Power and Historical Figuring: Rachael Pringle Polgreen's Troubled Archive

Rachael Pringle Polgreen, a freed‘mulatto’ woman who owned an infamous brothel/hotel in Bridgetown, Barbados during the 1770s and 1780s became known to her contemporaries through her role in the (sexual) entertainment of transient naval officers and the visits of Prince William of England. Piecing together ‘evidence’ from her will, estate inventory, a nineteenth‐century novel, a lithograph and an interview with a British officer, I engage Polgreen's complicated and fragmented archive, revealing how Polgreen represents an example of the problems with sources depicting women of African descent who lived in a slave society and the silences that inundate their archive. The first part of this article critically re‐examines pieces of her archive, through which an image of Polgreen emerges incommensurable with narratives of her triumphs. Next, through an analysis of the processes by which Polgreen is historically confined by powerful archival and subsequent historical representations, I challenge previous assumptions about her life. Finally, introducing material from the British parliamentary debates in which an incident involving Polgreen is described and new material from Barbados deeds left by Polgreen's former slave, I expose the nuances of Polgreen's ‘agency’ in a slave society – that which depended upon her sexual subjugation of other women of African descent.     

Robert Neal Rudmose Brown: Obituary

Africa Today: a Short Introduction to African Affairs. By B. W. Hodder. 18 1/2 x 12, 166 pp. 1 map, index. Methuen, London, 1978. Paperback £1.95.

The River Basin. By David Ingle Smith and Peter Stopp. 25 1/2 x 18, 120 pp. Cambridge Univ. Press, London, 1978. £5.95.

EDUCATIONAL

Place and People Series: No. 3—Communications and Networks, by Jean Forbes and James Ross, 80 pp.; No. 6—Land and Water Resources, by Arnold Bell, Raymond Cook and Ian Maciver, 72 pp., 24x 18J, Heinemann Educational, London, £1.40 each.

Beginning the New Geography. By Ken Briggs. 24 1/2 x 18 1/2, 64 pp. Hodder and Stoughton, 1979. £1.20.

Modern Techniques in Geography: Assignments in Geography. By Dalton, et al. 24 x 18 1/2, 68 pp. Philip, 1978.

Britain in Colour. By Fullagar and Virgo. 17 x 24, 186 pp. Hodder and Stoughton, 1978. £2.65.

Patterns of Development—Human Geography in Colour. By D. C. Money. 18 1/2 x 24 1/2, 184 pp. Evans Bros., London. £3.75.

World Resources Book 2—Metals. ByD. S.Scott. 29x21, 71 pp. Wheaton, 1978. £1.60.

Greater London. By Roland Allison. 19x25, 140 pp. Hodder and Stoughton, 1978. £2.45.

Contemporary Scotland: The Scottish Environment. By Ann Glen. 19x22, 74 pp. Heinemann Educational, London, 1978. £1.00.

British Isles. By Brian Nixon. 23x15, 316 pp. University Tutorial Press, Slough, 1978. £2.60.     

Best practices for measuring community resources across Canada: A comparison of coding classifications

Social scientists, geographers, criminologists, and health scientists are often tasked with finding data to best capture the impact of “community context” on individual outcomes, including residential services, physical resources, and social institutions. One outlet for such data in Canada is Digital Map Technologies Inc. (DMTI) Spatial, which offers a national repository of over one million businesses and recreational points of interest. The database is generated through CanMap Streetfiles, which includes geocodes of each point's precise location. These data are available to researchers from their university data library and Esri Canada, but primarily available to private sector and government markets. That said, the goal of the current paper is to encourage researchers to access this rich yet under-utilized data source. Each service, business, or resource in the DMTI Spatial database is assigned to a respective category using Standard Industrial Classification codes and North American Industrial Classification System codes. It is not clear, however, which is the more reliable coding criteria. We provide an overview of our review of DMTI Spatial data and take-away suggestions for using this valuable resource for future research on meso-level residential markers.