THE EVIL EYE IN THE WEST INDIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 104, 29 October 1938, Page 26

THE EVIL EYE IN THE WEST INDIES

Miss Peggy Cox, who has lived for the past eleven years on her uncle's sugar estate in Barbados, told the West India Royal Commission in London recently about the "evil eye" and "black magic" as practised in the West Indies, says the "Manchester Guardian."

"I do not think," she said, "any servants of mine questioned directly would admi* that they believed in it, because it is a thing no one will confess. It is a thing they are ashamed of, but it is extremely prevalent. One of my own household servants died suddenly after a short and inexplicable illness. Her children believed that another woman who hated her had put the evil eye on her and caused her death." Natives, she said, paid money to the witch doctor as an insurance

against harm coming, to them from people who possessed the evil eye.

Dame Rachel Crowdy (a member of the Commission): Does this affect their health?— Undoubtedly it does, because if a man seriously believes that the evil eye is put on him he gets worse in health.

Miss Cox suggested to the Commission—who are going out to investigate the social and economic conditions in some of the West India islands—that the Government should at once guarantee the interest of a loan for the development of land settlement and agriculture in the West Indies. She also urged the establishment of a Caribbean marketing board and a training college for instructors in agriculture.