John Foster Barham

Eldest son of Joseph Foster Barham, Whig MP for Stockbridge, 1807-32, and Lady Caroline Tufton, daughter of Sackvill Tufton, 8th earl of Thanet. In September 1832 succeeded his father to estates in Pembrokeshire, Stockbridge and the West Indies. The Barham family had owned and operated the Mesopotamia estate for over a century and ‘took a special interest in their slaves’ by inviting missionaries to educate them. However, John Barham ‘never visited Jamaica and took little interest in his property there’.

By 1836 he was under medical superintendence and in March 1837 he was certified by a commission of lunacy as of ‘unsound mind’. He died in March 1838.

He married Lady Katherine Grimston, daughter of James Walter Grimston MP, 1st earl of Verulam on 14 January 1834. They had no children.

His widow administered his estate: those in Pembrokeshire and the West Indies were entailed on his brother Charles Henry (1808-78, q.v.) (briefly Whig MP for Appleby in 1832) (following problems with John Barham’s next of kin and brother William – who died shortly afterwards).

James Owen, 'Barham, John Foster (1799-1838)' forthcoming in the History of Parliament Online 1832-1868; FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online]; Welsh biography online for the Barham family.

For Barham's lack of interest in his WI property: R.S. Dunn, ‘The story of two Jamaican slaves: Sarah Affir and Robert McAlpine of Mesopotamia Estate’, in R.B. Sheridan and R.A. McDonald (ed.), West Indies accounts: essays on the history of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic economy in honour of Richard Sheridan (1996), pp. 188-210; N. Draper, The price of emancipation: slave-ownership, compensation and British society at the end of slavery (2010), p. 40.

Barham’s papers and correspondence are held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.