Note 233 — Chapter VII · Lynch-law and its Justification

Fanny Kemble, writing in 1838–39, attributed the “personal offensiveness” of negroes to dirt and habits of uncleanliness, asserting that the negroes had no respect for their personal appearance, and that this lack of respect was due to slavery. In her journal, these words are found: “The stench in an Irish, Scotch, Italian, or French hovel are quite as intolerable as any I ever found in any of our negro houses.” In another connection, however, when describing a certain negro named Isaac, she refers particularly to his strong physical resemblance to a monkey, and says that she is much comforted by the fact that this individual “speaks.” See “Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation” (1863), pp. 23–24, 219.

In describing “The Negro in General,” Ratzel writes: “The specific, but hardly definable negro smell is certainly possessed by all, in varying degrees. Falkenstein refers it to the somewhat more oily composition of the sweat, which with uncleanly habits easily develops rancid acids.”—“History of Mankind” (Trans. from 2d German ed. by A. J. Butler, 1897), II, 315; see also II, 266, 301.

A practising physician in the city of New Haven, Conn., has assured the writer that the peculiar odor is again apparent very soon after a negro patient has been given a bath and a change of clothing.