Friday 8 February 1660/61

At the office all the morning. At noon to the Exchange to meet Mr. Warren the timber merchant, but could not meet with him. Here I met with many sea commanders, and among others Captain Cuttle, and Curtis, and Mootham, and I, went to the Fleece Tavern to drink; and there we spent till four o’clock, telling stories of Algiers, and the manner of the life of slaves there! And truly Captn. Mootham and Mr. Dawes (who have been both slaves there) did make me fully acquainted with their condition there: as, how they eat nothing but bread and water. At their redemption they pay so much for the water they drink at the public fountaynes, during their being slaves. How they are beat upon the soles of their feet and bellies at the liberty of their padron. How they are all, at night, called into their master’s Bagnard; and there they lie. How the poorest men do use their slaves best. How some rogues do live well, if they do invent to bring their masters in so much a week by their industry or theft; and then they are put to no other work at all. And theft there is counted no great crime at all.

Thence to Mr. Rawlinson’s, having met my old friend Dick Scobell, and there I drank a great deal with him, and so home and to bed betimes, my head aching.

50 Annotations

First Reading

Bradford  •  Link

"stories of Algiers, and the manner of the life of slaves there!"

L&M, in the "Shorter Pepys," replace the exclamation point with a semi-colon; and to "Slaves" add the brief note, "Taken by the pirates of Algiers."

dirk  •  Link

Algiers & slaves

For those who want to read about this kind of slavery from the other party's point of view, I would suggest "Leo Africanus" by Amin Maalouf.

Although not quite contemporary to Sam, most of what's being told in the book was still valid in Sam's time.

Want to know more about Leo Africanus?
Have a look at:
http://www.uta.fi/~hipema/leo.htm

vincent  •  Link

A spoiler but it has been mentioned before -Tangiers- and the reasons for Adm:Blake and other expeditions to the "la Mere' was that many Cornishmen and the neigbours the Devonites spent many an unpleasant period working for the men of Algiers and were ransomed back to the Families. 'Twas not pleasant times to go wandering on the beach and then be snatched and not see ones home land . This is one of the reasons that the Navy was kept and used to protect the business interests of the Merchant class of London, besides those disputes with the other Europeans, there was Piracy [even today ships disappear from sight [ and site] and LLoyds of London has to pay up even after the cargo mysteriously appears in the market place but no ship]

Emilio  •  Link

More Algiers and slaves

The full L&M has a lengthy footnote on this topic, mostly devoted to the very different take from Sir Godfrey Fisher's Barbary Legend. Fisher argues that "Algiers had a good reputation in this respect, and treated its captives rather better than Christian countries treated their slaves or jailbirds. He points out that, although slaves under Muslim law, they were regarded as prisoners-of-war, and had well-established rights. There is, however, much evidence besides Pepys's to controvert this view."

And thanks dirk for the Leo Africanus link above, it's just fascinating.

vincent  •  Link

If you were one of the guests of the pirates you might have had to study linqua franca
a source [sample Yorno, matina and manchar (day, morning and to eat.) ]
http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/…

Susan  •  Link

Wheatley adds a note to this passage:"The Long Parliament imposed a tax on merchants' goods (called the Algiers Duty) for the redemption of captives in the Mediterranean." Wheatley also says Bagnard translates as prison.(?) Very few persons at that time were anti-slavery or slave trade. The Royal Society invested in the slave trade. The Earl of Sandwich and Pepys himself owned slaves. A negro page boy was a Court fashion accessory. In Bristol, once the main port of the slave trade in England, there is a street called Blackboys Hill, where these little boys were displayed for sale. This remained current for some time. Jane Austen's contemporaries in Bath (near Bristol)had black servants. Antislavery sentiments did not become current in England until the 1670s. Aphra Behn published an anti-slave trade novel in 1688.

vincent  •  Link

6 pages of barbary coast by the bbc
http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=… remained a pirate stronghold for 300 years, an important part of the Ottoman empire and a bulwark against the Spanish imperialism (Hourani, 228-9).
[finally in ]1816: Dutch and British navies destroy the Algerian fleet.
1830 June 14: In retaliation of Algerian attacks on trade vessels, France attacks Algiers.

Emilio  •  Link

"they do invent to bring their masters in so much a week"

L&M have "endent" (as in "indenture") for the verb in this sentence, which makes so much more sense. Here are the relevant senses of the word, with a number of example sentences from Sam's mate Thomas Fuller:

3. intr. To enter into an engagement by indentures; hence, to make a formal or express agreement; to covenant (with a person for a thing); to engage. Also fig. Obs.

1642 Fuller Holy & Prof. St. V. iii. 367 At last she indents downright with the devil. He is to find her some toies for a time, and to have her soul in exchange. 1655 ---- Ch. Hist. II. iv. ? 23 Thus would I have Ecclesiasticall and civil Historians indent about the Bounds, and Limits of their Subjects.

b. with subord. cl. or inf. expressing purpose.

1643 S. Marshall Letter 7 Suppose a free man indents with another to be his servant in some ingenious employment. a1661 Fuller Worthies (1840) III. 366 [She] indented with her husband that her heritable issue should assume her surname.

vincent  •  Link

Strange coincidence, going to the " Fleece" and talking to men about their having been fleeced by the barbary pirates.
Lingua franca or a scan erratum "d" or 't'.
liberty of their padron [patron?]

Nix  •  Link

The pirates are still out there --

If you can find a copy of the Atlantic Monthly from last September, there is a long and frightening article about contemporary maritime piracy.

Alan Bedford  •  Link

"Wheatley also says Bagnard translates as prison."

In modern French usage, "Bagnard" translates as "convict" but I'd guess that it probably had the connotation of "cell" in the 17th century, at least in lingua franca. By the way, there's a good (and accessible) discussion of the lingua franca language as well as a glossary at: http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/…

Emilio  •  Link

Still more history of the Barbary pirates

this time from the 1911 Encyclopedia: http://1.1911encyclopedia.org/B/B…

It mentions that North Africa had been a hotbed of piracy long before Sam's time. The article starts with piracy during the decline of the Roman empire, but one of Pompey the Great's jobs was to defeat a still earlier generation of Barbary pirates in 67 BC, and the ships of Carthage indulged in piracy as well around 400 BC. More than two millenia of plunder is quite a record for the area!

Lawrence  •  Link

You couldn't hope to spend a better Friday afternoon, these are the days when you wish you'd been there with Sam listening and getting befuddled with him, I bet there was roars of laughter all afternoon. "Loving it Sam"

vincent  •  Link

"slave trade": today-We just use differrent legal and illegal methods to get dirt cheap labo(u)r now. { yesterdays news uk., 1L. a day to go 'cockerling'[not warming ones heart either] } alternative the credit card is a nice legal way of indenturing people to keep working for years.
Weekly Piracy Report
http://www.iccwbo.org/ccs/imb_pir…

Read up on the straits of Singapore & Indonesia for the modern version of Piracy.
TIMEasia.com | Asia Buzz: Anti-Piracy Act | 12/14/99
... But piracy in Indonesia worries Singapore and Kuala Lumpur too, because many of
the attacks of recent years have been in the busy Straits of Malacca that ...

dirk  •  Link

Bagnard

The English word "bagnard" used here is a phonetic equivalent of "bagno", as it is more commonly spelled in the lingua franca. Originally this was the word used for a public bath (a common institution among the North-African Arab nations!), but pretty early the word also came to be used for slave quarters - also in the christian countries around the Mediterranian.

Why? I suppose the smell of these unhappy creatures had something to do with it..

Bradford  •  Link

Vincent asks:

"Lingua franca or a scan erratum "d" or "t".
liberty of their padron [patron?]-
"Shorter Pepys" says:
"at the Liberty of their Padron."
—-the last word in italics. As Emilio kindly reproduced from the L&M note on transcription—-
http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1…
3rd annotation—-italics means the word was in bigger letters—-and, one would assume, spelled out, rather than in shorthand.

language hat  •  Link

bagnard: dirk is correct; this is what the OED calls an "obs[olete] corrupt form of bagnio," whose three definitions are:

1. A bath, a bathing-house; esp. one with hot baths, vapour-baths, and appliances for sweating, cupping, and other operations. (No longer applied to any such place in Britain, the nearest approach to which is the modern Turkish Bath; but applied as an alien word to the baths of Italian or Turkish cities.)
1624 Massinger Renegado i. ii, At the public bagnios or the mosques. 1653 Greaves Seraglio 7 Dining rooms, Bagno's [marginal note. Bathes or hot-houses; it must be pronounced Banios].

2. An oriental prison, a place of detention for slaves, a penal establishment.(So in It. and Sp., and F. bagne. The origin of this use of the word is doubtful: see conjectures in Chambers Cycl. 1751 and Littr?.)
1599 Hakluyt Voy. II. i. 186 The king sent.. to the Banio: (this Banio is the prison wheras all the captiues lay at night). 1645 Howell Lett. I. 42 A slave in the bannier at Algier. 1660-1 Pepys Diary 8 Feb., Stories of Algiers and the.. slaves there.. How they are all, at night, called into their master’s Bagnard. 1687 Rycaut Hist. Turks II. App. 5 A prison and Banniard of Slaves. 1728 Morgan Algiers II. iv. 268 He sent him to his Bagnio, among the rest of his Slaves. 1847 Disraeli Tancred vi. v, To be sent to the bagnio or the galleys.

3. A brothel, a house of prostitution. (Cf. similar application of stew.)
1624 Massinger Parl. Love ii. ii, To be sold to a brothel Or a common bagnio.

Sronk  •  Link

Turkish Baths
Some might find it interesting that these were originally a Greek institution, the same one that you find commonly described in Greek and Roman literature. The Turks took them over when the conquered the Greek Byzantine empire, while Western nations allowed them to die out (with a few exceptions). Thus when Westerners rediscovered them in Turkish lands, they called them 'Turkish Baths'.

Emilio  •  Link

Padron/italics

Thanks for your faith, Bradford, but I don't think I got it quite right back then. In the fuller account in the Intro to the whole shebang, L&M give a more complete list of when italics are used. I think today the italics are there simply because 'padron' is a foreign word; on that day a couple weeks ago, 'menses' was probably being italicized as Latin. When Sam writes large, they apparently make the italics larger to reflect that. _Mea culpa_.

For any interested, what gets in italics is any:

"headings, names of days and festivals that begin daily entries, titles of books, plays and music, names of ships, and any foreign words other than those that appear in the erotic passages written in Pepys's lingua franca. [These can all be in either longhand or shorthand.] The large formal hand he sometimes uses for headings and festivals is represented by larger italics."

vincent  •  Link

Emillio : Are the words Lingua Francae used by L&M or is that a modern expression for Mediterranean lanquage for the un-schooled around the ports of the 'med' from Beirute to Tangiers.
On my travels, blue moons ago every port, scruffy kids seemed to be able to make his wants known in the many languages of the lands that abound the "La Mare" [especially in the more fundamental words]
A dictionary says hybrid based on Italian, with Spanish,French,Greek and Arab elements from " Italian for frankish language"

Emilio  •  Link

Vincent -

It's both. In addition to the more usual meaning, that's what L&M call the Spanish-based language Sam will start using in a few years to describe his erotic encounters.

dirk  •  Link

Lingua Franca

For those who are less at home on the subject (Emilio, Vincent, correct me if I'm wrong!):

The language and the term "Lingua Franca" (="the language of the Franks") was formed in the late Middle Ages. It was a pidgin language (like Swahili e.a.).

It developed out of a need to communicate (not necessarily on peaceful terms!) with the Arabic speaking peoples of the Near-East and the North-African Coastline. It was made up mainly of words from Southern-European languages (i.e. the "Franks", as they were called by the Arabs still at the time): mainly Italian dialects, some French and Spanish and a little bit of Arabic etc - and virtually no grammar (no tenses or inflections etc).

It died out in the 1800s. For more info (and a - downloadable - glossary) have a look at the link in Alan Bedford's annotation above.

As far as I konw the term is still in use in *linguistics* to indicate a common (usually written) form of a language, which stands as a common denominator above sometimes widely differing dialects or related languages: like Modern Standard Arabic vs. the various local (spoken) forms of the Arabic language.

StewartMcI  •  Link

Mediterranean Slaves - This was at the height of the Order of St. John as a major naval power based on Malta serving as the bulwark of Christianity against the Westward spread of the Turk. An oared galley had a distinct advantage over a wallowing merchantmen at the mercy of the wind direction. Hence the success of the pirates, their galley slaves, and the Order pressed captives into similar service. A bit earlier John Knox the leader of the Scottish Reformation spent a year and a half as a galley slave in the French Navy.

dirk  •  Link

Lingua Franca

Maybe Sam actually spoke/understood some Lingua Franca??? He wouldn't have been the only one to do so in England at the time, although the average Briton/Londoner wouldn't have understood a word of it (being derived from Romanic languages) ...

john lauer  •  Link

re dirk's "e.a." = et al.
(not commonly recognized west of the water, or by Webster.)

Emilio  •  Link

Lingua franca

I tend to doubt that Sam knew much Lingua Franca, although he certainly could have picked up the odd bit from his seafaring friends.

You'll notice that L&M use the term in lower case, and from how they describe it it seems very much like something thrown together on the spur of the moment rather than a lingo that he picked up. Not only does it mix together bits of Spanish, English, French, Dutch, Italian, Latin, and even Greek, but to confuse things a bit more Sam throws in random l's, r's, m's, and n's. He probably started using it to hide some of the racier passages in his shorthand even further, but since he also drops into it for some innocuous passages he seems to love using it for its own sake.

All in all it gives a weird new spin to the phrase 'frank-ish language', so what better could you call it than Sam's own, lower-case 'lingua franca'?

Pedro Ornelas  •  Link

In 1617, nearly all men (a few hundreds) of the Portuguese small island of Porto Santo (northeast of Madeira) were kidnapped by corsairs of Algiers. Although by that time the ramsoning in Portugal was already 'state subsidised', as the BBC article says, on that occasion negotiations didn't work and most men never returned. More about corsairs (from Algiers, and France, Holland & Britain as well) in Portuguese atlantic islands, and references (if anyone can read Portuguese): http://www.ceha-madeira.net/brasi…

HY  •  Link

Thank many of you for excellent references in your annotations. Unfortunately, little has been done in the current literature to offset the striking Eurocentrist view of the Barbary Navy. They, in many ways, were more civilized than pre-19th century Europeans in their dealings with Christians. While everyone was pretty bad back then, they did provide a loophole for people through conversion. Something not available to African Slaves in America. Also, conversion often meant freedom and upward mobility as proven by the many European captains and even admirals of the Barbary states. "Pirate Utopias" is quite good at looking at the Moroccan corsair state of Bouregreg. We forget Muslims had lived in Spain for eight hundred years with high civilization and then were brutally expelled followed by the inquisition and many of the Barbary corsairs were originally from Spain.

vincent  •  Link

Civilised behaviour, 'tis noted, only skin deep if that. The writer ALWAYS puts the best SPIN on the version that he doth publish. The Great Will: did say and I will muck it up "..the good is oft interred while evil doth live on.." so 'wot' ever is written must always be taken with a pinch of salt,[ Cum grano salis] or said another way when the coin lays on the ground, you only see one side of things , the trick is to dope the coin to show your side.

Lameen  •  Link

Correction to Vincent:
"1830 June 14: In retaliation of Algerian attacks on trade vessels, France attacks Algiers."

The real story was more comical; in an argument about some huge 30-year-old debts owed to two Algerian Jewish wheat merchants (Bacri and Busnach) by the French government, the Dey of Algiers struck the French consul in the face with a fly-whisk. This provided a convenient casus belli to the French government, which hastened to occupy Algiers.

vincent  •  Link

enslaved : J Evelyn on his trip [oct 7 1644] through Europe describe the gally ships and their slave orsmen at the Marcelles [Marseille]
"...We went then to Visite the Gallys being about 25 in number. The Captaine of the Gally royal gave us most courteous entertainement in his Cabine, the Slaves in the interim playing both on loud & soft musique very rarely: Then he shew'd us how he commanded their motions with a nod, & his Wistle, making them row out; which was to me the newest spectacle I could imagine, beholding so many hundreds of miseraby naked Persons, having their heads shaken cloose, & onely red high bonnets, a payre of Course canvas drawers, their whole backs, & leggs starke naked, doubly chayned about their middle, & leggs, in Cupples, & made fast to their seates: One Turke amongst them he much favourd, who waited on him in his Cabine, but naked as he was, & in a Chayne lock'd about his leg; but not coupled.
……………Yet was there hardly one but had some occupation or other: by which as leasure, in Calmes, & other times, permitts, they get some little monye; in so much as some have after many Yeares of cruel Servitude been able to purchase their liberty: Their rising forwards, & falling back at their Oare, is a miserable spactacle, and the noyse of their Chaines with the roaring of the beaten Waters has something of strange & fearfull in it, to one unaccostom'd. They are ruld, & chastiz'd with a bulls-pizle dry'd upon their backs, & soles of their feete upon the least dissorder, & without the least humanity: Yet for all this they are
Cherefull, & full of vile knavery:…”
http://astext.com/history/ed_1644…

more 21st oct 1644 at Ligorne
page103 the diary of John Evelyn by E.S.DeBeer
Starts “..Here is in Ligorne, & especialy this Piazzo, such concourse of Slaves, Consisting of Turkes, Mores, and other Nations,etc…

Frank Landsman  •  Link

Although it is true that many corsairs were from Spain, some of the wealthiest and most powerful Admirals were from the Netherlands. My probable forefather "De Veenboer" came from Andijk, west-Frisia, and converted to Islam in Algiers, where he became Admiral of the Algerian Sultan's corsair fleet (200 ships). He was known by the name of Sulayman Reis and became the scourge of the Mediterranean, although he usually spared Dutch crews. He was killed by a cannon-ball in the harbour of Amsterdam on the 10th of October 1620. The sloop that carried his corpse was returned by the French/English captains involved. Sulayman's quartermaster was the notorious renegade Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, who ended up as Murad Reis in Morocco. His mulatto son (by a Moorish concubine)Anthony Jansen van Haarlem emigrated to New Amsterdam, where he was called "The Troublesome Turk" (sic). His descendants allegedly include such luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, the Vanderbilts, and Jackie Onassis-Kennedy.
Last week's Guardian Weekly from Britain featured an article by Rory Carroll on the hot topic of White Slavery, which claimed that all of the slave masters were Africans. Not so ...
Incidentally, not all European corsairs embraced Islam; the most successful of them all, Simon de Danser, remained a Christian of sorts.

Virginia Castro  •  Link

I am looking for more information, and hopefully a portrait of Jan Janszoon van Haarlem and/or his son Anthony Jansen van Salee-Vaes who emigrated to New Amsterdam and once owned 200 acres on Long Island, New York. I am a descendant through the Southards Thomas Southard who married Annica Jansen, Anthony's daughter)and their daughter Sarah Southard who married John Bedell. The Bedells fought in the Revolution and ended up with land in a small town in Missouri, Fairgrove, near Springfield, where my father was born. The Bedell family has annual family reunions in different areas of the U.S. which is how I found out about our pirate ancestry. My great grandfather Mahlon Bedell married a Black-Cherokee woman and had many children with his black slaves, all of whom he claimed and educated. So the mixture goes on. I would like any info on my pirate ancestors and would provide anything I know as well.Also books in Italian or French, which I can read somewhat (I am fluent in Spanish). Ones I have seen in bibliiographies are: BONO, S. I corsari barbareschi, Turin, 1964. HUBAC, Pierre: Les Barbaresques, Paris 1949. FISHER, Sir Godfrey: Barbary Legend: War, Trade and Piracy in North Africa 1415-1830, Oxford 1957. Has anyone read these?

Vicky  •  Link

I am related to Jan Van Haarlem and his son Anthony Van Salee, Anthony's daughter Sara, Jan Emans, their son Abraham Emans, Rebecca Stillwell, their son Jan Emans and Elinor Van Aaken, Catherine Emmens and Nathaniel Westfall, Sara Westfall and Thomas Hamilton, James Hamilton and Mary Agnes Logue. The Hamilton's lived in Meadville, Pennsylvania. I am 58 years old and just found out my family history. Only the names Hamilton/Logue, Bower were even mentioned and we didn't know any of them. My family moved from Pa. to California 1946. I wonder if they knew or didn't want us to know. I instinctively knew everything I found. Call if psychic premonition.

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Wikipedia says a lingua franca (also called a working language, bridge language, vehicular language or unifying language) is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues. Lingua francas have arisen around the globe throughout human history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages") but also for diplomatic and administrative convenience, and as a means of exchanging information between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities. The term originates with one such language, Mediterranean Lingua Franca.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin…

Bill  •  Link

"their master’s Bagnard"

BAGNIO, an Italian Term, signifying a Bath. Thence Bagnio is become a general Name in Turky, for the Prisons in which the Slaves are confin'd, it being usual to have Baths in those Prisons.
---The Builder's Dictionary. 1734.

By this means I kept my self alive, shut up in a Prison or House, which the Turks call a Bagnio, where they keep their Christian Slaves, as well those of the King
---Don Quixote. Cervantes.

Bill  •  Link

"their master’s Bagnard"

The cellars of the castle of Livorno were called bagno [from the Italian 'bagno' meaning bath] because they were below sea level, but they were used as dungeons for Turkish slaves: hence bagnio in older English, and bagne in French, 'dungeon, workhouse'.
---Dictionary of Languages. Andrew Dalby. 1998.

Edith Lank  •  Link

The American sentiment in the early 1800s -- Millions for Defense but Not One Cent for Tribute.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

A bagnio (from Italian: bagno) was a term for a bath or bath-house. In England, it was originally used to name coffee houses which offered Turkish baths, but by 1740[1] it signified a boarding house where rooms could be hired with no questions asked, or a house of prostitution.[2]

The term was also used to refer to the prison for hostages in Constantinople, which was near the bath-house, and thereafter all the slave prisons in the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary regencies. The hostages of the pirates slept in the prisons at night, leaving during the day to work as laborers, galley slaves, or domestic servants.

The communication between master and slave and between slaves of different origins was made in Lingua Franca (also known as Sabir), a Mediterranean pidgin language with Romance and Arabic vocabulary.

The Slaves' Prison in Valletta, Malta, which was both a prison and a place where Muslim slaves slept at night, was also commonly known as the bagnio or bagno. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Nix on 9 Feb 2004

The pirates are still out there --

"If you can find a copy of the Atlantic Monthly from last September, there is a long and frightening article about contemporary maritime piracy."

Anarchy at Sea
The sea is a domain increasingly beyond government control, vast and wild, where laws of nations mean little and secretive shipowners do as they please—and where the resilient pathogens of piracy and terrorism flourish
WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE SEPTEMBER 2003 ISSUE
https://www.theatlantic.com/magaz…

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

It's true Elizabeth, Cromwell and the Stuarts all contributed to the beginnings of the slave trade, which was happened without them thanks to the Spanish, Dutch and Barbary Pirates, etc. as discussed above. I think it fair to point out that, at the time of the Diary, the English were bad at it, and appear to have consistently lost money on their efforts. In time they got "better" -- more ruthless? better organized? larger ships? -- and by the 19th century it had to stop. Thank you, Quakers, for being our conscience.

A book about the decade which made a difference:
https://www.theguardian.com/books…

I particularly like the concluding paragraph (the break is mine so your brain has time to digest that staggering figure):

"Under the terms of the act, West Indian slaves were not immediately freed, but forced to labour on for years as unpaid “apprentices”. Meanwhile, the British government compensated slaveholders generously for the loss of their human property. As a proportion of government spending, Taylor estimates they received the equivalent in today’s money of about £340bn – more than five times the combined GDPs of the modern nations of the Caribbean.

"He ends, appropriately, with a plea for reparatory justice and a proper reckoning by our national institutions with the enduring legacies of centuries of slavery. As this timely, sobering book reminds us, British abolition cannot be celebrated as an inevitable or precocious national triumph. It was not the end, but only the beginning."

Third Reading

Keith Knight  •  Link

The reparations to slave owners made by the British government (mentioned by Sarah on 1 Nov 2020) was the subject of an eye-opening BBC documentary, Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners, in 2015 written and presented by historian David Olusoga.

An early version of the Civil Service created what was reckoned to be the first paper form, which claimants had to fill in with details of all their slaves - gender, age, location, whether they had children etc. Each characteristic was assigned a value and the total to be paid out was not subject to appeal. The claimants had to turn up on an appointed day in Old Jewry in the City of London to get their money (Olusoga paints a vivid picture of the street scene).

In practice, many slave owners were now widows who had been left them in their husbands' will. The owners were all over the UK (UCL has built a map from the paperwork). Aristocrats were treated the same as commoners in the process.

The bail-out was unsurpassed until the bank-bailout of 2008. Much of the compensation was then invested in the big scheme of the day, the building of the West Coast railway mainline from London to the NW of England and Glasgow.

Neville  •  Link

David Olusoga also wrote and presented the series 'A house in time' where he looked into the original construction and subsequent occupation of houses in various cities throughout the country. It was notable that some were originally built on the proceeds of slavery.
The National Trust has been criticised for illuminating the history of some of the properties in their care and have been accused of being 'woke' for pointing out their links to slave trade.
Still a hot topic in UK today

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