M. H. Spencer Joseph

I have just found this photograph of M H Spencer Joseph in the book Freedom Fighters from Monk to Mazumbo, by Ira Philip, about the struggle for human rights in Bermuda. (February 7, 2015)

Matthew Henry

Spencer Joseph

'Daily Gleaner', March 16, 1900

Baptisms in St Thomas, 1862

Matthew Joseph

more about Matthew Joseph >

Matthew Henry Spencer Joseph was a barrister from 1899 to 1903; the son of the Black schoolmaster, Matthew Joseph, he was born in Trinity Ville, St Thomas in the East, on November 28, 1861. Matthew Joseph, who gave his son his early education, had apparently intended him to be a lawyer from an early stage, but this plan was aborted because of financial losses from the publication of his book of poems in 1876. So instead of being articled to a well-known Kingston lawyer, Matthew Henry attended the Mico College, where he placed first throughout his course, and then followed his father in the teaching profession in 1880. He taught for some time at the Vere Free Schools, but resigned to become articled to a Land Surveyor. After receiving his commission from the Governor in 1890, he practised as a Commissioned Surveyor for several years, apparently the first Black Jamaican to do so. One project he worked on was the surveying of Rollington Pen for division into house lots.

His health was not good, so he gave up his profession as a surveyor to follow the old plan of becoming a lawyer. He went to London, to the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar on June 15 1899. While in Britain he became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of the Hardwicke Debating Society, and, as a prominent Freemason, he visited many Masonic lodges there; he had the patronage of the President of the Royal Geographical Society, Sir Clements Markham, and of the Duke of Teck. While in London he married Grace Ada Evens, and the arrival of the Black lawyer and his White wife in Philadelphia in 1903 when they were on their way to Bermuda elicited comment in the local newspaper; interestingly no such comment appears in the Jamaican papers.

from the records of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.

However, this interesting account appeared in an article on Jamaica, in a U.S. magazine in 1901:

GUNTON'S MAGAZINE
GEORGE GUNTON, EDITOR
VOLUME XX. JANUARY-JUNE, 1901
NEW YORK, THE GUNTON COMPANY,
41 UNION SQUARE
excerpt from
'HAS JAMAICA SOLVED THE COLOR PROBLEM?'
JULIUS MORITZEN
      In the United States the color question comes most strongly to the fore where those of different races meet in public places. As for Jamaica, it was to be expected that whatever animosity prevailed would find antagonistic expression where whites and negroes were supposed to meet on common ground. The writer recalls an incident which, while strikingly unique to a stranger, offers a fair example of what can be met with frequently in the British colony.
      It was on the evening of a dramatic performance at the Theater Royal, Kingston. The amateur talent of the city was to give a benefit for the fund for the widows and orphans of soldiers who had fallen in the Transvaal war. A large audience had gathered to pay tribute to the valor of the British army. The military band was playing a stirring battle piece and the curtain was about to rise. The writer was interested in the mixed assemblage which from the point of fashion would have done credit to an audience at the Metropolitan Opera-House on a gala night. Magnificent types of Creole women, handsome dark-skinned mulattoes and men and women of the pure negro type were scattered throughout the lower floor and occupied conspicuous boxes in the balcony. Sir Augustus Hemmings, governor of Jamaica, was in the official box with Lady Hemmings and other members of the family. Suddenly, attention was directed toward the rear of the auditorium.
      Down the center strode a couple, the man six feet tall and black as ebony, the woman a perfect blonde. Like some modern Othello and his fair Desdemona the couple reached their seats where the removal of the woman's opera cloak revealed a form which stood in striking contrast to that of her escort who looked almost inky black from head to foot, except for his immaculate shirt front. The man now rose and bowing toward the governor's box gave intimation that the occupants were no strangers to him. Then he turned aside and spoke to some one sitting next to him.
      "Rather a difference in complexion," remarked a typical Creole sitting near the writer. "Even to us such a contrast is not an everyday occurrence."
      It transpired that the negro was one of the foremost jurists on the island and that he had recently married in England. His wife, who belonged to a prominent family in the country across the sea, was making her initial appearance before the social set that evening. Nothing could have been advanced to prove more conclusively that Jamaica gives apparent social recognition to the colored race. And still it is only as a sort of superior toleration that the negro is admitted to the charmed circle of society. As in the United States, the color line would be drawn tight were it but politic. It is the knowledge of this which makes the Jamaica negro strive hard to earn social recognition through education.
      The Anglo-Saxon element of Jamaica looks with disfavor on intermarriage of the races. That such a practice is conducive to the solution of the color question is very doubtful. It is quite true that some of the most brilliant mulattoes in the island testify to the fact that mixed parentage has worked benefit in their particular cases. But as a rule the admixture of Caucasian blood is to be traced back a considerable period when the negro was still a slave.

He returned to Jamaica in 1899 and was admitted to the Jamaican Bar. He practised successfully in the island for the next few years and also participated in public life. He gave public lectures, including presiding and speaking at a meeting in 1901 to re-organise the Artizans’ Union, an early attempt at a Trade Union. In 1903 he went to Bermuda to take up cases related to the treatment of Jamaican labourers in that island. He fell ill and died early in September 1903, causing widespread grief and shock in both Jamaica and Bermuda. A very large concourse of people attended his funeral, the Masonic fraternity taking care of the arrangements. He died at the comparatively early age of 42, so his full potential was never revealed. It was reported at the time of his death that it had been expected that he would be made a KC; if this had happened, he would have been the first Black Jamaican to achieve that status, eight years before Hector Josephs actually did so.

(NB His surname, as for Hector Joseph(s), is spelled both as Joseph and Josephs; on his birth certificate the Christian names are ‘Matthew Henry’, but Mr Joseph is often given the initials ‘H M’.)