British slave-owners - new database

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LesleyB
Posts: 8184
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Scotland

British slave-owners - new database

Post by LesleyB » Wed Feb 27, 2013 11:21 pm

Hi all

A new database has been launched which enables people to look back and see whether their forebears were British slave-owners.
See article at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21601374

and database at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/

As you are probably aware, much wealth was accumulated all over Britain, including of course, some areas of Scotland, by the slave trade - not something one really wants to discover in one's tree, I suppose, but interesting historical information contained within the database nonetheless. There is quite a good overview of the slave trade from a Scottish angle here: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications ... 23121622/4

Best wishes
Lesley

StewL
Posts: 1396
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:59 am
Location: Perth Western Australia

Re: British slave-owners - new database

Post by StewL » Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:15 am

Hi Lesley
What an interesting reading was the link to the Scottish involvement in the slave trade.
Excellent!
Stewie

Searching for: Anderson, Balks, Barton, Courtney, Davidson, Downie, Dunlop, Edward, Flucker, Galloway, Graham, Guthrie, Higgins, Laurie, Mathieson, McLean, McLuckie, Miln, Nielson, Payne, Phillips, Porterfield, Stewart, Watson

Currie
Posts: 3924
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:20 am
Location: Australia

Re: British slave-owners - new database

Post by Currie » Sat Mar 02, 2013 5:36 am

Also check out House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, if you have access to them. There’s much more there, about slave owners, their estates, and their slaves, than just the compensation documents. There’s info about freeing of slaves, complaints by slaves, prosecutions for extreme cruelty, and stuff like that.

For Scots, Parliamentary Papers can be accessed from home via the NLS resources, but for people elsewhere it’s only available if you’re lucky and your National, County, State, or whatever library or educational institution subscribes. It’s a ProQuest database.

Unfortunately the slaves didn’t receive compensation; all they got back was a fragment of what had been stolen from them. Ancestry has a database of Colonial Slave Registers from the 1820s and 1830s. http://search.ancestry.com.au/search/db.aspx?dbid=1129

This small booklet is an interesting response to the slavery supporters’ argument at the time that “the Colonial slaves are better off than the British peasantry”. On page 10 you’ll find an extract from an advertisement in the Jamaica Gazette of June 1823, placed there by the owner of Harriet, a Creole girl, who has run away. She is described as “four feet three inches, no brand-mark, has scars on her back and stomach from flogging”. http://archive.org/stream/oates71082042 ... 1/mode/2up

All the best,
Alan