The Ledger That Still Bleeds

Sexual Violence & Domestic Servitude — St Kitts (1700s–1800s)

In the great houses of St Kitts, another unspoken war unfolded. Enslaved women worked in rooms filled with lace, porcelain, and imported perfume, yet nothing there softened the violence arranged behind closed doors. Sexual coercion was not a secret of the system — it was the system. Children born from these violations were rarely acknowledged, often sold, and always reminders that the British Empire’s wealth was built not only on labor, but on stolen bodies and broken lineages. The architecture of these houses still remembers.