Sans Humanité: The Story of Fireworks Man

Sometimes, my memories of him are so vivid, so well-formed, that I forget that I have never actually met him, that our only encounters with one another are in stories, or in dreams. He is my maternal grandfather, Patrick Alexander Ignatius Jones. He died to this life when my mother was seventeen, but he never really left us. Some people never do.

Patrick Alexander Ignatius Jones had talents as both an inventor of music and art and an inventor of technological devices. He was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in 1885, to a Chinese father and a French and African mother who hailed from the French island of Martinique but may have had roots in Haiti, as he liked to sing Haitian revolutionary songs. His father, part of the Hakka people, fled the Taiping Rebellion and opened a grocery store. His last name changed from Chen to Jones when he was baptized Roman Catholic and the priest requested he select a “Christian” name.

Patrick was part of his father’s “creole” family, the result of intermarriage with the local people and the introduction of African blood to their line. His father also had a Chinese family with a Chinese wife, and these lighter-skinned, straighter-haired relatives would later refuse to acknowledge Patrick’s brown children. For Patrick married a dark-skinned woman of majority African descent, my beautiful grandmother, and threw his allegiance in with the majority Black populace. This familial color divide was mirrored in broader Trinidadian society. Though it had been invaded by a succession of European powers, Trinidad ended up as part of the British Empire, on which it was once said the sun never set. The British imposed their strict class system, imbued with a color line. Whites, of course, were on top and on the bottom were the people with the darkest skin, the descendants of the African slaves whose labor had made Britain rich.

Though the civil service, education system and model of government were British, Trinidad was far more culturally Spanish and French. Mediterranean traditions were overlaid with African customs as well as those from China, India and the other places where Trinidad obtained its labor. My grandfather’s mother tongue was French, as taught by his mother. He was never entirely comfortable in English, though it was the language of his education in Trinidad. He won a scholarship to St Mary’s College, the premier boys’ school on the island, a Catholic-run institution that at the time admitted few people of color and none of the darkest people in the country.

Dissatisfied with British racism, when Patrick sought further education, he did not do what most middle-class Trinidadians did. He did not go to England, but rather to Germany, where he studied in the German language. This choice always seemed odd to our family, but a DNA Ancestry test taken by my mother may shed some light upon it. A small portion of her ancestry is German. Perhaps my great-grandmother, known to be part-French, was also part-German, and perhaps she spoke German to Patrick. Germany and France are neighbors, after all.

In Germany, Patrick studied Industrial Chemistry at Heidelberg University, ultimately earning a phD. He then returned to Trinidad, and he applied for jobs, in the civil service and in industry. However, no one would hire him. He was directly told several times that the jobs for which he was applying were reserved for white men. If he were a doctor or a lawyer, he could set up shop, hang his own shingle, and provide service to his own people, but an industrial chemist could not do that.

Patrick, then, began making his living as a pyrotechnist, making fireworks for sale. Fireworks were used in Trinidad for celebrations such as weddings and various holidays. He mixed the chemicals in a shed in the garden of his home. His children were allowed to help him but were forbidden from entering the shed unsupervised. My mother disobeyed this order once and ended up causing an explosion that permanently singed off most of her eyebrows and eyelashes.

Patrick Jones was not simply a scientist, however. He was also a man of considerable artistic talent, and he threw himself into Trinidad’s premier cultural celebration, the annual Carnival, or Mardi Gras. Carnival in the first half of the twentieth century was not what it is today – an international tourist attraction, a great spectacle that defines the nation’s identity. Carnival in my grandfather’s time was considered a lower-class pursuit, vulgar and loud, associated with the poor Black masses. Carnival, initially a Roman Catholic celebration of excess prior to the fasting and penance of Lent, practiced by the Spanish and French, took on many aspects of parades and rituals in West African traditions. During slavery and its aftermath, Carnival was an opportunity for the Black poor to caricature and mock the white rich and powerful anonymously, behind cover of a costume. My grandmother had middle class aspirations, and so she shunned Carnival. But my grandfather embraced it.

Patrick Jones’ major contribution to Carnival was the Dragon Band or Dragon Mas, developed by him at the turn of the twentieth century and still a part of the celebrations today. It is what it sounds like: a large group of revelers dressed as dragons and dragon-like beasts, dancing through the streets, known as “playing mas” in Trinidad. These dragons were likely partially influenced by the Chinese tradition of having individuals dressed as dragons dance at festive occasions. However, he added his own touches. He used cow horns and rope tails to give flapping wings to his dragons. It is said that when Patrick was asked what had inspired the Dragon Mas, he credited a picture of Inferno, or Hell, in St John’s Church in Trinidad, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Ties are also drawn between Dragon Mas and “dirty devil mas,” which was celebrated by people of African descent in the Trinidadian countryside.

Patrick Jones created a band called “Demonites,” headed by Beelzebub, or the Lord of the Flies, the head demon. This figure was kept in an iron cage secured with nine chains and borne aloft on poles. The following year, a Satan figure was added who danced along with a book and pen, recording peoples’ sins. And ruling over all was the dragon’s head, built in secret and revealed only on J’Ouvert Morning, the first day of Carnival, to amaze spectators. Ever innovative and resourceful, my grandfather used his limited means to create an array of hellish beasts from items like papier mache, bamboo, and various recycled items.

I do not think it was an accident that my grandfather chose the theme of recording sins for his Carnival band. Included in those sins would be the sin of colonialism. Patrick Jones was an ardent anti-colonialist, no doubt a result of his treatment by colonial authorities as well as his observations of the world around him. The British West Indies, as they were then known, were once a jewel in the British crown. A ready source of sugar cane, they were the middle point of the trade triangle, providing raw material to be refined into commodities to grace Europe’s tea tables. But when slavery became less economical and was abolished, the islands fell into ruin, mostly ignored by Britain, but not allowed to govern themselves or run their own affairs.

Patrick Jones was also a calypsonian – a singer of calypsos; songs that were used to make social and political commentary and which, like Carnival, was looked upon as a lower-class Black pursuit at the time. In their parodying or appropriation of the aristocracy, singers often took on names that involved titles and honorifics, and Patrick Jones’ official performing name was Cromwell the Lord Protector, after Oliver Cromwell, who waged war on the British monarchy. However, he was often referred to as “Chinee Patrick,” or “Chinese Patrick,” in a nod to his partial Chinese heritage. In my grandfathers’ time, calypsonians often engaged in “extempo” battles, much like freestyling today with rap artists, and one popular style was the “sans humanité” style, where a series of rhyming couplets ended with the words “sans humanité,” or “without humanity.”

My grandfather, however, as a French speaker, wrote a calypso entitled “Sans humanité,” with lyrics that read in part:

Class legislation is the order of the land

We have been ruled with an iron hand

Britain boasts of democracy

Brotherly love and fraternity

But British colonies have been ruled in perpetual misery

Sans humanité

This song got him charged with an offence under the British Anti-Sedition laws, designed to limit agitation for independence. My grandmother recalled that he was hiding in different houses while the police came banging on her door. Eventually the authorities gave up, but Patrick Jones did not. When World War II arrived, he was, of course, opposed to Trinidad’s involvement. Perhaps influenced by his time in Germany, and an ardent anti-colonialist, and ignorant of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, my grandfather sat in his front yard watching young men who had enlisted march up and down the street for King and country. He was famous for yelling at them, “You have no king! You have no country!” Sadly, two cousins on his wife, my grandmother’s, side of the family were among those marching and they perished in the war.

My grandfather was a devout Catholic all his life, but he became very upset when he learned that Pope Pius had blessed the bombs to be dropped on Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. The thought of a European pope sanctioning the suffering of African people spurred Patrick Jones on to write calypsos and deliver speeches castigating the pope. As a result, Patrick was excommunicated for a time, which broke his heart, as someone who attended Mass daily.

Despite his early opposition to the war, as more became known about Germany’s actions, my grandfather became a reluctant convert to the British cause. As the best firework maker on the island, he was eventually pressed into service to provide the British Navy with flares to guide supply ships through blockades of German U-boats to keep Trinidad fed. For his wartime service, he received a pair of gold cufflinks and a gold watch that are today in the possession of myself and my brother.

Patrick Jones also invented a device that could be used to find and defuse land mines, and he sent plans to the British War Office. He received a return letter informing him that unfortunately a British man invented the same thing in the same week – thanks but no thanks. His stolen invention is still in use today, and our family’s efforts to get information about it from the British War Office are rebuffed since the matter is still classified, or so we are told.

In his later years, faced with growing unrest by Trinidadians demanding greater involvement in their own affairs, the British began allowing more local rule, beginning with the city council of Port-of-Spain, the island’s capital where Patrick Jones lived. He was elected, and one of his major contributions was lobbying for August 1, 1833, the day that slavery ended in British-controlled territories, to become a national holiday. He also used his own funds to donate a silver cup to the Carnival committee to be awarded to the singer of the best calypso.

My grandfather developed Parkinson’s disease, and at the end of his life, had a terrible tremor that prevented him from participating in many of the activities he had previously enjoyed. He died in 1964. By then, many of his children were overseas and could not return home for the funeral. I never had the opportunity to know him, but I know all the stories about him. He inspires me to persevere, to be true to my roots, to remember my history, to know that there is a cost to speaking out, but to do it anyway.

I always visit his grave in Port-of-Spain's Lapeyrouse Cemetery when I am in Trinidad. When I am there on November 2, All Souls' Day, or the Day of the Dead, the whole family brings candles and flowers. In my head, I have always known him as “fireworks man,” but the brilliant yet fleeting bursts of light and sound are not the most apt metaphor for a man who left such a large legacy, both of scientific creation and artistic expression. I hope that he can see what I am doing and that perhaps he is proud. Patrick Alexander Ignatius Jones, Cromwell the Lord Protector, Chinee Patrick, Requiescat In Pace.