Music and was renamed the Cultural Training Centre. In 1995, eight years after Edna Manley’s death, the Cultural Training Centre was renamed the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. The National Gallery contains a permanent exhibit of her work.

Rex Nettleford

Prof. the Hon. Rex Nettleford is a man with a brilliant mind. He studied Political Science at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and has written numerous works on politics and culture and won many honours and awards. In fact in 2003 the Rhodes Trust established the Rex Nettleford Fellowship to mark the Centenary of the Scholarship in the Caribbean. However, his mind is not the reason I included him on this list. In 1962 Nettleford founded the National Dance Theatre Company and brought his own unique style of dance to the world. A mix of ballet, modern and West African dance all seamlessly combined into the perfect Jamaican Dance. For many years, in addition to his cerebral pursuits, he served as choreographer and principal dancer of the NDTC, at home and on tour across Europe and the Americas. Even now, well into his seventies, he still choreographs at least one dance each season.

Keble Munn

A scion of the Jamaican plantocracy, Keeble Munn was also a politician. But his life’s work was not politics but rather in regularising Jamaica’s most famous agricultural product, our fine Blue Mountain Coffee. An accident of birth caused him to come into this world on a two century old coffee plantation in the foothills of the Blue Mountains but he was not satisfied with enjoying his legacy. In 1950 he founded the Coffee Industry Board and set out to craft the stringent rules and regulations which guarantee that each and every berry, no matter which plantation it comes from, has exactly the same perfection when brewed into a cup of coffee. The specific rules which govern area, altitude, reaping time, colour and a host of other criteria were crafted by this dedicated man. His historic family plantation is now the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory.

Eugene Desnoes and Thomas Geddes

On the 31^st of July 1918 Desnoes and Geddes was incorporated in Jamaica and acquired the businesses formerly operated by Eugene Peter Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes. They went on to formulate and brew Red Stripe Beer. Need I say more?

Richard Ho-Lung

Who could have imagined when the soft spoken man was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1971 that he would make such an impact, not just on Jamaica’s Roman Catholic Community, but on the entire Island. Somewhere along the way he thought he could encourage more people into churches if there was something livelier to sing than the staid European hymns. This man, who had never written a word of poetry nor a note of music, started to create upbeat hymns, most with a reggae beat and some in the vernacular patois. This led to an annual Musical, number twenty-eight of which, Jam Reggae Opera, is currently on stage. As if his plate was not full, in 1985 Fr. Ho-Lung founded the Missionaries of the Poor. At first a few priests wandering Kingston’s inner city feeding the poor; now a large Order, recognised by the Vatican, housing the poorest of the poor, AIDS patients, unwanted babies, lepers; in India, the Philippines, Haiti, Uganda, Kenya and North America as well as in Jamaica.

Lenworth and Beth Jacobs

I can find almost nothing about these pioneers of Family Planning in Jamaica. Dr Lenworth Jacobs and his social worker wife, Beth, were the founders of Jamaica’s first organised family planning service in the mid 1950s. One can imagine that advocating birth control at that time was not very popular and they faced great opposition from both “polite society” and scores of “baby-fathers.” Today the average Jamaican woman has 2.3 children, much easier to care for properly than the 5.7 of the late 1950s and early 1960s. We are left with scores of family planning clinics called the Lenworth Jacobs Clinic or the Beth Jacobs Clinic but very little written word about this dedicated couple.

I promised only seven to match the number of National Heroes. Without even thinking I had listed twenty three names. I then began the task of whittling the number down to seven. I first crossed off those that I’ve already written about: Mary Seacole, T.P. Lecky and Jacob Decordova. Two more were crossed of as I had promised no political figures. Then there were those I could find very little on, like Mr Swaby(?) Who developed the ortanique. I then went on to the more popular names; most people already know a lot about Bob Marley and the other reggae greats as well as our great sports figures. Of those that were left, I eventually brought the list down to the seven who I think best fit my criteria.

Any other nominations?

Read more about Jamaica at my website Jamaica-Allspice.

Look at the houses in Cherry Gardens or Mona or Portmore. Concrete blocks sitting on the ground. Locked up from the rain or the heat or the wind. Air conditioners blasting in the Cherry Gardens ones and some of the others too.

Now take a drive through some of the older areas. Vinyard Town is a great example. Look at even older houses like Devon House or Harmony Hall; the Georgian and Queen Anne Victorian styles What do you see? Houses built for our climate not the modern “international style” we started to build in the sixties.

Devon House

So, how do we build a house for our climate? Look to the past. Use “green” air conditioning. Old houses were a marvel of air circulation. Firstly, the house was build off the ground, allowing air to circulate underneath. Quite often this area, or “cellar,” was enclosed with lattice of some sort to prevent animals from getting under the house. The larger homes, great houses or town homes, would have an actual cellar. The poorer homes, like farm-worker cottages, would just rest on blocks of limestone. This feature would also serve to keep the damp out during the rainy season.

The second, and possibly more important element, was the roof vent. This allowed the hot air trapped between the ceiling and the roof a means of escape. Windows were often sash windows with shutters: louvers or jalousies. The jalousies were opened and the windows closed to let in the light or, more often, the jalousies were closed and the windows opened to let in the air. Should a hurricane be imminent windows and jalousies were closed and barred. No time wasted in the days before satellite imagery when the only warning of a hurricane was a bell ringing at the coast when the storm made landfall!

And then, of course there were those wonderful verandahs on two or three sides of the house. Besides being the perfect place to gather, the verandah kept both heat and rain out. If you look at some of the former homes in downtown Kingston or in towns across the island, you will notice than many of these old houses have upstairs verandahs completely enclosed with lattice or jalousies. This allowed the householders privacy to leave all their bedroom windows and doors open in hot weather. In fact, I remember my grandmother telling me that as a child they would actually move their beds out and sleep on the upstairs verandah in very hot weather!

Headquarters House

Many of these old houses also had internal door lights or transoms, small latticed or louvred openings above the internal doors and, on occasion, even interior windows! This didn’t do much for privacy but it certainly allowed air and light to circulate within the house.

I grew up in a house built in the 1940s with a crawlspace, a roof vent, jalousies and internal lattice transoms and I can state quite definitely that it was a great deal cooler than my cousins’ brand new 1960s built on the ground, slab-roofed unventilated house.

So here’s my point. Why don’t we bring back some of those old features. The houses may cost marginally more to build but, in the long run, wouldn’t we have a substantial savings in air conditioning costs? And those of us who can’t afford air conditioning would be a damn sight cooler and more comfortable!

Read more about Jamaica at Jamaica-Allspice.com

1. Jamaica has a prehistoric forest.

Forestry Department image

This is not like the rolling hills that form much of Jamaica’s landscape nor like the majestic Blue Mountains soaring thousands of feet towards the sky. The Cockpit Country more resembles the landscape of an alien planet invented by Asimov. Take an egg carton and turn it upside down. That is precisely what you see if you fly over the Cockpit Country. Twelve million years ago Jamaica emerged from the ocean with a large birthmark. This resulted in a vast limestone karst area where hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of flora and fauna, extinct elsewhere in the world, still grow and thrive. (CockpitCountry.com)

2. The first iron bridge in the Americas was erected in Jamaica.

The old Iron Bridge which crosses the Rio Cobre on the outskirts of Spanish Town was cast in England and erected in 1801. The bridge has been closed to vehicular traffic since 1931. It is reputed to be the oldest bridge of it’s kind in the Americas and is on the World Monument Watch’s list of the 100 most endangered sites in the world. The foundation of the bridge was restored in 2002 and other areas are now being restored. (Jamaica National Heritage Trust)

3. Florence Nightingale was not the only woman tending the sick in the Crimean War.

Mary Jane Seacole (Grant) was born in Kingston in 1805. Her mother ran a nursing home for British Army and Navy personnel and had a reputation for being skilled in herbal medicine. Mary learned her mother’s skills and improved upon them through her travels. During the Crimean War her thoughts turned to soldiers she knew. In an effort to offer medical care on the battlefield, Mary travelled to London carrying letters of recommendation from many high ranking members of the military . There she met head on with the twin discriminations of sex and race.

Being the typical Jamaican woman, even 150 years ago, Mary did not give up. She made her way to Turkey and put herself up in the British Hotel, all at her own cost. She travelled to the Crimea to the hospitals set up by the British, where Nightingale was already working, and the two famous women cared for the injured even on the battlefields though not together as the official team were said to have snubbed the mixed-race “doctress.” (MarySeacole.com)

4. Jamaica’s most popular Newspaper has been published for 175 years.

The Gleaner first came off the presses on 13^th September 1834. The original Paper was a four page weekly published by Jacob and Joshua deCordova, natives of Spanish Town. The newspaper outlived all its competition, changed hands a few times, and today still has the largest circulation in the Island. (www.Jamaica-Gleaner.com)

This leads us to:

5. Jamaicans helped build Texas.

Jacob deCordova left Jamaica for the United States in 1836, later settling in Texas. He travelled extensively throughout the territory. He gave lectures in the cities of the eastern United States as well as in England encouraging his audiences to settle in Texas. He wrote and published several books about Texas and published two newspapers. At one time he was one of the biggest land agents in the territory, owning over 1,000,000 acres of land in Texas. The territory became a state in 1845 and in 1847 Jacob became an Assemblyman in the second State Legislature. He also created The Map of the State of Texas in 1849; this was used as the basis for many subsequent maps of the state. The American Civil War brought a downturn to his fortune and he died in 1868. (The Handbook of Texas Online)

As a side note: Dallas Texas was named after George Mifflin Dallas, US Vice President under James K. Polk. His father was Alexander James Dallas, sixth US Secretary of the Treasury and native of Kingston. (Wikipedia)

6. Black River was wired for electricity at the same time as New York City.

In the mid eighteenth century Black River was one of the wealthiest towns in Jamaica mainly because it was the centre for the export of logwood, royal purple dye. One of the wealthiest of its citizens was John Leyden. In c1875 Leyden wired his home for electricity and by 1893 the entire town was electrified with a steam powered generator supplied by Leyden Bros. Street lights and public and commercial in Kingston followed and by 1899 Kingston had an electric tramcar system. The Edison Company opened its doors in New York City in 1882 and between then and 1910 both they and the Brush Arc Lighting Company electrified most public and commercial buildings in that city. (The Gleaner, JNHT)

I have lots of other interesting facts on my website www.jamaica-allspice.com so please visit.

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