British Guiana

MEMORANDUM
BY THE
HONOURABLE A. M. ASHMORE, C.M.G., GOVERNMENT SECRETARY
ON THE SUBJECT OF
VILLAGE ADMINISTRATION
FROM THE TIME OF THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY TO THE
PRESENT DAY;

WITH AN
ECONOMIC CENSUS
OF THE VILLAGES OF BRITISH GUIANA FOR 1902.

Printed by the Authority of His Excellency the Governor.

GEORGETOWN, DEMERARA
C. K. JARDINE, PRINTER TO THE GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH GUIANA.
1903.

G.O. 13792.

Donated by Derek Nathan to the BWISC Library, Transcribed by Steve Jarvis

 HISTORY OF VILLAGE ADMINISTRATION.
--------------
During slavery, the blacks had no lands of their own, but lived on the front lands of Estates and
in the negro yards, the property of their masters. During the brief continuance of the
apprenticeship, and for a few years thereafter, they continued to so reside, and between 1838
and 1819 made very high wages, saving much money. This they expended by ill organised
companies, through nominees, in the purchase of abandoned plantations, of which, as cotton,
coffee and all other cultivations save sugar were given up, there were many on the market, and
sometimes on the purchase of front lands of sugar estates, the proprietors of which were anxious
to establish a resident population.
The purchasers of such a property, usually after an unsuccessful attempt to cultivate the estate
in common, distributed its lands among themselves, and built houses, and a village came into
existence.
A village of this kind found itself without any organisation for managing its affairs: it had no
communal institutions such as are universal in the East, and no `King' or Captains of Companies
to govern it as a West African village has.1* The villagers realised this want themselves. More
than one community prepared a code of rules for itself, and at a later date (1861) most villages
were found to have provided themselves with an overseer and watchman, and to have among
their inhabitants an understanding and sometimes a written agreement as to contributions for
payment. But those measures were generally unsuccessful. More than twenty years after the
foundation of most of the villages, the Commissioners of 1864 found them "generally in a most
unsatisfactory state, and in some instances in a deplorable condition: the houses in the latter
case in ruin and disrepair: and the lands attached to them "undrained, uncultivated and
neglected, the means of internal communication most defective, and the most utter disregard
for all sanitary considerations."
The history of the villages since their establishment is an account of the efforts of the
Government, not yet completely successful, to provide an organisation suitable to village
needs.
At the very outset of their new life, the inhabitants found themselves face to face with three
principal difficulties: - the difficulty of drainage, (drainage being in Guiana the condition of
existence); the difficulty of title, attendant on their having bought in common estates which
they desired to hold in severalty; and the difficulty of fulfilling the obligation which rested on
owners of plantations to maintain the public road through their properties.
The estates they had bought are parallelograms of land, embanked on all sides, with main
drainage trenches running along the foot of the embankments and discharging through one
outlet. No individual villager could cultivate his plot with success unless the whole system of
main drainage throughout the estate was kept in order. So long as what may be called the
"outfit of drainage," with which the plantation was provided at the time of purchase, lasted, it
was not impossible things should go well. When it began to give out trouble was inevitable.
The question of title might wait, but the difficulty of the roads came home early. The remedy
open to the Government in the case of an omission to repair roads was against the estate (in
solidum) liable for maintenance and was in the case of a village obviously unavailable. And it
was with this difficulty that the Government first endeavoured to grapple .
As early as 1845 special provision was made by Ordinance for the maintenance of the road
through the village of Queenstown in Essequebo by means of an assessment of a rate to be
prepared by Commissioners elected ad hoe and levied from the villagers.
A similar remedy was by later Ordinances applied to the like difficulty in other cases, and was
more or less effectually put into operation, but even up to a late date complaints of the state
of the main roads through the villages were very common.

1
There is some reason to think that the African organisation by `Kings' and 'Companies'
survived among the slaves until shortly before Emancipation [cf. Rodway. Vol. II. Ch. XXVI.
pages 296 et sea:]. The village organisation on the West Coast of Africa is military in its origin
and character, and the ` drilling' referred to in Rodway's book may perhaps be thus accounted for.
The election of these Commissioners was the first legislative attempt to provide a village
organisation.
In 1851 the Government dealt with the second of the difficulties referred to, the matter of
titles, and passed an Ordinance (No. 4 of 1851, amended by No. 1 of 1852) providing for the
appointment of Commissioners to divide the lands of villages among, and pass transports to,
the individual proprietors.
Meantime in 1850, an attempt was made to establish a general administration for sanitary
purposes throughout the Colony. By an Ordinance passed in 1850 two Central Boards of
Health were established, one for Demerara and Essequebo, and one for Berbice: and Local
Boards of Health, composed of the vestries of the Parishes and the medical gentlemen
residing therein, in every rural parish of the Colony (the towns of Georgetown and New
Amsterdam being separately provided for.)
This Ordinance probably never had any effect: it was repealed in 1852 and replaced by a
more elaborate measure by which a single Central Board at Georgetown was substituted for
the two Boards at Georgetown and New Amsterdam: and the parish vestries were created
Local Boards of Health for the rural districts with power to establish general systems of
drainage for their districts, and to make and enforce sanitary regulations within villages,
power being taken to declare new villages, and so to bring them under the operation of
regulations. -
The Local Boards of the Sanitary Districts were to be empow ered to levy rates so soon as
"provision shall have been made by ordinance for the election of the members of the Vestries
of the several parishes," up to that date nominated bodies. But no such provision was ever
made and no rates were therefore ever struck, with the result that so far as the rural districts,
including villages, were concerned, the machinery of administration never came into general
operation.2
In 1856, Ordinance No. 33 was passed by Sir Philip Wodehouse to provide villages with an
organisation for the management of their affairs generally.
This Ordinance is the germ out of which the existing more elaborate system has grown, and it
deserves a. particular description.
It began by enabling the Governor and Court of Policy by resolution to bring under its
provisions all plantations (and their owners) which having been purchased in common had
been divided, or should in future be divided in severality among the proprietors, and it
provided means of division for the future.3
It enacted that for every such plantation there should be an overseer whose salary was to be
fixed at a general meeting of shareholders, called together for the purpose by the District
Registrar. 4 The salary was subject to approval or alteration by the Governor and Court of
Policy. That fixed, a fresh meeting of shareholders was similarly to be called to appoint the
overseer and elect two Commissioners, and on failure by the shareholders to appoint and
elect, the District Registrar, with the Governor's approval, was to discharge the duty.
At the end of the year the overseer and Commissioners were to vacate their offices and a
fresh election to be held.
Every proprietor was declared to be liable to pay monthly for his share "such sum as shall be
sufficient to provide for the payment of the salary of the overseer, for the repair of the road
and of bridges, for the drainage and other necessary services of the estate," and provision

2
See Section 21 of Ordinance 1 of 1866, which appears to shew that the Local Sanitary Boards
before that date had incurred expenditure (and levied rates ?)
3
Under the provisions of this and similar ordinances the following villages were divided:-In
Demerara-Buxton, Plaisance, Victoria, Friendship, Beterverwagting, Den Amstel, Ann's Grove,
Two Friends.
And in Berbice-Gibraltar and Fyrish.
4
The District Registrar was the collector of Head money, a tax imposed to meet the cost of the
damage done by the Portuguese Riots of 1856. After the repeal of this tax, the Commissaries of
Taxation were created to take over the duty of tax collection and the Registrar's duty in respect of
the supervision of villages was entrusted to them.
was made for the assessment on the shareholders of their dues and for the collection and
accounting for them. A special assessment might be made in cases of emergency; and a
particular section of the ordinance laid down that in the case of work "of which the
performance is required of the respective shareholders” the overseer might give notice to the
shareholder to do it within 7 days, and in default, have it done and recover the cost from the
defaulters. This simple measure is still remembered by some of the older villagers, who quote its
principles as suitable to their needs. The causes of its failure were probably two: -the lack of
a system of Pro vincial administration, by means of which the central government could
supervise its working and influence the people to co-operate for their own good; and a
reluctance on the part of the Government to use compulsion to make the recalcitrant
minority, always to be found in every community, discharge their share of the common
obligations.
The first of these causes still renders village administration difficult and inefficient: the
second is passing away.
Special laws were passed to provide for the administration of particular villages. The most
important of these were Ordinances 10 of 1862 and 1 of 1863, creating Commissioners with
Boards of Advice to manager Buxton, Friendship and Beterverwagting and other villages, if
any, brought under their operation. The collection of rates, when the practice was first
initiated under these Ordinances, led to some sales of villagers' properties, and a good deal
of friction ensued between the peasantry and the authorities, which, in the village of
Friendship, culminated in a forcible levy by Police supported by a military force. In 1862 , a
Resolution of the Combined Court, covered by an Ordinance in 1864 , placed $60,000 of
borrowed money at the disposal of the villages by way of loan.
The Ordinance of 1856 remained in operation for 17 years, but for the reason pointed out, it
was not very effectual.
In February, 1864, the state of the villages was brought prominently before the Court of
Policy, and a Committee was appointed by Governor Sir F. Hincks to (among other matters)
"inquire into and report upon the condition and deficiencies of existing villages and to
consider whether by any improvements in the legal constitution or regulations thereof or in
their management they, i.e., the legal constitution and regulations, can be adapted......... ... to
improve the condition of the present villages."
The Committee in the early part of 1865 visited a number of villages in all parts of the
Colony, and in May of that year presented a report, the principal finding of which has been
quoted already, and framed thirteen recommendations, which have formed the groundwork
for much of the legislation that has since followed.
They advised the formation of a Central Board of Management; that provision should be
made for inspection by a Government officer; that aid should be provided in the shape of
loans; that there should be village Boards of Advice, with overseers to collect rates and
transact local business. They also proposed the survey of the villages, and arrangements for
giving the several owners good titles.
The report resulted in the passing of "An Ordinance," No. 1, of 1866, "to provide for the
better management and sanitary superintendence of villages." This law created a Central
Board of Villages, to consist of the Governor and members of the Court of Policy and other
nominees of the Governor, and conferred on it the powers of sanitary control previously held
by the Central Board of Health, but, in respect of the villages, not, it would appear, exercised.
The new law vested in the Board power to declare places to be villages and to divide villages
into incorporated and unincorporated, and it set over all, of whatever category, a
Superintendent or Board of Superintendence, nominated by the Governor; but the elected
Commissioners under the Ordinance of 1856 were nor, swept away but might be continued
by order of the Board, and in that case the direct supervision of them was withdrawn from the
Commissaries in whom it had been vested, and placed in the Central Board or any one or
more members thereof.
Authority to initiate village works in both incorporated and unincorporated villages rested in
the Superintendent or Board. In incorporated villages the cost was recoverable from rates,
but in unincorporated villages work might be set out by the overseer and done by the
villagers under a threat in case of failure to sell the village as a whole (!), or in the alternative
to levy a rate.
The result of all the legislation passed up to 1856 had been to create a number of different
kinds of local government for the villages. Four-Buxton, Friendship, Beterverwagting and
Queenstown-had special constitutions under special laws of their own. Under the new law
there were two more kinds of villages, incorporated and unincorporated, with differing forms
of government, and under the Ordinance of 1856 there were villages with yet a different kind
of constitution; while, side by side with the Central Board of Villages, there still existed the
Central Board of Health.
The law gave the Central Board of Villages power to borrow on behalf of any village and to
recoup itself out of the rates.
The Central Board of Villages, constituted as above described, made under the presidency of
Sir F. Hincks a determined effort to remedy the evils disclosed by the report of the
Commissioners.
It created 18 incorporated villages, for each of which it appointed a Board of
Superintendence, making use for the most part of the services of the local Clergy and some
of the gentry. And it declared almost every property in the Colony, not in European hands, an
unincorporated village, entrusting the supervision of them to local Boards of
Superintendence, of which there were two or perhaps more to a Parish. Overseers were
appointed and rates levied for local improvement in very many villages.
Under its borrowing powers, the Board raised and lent considerable sums of money to the
villages, very large loans being made to provide the East Coast villages of Buxton, Plaisance,
and Beterverwagting, with drainage by steam machinery. 5
This system of management, though no doubt it effected material local improvements, broke
down from its own weight. The smaller villages could not bear the cost of overseers, whose
salaries swallowed up nearly the whole of the rates. The unpaid Boards of Superintendence
failed to recruit suitable volunteer members who would face the petty squabbles and
disagreeable details of village politics: the Clergy found themselves involved in chronic
disagreement with their parishioners: while not the smallest detail of village administration
could be finally settled until submitted to a Board which included all the principal officers of
State, from the Governor downwards.
In 1871 the failure was apparent. and a further Commission of enquiry was appointed. The
report of this Commission, submitted in March, 1872, recommended that Government officers
should be appointed to manage the villages, assisted in each case by an elected council of
advice, and that proper accounts should be kept and duly audited. The report makes
reference to financial mismanagement and disorganisation, and not to the same causes of
complaint, -want of drainage, and breakdown of village works,-as the former report, and it
may perhaps be assumed that in these last respects there was less to complain of than there
had been in 1864.
There followed on this report the enactment of the elaborate Ordinance (No. 10 of 1873) - to
consolidate and amend the law "relating to villages and to provide for the management, regulation
and sanitary superintendence of villages." This Ordinance continued the Central Board of
Villages, consisting of the Governor and members of the Court of Policy and any number
more Government nominees. Under the Ordinance of 1866, the Government had relied for
aid in its village administration on local voluntary effort. The result had been failure and the
plan was frankly abandoned. The new Ordinance created a paid Inspector of Villages, and
provided for placing the local institutions under the supervision -of the Commissaries of Taxation.
It, at the same time, made general the system of public election, by which the inhabitants were
themselves to choose Councillors to advise and assist the Commissaries in their duties. Rates
were to be levied, and provision was made for estimates, for keeping accounts, and for village
works of all kinds. Provision was also continued to enable the Central Board to borrow on behalf
of villages.
The general extension of the practice of electing Councillors was not at first successful and it
was found in practice that villagers frequently would not assemble to elect Councillors, and that

5
cf. Return of village indebtedness attached
sometimes when got together for the purpose, they refused to elect, and it became incumbent on
the Central Board in most cases to nominate, but this difficulty gradually passed away. Under
this Ordinance 18 incorporated villages were administered. 6 All endeavour to work the smaller
(unincorporated) villages appears to have been abandoned. The business of the incorporated
villages was however still carried on at excessive expense. In two villages, Buxton and Fyrish,
the rates ran up to 4 per cent. In Plaisance they were raised to 32 per cent. on the valuation. A
number of villages on the Fast Coast petitioned against the continuance of the Ordinance.
In 1878 an Ordinance was passed to provide for the Sanitary Administration and Regulation of
the Colony.
It classified the whole Country into
Town Sanitary Districts,
Village Sanitary Districts. and
Country Sanitary Districts. ;
the first being the Municipalities, the second the villages incorporated as such under the Villages
Ordinance, and the third the remainder. It left the first two to be administered by the Authorities
already provided for them, and made fresh provision for the local Government of the third by
Sanitary Authorities to whom were given certain powers of administration and of levying
rates. It created a Board of Health to generally supervise and direct the machinery, and
remains still in force.
There were thus two superior authorities, dealing with local government, in existence side by
side - the Board of Villages governing 18 villages, all control over which was expressly vested
in it to the exclusion of the Board of Health, and the Board of Health, to whom the local
Authorities of the rest of the Colony were subject.
The former had the assistance of an Inspecting Officer, the Inspector of Villages; the latter
had no effectual supervisory staff at all; and it is not very clear how it was expected to put its
powers into operation. H appears to have contented itself, whenever complaint was made to
it that any inhabited place was in bad order, with procuring the creation of the locality as a
Sanitary District, appointing a Local Sanitary Board, and leaving it to act or not as it chose.
Speaking generally, such Boards did nothing, and from the date of the passing of the
Ordinance of 1873, if not from before that time, the whole community, with the exception of
the Municipalities of Georgetown and New Amsterdam and the incorporated villages, was left
without local government of any kind.
In 1883 the discontent and dissatisfaction at the administration of the incorporated villages
led to the passing of Ordinance No. 4 of that year, by which the whole of the machinery for
incorporated village management was swept away. The Board of Villages had been too
ambitious and extravagant. It had among other things started dispensaries in some villages
which had to be swept away; and had accumulated a heavy debt, to repay which no serious
effort was ever made. It ceased to exist, and the administration was divided between the
Public Works Department and the Inspector of Villages, the latter being created for the
purpose of the Sanitary Authority under Ordinance 3 of 1878 and so made subject to the
Authority of the Board of Health. All village property of a communal character, which had
been vested in the Board of Villages, was transferred to the Colonial Civil Engineer, and all
the work of the villages was done, and funds available for their maintenance expended, by
the Department of Public Works, a two per centum rate being levied generally on villages,
and the deficiency, which was chronic, made up out of public funds.
In anticipation of this change, in the Colonial Budget for 1883, a grant in aid of village
administration had been voted by the Combined Court of $25,000.
In the same year (1883) the maintenance of the Trunk Roads, other than those passing
through Sugar Plantations or through Georgetown and New Amsterdam, was assumed by the
Government, and the villages finally relieved of one burdea on their poor resources.
$150,000 was represented to be outstanding and uncollected on account of the maintenance
of these roads: not of course only or principally on account of villages. But the problem of vil-
lage indebtedness was not. as it should have been, grappled with. Fifteen villages, most of

6
List annexed.
them incorporated, at that time owed in round figures $94,000. It was recognised that they
could not manage their own affairs and also pay their way. Their property and the
responsibility for their future was on that account taken out of their own hands and assumed
by the Government, in return for a fixed rate of annual taxation, the general revenue
providing for the deficiency, but their several debts to the Government were retained on the
Colony's books.
This state of things continued until 1892, when, on the occasion of the passing of a new
Village Law, all the smaller debts were written off by authority of the Combined Court, but the
liabilities of Beterverwagting, Plaisance and Buxton aggregating nearly $75,000, continued to
appear as assets of the Colony until 1902, when all but a small balance, specially secured,
was written off the books. No reason was given in 1883 for treating the two sets of debts in
different ways, and it can only be surmised that the Government was reluctant to admit that
so considerable a sum of money had been totally lost. That it had been for a long period
before 1883 hopelessly irrecoverable an inspection of the account shows clearly.
In 1892 a new Village law was enacted. It remains still in force. It placed the villages, i.e.,
villages declared to be such, under the control of the Board of Health created by the
Ordinance of 1878, and it made the Inspector of Villages an officer of the Board. It put their
affairs under the immediate direction of elected Village Councils, to which it gave powers of
voting funds and taxes, of appointing Village Officers, constructing village works, etc., etc.,
and it re-vested in the Village Councils all the village property which by the Ordinance of
1883 had been transferred to the Public Works Department. By this Ordinance, the problem
of village management in those larger communities, from whom there can be raised by
taxation funds sufficient to pay a local staff as well as to provide for village works, may be
regarded as solved. The administration since 1892 has shewn a gradual improvement; the
Councils pay their way, and a moderate amount of interest is shewn by the inhabitants in
their working. In some cases rather more stringent supervision from above would be
productive of advantage, and a recent amendment of the law has made this more easy. But
there remain a great number of less populous and poorer communities, the condition of
which is still unsatisfactory. They are too poor to pay for a supervisory and tax collecting
staff, the cost of which consumes nearly all that a rate produces, and they are too scattered
and their interests are too distinct to permit of their combining and working under a common
centre or head.
An experiment has been successfully tried in one or two places, and is now being extended
to other communities, of requiring the inhabitants to contribute each his portion to communal
administration in the form of labour. The execution of the village works of drainage,
embankment, etc., is supervised by Local Committees, on each of which there is at least one
Public officer who forms the medium of communication between the Board of Health in
Georgetown and the local Committee, and the results are kept under observation through
the Inspector of Villages, or by means of visits of members of the Board itself.
The law has recently been altered to facilitate the working of this system, and if carefully
and diligently pursued, it promises a general improvement in the welfare of the smaller
groups of peasantry.
(Sd.) A. M. ASHMORE,
22nd April, 1903.