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[01:59]
C
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Women's role as slave owners is often overlooked, but just like men, they both profited from and maintained the institution of slavery. In her new book, Heiresses, historian Miranda Kaufman profiles nine women who married into the British aristocracy, bringing huge wealth generated from Caribbean slavery into the country. I spoke to Miranda to find out more. Thanks so much for joining me, Miranda, to talk about your new book, Heiresses. So in the book you look at the stories of nine wealthy women whose fortunes came from slavery. So what drew you to the subject of women who profited from enslaving people?
[02:53]
B
So it all went back to when I was commissioned by English Heritage back in 2006 to investigate links between their properties and enslavement and also in abolition. And I spoke to some of the leading scholars at the time I was still a PhD student. I spoke to Madge Dresser and James Wolven, who are amazing titans of British enslavement history, and they identified sort of about 10 different ways that a country house might be connected to enslavement for me to investigate. And that ranged from people owning plantations and people or investing in transatlantic trade, but also being merchants of produce like sugar or tobacco, or even with the abolition. If some of the men who owned these houses were involved in the parliamentary debates or at Kenwood, Lord Mansfield was the judge at some of the main court cases regarding the status of Africans in Britain. But one category that stood out was this category of heiresses. So if the man who owned the house married an heiress who had inherited wealth from Caribbean enslavement.
[04:01]
C
Before we kind of delve into individual stories, just give us a sense of the lay of the land. How common was it for women to inherit plantations in the Caribbean and the enslaved people obviously connected to those plantations, and what was the legal status of them being able to do so?
[04:20]
B
Men have always preferred to leave their property to other men across history. And you know, they have this beautiful vision of father to son inheritance stretching over the generations. But the lottery of human reproduction means that, you know, you've got 50% chance of a girl coming out. But men would, if they didn't have any sons, they would look at nephews, cousins, quite, sometimes quite distant male relations. But, but if none of those were available, then you get to daughters, nieces, granddaughters. One really startling statistic is that 40% of the claimants, when enslavement came to an end and the government offered compensation to enslavers to compensate them for their loss of enslaved property, 40% of the claimants of the people who got compensation payments were women. But for the book, I was looking particularly at heiresses. So some of those women didn't have a fortune. Some of them even earned a share in an enslaved person as a sort of investment, which was quite horrible. It sort of underlines the nature of treating humans like chattel property. But in the book, I was looking particularly for women who had inherited a significant amount of money, usually around at least £5,000, which was a lot at the time. So yeah, ones who had inherited a significant dowry or extensive property and had married in Britain. I found about 150 over 150 women and counting who fill that criteria of having significant wealth and marrying in Britain, because obviously there were also women who married in the Caribbean or lived, continued to live their lives in the Caribbean. But I was interested in the women who were bringing this wealth into Britain.
[06:03]
C
Can you tell us a bit more about the role of these so called Caribbean heiresses in Britain? British aristocratic society at this time. I mean, how were they viewed?
[06:12]
B
I think that these women, because of their wealth, were sought after by men at all stratas of society, from fortune hunters to dukes. So their wealth trumped pretty much any other kind of qualms we know from the pages of Jane Austen and all the other period dramas we know from that era. The way that it was sneered at to be in trade, and certainly any kind of illegitimacy or criminality was considered terrible. And there were strong class prejudices, but the wealth did seem to outweigh that. But in the Caribbean context, clearly it wasn't a long pedigree of aristocratic birth, because it was very much nouveau riche new money. And there was also these question marks about criminality and also racial ancestry. So long before transportation to Australia got going in the 17th century, particularly, criminals were transported to Virginia and Barbados particularly. But that sort of prejudice was then sort of spread across the Caribbean in general. So there are examples in plays of the time, sort of, say, oh, Miss Patty Plum of Jamaica, whose grandfather was sent there for stealing a goose or something like that. And then there's also, because of the really high prevalence of white men forming relationships with enslaved women or free women of color, there was this question mark over whether these women might have some kind of African ancestry. And that was also, you know, an issue that I think became more acute as the 18th century continued. Sort of attitudes to race evolved quite a lot over. Over the course of the 18th century.
[07:51]
C
And perhaps we can look at some stories that might tell us more about that later in the interview. But the women you looked at, as you said, they married in Brit, they brought their wealth to Britain. But how much interaction did they actually have with the plantations and the people that they enslaved back in the Caribbean?
[08:09]
B
Well, it really varied between individuals, and some of the women in the book actually were born in Britain, inherited these plantations, but had never actually been there, or some of them. You were born in the Caribbean, but then were sent to England for. Or Scotland for boarding school from quite an early age. But, I mean, one of them, Mary Ramsey, who later becomes Mrs. Richard Oswald, actually lived in Kingston, Jamaica, for the first 20 years of her life. Her father was a merchant, and she was growing up really a couple of blocks from the wharves of Kingston, and she would have been waited on by enslaved domestics. And I think she really got a sense of what her father was doing. He wasn't an importer of enslaved people, but he was trading in goods produced by enslaved people and their House was on parade, which is the main square in Kingston. And we know that that's where enslaved people might be hung or gibbeted if they were convicted of crimes, and their bodies were left there to rot for months. So she might have walked past that, or, you know, they said that you could smell a ship carrying enslaved people when it came into the harbor, you know, for miles before it arrived. And so she would have perhaps smelt those. And also, you know, there were these scrambles of sales when the enslaved people were docked and sold, and she might have heard those screams and things from her home. So she was really in the thick of it. But I think these women were involved. One of the women, Frances DL, we have some of her correspondence with her agents in Jamaica, and she's very involved. She's asking them to buy more enslaved people for the plantation. She's actually even discussing what kind of brand should be seared onto their skin to mark her ownership and her brother's ownership of these people. So that's quite eye opening. And she knows things like it's better to import various supplies from England rather than attempt to buy them in Jamaica because they're so expensive in Jamaica. So she's quite well versed in the whole business. And there are people who know England, enslaved people by name.
[10:21]
C
You point there to something quite interesting, which is obviously historians of slavery. One of the biggest challenges that they always face is trying to recover the voices of enslaved people themselves, which is obviously very hard in the historical record. But you say in the book that you've managed to find more than you thought you might. Can you tell us a bit about how looking at these heiresses has also opened up that. That window to the voices of enslaved people, too?
[10:49]
B
I've never really taken no for an answer on saying there's no evidence for the lives of black people. And I think that if you look hard enough, you can sometimes find pieces of a jigsaw to piece together. And I was looking at these family papers and other sources that, you know, if that's what you're looking for, then you can find more material. One of the interesting sources are these slave registers that from 1817 were kept every three years, where they wrote down the names of absolutely everybody on each plantation at the beginning, and then in later records, keep a record of births and deaths. So you have these fragmentary records for each individual, but it tells you their name, age, whether they were born in the Caribbean or in Africa, and sometimes some other notes. And so that allows you to piece together to some Extent, some family trees, at least through the matrilineal line, because who your mother was was much more important than who your father was. But in the book, I've managed to find corresponding details about those people. So Elizabeth Vassall, who inherited three estates in Westmoreland, Jamaica, when she was just 16, married to Godfrey Webster, who owned Battle Abbey, she's later Lady Holland, was born in Westmoreland, Jamaica, and was actually suckled by an enslaved black wet nurse as a baby alongside that. That lady's daughter. We don't know the. The wet nurse's name, but her daughter turns up later as Mrs. Phyllis. And so Phyllis, who lived at Friendship and Greenwich Plantation in Westmoreland, Jamaica, also appears in the letters of the Holland family. But one really interesting source is there's a Gothic novelist called Monk Lewis, who inherited two plantations in Jamaica on either end of the island. But there was one called Cornwall in Westmoreland, which happened to be adjoining Friendship in Greenwich, which was the. One of the plantations owned by Lord and Lady Holland. And he actually meets several people from Friendship and Greenwich when he visits his own plantation. He goes twice between 1815 and 1817. So we have these amazing encounters in there, particularly with Mrs. Phillis, who was almost, you might call, a foster sister to Lady Holland, who calls on Monk Lewis at his breakfast table and asks, you know, how is Lady Holland? How many children has she had? What's her life like? Now we know that Mrs. Phyllis's mother was Lady Holland's wet nurse. And so the two of them might well have sort of played together as young children. And I just find that fascinating, these two parallel lives. And I have this dream. There is now an opera house in the summer on the site of Holland House. And I have this dream that someone's going to write an opera with their two parallel lives. And I can just imagine Lady Holland on one end of the stage and Mrs. Phillis on the other, like, singing about their shared childhood and then how their lives wildly diverged.
[13:55]
C
Another story that you look at at the start of the book, which is not of an heiress, but, again, of an enslaved person, is the story of somebody called Betsey Newton. Can you share that with us?
[14:06]
B
Well, this is just this fascinating story that I think really surprises people and challenges their ideas about what the lives of enslaved people were like. So Betsy Newton managed to escape enslavement at Newton Plantation in Barbados and escape to London via St Vincent and actually sort of march up to the door of her enslaver's home and confront him and demand freedom for herself and her four children that she'd left behind. He concedes that she's free because she's set foot on English soil, but he absolutely does not want to do what she's asking, which is provide a document confirming her freedom and also conferring freedom on her children, which is what she desperately wants, because she wants to go home with that piece of paper and free her children, but there's absolutely no way he's going to do that. But she keeps on her campaign and she goes back to him over the years, but she never succeeds. But we know that she sort of kept in correspondence with her family back in Barbados, which again, shows that they were literate, they were writing letters, which is something that people don't always associate with the lives of enslaved people. And we know that she got married twice when she was in London, because every time she writes to her enslaver, she's got a different surname. It's a horrible story in a lot of ways, because the reasons that she felt forced to run away were that there had been this big crisis. And her family, you know, her family was actually a, you know, a relatively privileged family amongst the enslaved people. And there were big distinctions amongst the enslaved population between people who had some sort of privileges, sometimes, quite often because they had had relationships with the white plantation owners or overseers. But Betsy's family, that had had that kind of privileged access, her sister was in a sexual relationship with the overseer, William Yard, but the whole thing blew up when William Yard was caught in the act with Dolly, Betsy's sister. And the family is sort of sent out of the house into the fields, but then they've been used to taking supplies from the plantation stores. And so Betsy's brother gets accused of stealing stuff from the stores and then actually gets hungry. And Betsy is clasped in irons and separated from her newborn child. And the child then dies because he's not getting her breast milk. And it's just this absolutely horrendous scenario. And on top of that, they hear the news that the heiress that I've written about, Sarah Newton, who was by that point, Lady Holt, had just died. And she doesn't have any children, her sister doesn't have any children. And so Betsy and her family are terrified about what on earth's going to happen to them. Who are they going to be left to? Will they all be left to the same person? Will they be separated? And so it's quite a big crisis point that leads to her to run away and, you know, because she's got four children there, she's got an extensive family and it's a big thing to a very dangerous voyage to undertake. But what's really fascinating is that part of her claim to free status goes back to the fact that her grandmother was actually declared free by an English court of law in 1768.
[17:20]
C
I mean, it's such a remarkable story. So many twists and turns. And speaking of stories with twists and turns, you referred earlier to the story of Elizabeth Vassall Fox. Tell us a bit more about her. Is it true that she faked her own daughter's death?
[17:35]
B
Yes, it is. And we've got handwritten account of it by her and she talks about it in her diaries. Yeah. So quite an extreme story. So Elizabeth Vassall of Jamaica marries Sir Godfrey Webster, who's a lot older than her and they're not in love. She calls him her tormentor. They have this awful relationship. But she does persuade him to take her traveling around Europe and in Italy, she falls in love with Lord Holland and becomes pregnant by him. So they know that that's going to cause a crisis and that a divorce is inevitable. And I think a kind of shocking thing that we don't always realise is that in this period after a divorce, the father automatically got custody of the children because, after all, they were his property. And that was the sort of attitude. So the father got custody and Elizabeth knew that. So she took steps to keep her favourite child, who was her daughter Harriet, who was quite a young girl at the time. And she's in Italy traveling. So Godfrey's back in England already, and that's part of the problem. He's been in England for more than nine months, for a year, so he couldn't possibly be the father of the child she's carrying. So she's traveling with her servants in Italy and she gets out her watercolor paints and paints, red spots on Harriet's arms and legs, and tells everybody that she must have some sort of infectious disease and sends the servants away. And then she gets out her guitar case, which was oblong shaped, and fills it full of stones and clothing and a wax mask and sends it to the British Consulate in Livorno to be buried, because it is, of course, the body of her dead daughter. And then she smuggles Harriet via Hamburg dressed as a boy, back to England and she manages this deception. And actually, her husband, Sir Godfrey, is absolutely miserable. He has many flaws, but he does seem to have genuinely loved his daughter and has mourned her for a long time. But then later on, when Elizabeth is Lady Holland and her husband goes into politics. She realizes that she's got to come clean because it would be far too great a scandal and ruin his political career if it came out inadvertently. So she has to come clean and that means she has to give Harriet back to Sir Godfrey. And she's, you know, absolutely distraught. She said, you know, she was my favourite child. Would to God I was allowed to bring her up. And it becomes the subject of gossip and, you know, scandal. And her husband is equally blamed because, you know, they think, well, Lord Holland must have been in on it. He must have known. And Lord Byron, who is one of her regular dinner guests, comes up with a little epigram. He says, have you heard what this lady in Italy did that to save a child, she buried a kid because part of the gossip had been exaggerated that she didn't put a dead goat in the guitar case to give an authentic smell to the coffin.
[20:38]
A
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[22:50]
B
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[23:24]
C
Another extraordinary story that you referred to earlier is Francis DL who was an heiress, a mixed heritage heiress who was declared legally white in 1738. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about her story and what it can reveal about, as you alluded to earlier, relationships between white enslavers and enslaved women.
[23:48]
B
So Frances Dale is the daughter of Gibson Dale, who's a Scottish merchant who starts working for the South Sea Company and then ends up in Jamaica. That's where he meets Susannah Augier, who becomes Francis's mother quite quickly. And Susanna's father was a Huguenot, a French Huguenot merchant called John. And we don't know who her mother was, but John has got at least seven or more children that mentioned in, you know, between his will and other sources who were of mixed heritage had probably enslaved African mother or mothers because there's so many of them that they probably have more than one mother. So Susannah Augier comes from this quite extended family of mixed heritage men and women, but she's not actually mentioned in her father's will. In his will he sets free or manumits several of his children, but not her. So the inference is that she was actually freed before his death. And this is partly perhaps because she's by then in a relationship with her father's much older business partner, which is. I mean, when I say relationship, you know, I use that word with caution because the power dynamic in these encounters is really quite extreme. But I mean, in this particular story, the women do have quite long term relationships. So I think it's perhaps too simplistic to call it rape, which it clearly was in other examples. But I think these relationships would definitely have an extremely unequal power dynamic and all sorts of sort of other issues. So Francis Dale had a African grandmother, is what we're saying here, an enslaved African grandmother. So in Jamaica there's this really extraordinary legislation as to where they define whiteness. And this comes out of a political conundrum where the white elite do not want people of color to vote in elections or have civic rights, but particularly to have the vote. And in order to exclude people with African ancestry from voting, they then have to define who's white and who's black. And they come up with this formula that I think you have to be four generations removed from your African ancestors. If you're 1 16th black, then you can be counted as legally white. And that's enacted in 1733 and Daniel Livesey has done the pioneering research on this. But almost immediately after this legislation has passed, you then get people who don't quite count, like the Augier family, petitioning for an exemption. So they want to be classed as white, even though they don't fit the new bill's definition of who's white. And that's where Francis and her half sister and her mother show up. And Susanna Francis mother, petitions for this exemption in 1738, and she's one of the earliest people to place one of these petitions.
[26:48]
C
And do we have any sense of how when Frances married and went to Britain, how she would have been viewed because of this mixed heritage?
[26:59]
B
It's quite irritating because there was no kind of real smoking gun in the archive where, you know, her mother in law rants for two pages about it. So she actually meets George Duff, who's the son of Lord Braeco, who later becomes Earl Fife in Bath, the famous dating marriage mart of the 18th century. She meets him in Bath, but it's clear that his parents are definitely not in favour of the match to start with. So we know that they disapprove, but it's never explicitly stated why. And there are several reasons why they might disapprove. There is her African ancestry, but she's also a merchant's daughter. And not only that, her father is at by this point being sued by the South Sea Company, so that's not very appealing. And she's also illegitimate, as they would have seen it at the time. She's born outside of marriage. Her parents never married. So there are lots of reasons why his family might not be that keen, especially because actually they haven't been part of the aristocracy for very long. And Lord Braco was not born. Lord Braco and his father was a merchant. So they're trying to climb the social ladder and, you know, they're afraid. There's a great phrase in the archive, it said they're afraid of being seen as mere upstarts, the dunghill. But I think, like, as in most of these stories, eventually her wealth, you know, trumps all other considerations and they do get married.
[28:22]
C
Obviously, her grandmother, as you say, we think was probably an enslaved woman, but she herself profited from slavery. With her and with all of the other women as well. In your book, did you get any sense of reflections from them about the morality of where their money came from?
[28:44]
B
There really is vanishingly little evidence of any of them seriously examining the ethical situation that they're in. And I think they're more on the same side as most of the enslavers. Well, you know, to start with, it wasn't something that was really being questioned across society, but as the abolition campaign gets going and followed by the fight for emancipation, I think it is something that they then have to start justifying. And one of the other women in the book, Anna Susanna Watson Taylor's husband, George Watson Taylor, was an MP in the 1820s, and he goes on the record and has long speeches saying, it's not my fault, it's not my fault I became an enslaver. I just fell in love, married this woman. And I mean, belishing slightly there, but, you know, it was thrust upon them. So, no, they don't seem to have really reflected. I think, again, it's the money, and I think their livelihoods depended on enslaved labor. And that trumped all other considerations. And, you know, I think there's another woman in the book, Martha Swinburne, who has actually lost money. She's become, in her interpretation of the idea, quite poor because her estate in St. Vincent has been destroyed during the what's known as the Black Carib Wars. There was, you know, the British were fighting with the French invade the island, and the local indigenous Garifuna are part of that struggle. And she also has a large number of children, and she's petitioning the government in Britain and in France saying, that she wants compensation and she just positions herself as the victim in the story and only ever sees the enslaved people as a source of wealth to support her family. And she really never recognizes their humanity at all. Bizarrely, you know. Well, actually, not that unusually, there are people enslaved by her who share her name. You know, when you look at the list of people enslaved at Baker's plantation in St. Vincent, you find Old Martha and Young Martha, and yet she doesn't see them as human, really.
[30:54]
C
And one more woman I wanted to ask you about, that you profile is actually the aunt of Jane Austen, a woman called Jane herself, or Jenny. You say we can see echoes of her in certain Austen characters. Who might we draw those parallels with?
[31:10]
B
So her married name was Jane Lee Perrott, but as you say, because Jane Austen is so famous and I'm on first name terms with my character, I do refer to her as Jenny, which was the nickname her husband gave her. And I'm going to get in trouble with some Jane Austen scholars, I'm sure. But you know that Austen has been minutely studied by pretty much everyone. And there are some scholars who don't like to draw parallels with people in Jane's life and, you know, emphasise her imagination. But scholars have identified three characters in Austen's novels who seem to have parallels with the character of Jane Leigh Perrott. The first one is Mrs. Allen, who with her husband Mr. Allan, hosts Catherine Morland in Bath in Northanger Abbey when she first goes there. And Jane Austen actually stayed with Mr. And Mrs. Leigh Perrott when she first visited Bath, so they've drawn that parallel. And Jane Lee Perrott didn't have any children. Mr. And Mrs. Allen are also childless and they're both quite vain of their appearance and they both frown on a fashion for white dresses. So they're these kind of little hints. And then the second character is Aunt Norris in Mansfield Park. And this is a funny one because, well, Aunt Norris is sort of stingy and mean and sort of looks down on her, her nephews and nieces, which is certainly the way Jane Austen and her brothers and sisters looked on Jane Lee Perrott, who was really wealthy but, you know, didn't help them out at all. I think she once lent Jane Austen a dress to wear to a ball, but that's kind of the extent of her largess. But also, Aunt Norris has this sort of habit of sponging and sort of popping things into her pocket that she likes the look of as she's wandering around. And Jane Lee Perrott famously is arrested for shoplifting some lace from a shop in Bath and actually ends up imprisoned in Ilchester jail for about six months while she's waiting for the assize court judges to come back to that area because she's just missed the summer assizes and the judges aren't coming back till March. So she's stuck in prison for quite a while. And then there's like, the gossip kind of continues after that. She is actually exonerated, but there's this other rumor that starts flying around that she tried to steal a plant from a garden shop. So she has this sort of dodgy reputation, although I've sided with the scholars who conclude that actually the whole thing is a blackmail plot and she didn't actually steal the lace. And then the third character is Lady Denham in Sanditon, who again, is this very wealthy old lady. Because Jane Lee Perrott lives into her 90s, the parallel is again that there's a lot of younger relations vying for the inheritance. And Jane Austen herself sort of writes about keeping a sharp lookout for their legacy. So Jane Lee Perrott's husband James dies just a few months before Jane Austen does. And the Austen siblings were expecting to get some kind of inheritance from him because he's their mother's brother. But the will says that they will inherit, but only after his wife dies. And it's a real blow. And actually Jane Austen herself writes about how miserable it's made her, and then she dies soon afterwards. So it's quite tragic, really. So it's the older lady with the younger relations vying for her inheritance. But actually, reading Jane Lee Perrott's letters in a lot of depth, I found some other very, you know, these kind of little references. So both Lady Denham and Jamie Perrott keep pet cows at home. There's also this moment where Lady Denham gives a relation a very special gold watch, and Jane Lee Perrott also gives her, her great nephew a gold watch. But these are the kind of minutiae that literary scholars like to dwell on. But we'll see if anyone else thinks there's anything to go on on these cows and watches.
[35:10]
C
Certainly. Intriguing, isn't it? So looking at this from 2025, where can we see the legacy of all of this today?
[35:21]
B
So the women in my book were part of a much bigger story of enslavement and empire. And it's just another way, a sort of very human and connected way of into the story of how the profits of enslavement came into Britain and benefited Britain while at the same time removing humanity from whole swathes of people of African origin and having such a negative impact on the Caribbean to this day. But at the same time, you know, I think we have these strong legacies of racism and inequality in our society. You know, you can clearly draw the line of descent from this history of enslavement to the problems we still face with racism in our society today. So I think it's really, really important to be able to understand this history if we've got half a chance of trying to tackle the problems we face now.
[36:21]
C
And finally, Miranda, you also looked at your own family's connections to slavery. What did you find and kind of how did it connect to the stories that you looked at in the book?
[36:33]
B
Well, I think while researching the book, I was sort of constantly surprised by just the depth of connections to enslavement in so many different kind of corners of British history. And, you know, I think that if you look at most families that were at a certain level in Society in the 18th century, there is some kind of connection to enslavement or colonialism somewhere in that story. And on my mother's side of the family, she comes from a sort of gentry family in North Wales, where I live now. My grandfather actually sort of up grew, traced the family tree in a lot of depth, in lots of different directions. So I've managed to identify several people from the family tree who were connected. Probably the strongest connections were two family members who were merchants in Liverpool who were strongly engaged in trafficking enslaved Africans. North Wales is quite close to Liverpool, and quite a lot of Liverpool slaving merchants bought up land and retired to beautiful North Wales. So some of my ancestors were part of that pattern. And I found another fifth great grandfather. We all have a lot of fifth great grandfathers. But thanks to my grandfather's genealogical research, we found a fifth great grandfather called Robert Cooper Lee, who was primarily a lawyer in Kingston. And bizarrely, his name then appears on some of the legal documents that I looked at for the book. So he's the lawyer who sort of draws up Elizabeth Vassall's marriage settlement with Sir Godfrey Webster. So that was quite a moment to see his name on the piece of paper. And he was also part of this tendency for white men in the colonies to develop relationships with women of color. But he, unusually, brought this woman, Priscilla Kelly, back to London and married her in St. George's Hanover Square. So that's an interesting story. And I sort of only just sort of scratched the surface with this history. And I'm hoping now, free of writing Heiresses, I can delve further into the archives and find out more about my own family's story.
[38:37]
C
That was historian and author Miranda Kaufman speaking to me. Ellie Cawthorn Miranda's book Heiresses, Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery is out now. You can find more on Britain's role in slavery, including an article by David Olashogga on how ordinary Britons profited from the transatlantic slave trade on our website historyextra.com.
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Summary5 min read

Podcast Summary:

History Extra Podcast
Episode: "Britain's female slaveowners: the heiresses who made fortunes from enslavement"
Date: October 5, 2025
Host: Ellie Cawthorn
Guest: Dr. Miranda Kaufmann, Historian and author of "Heiresses"

Main Theme

This episode explores the overlooked history of British women—often heiresses—who inherited and profited from Caribbean slavery, funnelling immense wealth into British aristocratic society. Historian Miranda Kaufmann discusses her research into these women, how their wealth shaped British culture and class, and the complexities of race, gender, and morality in their stories.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Inspiration and Scope of the Research

Miranda Kaufmann began researching female slaveowners when commissioned by English Heritage to investigate links between country houses and slavery or abolition (02:52).
She focused on women who married into the British aristocracy and brought at least £5,000—often from Caribbean plantations—into Britain (04:01).
Identified over 150 heiresses fitting this profile, highlighting how widespread the phenomenon was (05:00).

Notable Quote:

"One really startling statistic is that 40% of the claimants, when enslavement came to an end and the government offered compensation... were women."
— Miranda Kaufmann (04:20)

2. Patterns of Inheritance and “Caribbean Heiresses”

Men typically preferred male inheritance, but lacking sons, they left estates to daughters, nieces or more distant female relations (04:20).
Wealth often trumped social prejudices in British marriage markets, making these women highly sought after (06:11).
Despite being 'nouveau riche,' the financial power of these heiresses outweighed concerns over illegitimacy or possible African ancestry (06:11).

3. Connections to Plantations and Enslaved People

Experiences varied: some women never visited the Caribbean, while others grew up amidst the brutal realities of plantation life (08:09).
- Example: Mary Ramsey lived in Kingston, Jamaica, for 20 years, likely witnessing violence and the direct consequences of slavery (08:30).
- Frances DL managed plantations from afar, instructing agents on branding enslaved people and business dealings (09:00).

Notable Quote:

"[Frances DL] is very involved... she's actually even discussing what kind of brand should be seared onto their skin to mark her ownership"
— Miranda Kaufmann (09:00)

4. Tracing the Voices of Enslaved People

Slave registers from 1817 onward allowed researchers to piece together some family histories (10:49).
The parallel lives of heiresses and the enslaved are illustrated by the story of Lady Holland and Mrs. Phillis, her wet nurse’s daughter, whose lives diverged dramatically but remained intertwined (11:30).

Notable Quote:

"I have this dream that someone's going to write an opera with their two parallel lives. I can just imagine Lady Holland on one end of the stage and Mrs. Phillis on the other, singing about their shared childhood and then how their lives wildly diverged."
— Miranda Kaufmann (13:10)

5. Remarkable Stories

Betsey Newton (14:06): Escaped from Newton Plantation, Barbados, to London to seek freedom for her children. Her story revealed literacy among some enslaved families and the importance of legal status in England (14:06–17:20).
Elizabeth Vassall Fox (Lady Holland) (17:35): Faked her daughter’s death to retain custody after divorce, an act both scandalous and deeply personal, illustrating legal and parental constraints on women in the period (17:35–20:37).

Notable Moment:

“She gets out her guitar case... fills it with stones and a wax mask and sends it to the British Consulate to be buried, because it is, of course, the body of her dead daughter. And then she smuggles Harriet... back to England.”
— Miranda Kaufmann (18:40)

Frances DL (23:47): Of mixed heritage, legally declared white in Jamaica in 1738 as local laws tried to define who could access rights and privileges. Her life exemplifies the complexities of race, inheritance, and social mobility.

6. Reflections on Morality and Agency

Most heiresses did not seem to grapple morally with owning enslaved people and prioritized wealth and family interests (28:43).
When pressed as abolitionist movements grew, excuses ranged from passivity to claims of victimhood by the system.

Notable Quote:

"There really is vanishingly little evidence of any of them seriously examining the ethical situation that they're in... Again, it's the money."
— Miranda Kaufmann (28:43)

7. Jane Austen’s Aunt and Literary Parallels

Jane Leigh Perrott ("Jenny"), Austen’s aunt, received an inheritance from Caribbean slavery. Her life and letters echo in several contentious or comic Austen characters:
- Mrs. Allen (Northanger Abbey)
- Aunt Norris (Mansfield Park)
- Lady Denham (Sanditon)
Jenny was arrested for shoplifting lace—a parallel to the petty behaviors of Austen’s fictional relatives (31:09–35:10).

8. Legacies and Contemporary Resonance

The influx of slave-derived wealth had a long-term impact, shaping the aristocracy and contributing to current inequalities and enduring racism (35:20).
Kaufmann emphasizes how closely entwined many British family histories are with slavery, even personally connecting her research to her own genealogy (36:21–38:37).

Notable Quote:

"If you look at most families that were at a certain level in Society in the 18th century, there is some kind of connection to enslavement or colonialism somewhere in that story."
— Miranda Kaufmann (36:32)

Memorable Quotes and Timestamps

On female inheritance:
“One really startling statistic is that 40% of the claimants... were women.” (04:20)
On agency:
“Frances DL... is actually even discussing what kind of brand should be seared onto their skin to mark her ownership.” (09:00)
On narrative possibilities:
“I have this dream that someone's going to write an opera with their two parallel lives...” (13:10)
On moral self-reflection:
“There really is vanishingly little evidence of any of them seriously examining the ethical situation...” (28:43)
On enduring legacy:
"You can clearly draw the line of descent from this history of enslavement to the problems we still face with racism in our society today." (35:20)

Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Story | |-----------|---------------------------------------------| | 01:58–02:52 | Episode/Book Introduction | | 02:52–04:01 | Origins of research, initial findings | | 04:01–06:02 | Patterns of female inheritance | | 06:02–08:09 | Social attitudes toward “Caribbean heiresses”| | 08:09–10:20 | Personal connections to plantations | | 10:20–13:55 | Tracing enslaved voices, Lady Holland/Phillis| | 13:55–17:20 | The story of Betsey Newton | | 17:35–20:37 | Elizabeth Vassall Fox fakes daughter’s death| | 23:23–26:48 | Frances DL and the invention of ‘whiteness’ | | 28:43 | Heiresses’ moral perspectives | | 31:09–35:10 | Jane Leigh Perrott and Austenian echoes | | 35:20–36:21 | Legacies and contemporary relevance | | 36:21–38:37 | Kaufmann’s personal family connections |

Conclusion

This episode offers a revelatory view of how British women actively participated in, profited from, and perpetuated Caribbean slavery, transporting vast privilege into the heart of the British elite. Miranda Kaufmann's research adds nuance to our understanding of Britain’s past and underlines slavery’s persistent implications for society and culture today.

Loading summary

Transcript43 lines

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[01:59]
C
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Women's role as slave owners is often overlooked, but just like men, they both profited from and maintained the institution of slavery. In her new book, Heiresses, historian Miranda Kaufman profiles nine women who married into the British aristocracy, bringing huge wealth generated from Caribbean slavery into the country. I spoke to Miranda to find out more. Thanks so much for joining me, Miranda, to talk about your new book, Heiresses. So in the book you look at the stories of nine wealthy women whose fortunes came from slavery. So what drew you to the subject of women who profited from enslaving people?
[02:53]
B
So it all went back to when I was commissioned by English Heritage back in 2006 to investigate links between their properties and enslavement and also in abolition. And I spoke to some of the leading scholars at the time I was still a PhD student. I spoke to Madge Dresser and James Wolven, who are amazing titans of British enslavement history, and they identified sort of about 10 different ways that a country house might be connected to enslavement for me to investigate. And that ranged from people owning plantations and people or investing in transatlantic trade, but also being merchants of produce like sugar or tobacco, or even with the abolition. If some of the men who owned these houses were involved in the parliamentary debates or at Kenwood, Lord Mansfield was the judge at some of the main court cases regarding the status of Africans in Britain. But one category that stood out was this category of heiresses. So if the man who owned the house married an heiress who had inherited wealth from Caribbean enslavement.
[04:01]
C
Before we kind of delve into individual stories, just give us a sense of the lay of the land. How common was it for women to inherit plantations in the Caribbean and the enslaved people obviously connected to those plantations, and what was the legal status of them being able to do so?
[04:20]
B
Men have always preferred to leave their property to other men across history. And you know, they have this beautiful vision of father to son inheritance stretching over the generations. But the lottery of human reproduction means that, you know, you've got 50% chance of a girl coming out. But men would, if they didn't have any sons, they would look at nephews, cousins, quite, sometimes quite distant male relations. But, but if none of those were available, then you get to daughters, nieces, granddaughters. One really startling statistic is that 40% of the claimants, when enslavement came to an end and the government offered compensation to enslavers to compensate them for their loss of enslaved property, 40% of the claimants of the people who got compensation payments were women. But for the book, I was looking particularly at heiresses. So some of those women didn't have a fortune. Some of them even earned a share in an enslaved person as a sort of investment, which was quite horrible. It sort of underlines the nature of treating humans like chattel property. But in the book, I was looking particularly for women who had inherited a significant amount of money, usually around at least £5,000, which was a lot at the time. So yeah, ones who had inherited a significant dowry or extensive property and had married in Britain. I found about 150 over 150 women and counting who fill that criteria of having significant wealth and marrying in Britain, because obviously there were also women who married in the Caribbean or lived, continued to live their lives in the Caribbean. But I was interested in the women who were bringing this wealth into Britain.
[06:03]
C
Can you tell us a bit more about the role of these so called Caribbean heiresses in Britain? British aristocratic society at this time. I mean, how were they viewed?
[06:12]
B
I think that these women, because of their wealth, were sought after by men at all stratas of society, from fortune hunters to dukes. So their wealth trumped pretty much any other kind of qualms we know from the pages of Jane Austen and all the other period dramas we know from that era. The way that it was sneered at to be in trade, and certainly any kind of illegitimacy or criminality was considered terrible. And there were strong class prejudices, but the wealth did seem to outweigh that. But in the Caribbean context, clearly it wasn't a long pedigree of aristocratic birth, because it was very much nouveau riche new money. And there was also these question marks about criminality and also racial ancestry. So long before transportation to Australia got going in the 17th century, particularly, criminals were transported to Virginia and Barbados particularly. But that sort of prejudice was then sort of spread across the Caribbean in general. So there are examples in plays of the time, sort of, say, oh, Miss Patty Plum of Jamaica, whose grandfather was sent there for stealing a goose or something like that. And then there's also, because of the really high prevalence of white men forming relationships with enslaved women or free women of color, there was this question mark over whether these women might have some kind of African ancestry. And that was also, you know, an issue that I think became more acute as the 18th century continued. Sort of attitudes to race evolved quite a lot over. Over the course of the 18th century.
[07:51]
C
And perhaps we can look at some stories that might tell us more about that later in the interview. But the women you looked at, as you said, they married in Brit, they brought their wealth to Britain. But how much interaction did they actually have with the plantations and the people that they enslaved back in the Caribbean?
[08:09]
B
Well, it really varied between individuals, and some of the women in the book actually were born in Britain, inherited these plantations, but had never actually been there, or some of them. You were born in the Caribbean, but then were sent to England for. Or Scotland for boarding school from quite an early age. But, I mean, one of them, Mary Ramsey, who later becomes Mrs. Richard Oswald, actually lived in Kingston, Jamaica, for the first 20 years of her life. Her father was a merchant, and she was growing up really a couple of blocks from the wharves of Kingston, and she would have been waited on by enslaved domestics. And I think she really got a sense of what her father was doing. He wasn't an importer of enslaved people, but he was trading in goods produced by enslaved people and their House was on parade, which is the main square in Kingston. And we know that that's where enslaved people might be hung or gibbeted if they were convicted of crimes, and their bodies were left there to rot for months. So she might have walked past that, or, you know, they said that you could smell a ship carrying enslaved people when it came into the harbor, you know, for miles before it arrived. And so she would have perhaps smelt those. And also, you know, there were these scrambles of sales when the enslaved people were docked and sold, and she might have heard those screams and things from her home. So she was really in the thick of it. But I think these women were involved. One of the women, Frances DL, we have some of her correspondence with her agents in Jamaica, and she's very involved. She's asking them to buy more enslaved people for the plantation. She's actually even discussing what kind of brand should be seared onto their skin to mark her ownership and her brother's ownership of these people. So that's quite eye opening. And she knows things like it's better to import various supplies from England rather than attempt to buy them in Jamaica because they're so expensive in Jamaica. So she's quite well versed in the whole business. And there are people who know England, enslaved people by name.
[10:21]
C
You point there to something quite interesting, which is obviously historians of slavery. One of the biggest challenges that they always face is trying to recover the voices of enslaved people themselves, which is obviously very hard in the historical record. But you say in the book that you've managed to find more than you thought you might. Can you tell us a bit about how looking at these heiresses has also opened up that. That window to the voices of enslaved people, too?
[10:49]
B
I've never really taken no for an answer on saying there's no evidence for the lives of black people. And I think that if you look hard enough, you can sometimes find pieces of a jigsaw to piece together. And I was looking at these family papers and other sources that, you know, if that's what you're looking for, then you can find more material. One of the interesting sources are these slave registers that from 1817 were kept every three years, where they wrote down the names of absolutely everybody on each plantation at the beginning, and then in later records, keep a record of births and deaths. So you have these fragmentary records for each individual, but it tells you their name, age, whether they were born in the Caribbean or in Africa, and sometimes some other notes. And so that allows you to piece together to some Extent, some family trees, at least through the matrilineal line, because who your mother was was much more important than who your father was. But in the book, I've managed to find corresponding details about those people. So Elizabeth Vassall, who inherited three estates in Westmoreland, Jamaica, when she was just 16, married to Godfrey Webster, who owned Battle Abbey, she's later Lady Holland, was born in Westmoreland, Jamaica, and was actually suckled by an enslaved black wet nurse as a baby alongside that. That lady's daughter. We don't know the. The wet nurse's name, but her daughter turns up later as Mrs. Phyllis. And so Phyllis, who lived at Friendship and Greenwich Plantation in Westmoreland, Jamaica, also appears in the letters of the Holland family. But one really interesting source is there's a Gothic novelist called Monk Lewis, who inherited two plantations in Jamaica on either end of the island. But there was one called Cornwall in Westmoreland, which happened to be adjoining Friendship in Greenwich, which was the. One of the plantations owned by Lord and Lady Holland. And he actually meets several people from Friendship and Greenwich when he visits his own plantation. He goes twice between 1815 and 1817. So we have these amazing encounters in there, particularly with Mrs. Phillis, who was almost, you might call, a foster sister to Lady Holland, who calls on Monk Lewis at his breakfast table and asks, you know, how is Lady Holland? How many children has she had? What's her life like? Now we know that Mrs. Phyllis's mother was Lady Holland's wet nurse. And so the two of them might well have sort of played together as young children. And I just find that fascinating, these two parallel lives. And I have this dream. There is now an opera house in the summer on the site of Holland House. And I have this dream that someone's going to write an opera with their two parallel lives. And I can just imagine Lady Holland on one end of the stage and Mrs. Phillis on the other, like, singing about their shared childhood and then how their lives wildly diverged.
[13:55]
C
Another story that you look at at the start of the book, which is not of an heiress, but, again, of an enslaved person, is the story of somebody called Betsey Newton. Can you share that with us?
[14:06]
B
Well, this is just this fascinating story that I think really surprises people and challenges their ideas about what the lives of enslaved people were like. So Betsy Newton managed to escape enslavement at Newton Plantation in Barbados and escape to London via St Vincent and actually sort of march up to the door of her enslaver's home and confront him and demand freedom for herself and her four children that she'd left behind. He concedes that she's free because she's set foot on English soil, but he absolutely does not want to do what she's asking, which is provide a document confirming her freedom and also conferring freedom on her children, which is what she desperately wants, because she wants to go home with that piece of paper and free her children, but there's absolutely no way he's going to do that. But she keeps on her campaign and she goes back to him over the years, but she never succeeds. But we know that she sort of kept in correspondence with her family back in Barbados, which again, shows that they were literate, they were writing letters, which is something that people don't always associate with the lives of enslaved people. And we know that she got married twice when she was in London, because every time she writes to her enslaver, she's got a different surname. It's a horrible story in a lot of ways, because the reasons that she felt forced to run away were that there had been this big crisis. And her family, you know, her family was actually a, you know, a relatively privileged family amongst the enslaved people. And there were big distinctions amongst the enslaved population between people who had some sort of privileges, sometimes, quite often because they had had relationships with the white plantation owners or overseers. But Betsy's family, that had had that kind of privileged access, her sister was in a sexual relationship with the overseer, William Yard, but the whole thing blew up when William Yard was caught in the act with Dolly, Betsy's sister. And the family is sort of sent out of the house into the fields, but then they've been used to taking supplies from the plantation stores. And so Betsy's brother gets accused of stealing stuff from the stores and then actually gets hungry. And Betsy is clasped in irons and separated from her newborn child. And the child then dies because he's not getting her breast milk. And it's just this absolutely horrendous scenario. And on top of that, they hear the news that the heiress that I've written about, Sarah Newton, who was by that point, Lady Holt, had just died. And she doesn't have any children, her sister doesn't have any children. And so Betsy and her family are terrified about what on earth's going to happen to them. Who are they going to be left to? Will they all be left to the same person? Will they be separated? And so it's quite a big crisis point that leads to her to run away and, you know, because she's got four children there, she's got an extensive family and it's a big thing to a very dangerous voyage to undertake. But what's really fascinating is that part of her claim to free status goes back to the fact that her grandmother was actually declared free by an English court of law in 1768.
[17:20]
C
I mean, it's such a remarkable story. So many twists and turns. And speaking of stories with twists and turns, you referred earlier to the story of Elizabeth Vassall Fox. Tell us a bit more about her. Is it true that she faked her own daughter's death?
[17:35]
B
Yes, it is. And we've got handwritten account of it by her and she talks about it in her diaries. Yeah. So quite an extreme story. So Elizabeth Vassall of Jamaica marries Sir Godfrey Webster, who's a lot older than her and they're not in love. She calls him her tormentor. They have this awful relationship. But she does persuade him to take her traveling around Europe and in Italy, she falls in love with Lord Holland and becomes pregnant by him. So they know that that's going to cause a crisis and that a divorce is inevitable. And I think a kind of shocking thing that we don't always realise is that in this period after a divorce, the father automatically got custody of the children because, after all, they were his property. And that was the sort of attitude. So the father got custody and Elizabeth knew that. So she took steps to keep her favourite child, who was her daughter Harriet, who was quite a young girl at the time. And she's in Italy traveling. So Godfrey's back in England already, and that's part of the problem. He's been in England for more than nine months, for a year, so he couldn't possibly be the father of the child she's carrying. So she's traveling with her servants in Italy and she gets out her watercolor paints and paints, red spots on Harriet's arms and legs, and tells everybody that she must have some sort of infectious disease and sends the servants away. And then she gets out her guitar case, which was oblong shaped, and fills it full of stones and clothing and a wax mask and sends it to the British Consulate in Livorno to be buried, because it is, of course, the body of her dead daughter. And then she smuggles Harriet via Hamburg dressed as a boy, back to England and she manages this deception. And actually, her husband, Sir Godfrey, is absolutely miserable. He has many flaws, but he does seem to have genuinely loved his daughter and has mourned her for a long time. But then later on, when Elizabeth is Lady Holland and her husband goes into politics. She realizes that she's got to come clean because it would be far too great a scandal and ruin his political career if it came out inadvertently. So she has to come clean and that means she has to give Harriet back to Sir Godfrey. And she's, you know, absolutely distraught. She said, you know, she was my favourite child. Would to God I was allowed to bring her up. And it becomes the subject of gossip and, you know, scandal. And her husband is equally blamed because, you know, they think, well, Lord Holland must have been in on it. He must have known. And Lord Byron, who is one of her regular dinner guests, comes up with a little epigram. He says, have you heard what this lady in Italy did that to save a child, she buried a kid because part of the gossip had been exaggerated that she didn't put a dead goat in the guitar case to give an authentic smell to the coffin.
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[23:24]
C
Another extraordinary story that you referred to earlier is Francis DL who was an heiress, a mixed heritage heiress who was declared legally white in 1738. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about her story and what it can reveal about, as you alluded to earlier, relationships between white enslavers and enslaved women.
[23:48]
B
So Frances Dale is the daughter of Gibson Dale, who's a Scottish merchant who starts working for the South Sea Company and then ends up in Jamaica. That's where he meets Susannah Augier, who becomes Francis's mother quite quickly. And Susanna's father was a Huguenot, a French Huguenot merchant called John. And we don't know who her mother was, but John has got at least seven or more children that mentioned in, you know, between his will and other sources who were of mixed heritage had probably enslaved African mother or mothers because there's so many of them that they probably have more than one mother. So Susannah Augier comes from this quite extended family of mixed heritage men and women, but she's not actually mentioned in her father's will. In his will he sets free or manumits several of his children, but not her. So the inference is that she was actually freed before his death. And this is partly perhaps because she's by then in a relationship with her father's much older business partner, which is. I mean, when I say relationship, you know, I use that word with caution because the power dynamic in these encounters is really quite extreme. But I mean, in this particular story, the women do have quite long term relationships. So I think it's perhaps too simplistic to call it rape, which it clearly was in other examples. But I think these relationships would definitely have an extremely unequal power dynamic and all sorts of sort of other issues. So Francis Dale had a African grandmother, is what we're saying here, an enslaved African grandmother. So in Jamaica there's this really extraordinary legislation as to where they define whiteness. And this comes out of a political conundrum where the white elite do not want people of color to vote in elections or have civic rights, but particularly to have the vote. And in order to exclude people with African ancestry from voting, they then have to define who's white and who's black. And they come up with this formula that I think you have to be four generations removed from your African ancestors. If you're 1 16th black, then you can be counted as legally white. And that's enacted in 1733 and Daniel Livesey has done the pioneering research on this. But almost immediately after this legislation has passed, you then get people who don't quite count, like the Augier family, petitioning for an exemption. So they want to be classed as white, even though they don't fit the new bill's definition of who's white. And that's where Francis and her half sister and her mother show up. And Susanna Francis mother, petitions for this exemption in 1738, and she's one of the earliest people to place one of these petitions.
[26:48]
C
And do we have any sense of how when Frances married and went to Britain, how she would have been viewed because of this mixed heritage?
[26:59]
B
It's quite irritating because there was no kind of real smoking gun in the archive where, you know, her mother in law rants for two pages about it. So she actually meets George Duff, who's the son of Lord Braeco, who later becomes Earl Fife in Bath, the famous dating marriage mart of the 18th century. She meets him in Bath, but it's clear that his parents are definitely not in favour of the match to start with. So we know that they disapprove, but it's never explicitly stated why. And there are several reasons why they might disapprove. There is her African ancestry, but she's also a merchant's daughter. And not only that, her father is at by this point being sued by the South Sea Company, so that's not very appealing. And she's also illegitimate, as they would have seen it at the time. She's born outside of marriage. Her parents never married. So there are lots of reasons why his family might not be that keen, especially because actually they haven't been part of the aristocracy for very long. And Lord Braco was not born. Lord Braco and his father was a merchant. So they're trying to climb the social ladder and, you know, they're afraid. There's a great phrase in the archive, it said they're afraid of being seen as mere upstarts, the dunghill. But I think, like, as in most of these stories, eventually her wealth, you know, trumps all other considerations and they do get married.
[28:22]
C
Obviously, her grandmother, as you say, we think was probably an enslaved woman, but she herself profited from slavery. With her and with all of the other women as well. In your book, did you get any sense of reflections from them about the morality of where their money came from?
[28:44]
B
There really is vanishingly little evidence of any of them seriously examining the ethical situation that they're in. And I think they're more on the same side as most of the enslavers. Well, you know, to start with, it wasn't something that was really being questioned across society, but as the abolition campaign gets going and followed by the fight for emancipation, I think it is something that they then have to start justifying. And one of the other women in the book, Anna Susanna Watson Taylor's husband, George Watson Taylor, was an MP in the 1820s, and he goes on the record and has long speeches saying, it's not my fault, it's not my fault I became an enslaver. I just fell in love, married this woman. And I mean, belishing slightly there, but, you know, it was thrust upon them. So, no, they don't seem to have really reflected. I think, again, it's the money, and I think their livelihoods depended on enslaved labor. And that trumped all other considerations. And, you know, I think there's another woman in the book, Martha Swinburne, who has actually lost money. She's become, in her interpretation of the idea, quite poor because her estate in St. Vincent has been destroyed during the what's known as the Black Carib Wars. There was, you know, the British were fighting with the French invade the island, and the local indigenous Garifuna are part of that struggle. And she also has a large number of children, and she's petitioning the government in Britain and in France saying, that she wants compensation and she just positions herself as the victim in the story and only ever sees the enslaved people as a source of wealth to support her family. And she really never recognizes their humanity at all. Bizarrely, you know. Well, actually, not that unusually, there are people enslaved by her who share her name. You know, when you look at the list of people enslaved at Baker's plantation in St. Vincent, you find Old Martha and Young Martha, and yet she doesn't see them as human, really.
[30:54]
C
And one more woman I wanted to ask you about, that you profile is actually the aunt of Jane Austen, a woman called Jane herself, or Jenny. You say we can see echoes of her in certain Austen characters. Who might we draw those parallels with?
[31:10]
B
So her married name was Jane Lee Perrott, but as you say, because Jane Austen is so famous and I'm on first name terms with my character, I do refer to her as Jenny, which was the nickname her husband gave her. And I'm going to get in trouble with some Jane Austen scholars, I'm sure. But you know that Austen has been minutely studied by pretty much everyone. And there are some scholars who don't like to draw parallels with people in Jane's life and, you know, emphasise her imagination. But scholars have identified three characters in Austen's novels who seem to have parallels with the character of Jane Leigh Perrott. The first one is Mrs. Allen, who with her husband Mr. Allan, hosts Catherine Morland in Bath in Northanger Abbey when she first goes there. And Jane Austen actually stayed with Mr. And Mrs. Leigh Perrott when she first visited Bath, so they've drawn that parallel. And Jane Lee Perrott didn't have any children. Mr. And Mrs. Allen are also childless and they're both quite vain of their appearance and they both frown on a fashion for white dresses. So they're these kind of little hints. And then the second character is Aunt Norris in Mansfield Park. And this is a funny one because, well, Aunt Norris is sort of stingy and mean and sort of looks down on her, her nephews and nieces, which is certainly the way Jane Austen and her brothers and sisters looked on Jane Lee Perrott, who was really wealthy but, you know, didn't help them out at all. I think she once lent Jane Austen a dress to wear to a ball, but that's kind of the extent of her largess. But also, Aunt Norris has this sort of habit of sponging and sort of popping things into her pocket that she likes the look of as she's wandering around. And Jane Lee Perrott famously is arrested for shoplifting some lace from a shop in Bath and actually ends up imprisoned in Ilchester jail for about six months while she's waiting for the assize court judges to come back to that area because she's just missed the summer assizes and the judges aren't coming back till March. So she's stuck in prison for quite a while. And then there's like, the gossip kind of continues after that. She is actually exonerated, but there's this other rumor that starts flying around that she tried to steal a plant from a garden shop. So she has this sort of dodgy reputation, although I've sided with the scholars who conclude that actually the whole thing is a blackmail plot and she didn't actually steal the lace. And then the third character is Lady Denham in Sanditon, who again, is this very wealthy old lady. Because Jane Lee Perrott lives into her 90s, the parallel is again that there's a lot of younger relations vying for the inheritance. And Jane Austen herself sort of writes about keeping a sharp lookout for their legacy. So Jane Lee Perrott's husband James dies just a few months before Jane Austen does. And the Austen siblings were expecting to get some kind of inheritance from him because he's their mother's brother. But the will says that they will inherit, but only after his wife dies. And it's a real blow. And actually Jane Austen herself writes about how miserable it's made her, and then she dies soon afterwards. So it's quite tragic, really. So it's the older lady with the younger relations vying for her inheritance. But actually, reading Jane Lee Perrott's letters in a lot of depth, I found some other very, you know, these kind of little references. So both Lady Denham and Jamie Perrott keep pet cows at home. There's also this moment where Lady Denham gives a relation a very special gold watch, and Jane Lee Perrott also gives her, her great nephew a gold watch. But these are the kind of minutiae that literary scholars like to dwell on. But we'll see if anyone else thinks there's anything to go on on these cows and watches.
[35:10]
C
Certainly. Intriguing, isn't it? So looking at this from 2025, where can we see the legacy of all of this today?
[35:21]
B
So the women in my book were part of a much bigger story of enslavement and empire. And it's just another way, a sort of very human and connected way of into the story of how the profits of enslavement came into Britain and benefited Britain while at the same time removing humanity from whole swathes of people of African origin and having such a negative impact on the Caribbean to this day. But at the same time, you know, I think we have these strong legacies of racism and inequality in our society. You know, you can clearly draw the line of descent from this history of enslavement to the problems we still face with racism in our society today. So I think it's really, really important to be able to understand this history if we've got half a chance of trying to tackle the problems we face now.
[36:21]
C
And finally, Miranda, you also looked at your own family's connections to slavery. What did you find and kind of how did it connect to the stories that you looked at in the book?
[36:33]
B
Well, I think while researching the book, I was sort of constantly surprised by just the depth of connections to enslavement in so many different kind of corners of British history. And, you know, I think that if you look at most families that were at a certain level in Society in the 18th century, there is some kind of connection to enslavement or colonialism somewhere in that story. And on my mother's side of the family, she comes from a sort of gentry family in North Wales, where I live now. My grandfather actually sort of up grew, traced the family tree in a lot of depth, in lots of different directions. So I've managed to identify several people from the family tree who were connected. Probably the strongest connections were two family members who were merchants in Liverpool who were strongly engaged in trafficking enslaved Africans. North Wales is quite close to Liverpool, and quite a lot of Liverpool slaving merchants bought up land and retired to beautiful North Wales. So some of my ancestors were part of that pattern. And I found another fifth great grandfather. We all have a lot of fifth great grandfathers. But thanks to my grandfather's genealogical research, we found a fifth great grandfather called Robert Cooper Lee, who was primarily a lawyer in Kingston. And bizarrely, his name then appears on some of the legal documents that I looked at for the book. So he's the lawyer who sort of draws up Elizabeth Vassall's marriage settlement with Sir Godfrey Webster. So that was quite a moment to see his name on the piece of paper. And he was also part of this tendency for white men in the colonies to develop relationships with women of color. But he, unusually, brought this woman, Priscilla Kelly, back to London and married her in St. George's Hanover Square. So that's an interesting story. And I sort of only just sort of scratched the surface with this history. And I'm hoping now, free of writing Heiresses, I can delve further into the archives and find out more about my own family's story.
[38:37]
C
That was historian and author Miranda Kaufman speaking to me. Ellie Cawthorn Miranda's book Heiresses, Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery is out now. You can find more on Britain's role in slavery, including an article by David Olashogga on how ordinary Britons profited from the transatlantic slave trade on our website historyextra.com.
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