Philip Monoux Lucas

Partner in Chauncy Lang & Lucas (q.v.) and husband of Sarah Lucas (q.v.), who as trustee under his will was awarded compensation for the enslaved people on several estates in British Guiana and St Vincent.  

1. Active in the West Indies c. 1802-1810 and acted as a resident agent (or factor?) in the slave-trade in St Vincent.

2. Recorded as "of Nottingham Place, co. Middlesex merchant" in 1827 in a settlement of annuities.

3. Burial of Philip Monoux Lucas of St Mary le Bon[e] 04/12/1830 at St John Hackney.

4. Will of Philip Monoux Lucas of [Nottingham Place] Marylebone proved 07/01/1831. In his will he names his children as Anna Maria, Harriet Fraser, Emma, James and George. He instructed his trustees to sell his estates in the Caribbean and set aside £50,000 of the expected proceeds to support an annuity of £600 p.a. to his wife Sarah, with the remainder settled in fifth shares on each of his children [subject in each case to pages of specific provisions].

5. Emma, the daughter of Philip Monoux Lucas and Sarah Lucas, married Edward Walker, a London solicitor who left £500,000 on his death in 1872. James Lucas, the son of Philip Monoux Lucas and Sarah Lucas, was a famous eccentric who became known as "Mad Lucas" or "The Hermit of Hertfordshire" and left £120,000 on his death in 1874. The man who was probably the second surviving son, George Lucas (1818-1890), left £57,510 0s 1d on his death at Fitzroy house, Fitzroy Square, 'late of 18 Hamilton Terrace' on 07/06/1890.

6. Anna Maria Lucas married the Austrian Joseph Ferdinand Count de Taafe and Harriet Fraser Lucas married Count Samuel Ernest Alexander Konarski.

1. Cambridge University Library 'Royal Commonwealth Society 2007 Exhibition', showing letters from Add MS 8369 concerning the Lucas family, including (1) George Case to Messrs P.M. Lucas & Co. 05/08/1806 re imminent arrival at St Vincent of Case's ships Bess and Eliza with 426 enslaved; Gabriel James & Co. 09/02/1807 to Messrs Lucas on departure from Liverpool of their ship Stork for Angola, requesting information on slave-market in St Vincent to be left for the Captain of the Stork at Barbados and (3) John Bean to PML from Trinidad 12/07/1807 on arrival in Trinidad of ships Aurora and Agreeable with 290 and 250 enslaved respectively.
   See the handlist of items in the Royal Commonwealth Society exhibition, ‘Slavery, shackles and sugar: the route to freedom?’, Cambridge University Library, 2007 at RCS 2007. Lucas family papers are held in Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Lucas family: Business and family papers, MS Add.8369

2. West Sussex Record Office AMS29 Mss 26547.

3. Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online].

4. PROB 11/1780.

5. William D. Rubinstein, Who were the rich? 1860- (Volumes 3 and 4, manuscripts in preparation), reference 1872/112. The ODNB entry for James Lucas erroneously gives his father's name as James Lucas but correctly identifies him as a major plantation owner and partner in Chauncy Lang & Lucas: F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Lucas, James (1813–1874)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17131, accessed 28 Dec 2014]; National Probate Calendar 1874; National Probate Calendar 1891.

6. Email from Charles Ross Baron of Biggar, 02/06/2013.

We are grateful to Charles Ross Baron of Biggar for his assistance with compiling this entry.