]] I just found the following information online.

] Can you remember where? ;-)

Luckily, I'd bookmarked it. It was from a Newsweek article - Fall/Winter 1991; title: The High Price of Sugar. I only posted the middle section of the article - the part focusing primarily on Antigua.

About your interesting comments on the above article - I read and agree with most of your conclusions. But while I accept that the life could be awful for slave and slave-owner alike, I'm sure you'll agree that the rewards were not proportionate. Bristol merchant John Pinney lived for twenty years in the West Indies making his plantations as profitable as possible. He left Nevis in 1783 and came home to Bristol worth about £70,000. Similar fortunes were made by many other planters willing to chance the climate and tropical disease.

The same was not true of the slaves. Their only 'reward' was likely to be an early grave. And remember, the Europeans had come to the West Indies by choice, unlike their slave labourers. I find it hard to muster up any pity whatsoever for the plantation owners of the day, I'm afraid, up to and including Sir Thomas.