John Tarleton V

Liverpool slave-trader and slave-owner, son of John Tarleton IV and brother of Thomas Tarleton (q.v).

1. John Tarleton (1755-1841), uncle of Rev. John Edward Tarleton (q.v.), is in the ODNB as 'merchant and politician', and is described there as 'a leading West Indian and African trader' but his slaving voyages are detailed and their profitability briefly discussed. A commission of bankrupt was filed for Tarleton in 1815, which his son John Collingwood Tarleton contested on the grounds that Tarleton was not a trader. The compensation records for the Rabot estate on St Lucia confirm that John Tarleton and Daniel Backhouse went bankrupt and had an assignee in bankruptcy appointed; for La Resource in British Guiana in 1817 Robert Phipps registered enslaved people as 'atty. of J. Tarleton & sequestrator', again suggesting financial strain affecting Tarleton. The ODNB also notes that John Tarleton's father, John Tarleton [IV] (1718-1773) 'a merchant' had left an estate worth £80,000.

2. John Tarleton married Isabella Collingwood 26/10/1790 at Alnham, Northumberland.

3. In the case of Hornby and others v Tarlton [sic] and others at the Lancaster Assizes in 1819, a charge of fraudulent conveyance against John Tarleton was upheld. The account of the case shows that Thomas Tarleton (q.v.) had been paid £68,000 on his withdrawal from the slave-trading and West India mercantile partnership with John Tarleton and Daniel Backhouse [at a date not given], and that subsequently Daniel Backhouse was to be paid £53,000 for his share in the partnership, later reduced to £40,000 in 1808, to be paid over 12 years. Backhouse died in 1811. In 1815, John Tarleton conveyed his property to his son John Collingwood Tarleton, when it included a life-interest in a moiety of large estate in Northumberland yielding £1500 p.a. that formed part of his marriage settlement (he had subsequently bought the other half); a life interest in £1200; a fee simple in warehouses in Liverpool worth £300 p.a.; an estate called Ingram worth £23,000; a valuable lease of tithes; a splendid house in Gloucester Place; and a large property in Demerara.

1. ODNB online, David Richardson, 'Tarleton, John (1755-1841), merchant and politician'. See 'Ex Parte Hornby. In the matter of Tarleton', Basil Montagu and Richard Bligh, Reports of Cases in Bankruptcy, decided by the Lord Chancellor Brougham, the Vice-Chancellor Sir Lancelot Shadwell, and the Court of Review (1835) pp. 1-28 for more details on the bankruptcy case.

2. Ancestry.com, England, Select Marriages, 1538-1793 [database online].

3. The Times 13/09/1819 p. 3, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/4070569/daniel_backhouse_slave_trader/ [accessed 12/06/2016].

We are grateful for the help of Sean Creighton and Adam Tarleton with this entry.