Comments Caption, “Marks of punishment inflicted upon a colored servant in Richmond, VA”; shows the back of woman with burn marks.

She was locked in a room by herself for over a week, during which time the mistress repeatedly burned her back.

The mistress was arrested, but released on $ 5,000 bail.

The original photograph is located in the Houghton Library at Harvard University (Wendell Phillips Papers, [bMSAm1953(942)].

In a letter from Richmond, dated July 6, 1866, which enclosed this photo, John Oliver wrote Wendell Philllips that although the photograph “is a very poor one . . . from it you will be able to see quite well the barbarism of Slavry [sic] as it now exist[s] in King William Co, Virginia in 1866.