These names are a fragment of the whole picture. Attempting to trace all the human beings enslaved and forced to work on the sugar and cotton plantations that lined the pockets of the Manchester Guardian’s founders is complex, and building a full picture of their lives is near impossible. As Dr Cassandra Gooptar, who conducted this research, writes: “The historically whitewashed narrative of Britain’s legacy of slavery and colonialism tended to treat the enslaved as a distant, abstract construct or statistic in a distant land.”
The effort to tell a different story – in an attempt to restore dignity and humanity – involves relying on sources that were not compiled with dignity in mind, such as lists of “confiscated property” or “contraband” after the US civil war, or newspaper ads placed to find “runaways” with crude descriptions of ethnicity, age or characteristics, as well as bills of sales. The ages are often written as approximate, and the names may not have been of their own choosing.
Below are some of the enslaved people connected to Sea Island plantations that supplied cotton to the Guardian founding editor John Edward Taylor’s company between 14 August 1822 and 24 April 1823. Researchers could not pinpoint records for that period, so some names are from records in the 1860s, but include older people who would have been enslaved in the 1820s, as well as their descendants.
Also listed are people enslaved on the Success estate in Hanover, Jamaica by the Guardian funder George Philips, for the period in which he co-owned the sugar plantation from 1817 to 1829. Their forced labour contributed to his wealth at the time the Manchester Guardian was founded in 1821. We know there were 122 enslaved people on the plantation that year, but researchers could track only some of their names. Many of the snippets of lives hint at much wider stories, the details of which may be lost for ever. One example is Granville, questioned for his role in Jamaica’s Christmas rebellion of 1831-32, which is credited with paving the way for abolition.
Another is an advert in the Royal Gazette of Jamaica recounting an enslaved woman, Nanny Grignon, as being in Hanover workhouse, having been recaptured after making a bid for freedom. She is likely to have been held there until being “claimed”, possibly by William Stanford Grignon, the attorney who took on the day-to-day running of the sugar plantation on behalf of the Manchester-based absentee landlords. She is described as a “Chamba” – an ethnic group – and bearing branding of “CV or GN on left” and a large scar on her right shoulder.
Further detail can be gleaned from official registers, which hint at heartbreaking stories of generations born into bondage, such as “Abba”,“daughter of Phillis”, listed as “age six months”. Others list “death” alongside names such as “Old Lavinia”, or “Mungo” who is listed as having died aged 38.
• Words by Maya Wolfe-Robinson. Research conducted by Dr Cassandra Gooptar, advised by Professor Trevor Burnard, The Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull. Read the full report
