William Vaughan

London merchant and prime mover in the development of wet docks in London in the 1790s, culminating in the building of the West India and London Docks. He has an entry in the ODNB as 'promoter of the London docks' which is silent on his connections with slavery.

1. Son of Samuel Vaughan, the Unitarian London merchant and absentee owner. Brother of Benjamin Vaughan (1751-1835), briefly MP for Calne (1796) and radical self-imposed exile to America from 1797, and of Samuel Vaughan junior, proprietor of Flamstead and Vaughansfield in St James (each of whom q.v.).

2. Will of William Vaughan merchant of Fenchurch Street proved 17/06/1850.

E. I. Carlyle, ‘Vaughan, William (1752–1850)’, rev. Anita McConnell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2013 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28155, accessed 28 Oct 2015]

1. David Beck Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition 1783-1807 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 64.

2. PROB 11/2115.