H.M. Hyndman

H.M. Hyndman, founder of Britain's first Marxist party the Social Democratic Federation, said that his grandfather had at one period 'been compelled to play the violin in public houses' but had prospered from extraordinary profits made in buying up estates in Demerara from alarmed Dutch citizens at the time of cession to Britain and from 'the ordinary profits of his plantations being steadily forthcoming on a large scale from the beneficial toil of his well-nourished negroes.'

The ODNB entry for H.M. Hyndman says 'Robert Augustus Hyndman, his grandfather, made a fortune by land speculation in Demerara, and developed West Indian connections through trade, marriages, and local politics.'

H.M. Hyndman, The record of an adventurous life (London: Macmillan, 1911), p. 1, 2-6.

Chushichi Tsuzuki, ‘Hyndman, Henry Mayers (1842–1921)’ ['socialist leader'], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34088, accessed 8 Dec 2014]