Lot 37
Jamaica - slavery - sugar trade
Manuscript letter-book of plantation attorney William Shand of Fettercairn, 1826-7
Estimate: £500 - £800
Auction: 19 September 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
Folio (31.5 x 20cm), contemporary vellum by G. Roake of London, [230] pp., written in various clerical hands, on laid paper watermarked Joseph Coles 1824, the letters to numerous correspondents, many evidently in Jamaica, and containing substantial detail on Shand's Jamaican estates (including disappointment at the poor yields of his estate at Killetts), the practicalities of sugar-cultivation, the shipment of sugar, coffee and rum from Jamaica to Trieste, the estate of his brother John Shand (also a Jamaica planter), and domestic matters, notable passages including:
To Alexander McLeod (p. 89): ‘The West Indians [i.e. plantation owners] are again holding up their heads and matters look better. A favourable change has taken place in the sentiments of your ministers and of course many of their adherents in regard to the colonies, the coffers of our enemies are empty, and in consequence petitions against them are few … The West Indians are a mere rope of sand, and of themselves incapable of anything, they meet at the club, talk much, abuse each other, and do nothing’.
To an unnamed recipient (p. 99), concerning the merchant brig ‘Rocket’: ‘The officers of the customs objected to grant a … certificate for this vessel to load out of the port of Kingston, at Clarendon Bay, altho the several acts of parliament … direct them to’.
To James McDonald, p. 106: ‘On plantation affairs I shall not now trouble you much … When I return to Jamaica … I hope to find that measures of economy have been adopted and that amongst others progress has been made in breeding cattle for the estate … The effects of the floods and injury to the roads would I fear retard the carriage of produce and render it necessary to purchase a large proportion of produce for the cargo of the Rocket, had there been coffee at the market and it be not very high … I would at the same time like to encourage consignments of either coffee or sugar to Mr Borland if more of my own produce should be reserved for the second Bristol ship and another small vessel for Trieste’.
To Alexander Bravo, p. 110 ‘I was in hope of receive ere now accounts of sales of coffee, sugar and rum sent from hence to Trieste’, the letter outlining in detail the advantages of ‘shipping direct from Jamaica to Trieste’.
To Alexander Bayley (unpaginated): ‘From what you mention of your sugars being ill adapted for refining it is not probably they would command so much as otherwise in Trieste and I would not recommend that market for them …'
Provenance
From the library of the late Robert Bogdan (1950-2023), of Boghead of Torries and Dykehead of Avochie, Aberdeenshire, geography master at Charterhouse and sometime chairman of the Scottish Castles Association.
Footnote
William Shand ( (1776-1845), of Fettercairn, Aberdeenshire was 'a planting attorney with experience of managing 18,000 to 20,000 enslaved people in his time in Jamaica between 1791 and 1823 (he returned there between January 1825 and May 1826, presumably to deal with his and John Shand's affairs around the latter's death). It also emerged that he owned 1200 people as a result of purchase "about 1801" (UCL Centre for the Studies of the Legacies of British Slavery, online, accessed 12 July 2024).
