Interrogation of a runaway convict, Copenhagen 1776
From 1741 to about 1860 a prison known in its time as “Slaveriet”, translating simply to The Slavery, existed in Northern Copenhagen. The Slavery was one of many similar extramural convict institutions littering early modern Scandinavia and Northern Germany. During their stays in these institutions, chained men, “slaver” (slaves), performed hard labour for the military states. They helped build and maintain key infrastructure such as ships and fortifications. The Slavery in Northern Copenhagen was run by the Danish army, though many of the slaves had civilian backgrounds prior to conviction. Slavery, which denoted both the institution and the state in which these men found themselves, could be for life or for a set term. The chains were the distinctive mark of a slave.
Because of the outdoor nature of the labour performed by slaves, escapes were quite common. About one in six slaves ran away at some point during their punishment. By the late eighteenth century, their success rates were about one in three. The rest were caught. Upon return, runaways were interrogated in Copenhagen’s garrison court, a form of court martial, mostly in order to figure out if they had stolen while away, but also to grasp whether the escape itself owed to negligence or collusion on the part of guards or other security breaches. Formally, torture was not allowed without a case-by-case acceptance from Denmark’s absolutist king. However, a few cases against slaves reveal that in such particular cases the threat of torture or violence was sometimes key to making the runaway talk, possibly conditioned by their prior loss of status upon entry into slavery. Interrogations in the garrison court were usually held as preparatory acts for actual court meetings that would conclude with a verdict by a jury of officers. In cases against runaway slaves, such follow-up meetings were usually not held. Rather, the interrogation itself sufficed to hand out customary punishments of whippings and heavier chains for the convict.
The interrogation below concerns the slave Bertel Henrichsen, who briefly recounts his life in the source. The prison’s entry books supplement these biographical details as they reveal how he had arrived in the Slavery on 8 December 1772. They also note that he died there, still a slave, on 26 November 1788. Prior to his conviction, he had been a farmhand.
The original document is held in Denmark’s national archives, Rigsarkivet, in Copenhagen as part of a bound minute book.1 It is written in Danish on coarse pages in gothic handwriting by a court scribe. The text of this specific interrogation reads as continuous prose, but from other cases we know that such narratives were, typically, the result of stringent questioning from the examiner. In this sense, the text is a composite, in which we often cannot tell with certainty whose words we hear.
Translation
Copenhagen 24 June 1776.
To interrogate dishonoured slave Bertel Henrichsen who on 12 August 1773 has deserted from this slavery, but in recent days has been brought back, this garrison court was gathered at Hovedvagten2 at the order of the governorship. The aforementioned slave, who was presented to the court by prison warden Bræsten, answered the following upon being questioned: His name is Bertel Henrichsen, born in Rungsted3, 27 years old, unmarried, about four and a half years ago he was pilloried and put in the Slavery for life on account of theft.
On 12 August 1773, when he along with another slave, Friedrich Schröder, was cleaning the moat at the Citadel below Østerport4, under the eye of guard5 Wulff, he had crossed over to the glacis on a small raft they used for this work, and had run away after having left his slave dress6 by the raft, and having beaten off his slave irons with a rock in the field, he had, wearing an old grey shirt and a pair of old soldiers trousers, walked to the village of Slagslunde, which is about four and a half miles7 from this city. A farmer in this place by the name of Jens Nielsen had immediately taken on his service, and he had served this man until last New Year and in this period he had gone to confirmation and then to the alter in the church at Slagslunde by the priest Mr. Henrich Pram, having pretended to being Swedish by birth and not yet having received confirmation. Last New Year he had come to serve Torkel Pedersen in the same village and to this farmer he had stood in service as farm foreman until the other day, when he drove his master's cart with a load of logwood to the harbour here by Proviantgården8, when a farmhand from Rungsted, by the name of Ole Svendsen, recognised him at Kultorvet9 and then brought him to the commandant in this city. At the farmer Torkel Pedersen, the deponent still had a brown homespun dress, a pair of linen pants, a shirt and a cap which he had bought with his pay, and he presumed that some of his pay is still due, as he was to get 17 slettedaler10 by next New Year for piecework, of which he had to this day only received 9 slettedaler in money, even though Torkel Pedersen had vouched for him for the aforementioned dress, which he had bought from the smallholder Lars Christophersen for 2 rigsdaler. Regarding his first master, Jens Nielsen, the deponent presumes to also be owed something, but he cannot precisely say how much. The deponent assures that he has not committed any excesses since he escaped from here, but to have made a living, as mentioned, in a legal way. He added that in order not to be known he had given himself the name of Henrich Eilers, and had for as long as he had been in Slagslunde been called that.
Thereby the interrogation was ended and signed.
Translated by Johan Heinsen.
Original
Kiöbenhavn den 24de Juny 1776.
For at examinere en uærlig Slave navnlig Bertel Henrichsen som den 12te Aug. 1773 er deserteret her af Slaveriet, men i disse dage igien bleven indbragt, var nærværende garnisons-forhör paa Gouvernementets Ordre i dag forsamlet paa Hovedvagten. Bem te Slave, som af Arrestforvahrer Bræsten blev sisteret, giorte paa Tilspörgsel fölgende Forklaring: Hans Navn er Bertel Henrichsen, föd i Rongstedt, 27. Aar gammel, ugift, for omtrent halv 4 de Aar siden ere han for begangne Tyverie bleven pidsket til Kagen og derpaa indsadt i Slaveriet paa Livstid.
Den 12. Aug. 1773. da han tillige med en anden Slave navnlig Friderich Schröder, rendsede Graven i Citadellet needen ved Österport, under Opsigt af Gevaldiger Wulff, havde han med en liden Flaade, som de brugte til dette Arbejde, sadt sig over paa Glaciet og var derpaa löbet bort efter at han havde kastet sin Slavekiortel fra sig ved bemelte Flaade, samt paa Marken med en Steen afslaget sit Slavejern, var han, klæd i en gl graae brystdug og et pr gamle Soldater-buxer gaaet hen til Landsbyen Slaglund, som ligger halv 4 de Miil herfra Staden. En bonde sammesteds navnlig Jens Nielsen, havde strax taget ham i Tieneste, og havde han tient hos samme indtil sidstafvigte Nyeaar, samt imidlertid gaaet til Confirmation og derpaa til Alters i Slagslund Kirke hos Præsten Hr. Henrich Pram, saasom han havde foregivet at være en Svendske af födsel, og at han ej havde været til Confirmation. Sidst afvigte Nyeaar var han kommen at tiene hos bonde Torkel Pedersen i samme bye og hos samme bonde havde han staaet i Tieneste som Avlskarl indtil i forgaars da han med denne sin Hosbondes vogn kiörte et læs faugne-brænde ind til ved havnen her ved Proviantgaarden, da en bondekarl fra Rungstedt, navnlig Ole Svendsen som kiendte ham paa Kulvtorvet, og derpaa bragte ham hen til Hr Commandanten her i Staden. Hos Bonden Terkel Pedersen havde Deponent en brrun Vadmeels kiol, 1 pr Lærreds buxer, 1. skiorte og 1. hue liggende, som han havde anskaffet sig af sin lön, og formenede han og endnu at komme noget tilgode af sin lön, saasom han til næstkommende Nyeaar, efter Accord skulle have 17 slette daler hvor af ham til dato ikke havde bekommet mere end 9 sd i Penge, dog havde Terkel Pedersen sagd god for ham for den ermeldte Kiole, som han havde kiöbt af en Huusmand, navnlig Lars Christophersen for 2r hos hans förste Hosbonde Jens Nielsen formeener deponent ogsaa endnu at have noget til gode, men kand ikke egentlig bestemme hvor meget. Deponent forsikkrer ellers, ikke at have begaaet nogle Excesser siden han undvigte herfra, men at have, som ovenmeldt ernæret sig paa en lovlig Maade. Endnu tilföyede han dette, at han for ey at blive kiendt, havde givet sig det Navn Henrich Eilers, ligesom han ogsaa længe han har været i Slagslund er bleven kaldt saaledes.
Hermed blev forhöret sluttet og underskrevet.
Map of places mentioned in the source
Action phrases
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.11
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.12 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.13 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".14
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.15 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 Slagslunde: 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.16 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 Slagslunde 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.
Epilogue
Two years later, on 9 August 1778, Bertel Henrichsen ran again. This time he ran from a worksite at the Copenhagen ramparts, where he worked along with another slave. Before running at the end of the day, he had spent the day preparing another act of self-transformation as his fellow worker wrote Henrichsen a fake passport while he himself broke his irons. According to later testimony, the co-worker wanted to run with Henrichsen, but they had been unable to break his chains before the workday ended, so Henrichsen left Copenhagen alone again leaving behind chains and prison garb at the worksite.
Once more, he went straight to Slagslunde. Most likely, the passport he now carried with him, was a so-called release pass that attested that a slave had been released. He then spent three weeks in Slagslunde during which "he had been harvesting for a farmer, Jens Nielsen".17 Thus, Henrichsen approached his former master who, in need of seasonal labour, took him on. However, after two weeks Nielsen along with Henrichsen's other former master Pedersen arrested him and handed him over to the authorities. Again, his transformation was a failure.
Interestingly, the interrogation after the second escape presents itself not as continuous prose, but as a series of questions and answers. It also employs a slightly different and somewhat more militaristic vocabulary. Instead of having "run away" he had, in the words of the examiner "deserted" and instead of being "recognised" he was "seized" (attraperet). This might suggest that the phrasing of the action phrases focusing on his transformation of identity in the first interrogation were, in fact, Henrichsen's own words.
Footnotes
Rigsarkivet, Forsvarets Auditørkorps, Auditøren ved Garnisonskommandantskabet i København, F. Justitsprotokoller, 1773–1779.↩︎
A military court and jail building.↩︎
A small fishing village north of Copenhagen. See map.↩︎
The Copenhagen citadel was adjacent to the city gate called Østerport – the city’s northernmost gate.↩︎
The original term “gevaldiger” was at this point specific to the institution but is hard to translate.↩︎
Convicts wore a distinctively patterned coat known as “slavekjole” (slave dress).↩︎
A Danish mile at this point was about 7.5 km.↩︎
The naval arsenal by the docks in Copenhagen.↩︎
A public square in Northeastern Copenhagen.↩︎
Unit of currency. 3 “slettedaler” was worth 2 “rigsdaler”. The bounty paid for a runaway was usually about 6 rigsdaler.↩︎
Marcel van der Linden, “Dissecting Coerced Labor” in On Coerced Labor: Work and Compulsion after Chattel Slavery, edited by Marcel van der Linden and Magaly Rodríguez García (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 293–322.↩︎
What is commonly understood by “pillory” in English would instead be called a “gabestok” in Danish.↩︎
A brilliant microhistorical monograph by Tyge Krogh has discussed what dishonour meant and how it was practiced in eighteenth-century Denmark. See Tyge Krogh, Det Store Natmandskomplot: En historie om 1700-tallets kriminelle underverden, 2. edition (Copenhagen: Rosinante, 2018).↩︎
For statistics see Johan Heinsen, Mutiny in the Danish Atlantic World: Convicts, Sailors and a Dissonant Empire (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), chap. 5.↩︎
Maria Ågren (ed.), Making a Living: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).↩︎
For more on rural service in Denmark-Norway see Hanne Østhus, “Servants in Rural Norway c. 1650–1800,” in Servants in Rural Euroe 1400–1900, edited by Jane Whittle (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017), pp. 113–130.↩︎
Rigsarkivet, Forsvarets Auditørkorps, Auditøren ved Garnisonskommandantskabet i København, F. Justitsprotokoller, 1773–1779, 29 August 1778.↩︎