Trafficked Child

• Child Slavery in the American Colonies

• Alexander Ross, and several other Scottish boys, were brought by Maurice Trent to the Court of Quarter Sessions in Chester County, Pennsylvania, on October 3, 1693, in order to have their ages and terms of indenture determined, since they lacked proper documentation. Maurice Trent, and others of the Trent family, appear to have been actively employed in the selling of child servants shipped from Scotland without indentures. At the time of his court appearance, Alexander was judged to be about 11 years old.- Forgotten Children: Scotland's Colonial Child Servants
  
  Additional Context: While referred to as indenture, this is child trafficking and slavery. Indenture is most commonly understood as something a person entered into voluntarily or something they were sentenced to by a court for remittance of a crime. However, in Alexander's case, he was far too young to have been capable of voluntarily entering into a contract, and having no papers suggests no guardian had agreed to the indenture. While apparently not even considered a crime in the colonial period, this practice absolutely bore all the hallmarks of our modern conception of slavery: lack of consent, treatment as property, being purchased for one's labor, and having freedom of action and movement restricted at the whims of an unrelated adult. This is one of the more disturbing practices that commonly occurred in the colonies, though it is rarely mentioned in historical records.
  
  Other children would later relate to family and friends that the Trent family had kidnapped them from various places in Scotland. The family chose Scotland specifically because of a legal loophole that allowed cargo, which included indentures, to be transported directly to the colonies without going through English ports where they were subject to being inspected and scrutinized. Upon arrival in the colonies, Trent would bring the children in to court, often voluntarily, and rather than being punished or even discouraged from these actions, would be given indenture papers for the children, legalizing the process. Even if a trafficker were to confess to kidnapping, a fine of ~$300 in today's money would be the maximum penalty. I should note this penalty had nothing to do with kidnapping but was essentially a penalty fee for transporting goods without proper documentation. With proper paperwork, the children could then fetch the kidnappers about $3000. This family (the Trents) are documented in court records having done this to hundreds of children, apparently never raising any concerns with court officials.
  
  Several members of the family were poisoned and killed by servants and slaves working together despite the extreme penalties they would face, indicating that even on a personal level, the Trents must have been truly awful people.