A new database will let family tree researchers uncover uncomfortable information — whether their ancestors owned slaves.
Historians at University College London produced the database using records of the £20 million paid in compensation for the loss of “property” when slave ownership was abolished in 1833.
The database has details of around 46,000 individual claims and awards made to those who either owned slaves or benefited indirectly from ownership. Among them were the trustees of author George Orwell’s great-grandfather, Charles Blair, who were paid £4,442 for 218 slaves on a plantation in Jamaica.
The database can be searched by gender, occupation, religion, dates of birth and death and address. Parliament abolished the slave trade in 1807 but slavery was not outlawed in British colonies until 26 years later.
Project leader Professor Catherine Hall said: “What we have done is to establish the life-trajectories of some 3,000 absentee slave-owners in Britain, and analysis of this has allowed us to trace the legacies of slave-ownership in Victorian Britain.”
Research associate Keith McClelland said that 10 per cent of wealthy 19th-century Britons were directly connected to the slave trade and the proceeds helped build railways, businesses, buildings and art collections that exist today.
To search the Legacies of British Slave-ownership database visit www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs