The Seduction of Workers: Our American Ancestors

We idealize the early immigration experience. In fact, many workers were “seduced.” That is an actual legal term that approximately means “fraudulently induced.”

Sex was an allure for some, especially young maidens. Consider this excerpt from John Wareing’s research article, “Violently taken away or cheatingly duckoyed”:

“Meriton Latroon … was faced with a servant girl whom he had ‘cruelly trapanned' to Virginia, and who had returned to London. She reminded and accused him of ‘the flatteries you used to delude a poor credulous maiden whom you not only shamed but ruined. You cannot forget your matchless treachery in seducing me aboard a Virginia ship in whom I was carried thither and sold, you hoping by that villainy to have been for ever rid of me and mine.’”

Today, we call this sex trafficking (with similar false inducements transformed into sexual labor).

Sometimes, husbands sold their wives into servitude.

“A broadsheet of 1675 describes how an unfaithful husband had tried to sell his wife to ‘some forraign plantation’ so that he could be alone in London with his mistress, but the captain took pity on her and turned the tables on the husband who was himself sent ‘very fairly bound’ to ‘Chuck a Tuck in James River in Virginy’.

Sometimes husbands abandoned their wives:

“The ballad of a weaver who had an unfaithful and complaining wife…. told her that he was going to Virginia, but her joy at his departure and the prospect of making merry with her lover in his absence was short-lived when she found that upon boarding the ship to see him off, she herself was to be taken because the wronged husband had sold her to the captain for £10.”

Sorry for the sudden twist there!

However, mostly “seduction” referred to mundane matters, such as recruiting workers—from laborers through skilled tradesmen—to seek riches in America. 

England was so concerned about the loss of labor to America that King George III (the guy we rebelled against) enacted 13 Geo. III XXI. A.D. 1773.  The law applied anytime a person would “entice, persuade, or endeavor to persuade, solicit, or seduce any Manufacturer, Workman, or Artificer of or in the Wool, Mohair, Cotton, or Silk” or related manufacturing industries, or in “Iron, Steel, Brass or any other Metal, or Clock-maker, watch-maker, or other Manufacturer, Workman, or Artificer of or in any other manufactures of Great Britain or Ireland.”

In other words, the law applied criminal penalties to HR recruiters (i.e., “Talent Search Professionals”) who exported labor to America.