Note: This news item was published in Dundee Courier on August 11, 1873. Dundee Courier sourced the news from Calcutta Englishman.

Now that the fever for the suppression of the slave trade is strong amongst those in authority over us, it may not be inopportune to call attention to a regular system of slavery which is alleged a correspondent of the Dacca Prokash to be in existence near Sylhet.

The letter says that, “in spite of the law prohibiting the sale and purchase of female slaves, the practice has been kept up with so much secrecy that it is not possible for Government to detect the culprits. Sometimes a polygamist delivers one of his wives to a rich man to work for life as his slave; at another time a debtor, to satisfy a decree obtained against him, surrenders a daughter (who may be a young woman or a little girl), or his sister, to the creditor for short time, which arrangement, however, continues in force like the Permanent Settlement Act. Sometimes it happens that a vicious woman, to preserve her standing in society, makes a present of her natural daughter to the powerful headman of the community, and at other times men of property send messengers to poor men greedy of money, and bring their daughters under their influence by offering them small sum, and promising to marry them.

“The purchase and sale of slaves in the ordinary way has not altogether disappeared. The children of former slaves are still working in the houses of their masters in the same capacity. There are those, too, who have in manner made the marriage of slave girls a sort of trade. They marry as many as 5, 10, and 15 girls each. If a respectable man happens to have a slave girl in his house, he brings slave boy and gives her in marriage to him, but she has but little of his society after the ceremony is over. The practice of employing maidservants does not obtain this place, and men who are looked upon as respectable, in order to maintain their position, must keep at least one female slave.”