Hi Marion,
The plot thickens.
For the work, made in 1832, to still be treated as an unpublished work here in the UK it needs to have had an anonymous author. If the identity of the author is or was known, then the act of publication in Jamaica is irrelevant since the author would have died more 50 years before the publication. In other words due to the date of creation and the known author having died no later than say, 1900, the work would have been out of copyright everywhere.
The key to this problem lies in knowing whether:
a. the author was anonymous, and
b. if the publication in Jamaica was authorised or not. That is to say did the author's heirs permit the publication? If they didn't, then we would need to rely on the Haitian copyright law which applied in 1832. I have no idea what that law was or if any such law actually existed. Although Haiti was by then an independent country, I suspect if it did have a copyright law it would have been based on French copyright law, which at the time meant that protection only lasted for the lifetime of the author. By 1866 in France this had become the author's lifetime plus 50 years after death, but of course there is no guarantee that the law of Haiti also adopted this term.
Almost certainly I think we can assume that by around 1900 (or 1950 at the very latest) the work was out of copyright. But in case that conclusion is wrong, we need to analyse the interntaional legal situation.
The first international treaty on copyright which Haiti joined was the
Buenos Aires Convention in November 1919. The Buenos Aires Convention required its signatory states to provide as a minimum term of protection of the lifetime plus 50 years after death, and it also imposed the doctrine of the shorter term (ie the same as is stated in section 12(6) of the UK's CDPA) - see Article 6 of the treaty. The Buenos Aires Treaty is entirely silent on what happens in the case of works of unknown authorship, and also on what is to happen with unpublished works. Neither Britain nor Jaimaica joined the Buenos Aires Convention. The Convention was not retroactive and so its terms did not apply to a work made about 87 years earlier than Haitii's accession, unless the work was still in copyright in 1919 under Haiti's domestic law.
Haiti joined the
Universal Copyright Convention in 1955. The UCC does recognise the protection of unpublished works but again is silent on the treatment of anonymous works. The UCC also adopts the doctrine of the shorter term (see paragraph 4 of Article 4). Britain joined the UCC in 1957, but Jamaica has never been a member. Again the provisions of this treaty were not retroactive.
In 1996 Haiti joined the Berne Convention. However as this was after the publication of this particular work in Jamaica, the Berne Convention terms may be irrelvant. Britain joined the Berne Convention in 1887 and Jamaica joined in 1994.
So where does this leave the status of this work in the UK today? I suggest that since any copyright which might have applied in Haiti when the work was first made would probably have ended when its author died, or if they were anonymous, when they were presumed to have died. The end of the copyright would have been probably no later than 1900, and certainly well before 1988. There is nothing to suggest that any law of the time in Haiti protected anonymous works in a different manner to the works of known authors.
Jamaica became independent in August 1962, but because it was not a member of any of the relevant international treaties until 1994, it had no obligation to acknowledge or protect the copyright in works made in other countries of origin, unless there was some bilateral agreement between Jamaica and Haiti covering the subject (I have no idea if this was the case).
On that basis I believe that the publication in Jamaica was lawful, firstly on the presumption that any copyright in the originating state had lapsed, and secondy because Jamaica was under no obligation to protect works of foreign origin. Since the work was already in the public domain at that point, the fact of publication did not cause any new copyright to come into being.
However once Jamaica joined the Berne Convention in 1994 and Haiti joined in 1996, both countries became subject to the provisions of that treaty, which although not technically retroactive, meant that paragraph (3) of Article 7 might be said to have applied. This says:
(3) In the case of anonymous or pseudonymous works, the term of protection granted by this Convention shall expire fifty years after the work has been lawfully made available to the public.
If this does apply, and I am very doubtful whether it does, then the UK is required to recognise the copyright in the work until 1 January 2039, if the work was by an anonymous author.
The last question is, if the work is still in copyright, who is the current day owner of that copyright and are they likely to want to enforce that copyright in the UK, especially if they are domicilled in Haiti?