[Original Manuscript] List of Death Among the Late African Company Officers in the Settlements on the Gold Coast from the 1st of January 1812, to 1st of January 1822 Being a Period of Ten Years. de ARTHY, E - 1822

Gold Coast, 1822. Handwritten. Very Good. Cloth custom made portfolio. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. Gold Coast, 1822. 4 pp. Manuscript ca. 34x21 cm (13x8 in). Manuscript with tears but no loss of text housed in a blue cloth custom made portfolio with a red gilt morocco label on front cover. In very good condition. This report by the Assistant Surgeon in the African Company of Merchants concerns the mortality rate among the Company's officers during a period of ten years (1812-1822) and includes a list of fifty people (indicating their names). The "Remarks" section explains the statistics: "The African Company Establishment when fully appointed consisted of forty-five commissioned and non commissioned European officers but during the period of time stated above, there was not more than thirty-five residing in the Settlements on a yearly average & the deaths among them being five annually on an average." Arthy also counts the number of the native workers of the Company: "170 non commissioned officers and private soldiers, and 334 artificers, labourers and labouresses", and states that the mortality amongst them "except on occasional visitations of the Small Pox, was generally at the rate of one percent per annum, and very rarely exceeded two percent". Arthy concludes that "there is much reason to believe that the Climate of the Gold Coast would be found considerably less destructive of the health and lives of Europeans than that of any other intertropical country round the world. In reality to decide this question, it does not seem necessary to enquire further that Sierra Leone, Charlestown, the Havannah, Surinam and Batavia, wherein the mortality among Europeans annually so excessive and lamentable and so generally known as might serve to remove all Doubts of the superior salubrity of the Climate of the Gold Coast to that of all other tropical countries". "The African Company of Merchants was a Chartered Company in the Gold Coast area of modern Ghana, in the coastal area where the Fante people lived. It was founded in 1752 and replaced the Royal African Company which was dissolved in that year. In 1817 the Company had signed a treaty of friendship that recognized Asante claims to sovereignty over large areas of the coast, including areas claimed by the Fante. The Company was abolished in 1821, as the slave trade had not been suppressed in these privately held areas. Authority over the area was given to Governor Charles MacCarthy, the governor of Sierra Leone, who was subsequently killed in the First Anglo-Asante War" (Wikipedia)..