Heading: (African American, 1857)
Author: Gilmour, John
Title: Letter to Scottish business partner about getting rid of a mentally ill slave woman in an asylum
Place Published: Richmond, Virginia
Publisher:
Date Published: March 7, 1857
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed, 1 pg. To William Love, [Glasgow, Scotland?].

The bulk of this letter records business details apparently written to a business partner in Scotland, possibly the William Love who published a newspaper in Glasgow in the 1850s. "...I have had to remove the Negro Woman from the Asylum. What I shall be able to do with her, will see if she remains quiet and peaceable. I may be able to get her taken care of here for less than where she was. I wish much she could be got rid of as I fear she will give trouble. But will do what I can for her...I have not yet decided what time we may leave this for Scotland if we do it this year..."

John Gilmour was a Scottish Tobacco merchant who, with his new wife, came to Virginia from Glasgow around 1850 to establish a factory and warehouse for his firm in Manchester, Virginia, a port city adjacent to Richmond. He remained there for nine years, before, returning to his homeland.



The bulk of this letter records business details apparently written to a business partner in Scotland, possibly the William Love who published a newspaper in Glasgow in the 1850s.



Undoubtedly aware that American slavery was frowned upon in his homeland, he writes Love with a slight hint of compassion softening his Scottish frugality about one of the slaves he owned who suffered from mental illness; she was probably being cared for at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, 60 miles to the south, at Williamsburg. Under the direction of psychiatrist John Galt, an advocate of "Moral Management", the asylum, dating back to the 19th century, did not discriminate on the basis of race and, after 1846, admitted slaves as well as free Blacks as patients. Galt's one quirk was his belief that Blacks, not being burdened with worries about owning property, running a business, or holding public office, were thus "immune" from mental disease. Nevertheless, he apparently admitted Gilmour's slave for care in his institution - at a cost that Gilmour found excessive.



Gilmour eventually sold his slaves and returned to Scotland. Leaving his factory and warehouse in the hands of a younger man, he thus escaped the agony, in the third year of Civil War, of watching his warehouse, holding millions in tobacco owned by the Confederate Government, burn to the ground. The fire was attributed to the work of an "incendiary", though whether the arson was war-related was a subject delicately avoided by Confederate newspapers.

s.

Light soil and edgewear; good.