Concubinage was practised among the highest classes.

Young merchants and others who were unmarried, on first going to the island, regularly engaged colored females to live with them as housekeepers and mistresses, and it was not unusual for a man to have more than one.

The children of these connections usually sat with the mothers at the father's table, though when the gentlemen had company, neither mothers nor children made their appearance.

To such conduct no disgrace was attached, nor was any shame felt by either party.

We were assured that there are in Bridgetown, colored ladies of "respectability," who, though never married, have large families of children whose different surnames indicate their difference of parentage, but who probably do not know their fathers by any other token.