Disclaimer: We didn’t write this. They did. So the ladies of Abaco need not write to us in protest. Who is they, who would take pen to paper in 1890, to write about the women of Abaco, you might ask? Well at Bahamianology we think it was an American gentleman suitor who was encouraged to go to Hope Town in search of a wife. He wrote in quite sexual terms given the time 1890, as well as using quite humorous tones, to describe what he found there. His article swept across the broadsheets of America appearing first in the New York Times in January 1890.
The writer uses very fluid, colourful language to bestow both compliments and criticism on Hope Town women of 1890. For example, he says this to essentially call them not very smart.
“In the higher mental activities — those which illuminate the face and give it vivacity and piquancy— the Hope Town girl is wanting.”
“At 35 she is a hatchet-faced, toothless hag, smoking a villainous clay pipe and indulging in surreptitious nips of a fiery liquor…”
