Key Facts
This section provides some facts on the scale of the Dawkins’ slave-owning activities, the wealth generated from their participation in the plantation economy, and the compensatory gains they received upon the termination of British West Indian slavery in 1833.
1
At the time of his death, Henry Dawkins I (1698-1744) possessed over £100,000 and 1,300 Africans making him the second wealthiest slave-owner and third largest holder of enslaved people in Jamaica during the mid-eighteenth century.
4
By the late eighteenth-century, the Dawkins family were in possession of three large English country estates (Over Norton, Salford, and Standlynch) that covered almost 5,000 acres.
7
A total of £36,000 compensation was awarded to James Colyear Dawkins (1760-1843) in exchange for the “liberation” of the 2,000 enslaved Africans he owned in 1835. This sum is equivalent to approximately £29 million today.
2
James Dawkins (1722-1757), Henry I’s eldest son, was the fourth largest owner of land in Jamaica and possessed 14,300 acres circa 1750.
5
Upon his death, in 1814, Henry Dawkins II held a fortune of £150,000, making him one of the 16 wealthiest people in Britain in 1814.
8
The direct descendants of the Dawkins slave-owners continue to reside on the country estate purchased by their ancestors nearly 300 years ago.
3
The Dawkins family possessed their own sugar counting houses on the south coast of Jamaica and partially owned a fleet of ships which they used to transport their tropical produce to, and estate supplies from, England.
6
The Dawkins’ English countryside residence at Standlynch was purchased by the government in 1815 for the sum of £90,000, gifted to the Nelson family and renamed Trafalgar Park in recognition of Horatio Nelson’s war efforts in the Battle of Trafalgar.