William Jervis Livingstone

William Jervis Livingstone was the manager of the Magomero Estate in Nyasaland owned by A L Bruce Estates Ltd and was murdered - beheaded in front of his wife and two small children in 1915 during the uprising against colonial rule led by John Chilembwe. Livingstone, from the Isle of Lismore, was born in Argyllshire, Scotland in 1865 and appointed as manager of Magomero in 1893. Although he experimented with growing coffee and later cotton, the estate was not a financial success and Livingstone imposed increasingly harsh labour demands on the estate workers there. He was also accused of the mistreatment treatment of those workers, but both the excessive work demands and his tough regime were the results of the pressures for financial success originating from Alexander Livingstone Bruce, a director and major shareholder in A L Bruce Estates Ltd, who also lived in Nyasaland. Bruce considered independent African churches were subversive, and instructed Livingstone to destroy the churches that Chilembwe built on the Magomero estate. Chilembwe's grievances about colonial rule and the oppression of African estate workers came to focus on William Jervis Livingstone and, when he initiated his revolt on 23 January 1915, Chilembwe ordered some of his men to attack the A L Bruce Estates, to kill all European men and to return with Livingstone's head. Livingstone and three others, including Duncan MacCormick also from Lismore and an African servant were killed at Magomero. William Livingstone's wife Kitty and her female house guests and children were luckily all unharmed. In the aftermath of uprising, Livingstone and the Estate of Magomer was blamed for the harsh and unsatisfactory conditions on the A L Bruce Estates. The actual owner of the estate, Alexander Livingstone Bruce escaped censure, despite all orders coming from him. More recently, William Livingstone's character has been re-examined against the backdrop of the huge estate he was tasked to run for his employers and, although a hot tempered man, he is also regarded as reacting to the impossible demands made by Alexander Livingstone Bruce.

Birth and family

William Jervis Livingstone was born on 8 March 1865 at Bachuil,Isle of Lismore, Argyllshire, in Scotland. His father, Alexander Livingstone (1815-1906), was a Baptist minister and his mother Jessie (née McPherson, 1824–99) was Alexander’s second wife. Alexander Livingstone had seven children, of whom three died as infants and two, including William’s older half-brother, in their twenties. Only William and his younger brother Thomas survived into the 20th century. In 1908, William married Katherine (née MacLachlan) and they had three children, one of whom died as an infant.

Both Alexander Livingstone and later his son William claimed the title of Baron of Bachuil, although this dignity was not formally recognised until 2004 and it did not imply ownership of any land. William Jervis Livingstone considered that he was related to David Livingstone, but no direct connection has yet been proven as many records were burned after the 1745 rebellion of Culloden. What is known is likely John Livingstone who is listed as fighting at the Battle of Culloden (see No Quarter Given: The Muster Roll of Prince Charles Edward Stuart's Army 1745-1746, by Christian Aikman, Baron Alastair Livingstone and Betty Stuart-Hart)was their common antecedent. It is known that David Livingstone’s daughter Agnes called on William Jervis Livingstone to manage the Magomero Estate after the death of her husband, Alexander Low Bruce, on account of this relationship. Livingstone was 28 years old when he was appointed to manage Magomero and 49 when he was killed there on 23 January 1915: most of what is known of him concerns his 21 years as manager of that estate.

Magomero

Agnes (b. 1847), the daughter of David Livingstone married Alexander Low Bruce (b. 1839) in 1875. They had four children including two sons, David Livingstone Bruce (b. 1877) and Alexander Livingstone Bruce (b. 1881). Alexander Low Bruce was a master brewer who supported African commercial and missionary organisations and, after his marriage to Agnes Livingstone, he became a director of the African Lakes Company. He never visited Nyasaland, but obtained title to some 170,000 acres of land there through his association with the African Lakes Company and the agency of John Buchanan, a planter who also brokered land sales by local chiefs. Of this land, 162,000 acres formed the estate that he named Magomero, situated south of Zomba. On his death in 1893 aged 54, title to his African assets passed under his will to the A L Bruce Trust, whose main beneficiaries were his two sons, then aged 16 and 12.

Shortly before his death, Alexander Low Bruce had appointed a manager for each of his two estates in Nyasaland. William Jervis Livingstone took control of the main estate of Magomero in Chiradzulu District in 1893 and D.B. Ritchie was charged with the smaller Likulezi Estate near Mlanje. Initially, Agnes assumed oversight of the A L Bruce Trust until Bruce's heirs, David and Alexander, could take over when they came of age. The provisions of their father's will expected them to run the estates:

"…not on account of any pecuniary advantage…but in the hope and expectation that they will take an interest in the opening up of Africa to Christianity and Commerce on the lines laid down by their grandfather the late David Livingstone."

However, after their mother’s death, and as the Magomero estate showed potential, David Livingstone Bruce and Alexander Livingstone Bruce purchased the assets of the A L Bruce Trust in 1913, paying just over £41,000 for its two estates. They then incorporated A L Bruce Estates Ltd in 1913 as a commercial venture with a share capital of £54,000, largely held by the two sons and one of the daughters of Alexander Low Bruce.

When Magomero was acquired, it was largely unoccupied and uncultivated, and William Jervis Livingstone needed to find suitable crops and workers. At first, he tried unsuccessfully to grow coffee, then turned first to cotton and later to tobacco. Most workers at Magomero were not local people but "Anguru", a term used to describe a number of different Lomwe speaking migrants from Mozambique. These Lomwe workers came to Magomero as tenants; initially the men had to work for one month a year in lieu of rent: single women were exempt. Livingstone ordered the planting of about 70,000 bushes of Arabica coffee in 200 to 300 acres as the first estate crop at Magomero in 1895, but after poor crops in 1898 and 1899 because of frost and a collapse in world coffee prices in 1903, he looked for more profitable crops.

Livingstone turned to cotton from 1903: growing Egyptian cotton was unsuccessful as it was more suitable for hotter areas, but from 1906, he developed a hardier variety of Upland cotton called Nyasaland Upland, and in 1908 planted 1,000 acres at Magomero with it; this was increased to 5,000 acres by 1914. Cotton required intensive labour over a long growing period, and Livingstone ensured that 3,000 to 5,000 workers were available throughout its five or six month growing season by exploiting the obligations of the labour tenancy system called thangata. This word originally meant help, such as one neighbour might give another, but it came to mean the work that a tenant on a European-owned estate had to undertake in lieu of rent. Tenants were also required to undertake additional work on account of the Hut tax which the owner paid on behalf of tenants. Other men worked for wages: they were often unpaid, underpaid or given tobacco instead of cash, and violently coerced by the owners. Alexander Livingstone Bruce was said to have pioneered the thangata system, and once Magomero started to grow cotton, Bruce, who lived in Nyasaland and had control of the estate operations, instructed Livingstone, his manager, to exploit thangata rigorously. When cotton growing started, the Bruce estates increased the labour demand to four or five months a year, mainly in the growing season, leaving tenants little time to grow their food. Single women tenants were now also required to work.

One of the main reasons that William Jervis Livingstone was murdered in the 1915 Chilembwe uprising was the severity of his management. Following the uprising, the protectorate government tried to replace thangata by cash rents. However, Alexander Livingstone Bruce, as a major planter, led estate owners in threatening massive evictions if this change were implemented, and thangata remained. Even after Livingstone’s killing, the work obligation on the A L Bruce Estates was little modified, sometimes amounting to six months for thangata and Hut tax. However, as the Crown lands nearest to the estates were already crowded, and as most of the estate tenants had no claim to settle there, they had little option but to stay.

William Jervis Livingstone was quick-tempered and his actions, including arbitrarily increasing tenants’ workloads and ordering them to be beaten. Corporal punishment was fairly widespread at that time both in the colonies and also in the UK of course. As early as 1901, Livingstone was fined for harsh treatment of some of his workers. However, against this, several headmen from the Bruce Estates confirmed that Livingstone had distributed food in times of famine showing he actually cared for his workers.

Chilembwe’s Providence Industrial Mission was the closest one to Magomero, and built schools and churches on the estate. Livingstone was accused of destroying them when in fact he was only carrying out the orders of his own employers of the AL Bruce Estates. But Chilembwe himself deliberately provoked confrontation by erecting churches on private estate land, knowing that the estate owner did not want them built on his land. It is clear that Livingstone had to act under orders from Alexander Livingstone Bruce. Unlike the alternatively harsh, then generous William Jervis Livingstone, Bruce (who had absolute control over estate policy) had the consistent aim of making a profit from its operations. Bruce, whose view was that educated Africans had no place in colonial society and opposed their education, recorded his personal dislike for Chilembwe as an educated African. He considered Chilembwe's churches were centres for agitation, and that by building them on the estate, Chilembwe was making a claim to part of its land. As Livingstone carried out the work of destruction, he, rather than Bruce, became a focus for Chilembwe’s grievances resulting in his tragic demise.

John Chilembwe

John Chilembwe (1871 – 1915) was a Baptist minister who attended a Church of Scotland mission around 1890, and became a servant of the radical missionary Joseph Booth in 1892. Chilembwe left Nyasaland in 1897 to be educated at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, (now Virginia University of Lynchburg). He was ordained as a Baptist minister at Lynchburg in 1899 and returned to Nyasaland in 1900. Chilembwe started his Providence Industrial Mission in Chiradzulu district: in its first decade, it developed gradually, helped by donations from his American backers, and it founded several churches and schools. Initially, Chilembwe avoided any criticism that the colonial authorities might think was subversive, but by 1913, he had become more politically militant and openly criticised the government over African land rights and the conditions of tenants, particularly on the Magomero estate, on which many of his mission congregation worked.

In his first decade in Nyasaland after returning from Lynchburg, Virginia, Chilembwe had reasonable success. After 1910 his mission faced rising debt as support from its American backers dried up. His personal life was clouded by the death of a daughter, his asthma attacks and his declining eyesight and general health. These problems increased Chilembwe's bitterness toward Europeans in Nyasaland, and moved him towards thoughts of revolt. However, the outbreak and effects of the First World War was the key factor in moving him from merely thinking to planning action, which he believed would lead to the deliverance of the African people of Nyasaland.

Following a battle at Karonga in September 1914, Chilembwe wrote an impassioned letter to the "Nyasaland Times" newspaper, saying some of his countrymen, "have already shed their blood", others were being "crippled for life" and were "invited to die for a cause which is not theirs". By December 1914, Chilembwe was regarded with suspicion by the colonial authorities and the Governor decided to deport him and some of his followers. The war-time censor had stopped publication of Chilembwe’s letter. This, and the possibility that he learned of his intended deportation, prompted him to bring forward his revolt, which made its success unlikely. Chilembwe gathered a small group of mission-educated Africans as his lieutenants, and in December 1914 and early January 1915, planned to attack British rule in Nyasaland. How a man of the church would ever contemplate murderous revolt, however frustrated he was with Colonial administration begs all sorts of questions.

So the aims of the rising remain unclear, as Chilembwe and many of his leading supporters were killed, and as many relevant documents in Nyasaland were destroyed in a fire in 1919. However, his use of the theme of “Africa for the Africans” suggests a political motive rather than a purely religious one. Chilembwe is said to have likened his rising to that of John Brown, and stated his wish to "strike a blow and die". His plan had three parts, first to attack government centres in the Shire Highlands on the night of the 23rd to the 24th of January 1915 to obtain arms and ammunition and, second, to attack European estates in that area during the same night. These two parts relied on a force of about 200 men, mainly from Chilembwe's congregations or other independent African churches. The third part of the plan involved men from a simultaneous uprising planned for the Ncheu District to move south and link up with Chilembwe’s force. The first and third parts of the plan failed almost completely: few planned attacks were carried out, so few arms were obtained, and the Ncheu rising was abortive.

The Murder of William Jervis Livingstone

On Saturday 23 January, Chilembwe claimed to have received information that the Europeans would begin killing all Africans on 25 January. Where he heard this paranoid rumour cannot be substantiated. What is known is that he gathered his followers in Mbomwe church, the first he had built after his return from the United States, to give them final instructions for the rising. He did not accompany his men on their attacks, but divided them into several groups with different tasks. Two groups were sent north to attack the A L Bruce Estates with orders to kill all European men and bring back the head of William Jervis Livingstone, but not to harm any women. Most of the remaining men were to head south towards Blantyre, the commercial centre of the protectorate.

One of the two groups sent north led by Wilson Zimba was to attack the headquarters of the Magomero estate, which also stored rifles for part of the Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve. The other group under Jonathon Chigwinya was to attack the Mwanje plantation, a part of the Magomero estate some distance from the headquarters. There would normally have been three European men at the headquarters, William Jervis Livingstone, his assistant Duncan MacCormick (also from the Isle of Lismore) and J T Roach, the Australian estate engineer. But this night Roach was absent. There were also four European women and five children there. Zimba’s men surrounded Livingstone’s house and waited until the family retired for the night at around 9 pm, when several of them broke in, attacked Livingstone with spears and severely wounded him while he attempted to defend himself, using his rifle as a club. He was apparently still alive when he was decapitated with an axe in front of his wife and two small children in their family bedroom. Duncan MacCormick lived alone in a small cottage a few hundred yards from Livingstone's main estate house. His cottage was not surrounded before the attack on Livingstone, but when MacCormick became aware of the commotion, he ran to investigate without arming himself with his rifle and was speared to death. Roach’s house was attacked after the deaths of Livingstone and MacCormick. When he was found to be absent, two rifles and ammunition he kept there were taken. The whole attack on the headquarters was over by 9.30 pm.

Meanwhile, the Mwanje plantation had been attacked around 8 pm. One of the two European men and his servant were speared to death, but the other European fought off his attackers with rifle fire. Two other Africans were killed by the groups sent south, and a European-run mission was set on fire and a missionary was severely wounded. On Sunday 24 January, Chilembwe conducted a service Mbomwe church next to a pole impaling Livingstone's head, but by 26 January he realised that his uprising had failed. After avoiding early attempts to capture him and apparently trying to escape into Mozambique, he was tracked down and killed on 3 February.

William Livingstone's widow, Kitty Livingstone, suffered great traumatic distress after the uprising having witnessed her husband's attack and beheading at close quarters as she was at the time just retiring to bed. Her trauma was made worse by then having to defend her dead husband's name during the British Colonial Commission of Enquiry in 1916. Kitty's little daughter, Nyasa, was also traumatised, having also been witness to the brutal decapitation of her father in the family bedroom at Magomero on the night of 23rd January 1915. As a mere infant, with her mother, baby brother and houseguests that had been staying at Magomero that night, she also had to endure abduction by forced march for three nights and days into the African bush - as captives of Chilembwe's rebels. Kitty, her children Nyasa and Alastair (only 6 months old), her house guests and their children, were eventually rescued by the Kings African Rifles three days after their abduction; thankfully they were found unharmed.

Reputation

Despite having the name Livingstone and a claim to a notable ancestry, William Jervis Livingstone had no money of his own and was an employee with an uncertain status among landowning planters. He was the salaried employer of the A L Bruce Estates. After his murder, the British colonial administration found it convenient to blame him and Scottish Missions in general for the Chilembwe revolt. In choosing a deceased man, they conveniently had a "dead man who told not tales" inasmuch he was never able to defend himself. His main failing was trying at all odds to deliver financial success for Magomero. But A L Bruce Estates Ltd as an operation was undercapitalised, struggling as they did to plant coffee, rubber and cotton for commercial success. William Livingstone's employers demanded constant results of him and, although Livingstone may have acted reasonably in the early years of being manager at Magomero, once the estate turned to cotton planting, heavy demands were in turn placed on the workers, and this was delivered at times with Livingstone's hot tempered characteristics. Livingstone was caught between the demands of his employers and maintaining the proper welfare of their African workers . Whilst he may have supervised fairly and reasonably, he was known to have a short fuse: his employers demands every fueling his anxiety to produce commercial successes. Although most attention had been given to Livingstone, Alexander Livingstone Bruce, who was a director and major shareholder of A L Bruce Estates Ltd had charge of the company’s operations in Nyasaland. Bruce used Livingstone and other European employees to enforce his policies, and tacitly approved of their methods.

At the official enquiry into Chilembwe’s uprising held in June 1915, the planters blamed missionary activities, while European missionaries emphasised the dangers of the teaching and preaching of African-led churches like Chilembwe's. African members of European-led churches complained about the treatment of workers on estates. The official Commission of Enquiry needed to find causes for the rising and it blamed Chilembwe for his mixture of political and religious teaching, but also the unsatisfactory conditions on the Bruce Estates and the harsh regime of William Jervis Livingstone. In this enquiry, the Resident at Chiradzulu told the Commission appointed to consider the revolt that the conditions imposed on the A L Bruce Estates were oppressive, including paying workers poorly or in kind (not in cash), demanding excessive labour from tenants or not recording the work they did, and whipping both workers and tenants.

Kitty Livingstone, William's widow, was called to give evidence at the Commission of Enquiry. She was incensed at the accusations against her husband and the Scottish Missions and defended William passionately, stating that he was charitable to the hungry and sick. "Her defence is quite plausible: Livingstone was quick-tempered ....and kind at different times. Her defence was that Livingstone was good master, not a bad one as the commission claimed. The concept of the master-servant relationship was at the heart of colonial society, but this concept was precisely what Chilembwe was fighting with his schools and self-help schemes, and ultimately why Livingstone was killed".

See also

Clan MacLea

A L Bruce Estates

Thangata

John Chilembwe

Sources

• L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32182-4
• Geni, William Jervis Livingstone. http://www.geni.com/people/Baron-William-Jervis-Livingstone/6000000000987913269
• N Livingstone of Bachuil, (2004) The MacLeas or Livingstone and their allodial Barony of the Bachuil http://www.baronage.co.uk/2006a/Bachuil.pdf
• Clan Livingstone website http://www.clanlivingstone.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1151&hilit=Nyasaland&start=70
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~swilson/livingstone/descendants.htm
• http://www.nls.uk/catalogues/online/cnmi/inventories/acc11777.pdf
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• R Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, African Historical Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2.
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• R. I. Rotberg, (1970). Psychological Stress and the Question of Identity: Chilembwe's Revolt Reconsidered, in R I. Rotberg and A. A. Mazrui, eds., Protest and Power in Black Africa, New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-019-500093-1.
• R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The Making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964, Cambridge (Mass), Harvard University Press.
• G MacCormick, (2004). Duncan MacCormick, 1888 - 1915 Planter at the Magomero Estate, The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 57, No. 2.