bw 7

transcript |  the sweetie lady  | up

First female: Good day!

Good day! Hey, I ain’ hear from you fuh ages. You got some time? Come nuh, come walk wid me a while. I carrying my tray up through Bay Street to Hastings. I hoping to get there before the tram reach. I going to sell my sweeties to the better offs.

(I sell sugar cake, black cake, glass…)

This is one of the first little piece o’ honest work we women could do for we selves as free black women, yuh. I ain’ no huckster. Dem does sell their own provisions, yam, sweet potatoes, an tie up deh head in crocus bag. We proud to be ‘vendors’.

(Mauby! Mauby! Fresh mauby! It good for yuh worms)

I is the ‘sweetie lady’. Millie over yonder wid de white apron is sell she conkies, pone and flat corn biscuits, and Becka got she tray uh needles, ribbons, hooks and eyes, thread and de like.

Cummuh, cummuh! Wha’s de time? Leh we go up de street.

(Free coloureds are merchants, haberdashers, tavern and innkeepers, hucksters, tailors, shoemakers, jewelers and artisans)

All out here was agricultural land one time, yuh know. Looka Mr London Bourne pun he verandah! Good day, sir! Some peanut brittle for you today?

Leh we cross the road to Carlisle View. Aint de sea look sweet doh! You know dat Bridgetown got more than one hundred tippling and crimping houses, or taverns, as they call them nowadays. Lord, and nearly all o’ them own by free mulatto women, de likes of Betsy Lemon, Hannah Lewis, Rachel Pringle and Mary Bella Green.

(There is an immediate necessity of checking the growing power of that class of people, particularly in Bridgetown)

Wait, wait, watch yuh step. Wha! Looka she coming, pompasetting wid she gold jewelry and bedeck in finery. Good day, madam, you out strolling? How business? What you purchasing today? A ginger cake? Comfits?

Second female: I prospering, Ida, prospering. Since I buy my freedom I doing business. I own a hotel, a tavern and three more properties here in Bridgetown and a number of slaves too. (Laughs) The ships in harbour today, so you know we goin’ be doing a plenty maritime trade this evening. (Laughs)

(…spending their time in a most lewd and drunken manner, dishonoring the guard) First female: Oh lordy! Looka Carlisle Bay! De harbour full o’ ships! Down here gwine be swarming wid His Majesty’s mariners tonight.

British male voice: Right I’m going to get me some rum, breadfruit, pig tails, and a wench.

First Female continues: Come leh we hurry up. Wha’ time it is? Wha’ time it is? Oh no, de tram coming! De tram coming! And I spend so much time talking to you. I gone! Have a blessed day, yuh hear?

Look muh here, I is de sweetie lady!

artist profile | laura lin hutchinson | up

In her sound project, Laura Lin Hutchinson assumes the persona of a late 19th century “Sweetie lady” and takes us on a walk up Bay Street as she plies her goods and encounters some of the other female vendors of the time (the “Mauby lady”, the “Haberdasher”, and the “Bread lady”). She states, “I wanted to give a glimpse of the social layers of post-emancipation Bridgetown, focussing on the free black and coloured women and their struggle for survival and independence. … the Sweetie lady captured my attention not only because she’s a historical figure but because she is still present, still providing for her household, and still selling the same sweets, a century later! Also, as a Mulatto myself, I find the role of the Mulatto woman within the Caribbean context historically to be fascinating. I want the listener to experience and be immersed in a Bridgetown of yesteryear that’s surprisingly not so different from today except for the traffic!!”

Laura Lin Hutchinson worked as a professional DJ/broadcaster in the early ‘80s and again in the ‘90s. She has been a voice-over artist for the past 25 years, voicing a diverse number of commercials, documentaries, features, and so forth. She is also a freelance writer, a presenter on Discover Barbados TV, and is an accomplished stage actor. She has recently written and produced her first short film, “Holding On.”