This third blog in a series which looks at evidence of slavery in English Ms 1199 Messrs Cardwell, Birley And Hornby: Stock and Ledger Books – Wadsworth Manuscripts – Archives Hub focuses on the company’s trade through the port of Liverpool. In the eighteenth century, travel between Blackburn and the Mersey was difficult, so the business paid brokers to look for better quality cotton arriving at the docks, to purchase it, and to organise its transportation on to East Lancashire. Whereas in the initial pages of the ledgers a good proportion of the cotton arrived through Lancaster, within a few years this had changed to almost all the raw material coming via Liverpool (with a small amount brought through Bristol and London). Many of the city’s leading merchants and brokers appear in the ledgers, several of whom were involved in slavery, while others owned plantations with enslaved people in the Caribbean, and a few both.
William and John Marriot appear in historical Lancashire directories as Liverpool cotton brokers, the ledgers confirming that they supplied Cardwell, Hornby & Birley with the imported material. Research on the Legacies of British Slavery website shows that William Marriot had a cotton plantation in Vere, Jamaica, from which he supplied clients. William must have passed away between the Blackburn merchants receiving the cotton and the point of payment, as the ledger states that: ‘The executors of the late William Marriot…debts owing by us: £252 16s’. According to the Historic England website Beechley, Non Civil Parish – 1262024 | Historic England, John Marriot had a mansion which he named Beechley, constructed using some of his profits – currently an empty Grade 2-listed building in Liverpool, with only the stables now in use.
The business name ‘Harper & Co. Liverpool’ is listed as supplying 44 bags of cotton valued at £707 to the Blackburn merchants (see Blog 2 for an image confirming this). Liverpool’s William Harper (1749-1815) was a slaver who, according to research on the About – Slave Voyages website, invested in over 50 triangular journeys from the city between 1784 and 1799. These ships first travelled to Africa, carrying items with which to barter for the enslaved, and then sailed across the Atlantic, to sell them on to plantation owners in the Caribbean, Guyana and Charleston in the US state of South Carolina. The vessels then returned to Liverpool, carrying goods which included cotton picked by the enslaved, on estates in the West Indies and the US. Research on the Legacies of British Slavery website shows that Harper owned a plantation in Montserrat, from which a business partner and father-in-law later received post-abolition reparations for the loss of enslaved people.
Robert Brade (1747-1815) partnered Harper in a company which traded in enslaved Africans from Liverpool and another base in Dominica. Brade is listed on Slave Voyages as investor (in some cases alongside Harper) in ships visiting the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Cuba, Dominica and Grenada, which returned with cotton and other goods to Liverpool. The ledger shows that Cardwell, Hornby & Birley owed Harper & Brade £5,318 (over £388,000 in modern terms), quite probably for Dominica cotton, which was considered of very high quality and so fetched top prices in Lancashire mills.
Trade with companies named Allanson & Barton and Barton, Higginson & Francis appear in the accounts, the partners being John Allanson, Thomas (1753-1799) and William Barton (1755-1826), and John Higginson (1776-1834); I have been unable to identify ‘Francis’. Slave Voyages confirms Higginson, Allanson and the Barton brothers as investing in ships which carried enslaved Africans to ports in St Lucia, Barbados, St Kitts, Jamaica, St Vincent and Savannah in the US state of Georgia during this period. In fact, between 1768 and 1815, companies run by the Barton family were the largest importers of cotton through Liverpool, shipping more than twice the amount of their nearest rivals, Barbados being one of their companies’ key calling points.
William Barton is confirmed on the Legacies of British Slavery website as the owner of the Waterford and Joes River plantations on the island of Barbados. Barton and his heirs claimed £8,500 (now around £620,000) for 379 enslaved people in post-abolition reparations. John Higginson also owned several plantations on the island of Barbados, claiming compensation for the loss of many enslaved Africans. Cardwell, Hornby & Birley’s ledger shows £1,358 as owing to the Liverpool merchants, presumably for the cotton grown on their Barbados plantations, picked by the enslaved and then shipped back on the return journeys by vessels almost certainly part-owned by the same people.
Cotton provided by William Aspinall (1744-1783), valued at just over £214, appears in the second stock and ledger book of Cardwell, Hornby & Birley, which dates from 1793-1798. According to Slave Voyages research, Aspinall invested in ships sailing from Liverpool in the 1790s, selling enslaved Africans to plantation owners on the islands of Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Grenada. James (1729-1788), John Bridge (1759-1830) and William, traded as J. & J. Aspinall, and between 1766 and 1807 the Aspinall family was involved in more than 190 triangular journeys. This includes one of the most infamous episodes of that time, when hundreds of enslaved Africans were thrown into the Atlantic from Aspinall’s ship Zong as drinking water ran short, the owners then claiming on the ship’s insurance for ‘loss of cargo’. Legacies of British Slavery confirms that the later mayor of Liverpool, John Bridge Aspinall and Thomas Aspinall, the sons of James, claimed post-abolition compensation from the UK government for the loss of enslaved people on plantations in Jamaica. It is therefore likely that William, John and James both traded in enslaved Africans and used them to pick cotton on Caribbean plantations, which William then supplied to the Blackburn company.
The Slave Voyages website shows John Kennion as a Liverpool slave ship investor from the 1750s, visiting Barbados, St Kitts, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Brazil, Tortola, Nevis, South Carolina, Antigua and Cuba. Newspaper reports confirm that Kennion was in Jamaica in 1768 and was importing goods (including cotton) through Liverpool in the 1770s. Legacies of British Slavery research has him as a plantation owner with enslaved people in Jamaica, with Hall Head and Holland Estates. The ledgers refer to: ‘Kennion’s 20 bags Tobago cotton now on Shipboard for Liverpool’ and below that to Kennion’s ‘9 bags Tobago cotton…’ Kennion has (so far) not been connected to trading with plantations on that Caribbean island, so as an importer through Liverpool, he perhaps supplied Tobago cotton shipped by another company to Blackburn. Kennion ran much of his business in partnership with William Atherton (1742-1803). Originally from Preston, Atherton’s family, which included Richard (1738-1804) and John, were also involved in slavery. Although neither William, Richard nor John appear by name in the ledgers, ‘Athertons & Co. Preston’ is listed as doing business with Cardwell, Hornby & Birley. The Legacies of British Slavery website confirms that William Atherton owned one Jamaica plantation and had a stake in another, from which multiple post-abolition claims for the loss of the enslaved were made.
John Knight (1708-1784) was reported in newspapers as being a merchant based in Water St, Liverpool, importing goods including cotton through the port in the 1760s. According to Slave Voyages and other sources, between 1750 and 1775 Knight invested in at least 114 slave ship journeys to Jamaica, Dominica, St Kitts, Grenada, Barbados, St Vincent, Antigua, Martinique, Montserrat and to Charleston in the US state of South Carolina. Knight supplied enslaved Africans to, and formed a friendship with, Henry Laurens (1724-1792), a US ‘Founding Father’ based in Charleston, who was a politician, slave trader and a plantation owner using enslaved labour. As a partner in Austin & Laurens, the largest slave-trading business in North America, Laurens generated vast wealth.
Letters between Knight and Laurens, in the Henry Laurens Papers held within the archives of the South Carolina Historical Society (Laurens-Henry-papers-037.pdf) discuss the business of slavery and include correspondence from Knight persuading Laurens to return to the trade after he had turned his back on it. The Austin & Laurens Account Book, preserved at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Account book, 1750 April-1758 December. – Yale University Library) also details the finances of the trade in enslaved people between Knight and Laurens. Knight is listed as supplying 16 and a half bags of cotton to the Blackburn company at a cost of £198. A ‘Mr Knight’ also appears in the accounts, and is quite possibly one and the same person, although I am yet to confirm the connection.
See the fourth and final blog in the series, which looks at more direct slavery connections in the partnership of Cardwell, Hornby & Birley, investor Joseph Feilden and their families.
For a list of resources and acknowledgements, see the end of Blog 1.
A well researched series. Thank you.