Caribbean connections at the Georgian House

The parlour

In the late Georgian period, discussions around the anti-slavery movement exploded in Edinburgh. Norman Lamont, son of the first owner of the Georgian House, was an anti-slavery supporter.

Did he know or read the writing of Robert Wedderburn? Robert was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1762 to Rosanna, an enslaved mother, and Scottish sugar planter James Wedderburn. As an adult, he became a revolutionary speaker, minister, and author in Britain. He wrote The Horrors of Slavery, published in 1824. Did the Lamonts, or Norman in particular, read books by Wedderburn or his peers, Oluadah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, in this very room? Equiano and Sancho received warm welcomes on their visits to Scottish cities. They had their public appearances reported in newspapers like the ones you see in this room and spoke to large audiences at places such as the Assembly Rooms in George Street. Perhaps Norman was in the crowd.

In the home, women in upper-class circles expressed their support for abolition by refusing to take sugar in their tea. In the 1790s, political pamphlets were widely distributed, and these urged women to use their influence to shape the domestic sphere. This led to over 400,000 people boycotting sugar, resulting in a dramatic drop in sales. Ask a guide to point out a tea caddy.

The drawing room

This portrait of British heiress Dido Elizabeth Belle hangs in Scone Palace in Perth, but it could just as easily fit in with the portraits of women here. Dido was the daughter of an enslaved African woman, Maria Belle, and Sir John Lindsay, nephew of the Scottish Earl and Lord Chief Justice, William Murray, Lord Mansfield. Along with her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, Lord Mansfield raised Dido at Kenwood House in London.

Dido was born in the Caribbean in 1761 and was baptised at the age of five in London. In this portrait, she is possibly wearing a tignon. A French colonial law of the same name forced all Black women - free or enslaved - to cover their hair. This law was meant to curb women’s agency; however, historian Carolyn Long notes, the tignon ‘became a fashion statement’. Women decorated tignons with jewels and ribbons and used the finest available materials to wrap their hair.

The bedroom

It was common in the Georgian period for women to entertain guests informally in the bedroom. Perhaps Esther Athill Anderson, wife of the minister of Charlotte Chapel (where the Lamonts worshipped), was a guest of Helen Lamont in this very room?

Esther was the daughter of Dorinda, a free Black woman and the Chief Justice of Antigua. She married Rev. Christopher Anderson in 1817 and, on her father’s death, was bequeathed £800 on top of her £1,200 dowry. At this time, Antigua had several plantations owned by Scots and worked by enslaved people. Fifty years before Esther’s birth in 1784, they had planned a revolt. This was one of many revolts planned and executed by enslaved people across the Caribbean during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The dining room

The Lamonts would have dined with residents of Charlotte Square and the wider New Town, many of whom had investments in commodities produced through the labour of enslaved people. Next door at No. 6 Charlotte Square, John Innes Crawford inherited the Bellfield sugar plantation and hundreds of enslaved people.

One of the ways sugar from a plantation such as Bellfield was used, was to make rum. It would have been served in a punch bowl such as the one in the dining room. Take a close look at the ladle. It is made from the shell of a coconut. Made in St. Kitts in the Caribbean, the intricate carving reflects the European appropriation of the Caribbean tradition for carving coconuts.

The kitchen

Purchased on the Royal Mile, sugar was a luxury traded from America and the Caribbean. Enslaved people were the labour force used to grow and refine sugar. They may also have worked on the ships transporting it back to be sold in Britain. Servants or traders would have delivered goods to houses like the Georgian House around the New Town. Perhaps this was a way for Scots with Black heritage to establish social networks around the city.

The servant’s room

Malvina Wells was a Black woman living in early 19th-century Edinburgh and working as a lady’s maid. As a high-ranking servant, it is possible she had a room of her own, just like this one.
Originally from Carriacou, Malvina was born into enslavement on a cotton plantation owned by the Mills family, but gained her freedom when she relocated to Edinburgh as a servant in the Maclean household. From her time as a lady’s maid, the brief period of living independently with a lodger, and later as a companion to the elderly Joanna Maclean (Mrs Macrae), Malvina would have enjoyed some independence and financial mobility. She maintained connections with her homeland, leaving £5 in her will ‘to the young man in the island of Grenada who sends me the newspapers periodically’. Malvina is buried in the grounds of St John’s Church on Princes Street, not far from the places in the New Town where she lived and worked.

Timeline

• 1778 Knight v Wedderburn trial confirms that slavery is illegal in Scotland.
• 1785 Edinburgh Milkmaid with Butter Churn, painted by David Allan.
• 1790 Ania, later known as George Dale, records his experiences of slavery.
• 1805 Malvina Wells is born.
• 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act passed.
• 1815 Jean Baptiste Philipe graduates from Edinburgh University with a medical degree.
• 1816 Esther Athill Anderson marries Rev. Christopher Anderson.
• 1824 Robert Wedderburn publishes The Horrors of Slavery.
• 1825 John Edmonstone teaches Charles Darwin taxidermy at Edinburgh University.
• 1833 Over 160,000 women signed a petition in Edinburgh calling for the end of the slave trade.