University London College (UCL) last Wednesday announced the establishment of its new Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, with the support of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University.
UCL also unveiled the new Legacies of British Slave-ownership online database on British slave-ownership 1763-1833 that contains some 20,000 newly researched slave-owners and more than 8,000 estates.
The new centre will continue the work undertaken by the earlier Legacies of British Slave-ownership (LBS) projects.
Slavery abolished
In 1833, British parliament abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, Mauritius, and the Cape. The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, but it had taken another 26 years to effect the emancipation of the enslaved. In place of slavery, however, the negotiated settlement established a system of apprenticeship, tying the newly freed men and women into another form of unfree labour for fixed terms.
Parliament also granted £20 million in compensation, to be paid by British taxpayers to the former slave owners. That compensation money provided the starting point for the first phase of the LBS project. In the second phase, UCL tracked back to about 1763 the ownership histories of the 4,000 or so estates identified in the first phase. In doing so, they doubled the number of estates identified and added another 20,000 slave owners.
On its website, ULC says, “We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery’s role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present.
“The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-owners, and we hope that the database produced in the first two phases of the project, while at present primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching enslaved people.”
Searching
The database contains several search fields, such as name, education, address, occupation, religion, colonies, and claim details. These search fields make it easy to discover the wealth of information compiled.
In addition to finding the names of slaves and slave owners, you will often find the names of their family members, along with dates and location of birth, marriage, and death.
Even if your direct ancestor was not a slave owner, you may find information about them because they were related to one or worked for one. For example, here is part of Benjamin Morrison’s story:
13 September [1825]. At Bognie Westmoreland, Jamaica, in consequence of a fall from his horse, Benjamin Morrison Esq., of Bognie, in the 59th year of his age. Benjamin Morison was baptised 24/02/1766 at Marnoch Banff, the son of Benj. Morison and Isa Leslie. Eight children (6 daughters, 2 sons) of Benjamin Morison and Isa Leslie were baptised at Inverkeithny or Marnoch between 1754 and 1771. One of the sisters, Katharine, was baptised 1768. A Katharine Morison married John Gairtly 11/05/1794 at Old Machar, Aberdeen.
This ‘logo’ of the Legacies of British Slave-owners Centre shows a Whig politician slipping £20 million out of John Bull’s pocket. It is from the cartoon, ‘Slave Emancipation; Or, John Bull Gulled Out Of Twenty Millions.’
I was unable to find any of my ancestors’ surnames in the database, so I searched for the last name of a distant in-law who was born in Jamaica. Her surname, Brown, produced several results, although I have no idea at this point if there is any connection.
I also found information about slave owners and slaves in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the United States, and France. So look for every possiblity.
The Search Guidance Notes are useful. They are brief and written in a style that makes it easy for most users to understand.
People of Interest
To understand the importance of this database, read some of the biographies of People of Interest. The biography of Malvina Wells, for example, is remarkable on several levels, from her birth in Grenada in 1804, to becoming a slave when she was 13 and being taken to Scotland to, most importantly, the fact her story has been published online.
There is a lot of information on this website that is worth exploring, even if you don’t expect your ancestors are among those in the database.
