Nelson Memorial. A slave in chains. Image courtesy @Tony Grant
Inquiring readers, this rather serious topic of British slave ownership plays a role in Jane Austen’s world and her novels. She addressed the issue in an indirect way in Mansfield Park and Emma, with the Bertram fortune resting on slave trade and Mrs. Elton’s merchant father situated in Bristol, one of three major slave-trading centers in Britain. I am sure that her two sailor brothers related vivid tales of their travels in their letters and when they returned home for a visit. Jane, who was well-read and participated in family conversations, was keenly aware of human trafficking and exploitation. Ironically, a few years after her death, Charles actively patrolled the seas against the slave trade. In this post, Tony Grant addresses the legacies of British slave ownership. The British, godbless’em, abolished slavery decades before the U.S. and in a more civilized and peaceful manner. (Tony Grant, who lives in Wimbledon, is a frequent contributor to Jane Austen’s World. Visit his other blogs at London Calling and The Novels of Virginia Woolf. He traces his ancestry to the slave trade. As for me, I was born a Dutch citizen. The shameful actions of the Dutch in transporting slaves from Africa and their role in the slave trade is well documented.)
Catherine Hall, Image @University of York
(Researched at UCL (University College London) by Catherine Hall Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History and her project team.)
The above title is an umbrella title which has been given to two projects, one called, “Tracing the impact of slave ownership on modern Britain,” and the other, “Legacies of British Slave Ownership.” These will lead to a further project entitled, “Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave ownership 1763 -1833.”
Clapham Church, Holy Trinity. Image @Tony Grant
In 1974, I was in my second year of teacher training. I was doing a three year teacher training course at Gypsy Hill teachers training college situated on Kingston Hill, about a mile from the centre of Kingston upon Thames. The college was eventually amalgamated with Kingston University. The new university education department did not retain it’s rather romantic sounding epithet, Gypsy Hill, unfortunately. My teaching practice during that second year was to spend six weeks teaching English at Henry Thornton’s Secondary School situated on the south side of Clapham Common. It was a tough place to go as a young teacher. Although Clapham is not quite classed as inner city the area was home to lot of disadvantaged families some of them ethnic minorities and many of them West Indian in origin. Henry Thornton would have been pleased about the ethnic mix in the school. My first English lesson, reading and discussing, Cider With Rosy,by Laurie Lee, was to be with a class of fifteen-year-olds. As soon as I walked into the classroom a large powerfully built West Indian lad, swaying back in his chair staring at me, trying to stare me out, nonchalantly raised his right fist and smashed it through the pain of glass in the window next to him overlooking the corridor. I think the blood must have drained rather quickly from my face and I asked another pupil to get the head of year who came rushing to my help immediately. Coming from Southampton, on the south coast, this was my first experience of Clapham.
Interior of Clapham Holy Trinity Church, image @ Tony Grant
However that experience has many connections with Britain’s past history in the slave trade and with what I am going to write about in this essay. Henry Thornton, was born in Clapham on the 10th March 1760. His father had been one of the early founders of the Evangelical movement in Britain. His father and his cousins were bankers. In fact his brother Samuel Thornton became The Governor of the Bank of England. Henry himself was a very successful banker. The bank – Down, Thornton and Free – became the most successful bank in London. Henry Thornton is credited with being the father of the modern central banking system. He was a great theorist and wrote books about banking.
Henry Thornton
Henry became the Member of Parliament for Southwark, which is situated just across London Bridge from The City. However, he was unlike other bankers of the time. Britain’s wealth was closely tied up with the slave trade, but Henry Thornton was an abolitionist. Henry Thornton was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers, who incidentally met and worshiped together at Holy Trinity Church, which nowadays is directly opposite Henry Thornton’s school where I had my momentous teaching experience. He was foremost a campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. His close friend and cousin was William Wilberforce. The two men lived together with their families at Battersea Rise on the opposite side of Clapham Common to the church and where the school that uses his name is situated. Henry was the financier behind the Clapham Sect in their many campaigns.
William Wilbeforce. Image @Tony Grant
Catherine Hall and her project team are endeavouring to understand the extent and the limits of slavery’s role in shaping the history of Britain and its lasting legacy. They are focussing on various aspects such as commerce, culture, history, the Empire, physical attributes, such as the great houses and estates financed by slavery and also political aspects. How was slavery was involved in national and local politics? In Henry Thornton we see many of these aspects even if his actions and beliefs were contrary to the slave trade. He was a member of parliament who campaigned against slavery. He used his wealth to counteract slavery. I wonder if the West Indian lad who broke the window in my lesson realised that his destiny and the generations of his family before him were connected with the man whose name was on the school he was attending?
There is rather a surprising link and revelation about Henry Thornton in the research and data the UCL team has gathered. Kate Donnington, one of the PHD researchers on the team, has written a thesis about George Hibbert, one of the most influential characters and one of the major figures amongst West Indian merchants.
George Hibbett
George Hibbert was a leading member of the pro slavery lobby and so one of the main adversaries of Henry Thornton over the slavery bill. However, Hibbert was a philanthropist and did many good works for charities. In 1824 he helped set up the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Nowadays that has become the RNLI, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which saves the lives of many around our coasts to this day. He was also involved in creating The Royal Institute. The running and creation of the Royal institute for the arts and science also involved, Henry Thornton and his brother John. It seems that individuals could be absolutely opposed to each other over slavery but work together in other aspects of the nation’s life.
This project by UCL is of national and international importance, but it also has a very personal meaning. Another of the researchers in the project team, James Dawkins, is studying the slave owning presence of his own family, the Dawkins, through the data collected. This inspired me to look up my surname, Grant, to see who amongst the Grant clan from North East Scotland around the Spey Valley, was connected with slavery. I didn’t have any hopes for direct ancestors to myself being involved in slavery unless were crew on the slave ships; we were labourers in the fields and workers in the whisky distilleries. We owned no land as such and certainly had no wealth.
Slave Ship. Image @Liverpool Museum
I discovered there were many Grants involved in the slave trade and plantation ownership though. There were various Alexander Grants, not all the same person I am sure. Alexander, must have been a popular name amongst the Grants. In fact my son, Samuel, has Alexander as his second name. There is an Alice Grant, one of my daughters is called Alice, a Betty, and various Anne Grants. It quickly becomes evident that many women, perhaps through inheritances, were investors in and owners of slaves. The list of Grants goes on.There are one hundred and eighty five Grants listed. I have an uncle, John Grant. There are many John Grants in the list and my father is Robert and yes there are many Roberts in the list. My own family’s Christian names are amongst the most prevalent Christian names associated with Grants in the survey. But my surname Grant is one Scottish surname amongst hundreds. If my families name is mirrored in the survey by all the other Scottish clan names there must be an inordinate number of Scottish families connected with the slave trade.
“The abolition of the slave trade Or the inhumanity of dealers in human flesh exemplified in Captn. Kimber’s treatment of a young Negro girl of 15 for her virjen (sic) modesty.”
Shows an incident of an enslaved African girl whipped to death for refusing to dance naked on the deck of the slave ship Recovery, a slaver owned by Bristol merchants. Captain John Kimber was denounced before the House of Commons by William Wilberforce over the incident. In response to outrage by abolitionists, Captain Kimber was brought up on charges before the High Court of Admiralty in June 1792, but acquitted of all charges. Image @Wikimedia
I took one Grant to look at more specifically. Alexander Grant , the survey does not show when he was born but he was born at Abelour, Banffshire. He died on the 7th may 1854 He was a slave owner, planter and merchant on the island of Jamaica. He had Abelour House built for him in 1838. The house still exists today. His will left £300,000. His estates in Jamaica and Scotland were inherited by his niece, Margaret Gordon McPherson Grant.
Slaves in transit, Liverpool
An interesting character I discovered on the UCL website was Ann Katherine Storer (née Hill, 1785-1854) She was born in Jamaica, where she married Anthony Gilbert Storer. She inherited her husband’s estates after his death, which not only included his Jamaican estates but also Purley Park in Berkshire, England. Anthony Gilbert Storer died in June 1818 and Ann Katherine returned to Purley Park with her five surviving children. There were problems with large debts and disputes over recompense. A rather strange and disturbing story is related about Ann Katherine Storer. When she returned to England she brought some slaves with her to work at Purley House.
Slave ship
“In 1824, Ann Katherine Storer was accused of the maltreatment of Philip Thompson, a black servant who was bought as a slave in Jamaica and brought to England by the Storers. According to Philip Thompson’s testimony, “flogging was the usual punishment for any misdemeanour and he was often ill treated… One day in July 1824 Mrs Storer was already up when Philip rose at 6 am. Finding that he had not been up in time to clean the lobby she ordered him to be taken to the “whipping place”. After removing his coat, waistcoat and shirt, he then received about a dozen lashes from a hunting whip wielded by the butler so that the blood ran down his back… Mrs Storer was said to have been present and said [to Robert Stewart, the butler], “Well done, Robert, give him more”…
African slaves in Liverpool
There is an element of sadism in this. She almost seems to take pleasure in the ill treatment of Philip. Ann was born and brought up on a slave plantation and was obviously used to dealing with slaves. This story made me wonder if this was a usual sort of treatment that was commonplace.
I mentioned above that the project team are focusing on aspects such as commerce, culture, history, the Empire, physical attributes such as the great houses and estates financed by slavery and also political aspects. Money from slavery was used to build Abelour House in Scotland as one example and the estate still exist today. George Hibbet was a philanthropist as well as a slave owner and he did many charitable works including setting up the forerunner to the RNLI as well as the London Institution, which was for the diffusion of useful knowledge in the arts and sciences. He acted as both its president and vice president between 1805 and 1830. He was a member of a number of learned societies and clubs including the Freemasons, the Linnean society and the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Hibbet collected books, prints and art. He also inherited a house with its estate called Munden in Hertfordshire. I am taking George Hibbet as an example, but the point is that this sort of philanthropy and range of interests in the arts, literature, science, charities and so on is replicated throughout the four thousand individuals of wealth and property identified by this research.
Slavery and it’s proceeds were and are bound up with the whole of society, good and bad, and we must still be benefiting from it today. Eric Williams, the historian who wrote, “Capitalism and Slavery,” believes that the slave trade and slavery, “provided not only essential demand for manufactures and supply of raw materials but also vital capital for the early phases of industrialisation. This has been partially substantiated through the histories of particular family firms.”
Shackles
In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in Britain and it’s Empire. In 1833 slavery was abolished by the British Parliament in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and The Cape. These people in the survey have been identified as the recipients of compensation for the loss of wealth when slavery came to an end. However it is important to note that what replaced it was not much better. The great sugar, tea. cotton and coffee plantations were still there. The slaves got their freedom but were then signed up to what was called an apprentice scheme. This meant that they signed up for work on the estate for a minimum number of years. Life did not materially or actually change for them. In many ways, it is interesting to think about what slavery is and means. Slavery is obviously the worst sort of work contract but we all have to work. We all have no choice once we have signed a contract. The conditions of work are very favourable on the whole for us but there are legal and social requirements we have to fulfill. The jobs we have can in no way be compared to the plight of a slave but there are degrees. Is working for someone else and being contracted to work a type of benign slavery?
The research Catherine Hall and her team are doing is fantastic but it has had its critics. There have been concerns both in the United Kingdom and in the Caribbean that the project team is white. One argument in defence is that white people as well as black people were all part of the slave trade. By putting the emphasis in the study on individual slave owners there is a fear that the case for reparations to be made by the state could be weakened. There is also a concern for banks and legal firms founded in the 17th century or before who have continued to this day and who have inherited the benefits derived from slavery in the past. The UCL group has said they are prepared to share their empirical data with these firms but also the contextualisation of that evidence.
Triangular slave trade. Liverpool
Professor Hall and her colleagues suggest that there are some key questions and problems that remain to be addressed:
- “What proportion of Britain’s nineteenth-century wealth was linked to slavery?
- How significant was this injection of capital into the burgeoning industrial economy of the 1830s?
- Was investment in other parts of the empire seen as desirable?
- How did this capital contribute to consumer spending – on houses, gardens, books or paintings?
- Did philanthropic institutions significantly benefit?
- We have also been exploring the political activities of the slave owners – to follow them in parliament, to see what positions they took on domestic and imperial matters, how active they were in local politics or what contributions they made to cultural institutions.
- We have also investigated the ways in which their writings represented the slave trade and slavery.”
The UCL website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Jane Austen's World 
In Emma, didn’t Mrs. Elton say her brother in law, Mr. Suckling was “rather a friend of the abolutionists”
One does wonder what goes on in Jane Austen’s mind when she wrote this passage, since the name “Suckling” can in no way be taken seriously and since Mrs. Elton seems a bit too quickly defensive and apologetic for a daughter of a Bristol Merchant when speaking to a mere governess-to-be. Here is the passage from Emma:
“One does wonder what goes on in Jane Austen’s mind when she wrote this passage, since the name “Suckling” can in no way be taken seriously and since Mrs. Elton seems a bit too quickly defensive and apologetic for a daughter of a Bristol Merchant when speaking to a mere governess-to-be.”
I wondered exactly that. Anything coming from Mrs. Elton’s mouth cannot be taken seriously. Was it a genteel affectation to be pro-abolution? Mrs. Elton was all about genteel affectations.
Jane Austen was being ironic; I believe Mrs. Elton was aping the correct language, but one has to wonder if she believed what she said.
Hi Tony: as I mentioned to Vic I have an unpublished paper from a historian friend of mine about the beginnings of Sierra Leone as a homeland for freed slaves. Wiliiam Wilberforce and Henry Thornton were dismayed when the colony found it necessary to introduce indentured labour (what you are calling apprenticeship) as a stepping-stone to complete freedom, but it was the only way to introduce the freed slaves into the wage economy.
I have that history portrayed fictionally in scene in a free novella on my website at http://christopherhoare.ca/giselmatah_and_slaveship.htm My character found she could hardly give freed slaves away.
If Sir Thomas Bertram had plantations in the Carribean, he almost certainly owned slaves. Sir Thomas is a virtuous man, if somewhat shortsighted when it comes to his daughters. As much as it pains me to say it, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense that Jane Austen considered abolution a genteel affectation.
Vic and Deirdre,
I’ve never believe in Mrs. Elton words.
Exactly, Raquel. If Mrs. Elton was pro-abolution, Jane Austen likely was not.
Thanks for this; here is the entry in their database of beneficiaries of the 1833 compensation for my Lascelles ancestor:
Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood AWARDEE:
Barbados 211 (Belle) £6486 1S 6D [292 Enslaved]
Barbados 2769 (Fortescues) £3291 11S 4D [176 Enslaved]
Barbados 2770 (Thicket) £5810 5S 6D [277 Enslaved]
Barbados 3817 (Mount St George) £3835 6S 5D [188 Enslaved]
Jamaica St Dorothy 23 (Nightingale Grove Estate) £2599 0S 4D [112 Enslaved]
Jamaica St Thomas-in-the-Vale 147 (Williamsfield Estate) £4286 19S 3D [232 Enslaved]
A slave was worth £20.
Fast forward to September 5,1863 and Britain besides having forbidden slavery was very much interested in forwarding the interests of the South in the American Civil War and was about to sell ironclad vessels to be outfitted for war made by the Laird Shipbuilding Company to the South. A very huffy warning from the United States Foreign Minister to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams stopped Britain from defying the Neutrality Act of 1819. Britain was very much interested in the South and its slave labor to maintain a source of cheap cotton. So even with all the idealism of the early 1800’s the practical side of taking advantage of slavery did not disappear.
I tried to add the Barrett family to their website but they are not included in their encyclopedia and thus the comment was rejected. This is the rejected comment:
It will be important to include the Barrett family and their Hope End estate in Malvern as well as their Cinnamon Hill plantation in Jamaica. This is the family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A well-researched book is Jeanette Marks, The Family of the Barrett (1938). I have further material in this library in Florence’s English Cemetery, which has many Abolitionists, Frances Trollope as well as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. .
Julia, Catherine Hall and her colleagues based their research on the 4000 British slave owners and plantation owners who claimed compensation from the government when slavery was abolished. Slave owners who sold off their estates or who stopped being slave owners previously are not included. There is a lot less documentation for those people.If the Brownings had applied for compensation when slavery ended then they would have been included.
Tony
Interesting that you mentioned the Storers. Before AG Storer’s death he borrowed £10,000 from my gggggfr Louis Bazalgette, with his Jamaican estates and some property in England mortgaged as security. Ann Storer held out until the bitter end in resisting repayment of this loan, and after her death the estates were finally able to be sold. The amount of the loan that was repaid is not known but my family received compensation, not because they were slave-owners per se, but because they had a claim on the Storer estates.
How fascinating. My family lived in Clapham in the 18th century and were friends of the Thorntons. I have the manuscript diary of Elizabeth Susanna Davenport (later Graham) my 4th great grandmother written between 1780-83 and describing her everday life including multiple visits to ‘take tea with the Thorntons’.
As a lark, I looked up some Austen family names. I found Brydges, Leighs, Coopers, Walkers, Hancocks, and Perrots listed. We might argue about Austen’s personal feelings about slavery all day, but it’s probable that she, like those of us today who don’t fret about child labor every time we buy a cell phone, considered the institution and its repercussions in the abstract.
For those who are interested, I would recommend you read the book Sugar in the Blood, by Andrea Stuart, Jamaica-born, English-educated, excellent writer. Her early ancestor, one George Ashby, left England for Barbados in the 1630s; he rapidly became successful as a sugar plantation owner, and his descendants thrived, growing and processing this crop of “white gold” which was as important in that era as oil is in ours. Processing cane sugar was even more labor intensive than growing and harvesting tobacco, with the inevitable, at that time, result that all the plantations used more and more slaves. It is impossible to overvalue the effect of cane sugar on the world’s economy. Stuart says that sugar financed the Industrial Revolution and fueled the Enlightenment. She found herself in the amazing position of some of her ancestors being slaves and others being (their) owners. The father/owner was in the late 18th- early 19th Century. Her specific ancestor was successful as a carpenter after he gained his freedom. I have heard her speak on her research and the book; it is a fascinating story.
Great post and very timely for me. The book I’m working on now takes place in the West Indies. I tweeted.
Very interesting topic and very timely. I have a book edited by Catherine Hall in my “to-be-read to choose a paper topic” (for a class titled Empire) pile. I didn’t choose slave trade but I might have had you posted this sooner. The topic of involvement in the slave trade is on the minds of many of the intellectuals in my home state. Americans may want to check out Brown University’s Committee on Slavery and Justice website.
http://brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/
There’s lots of great information on America elites and the slave trade in the 18th century.
Alexa adams said something very intersting,, ” it’s probable that she, like those of us today who don’t fret about child labor every time we buy a cell phone, considered the institution and its repercussions in the abstract..”
It gott me thinking and delving.
It occurred to me reading through the UCL website that those who wanted to continue slavery, such as George Hibbet, were good men. He believed in good causes and was what we would term a philanthropist. The pro abolitionists were good people too and many were also philanthropists. So what was the ideological difference between the two groups?
Generally people did not experience the slave trade in this country. Slaves were bought in Africa and sold in the Caribbean. Very few made it to these shores. They might become servants in grand houses and often as in the case of Cesar Picton from Senegal, who lived in Kingston upon Thames, be given their freedom once arrived on these shores and he became a wealthy businessman.
The belief in this country, of the majority for centuries, was that Africans were not on the same level as them. They were a lesser species and so it was alright to treat them as slaves. Also slaves were mostly out of sight and the true nature of slavery was merely a concept, something that happened far away, out of mind and could be reasoned for.
It is interesting to note how none of Jane Austens characters are black either as servants in the big houses and on the country estates or as people who might be part of a community. She would have seen a few in the towns and cities she frequented, Bath, Southampton, Kingston upon Thames and Bristol and most definitely in the streets of London. She obviously never ever associated with them and if they did come within her vicinity she must have been blind to them. They did not exist as characters or human beings. The Church of England probably encouraged this belief and attitude. So where did a sense of injustice towards slavery come from and also a sense that they were equal as human beings?
The pro-abolitionists really took off in May 1787 with the formation of The Society for the Abolition of The Slave Trade fuelled by a strong religious belief promoted by the Quakers. As early as 1657 the leader of the Quakers, George Fox wrote,
“’… now I say, if this should be the condition of you and yours, you would think it hard measure, yea, and very great Bondage and Cruelty. And therefore consider seriously of this, and do you for and to them, as you would willingly have them or any other to do unto you…were you in the like slavish condition.’
So it was the Quakers who sowed the seed of a different way of thinking. Religious people of different denominations had backed slavery and so it took a massive effort to change hearts and minds. We find it hard to imagine that people could condone slavery because the way our society thinks, our attitudes and personal beliefs about the human condition nowadays but it took education to get us to where we are over a very long period of time and change.
The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade mobilised thousands of people across the country. They set up committees, they had agents who went around talking to audiences, they produced pamphlets, pictures, books and artefacts to show people what slaves had to endure.
I have always thought that after the Knowles/Somersett case of the late 18th c that it became impossible to keep slaves in England, common law always recognising the dominion of one man over another was impossible without black letter law; being the basis of the old saw of the Englishman born free, (English women and men, that is). I think the idea that sugar and slaves financing the Industrial Revolution is a bit fanciful, although it makes for a good story. The evidence I think leans more towards the farmers, land holders, merchants (some of whom had slave production in the Caribbean and American south, others, many more of whom had import/export businesses in India, Java, Northern America and the northern Europe that did not rely on slavery) and business men. These (mainly) men did not stop off at the bun shoppe, and were of the same sort who manned the fleets of trading vessels and the Royal Navy, who populated North America, ran the Indian and China trades, formed the free settlers of the antipodian colonies. Jane Austen’s class, I suppose, typified by Mr Gardiner and Mr Bingley’s father in Pr&Pr, and denigrated by Sir William Elliot in his comments about the Navy in Persuasion. Mansfield Park is interesting in that it contains the transition between the business man making the money (Sir Thomas Bertram) and the idlers living off the spoils (the Bertram boys and girls), which was a real transition in British society, especially as the latter took the political and cultural reins in the later Victorian age. In another reality the industrial revolution would have Mr Gardiner and Mr Darcy investing their money into a large factory along the rivers in Derbyshire, or in the Black Country, and making an even bigger pile, the only slaves in sight being wage slaves.
Kevin, thank you for that information. Cesar Picton, who i mentioned in my article is not mentioned in the records as a slave once he reached England. He was bought by a British naval captain in Senegal for Sir john Phillips of Norbiton just outside of Kingston upon Thames and also worked at Sir Phillips estate in Pembrokeshire called Picton Castle. Sir john had him baptised as soon as he arrived on these shores. The family held Cesar in high regard and a few members of the family left him money in their wills. This was how he became wealthy and was able to set up in business.He was a freeman as soon as he reached these shores it appears.
As for slavery financing the Industrial Revolution it might be worth your while exploring the UCL database. One of their lines of research will be to ascertain how much wealth from slavery was used to finance various organisations and indeed the Industrial Revolution.