Chinese "Coolie" Contract Laborer Hospital Death Certificate in Colonial Cuba, 1869

Chinese Indentured Servant Migrant Healthcare

Manuscript & Autographs

Chinese migrant hospital certificate from Havana in 1869, documenting the admission and death of a man identified in manuscript as a native of China within the Real Hospital de Caridad de San Felipe y Santiago. Issued while Chinese contract labor supplied Cuba with a large migrant workforce under a system regulating employment, movement, subsistence, discipline, and medical treatment, the certificate records one individual at the point where that labor regime intersected with colonial hospital administration. Chinese labor contracts of the period commonly stipulated medical attendance and hospital care during illness, while later testimony documented high rates of sickness and death among Chinese workers subjected to excessive labor, inadequate food, punishment, and compulsory recontracting.

Real Hospital de Caridad de San Felipe y Santiago, Comisaría. Havana, 1869. One partially printed document completed in manuscript in brown ink, one leaf. 5.75" x 7.25". The deceased is identified in the manuscript as “natural de China,” followed by entries within printed fields for province, civil status, age, and parentage. The printed form begins “Ha fallecido en la...” and subsequently records the date on which the individual “ingreso enfermo en este Real Hospital.” Its concluding administrative language directs that “cuyo cadaver se remite al Cementerio general para que se le de sepultura,” followed by the request that the appropriate orders be given “para que asi se verifique.” The certificate closes “Dios guarde á V. muchos años,” with a manuscript Havana date in 1869 and an administrative signature. Extensive brown manuscript entries occupy the principal fields, with signatures and notations extending beyond the printed guide lines and offsetting substantially onto the verso.

Chinese contract migration to Cuba began in 1847 and brought more than 100,000 migrants to the island before the overseas contract trade ended in the 1870s. The overwhelming majority were men recruited from southern China and bound to fixed terms of labor under contracts governing wages, subsistence, discipline, illness, and medical treatment. By 1869 these migrants worked within an economy in which African slavery and Chinese indenture operated concurrently, particularly in sugar production but also in transportation, construction, manufacturing, domestic service, and urban employment. Hospital records add a different administrative dimension to the labor contracts through which this population is more commonly documented. Surviving records of the Real Hospital de Caridad de San Felipe y Santiago classify patients by names, ages, origins, racial or legal categories, illnesses, and deaths, and institutional holdings preserve certificates specifically concerning Chinese colonos. Moderate toning and staining, small marginal punctures and tears, old folds, and extensive brown ink offsetting and show through; manuscript and printed text remain substantially legible. Overall good condition. An individualized record of the medical and mortuary bureaucracy through which an Asian migrant was classified, hospitalized, and buried in Havana in 1869.

Item #23809

Price: $1,250.00