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Bristol West India Merchants in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Kenneth Morgan
Kenneth Morgan
Affiliation:
The University Of Liverpool
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Extract

On the north wall of the cloisters in Bristol Cathedral there is a small headstone ‘Sacred to the Memory of Thomas Daniel Esq … a respectable Merchant of this City who was born in Barbados on the 14th March 1730 and departed this life on the 23rd February 1802.’ In the north transept, on a floor marble over the family vault, another inscription to the same man can be found. Thomas Daniel Sr, as he was known, came from a mercantile family that had settled in Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century. He spent his early career in that island and later emigrated to Bristol in 1764. From then onwards he built up a substantial business as a Bristol West India merchant, and handed this down to his son, Thomas Daniel Jr, at the turn of the nineteenth century. The son expanded his trade in Caribbean sugar and acquired slave plantations in Barbados, Antigua, Nevis, Montserrat, Tobago and British Guiana. After Emancipation in 1834 he and his brother, John, received £102,000 in compensation for the loss of their slaves— the second largest sum awarded to Bristol proprietors. The money accumulated by Thomas Daniel Jr enabled him to purchase a fine town house in Berkeley Square, in a fashionable residential area, plus a pleasant country seat at Henbury, just beyond the north-western boundaries of the city. Burgeoning wealth went hand in hand with civic status. From 1785 until 1835, Daniel served on the Bristol Common Council, the governing body of the city.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 3 , December 1993 , pp. 185 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1993

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References

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17 The firms are listed in the appendix.

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48 Inferred from the fact that Philip Protheroe did not come of age until that year.

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56 These activities are documented in UMA, Henry Bright letterbook (1739–48). The records left by the Brights and the Meylers are discussed in Kenneth Morgan, ‘The Bright Family Papers,’ Archives (forthcoming).

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80 The eight were Henry and Richard Bright, John Curtis, Thomas Daniel Jr, Thomas Deane, Samuel Munckley, Philip Protheroe and Henry Swymmer (Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 85–6, 90–2, 100, 103, 110–11, 113, 126)Google Scholar.

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88 Based on notices for merchants in FFBJ, on Sketchley, James, Bristol Directory (Bristol, 1775Google Scholar; facsimile reprint, Bath, 1971), and on Matthews, W., The New History, Survey and Description of the City of Bristol, or Complete Guide and Bristol Directory for the Year 1793–4 (Bristol, 1794)Google Scholar.

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97 UMA, Bright & Milward to Henry Bright, 15 June 1773, box 16, Bright family papers.

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102 Ibid., 80–5, 87, 195–6.

103 Details on the debts of John Pinney, James Tobin and William Miles are available in Pares, , West-India Fortune, 239–319Google Scholar, and in ‘Calendar of Correspondence from Miles to Tharp,’ ed. Morgan, , 93–101, 103, 105, 111, 113–16, 118–21Google Scholar.

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