Women feeding sugarcane mills often lost limbs and died of tetanus from exhaustion

Evidence

Harvested stalks of cane were fed twice through a mill—usually driven by mules, and sometimes by water—that crushed them to release their juice. This task, usually assigned to women, was particularly dangerous. If the slave was tired or distracted, and allowed even a finger to be pinched in the grinders as she guided a stalk into the mill, “the finger goes in, then the hand, then the arm and the whole body except the head.” Since during the harvest season the grinding of cane was often done all night in successive shifts of slaves, exhaustion was common. Many lost their arms, and some died of tetanus. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 166

Categorization

• CANDY: The graphic ‘finger goes in, then the hand, then the arm’ is a striking, retellable detail of plantation danger.