Interrogation of a runaway convict, Copenhagen 1776

Through the interrogation, Henrichsen, mediated by the scribe, relates a chain or sequence of phases: his entry into slavery, a moment of labour extraction, his exit from slavery, a brief liminal phase before his entry into a new labour relation, service. He changes master once and then provides us with another scene of labour extraction, before his apprehending leads to re-entry into convict labour. At each of these phases or “moments of coercion”, we can identify the action phrases he uses (info).

Henrichsen’s initial entry into slavery is described as “he was pilloried and put in the Slavery for life on account of theft” (ere han for begangne Tyverie bleven pidsket til Kagen og derpaa indsadt i Slaveriet paa Livstid). Henrichsen provides this action phrase as part of a short biography. Providing such information up front was normal procedure in these cases and he was most likely prompted by an imperative to identify himself. Henrichsen presents a sequence in which he was flogged by an executioner and then subjected to the hard labour institution. The verb “pilloried” is not a direct translation of the Danish phrase, which would rather read, awkwardly, “was whipped to the pillory”. However, even the term pillory is to some extent a mistranslation as the equivalent Danish term “kag” denoted a specific type of shaming device, a large wood pillar to which the punished was chained and whipped, always by an executioner. Henrichsen mentions this pillar in the singular (Kagen). Thus, his path into a situation of coerced labour starts with corporal violence at the pillory. In this way, the specificity of his trajectory is effaced and replaced by his having come into contact with this abstract material object, the meaning of which would have been lost to none in the eighteenth-century. Thus, one might interpret the phrase based on what this specific violence does. While slavery as punishment was always socially stigmatizing, it could be accompanied by a formal loss of honour – either through branding of the face or back or through whipping by an executioner, sometimes in combination. Both would happen by a pillory of this type, which was therefore intimately associated with dishonour, conceptualised almost as a material stigma or contamination. According to the Danish Code of 1683, a dishonoured person was unable to testify against people with their honour intact, i.e. almost everyone else. The document underscores this status by naming Henrichsen as a “dishonoured slave” (uærlig slave) in the opening sentence. The danish term “uærlig” signifies both “dishonoured” and “dishonest”. This double status, outside of regular society and outside of the sphere of judicial truth, is underscored by being evoked both as part of the court’s way of presenting the summoning of Henrichsen as well as the story that he presents after being summoned. It also sets the stage of the story in a different ways as dishonoured slaves were seen as unfit for pardon and always served life sentences. For this reason they were also much more prone to exit through escape than slaves who had not never been in contact with “Kagen” (info).

Interrogations of escapees are a key source to knowing what labour slaves actually performed in this convict labour institution. Because the slaves usually ran from the worksites, dispersed across the city, documents like this can be used to identify what they actually did. In this way, the document can be used in the way that Maria Ågren et al. have used court records as part of the Gender and Work project. The retelling of Henrichsen’s escape also starts with labour extraction. Along with a fellow slave, Henriksen was “cleaning the moat” of Copenhagen’s citadel. The citadel was the main fortress of the fortified capital, and from the sources, it appears a key worksite, and in the sources we find slaves performing an array of tasks at this site. In the specific instance, we also catch a glimpse of how this job was performed using a tool: A raft that transforms into a tool for exit as Henrichsen seizes the moment. Indirectly, the passage also relates the extraction of labour from the slave guard, whose job it was to watch. This is a common action phrase performed by guards in these escape interrogations, and one that they, as a result of the circumstances of the recording, fail at. However, in this case, the failure is related in a way that no fault seems to be placed on the guard. It is a common trait of these documents that the escapee refrains from placing blame on their guards, possibly because of the repercussions that doing so might have when, down the line, that same guard would again be watching over the slave’s work.

The escape itself is related in a series of action phrases that are all specifically situated – by the raft, on the glacis and in a field. Such sites were of interest to the examiner as they might necessitate future actions to prevent more escapes. Yet in Henrichsen’s retelling, these sites at the same time become places of transformation as Henrichsen leaves the easily recognisable slave dress and the irons behind. Thus, he allows us to imagine what he looked like after having walked for a day to the village of Slaglunde: a ragged man in what might be identified as pieces of military garb. Later in the story, he revealed that he had pretended to be Swedish by birth and had used this identify to craft a new one as he had become a part of the local congregation through his confirmation by the local priest. Thus, the sequence from exit, through a liminal phase of moving along the roads and of entry into a new labour relation, is related as one of pretending (han havde foregivet). That act of pretending was possible because runaway Swedes – escaping military service as well as other forms of labour – were a common sight in this border region, just as many runaway convicts from Copenhagen, and here Henrichsen’s story is atypical, attempted to go to Sweden. In the final passage of the interrogation, Henrichsen reveals that he had also adopted a fake name. The action phrase of this name change is “given himself the name” (givet sig det Navn). The specific phrase, which casts Henrichsen as the main actor in his own transformation, evokes the parental act of giving a name to a child. In its way, the specific phrasing underscores that Bertel Henrichsen had really become Henrich Eilers.

The transformation from dishonoured slave to Swedish deserter and then to member of a local community is complete with Henrichsen’s entry into the service of local farmers. Such farmers were themselves bound to the estates on which they were born and from which they leased their farms. Until 1788, the male rural population was bound in what has been understood as a form of serfdom. Much Danish historiography has discussed to what extent such tenant farmers (fæstebønder) were “free” or not. Recent historiography, however, has reorientated itself towards the classes that provided service in this rural economy and who were often employed, as Henrichsen was, by tenant farmers, sometimes even to perform the corvée that tenant farmers owed their lords. Often such rural service was life-cycle service as farm servants would eventually tend to get married and then lease their own farms, establishing their own households (info). Henrichsen was approaching the common age for marriage, so had he not been caught that would likely have been his life-course too. While service meant to become part of the household of the master, service in the eigteenth century was often paid in money wages. Action phrases in Henrichsen’s story evoke both his cooptation into his master’s household as he had bought a shirt on credit from the master, but also his simultaneous status as a wage labourer. To serve (at tiene) was the most common form of employment in eighteenth-century Denmark. One of the only types of labour never framed as “service” was labour performed by slaves. Thus, Henrichsen’s becoming a servant signifies a return to normality – a normality defined by labour, but also by household authority, and, to some extent, by the discipline of a master. Henrichsen’s recollection of his service underscores his later point that “he had not committed any excesses” (ikke at have begaaet nogle Excesser). He had transformed himself into a man who made an honest living.

In subtle way, the story provided by Henrichsen also suggests that he was good at his job. Not only does he earn enough money to buy new clothes. He is also hired by a second farmer and gains the position of foreman (avlskarl). This means that he would have overseen the work of other servants in the fields. He does, however, not relate those tasks explicitly. Instead, a single situation of labour extraction is presented as it forms the backdrop of his eventual apprehending: He performed the task of driving a cart to and from Copenhagen harbour with logwood. Again, the story turns into a story of pretending but this time as failure. Instead of relating the physical act of being caught, the action phrase is structured around the verb “recognised” (kiendte, which might also translate to “knew”). Thus, the story concludes with the disguise falling apart on account of another farm servant from Henrichsen’s birth village.

That farm servant is implicitly present in the later passage, in which Henrichsen claimed that his, now former, masters in Slaglunde owed him money. The reason for this is that bounties were paid to men who caught or gave information leading to the arrest of escaped slaves. Those bounties were then paid by deductions in the small sum that slaves were allowed to buy food and drink. Henrichsen would have known this, so his act of claiming a wage owed to him should be read in this light. Likely he hoped that the wages might cover the customary 6 rixdollars he now, by proxy of the prison authorities, owed to Ole Svendsen. Nothing in the document hints whether this action of claiming outstanding wages was successful.

The many action phrases of this short document show, each in their way, a world of labour coercion, in which social relations are not structured along a simple dichotomy of free and unfree. Very few of the actors in the document, except perhaps for the prison warden and the unnamed officers in court, were free in the modern sense. Instead, everybody served someone. And even the common farmhand could gain a leg up in the world, by giving up an old acquaintance whom he knew to be infamous. Yet, masterlessness also plays a role as the runaway convict could leverage the commonality of illicit circulation of runaways in this region of border crossing to craft a plausible, alternate identity.