Colonial soldiers were now brought to Morant Bay to crush the rebellion. Nearly 500 people were killed and a greater number were flogged before “order” was restored. Stony Gut, considered the stronghold of the rebels, was destroyed. Paul and Moses Bogle were captured and hanged on October 24, 1865 at the Morant Bay Court House a day after George William Gordon, who did not participate in the rebellion, was executed.
In January 1866, a Royal Commission was sent from London to investigate the Rebellion. Following their investigation Governor Eyre was dismissed as the Governor of Jamaica, and then charged but not convicted of murder. Jamaica became a Crown Colony governed directly from England as a result of the rebellion.
Paul Bogle (1822-1865) •
Oct 11, 1865 – Jamaica Morant Bay Rebellion
Morant Bay Rebellion began on October 11, 1865, Jamaica.
The rebellion was the result of years of political, economic and racial tensions in Jamaica. The island was in the grip of an economic decline, but had also faced years of epidemics, floods and droughts. The island’s enslaved population had been emancipated on 1 August 1834 but were initially placed in ‘apprenticeship’ to their former ‘masters’, another form of bonded labour, for a period of four to six years. Apprenticeship was abandoned in 1838, but over the next three decades Black estate workers and peasants bore the brunt the economic crises, receiving few civil or religious freedoms from Jamaica’s white (and to a lesser extent, mixed race) elites, who often actively tried to restrict and criminalise them further.
The Morant Bay Rebellion, October 1865 – The National Archives blog
The Rebellion was swiftly met with oppressive marshal law and swifter executions of over 500 people, regardless of their guilt or innocence. Among those executed were Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, two popular leaders of the black community.
Paul Bogle, William Gordon
From the Centenary Morant Bay Rebellion series
Release date: 1965 by Jamaican Post
George William Gordon was born to an enslaved woman and her owner and was a slave himself until he was freed at 10. He went on to become a successful business owner and later a member of the St. Thomas government. He was known as a “champion of the parish’s Black poor, a Native Baptist, and friend of Bogle, Eyre and the island’s elite detested Gordon.” (ibid) The uprising provided the government with an excuse to rid themselves of a someone they accused of “‘inflaming’ labourers” (ibid) and encouraging unrest.
Paul Bogle was a passionate advocate for equality and the end to both economic and legal discrimination. A friend and follower of George William Gordon, Bogle led the march of nearly 300 to the Morant Bay court house to protest the arrests and convictions of poor farmers convicted of trespassing on long abandoned plantations, to harvest a bit of sugar cane. It was the march on Morant Bay and the local militia’s response that sparked the rebellion.