No time to wash at The VOC Slave Lodge

On 10 June 1793 C G Höhne, private secretary to the Governor, wrote a letter to Cape of Good Hope, about the conditions of enslaved people at the VOC Company Slave Lodge in Cape Town. He stated with grave concern that due to ‘increased labour’ performed by a ‘much reduced number of the East Company’s slaves’, enslaved people at the Lodge were not given enough time to wash their clothes or themselves as ‘for an extended period no Sunday or any day of cleaning themselves has been allowed them.’