Henry Hunter

1. Henry Hunter was attorney to William Murray, on Latium Estate, St James, Jamaica. Sturge and Harvey recounted a meeting with him at Latium estate in the account of their 1837 tour of the West Indies. Hunter was recounted as presenting "a series of calculations and statements, which show the immense superiority of free over slave labour, as well as the docility and industry of the negroes, when encouraged by judicious and kind treatment". The authors observed that from 1817 to 1834 the population of the plantation gradually decreased but since 1834 births had been very numerous. Benjamin McMahon worked as book-keeper under Henry Hunter in the late-1830s. According to McMahon, Hunter was a corrupt man who tried to stop McMahon from receiving his full salary on account of a gambling debt.

2. Hunter died 14th October 1844 in Jamaica. Probate was granted to one of his residuary legatees and niece, Sarah Lamplough, wife of Henry Lamplough, chemist and druggist of Holborn-hill, London. Effects under £450.

1. Joseph Sturge & Thomas Harvey, The West Indies in 1837: Being the Journal of a Visit to Antigua, Monsterrat, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbadoes, and Jamaica; Undertaken for the Purpose of Ascertaining the Actual Condition of the Negro Population of Those Islands (London, 1838), p. 7; Benjamin McMahon, Jamaica Plantership: Eighteen Years Employed in the Planting Line in that Island (1839) pp. 81.

2. National Probate Calendar 1866.

We are grateful to Cynthia Gentles and Siddharth Singh Ahlawat for their help compiling this entry.