George Hibbert

West India merchant, slave and plantation owner, collector and philanthropist . He has an entry in the ODNB as 'merchant.'

1. George Hibbert was born in 1757 to Robert (1717-1784) and Abigail Hibbert née Scholey (1721-1793) of Stockfield Hall near Manchester. Robert was a West India merchant and cotton manufacturer in Manchester with commercial premises on King’s Street, he was also a trustee of the dissenting Cross Street Chapel. George’s uncle Thomas Hibbert (1710-1780) was known as ‘the late Mr. Thomas Hibbert, who had for forty or fifty years before been the most eminent Guinea factor in Kingston, and a most respectable character.’ The family owned several large estates in Jamaica. George was educated at Reverend Booth’s academy at Woolten Hall. In 1784 he married Elizabeth Fonnereau (1765-1841), the daughter of Phillip Fonnereau, an M.P. and Director of the Bank of England. The couple had fourteen children.

2. In 1781 he left Manchester and joined the family counting house Hibbert, Purrier and Horton which was engaged in the West India trade. The partnership reconfigured several times over the years; it was involved in the shipping and distribution of slave produced good, particularly sugar from Jamaica. Over the course of his career he became the senior partner in the Hibbert family partnerships, the Chairman of the West India Dock Company, a central figure in the Society of West India Planters and Merchants, an Alderman for the City of London (1798-1802), a Member of Parliament for Seaford (1806-1812), and finally the Agent for Jamaica (1812-1831). Such was his reputation within the City that by 1816 he was acknowledged as ‘an eminent West India Merchant, whose family has long is considered as the head of the principal commercial house in Jamaica.’

3. George was a leading member of the proslavery lobby. He acted as the Chairman of the Society of West India Merchants. He gave evidence to Parliament in 1790 supporting the slave trade and making claims for compensation. He gave three speeches to Parliament in 1807 during the slave trade debates which were later published. He wrote a pamphlet on the Slave Registry Bill in 1816. As Agent for Jamaica he acted as the an intermediary between the imperial Parliament and the Jamaica House of Assembly.

4. In 1793 George Hibbert became involved in the plan to build closed wet docks for the West India trade. The West India Docks were constructed on the Isle of Dogs and opened for business in 1802. George invested £2,000 and acted as Chairman of the West India Dock Company eight times between 1799-1815.

5. As a philanthropist George was involved in the establishment of the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck in 1824. Sir William Hillary recruited George to help generate funds from his mercantile connections in the City. He was also involved with the London Institution which was founded in 1805 and paid for by subscription. The enterprise involved George Hibbert and his friends Sir Francis Baring and John Julius Angerstein, as well as the abolitionists Henry and John Thornton, and Zachary Macaulay who acted a managers. The Institution was intended for the diffusion of useful knowledge in the arts and sciences with an eye to increasing the productivity and efficiency of commerce and industry both at home and out in the empire. Hibbert took a leading role in its establishment and acted as both President and Vice-President between 1805-1830. The magnificent building at Finsbury Circus was designed by William Brooks and constructed by Thomas Cubitt.

6. George was a member of a number of learned societies and clubs including the Freemasons, the Linnean Society, the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. He became a member of the elite bibliophile group the Roxburghe Club in 1816. In 1810 he was sponsored by Earl Fitzwilliam and elected to the Brooks’s.

7. George collected books, prints and art. Major sales of his collection took place in 1802, 1809, 1829 and 1833, 1860, 1868 and 1902. The sale in 1829 was noted in that it ‘occupied altogether forty-two days... There were eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-four lots, representing about twenty thousand volumes; and the total amount realised was twenty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three pounds, nine shillings.’ George Hibbert inherited a country house and estate called Munden in Hertfordshire through his wife Elizabeth Fonnereau’s uncle Rogers Parker in 1829. Prior to that he had resided at different times in Broad Street in the City, Clapham Common Northside and Portland Place. George died at Munden in 1837. Munden remains within the Holland-Hibbert family today.

Hancock, David. "Hibbert, George (1757–1837), merchant." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 23 Jan. 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13194. George Hibbert and his family context are the subjects of Kate Donington, The Bonds of Family: Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British Atlantic World (Manchester University Press, 2019).

1. Oliver Vere Langford, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies, Vol.4 (London, 1919), p.195. Sir Thomas Baker, Memorials of a Dissenting Chapel, its foundation and worthies; being a sketch of the rise of Non-Conformity in Manchester and the erection of the Chapel in Cross Street, with notices of its Ministers and Trustees (Manchester, Johnson and Rawson, 1884). Evidence given by Hercules Ross, 1790-91, quoted in Richard Sheridan, ‘The Commercial and Financial Organisation of the British Slave Trade, 1750-1807’, in Economic History Review, New Series, Vol.11, No.2 (1958), p.255.

2. John Watkins, Frederic Shoberl and William Upcott, A biographical dictionary of the living authors of Great Britain and Ireland (London, Henry Colburn, 1816), p.155.

3. George Hibbert, The Substance of Three Speeches to Parliament on the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and on the Petition Respecting the State of the West India Trade in February & March 1807.

4. Evidence given by George Hibbert, Report from the Select Committee into the means of improving and maintaining the foreign trade of the Country (London, 1823), p.142.

5. http://rnli.org/safetyandeducation/teachersandyouthleaders/teachingpacks/Pages/Save-lives-at-sea/Tab2/How-did-they-plan-for-success.aspx [accessed 01/02/2013]. Janet C. Cutler, ‘The London Institution, 1805-1933’, unpublished PhD Thesis (University of Leicester, 1976).

6. http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/fellowship/Fellows1660-2007.pdf [accessed 01/02/2013]; http://www.roxburgheclub.org.uk/membership/index.php?MemberID=32; http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/hibbert-george-1757-1837 [accessed 01/02/2013].

7. Pieces from George Hibbert’s collection featured in the ‘Prized Possessions’ exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge which ran from 25 May 2010 to Sun 26 September 2010; William Younger Fletcher, English Book Collectors (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1902), p.302.

Portrait of George Hibbert by Thomas Lawrence, 1811, © Museum of London.