John Hope, 5th Earl of Hopetoun

5th Earl, son of General Sir John Hope, 4th Earl of Hopetoun (1765-1823), and Louisa Dorothea (1786-1836), daughter of Sir John Wedderburn Bart. Claimed as one of the executors of Francis Grant (q.v.) but he is not named among the co-executors who were the awardees of the compensation for the Blackness estate in Westmoreland Jamaica.

1. Lord-Lieutenant of Linlithgowshire.  Left £103,878 in 1843. Married Louisa Bosville Macdonald 04/06/1826. One son, John Alexander.

2. Among John Hope's siblings was Louis Hope (1817-1894), the 7th son of the 4th Earl and Louisa. Louis Hope was a pioneer of the Queensland sugar industry in Australia. Moving from Britain to New South Wales in 1843, then to Moreton Bay in 1848 and Ormiston in 1853, Hope developed sugar production from 1865. He also advised and supplied plants to John Buhot (the son of the Barbados merchant of the same name) and Claudius Whish - both key figures in the industry's development. Hope imported and exploited Pacific Islands labour on his sugar plantations; if they were not enslaved workers they were close to being so.

T71/871 Westmoreland No. 82.

1. William D. Rubinstein, Who were the rich? A biographical dictionary of British wealth-holders Volume Two 1840-1859 (MS) reference 1843/32 (who says that some sources give 1803 as his birth year); www.thepeerage.com [accessed 02/10/2011].

2. A. A. Morrison, 'Hope, Louis (1817–1894)', Australian Dictionary of Biography.