Andrew James Cochrane-Johnstone formerly Cochrane

Governor Dominica 1797-1803. MP for Stirling Burghs 1791-1797 and for Grampound 1807-1808 and 1812-1814. Owner of the Hope estate on Dominica and later an owner in Demerara. R.G. Thorne details Cochrane-Johnstone's speculative and sometimes fraudulent undertakings, including the scheme reported by William Beckford: To Beckford, Cochrane Johnstone confided his ‘Santa Croix speculation’. It involved buying a sugar plantation with 1,600 negroes on it on the former Danish island for £25,000 down, and transferring to it all the negroes on his Dominican plantations. This speculation, he claimed, he ‘certainly would not have entered on ... had I not viewed it as a fund for increasing the fortune of the head of my family—all my views are bent to increase my gallant nephew’s prospects—my daughter is already amply provided for’. After his conviction for a Stock Exchange fraud in 1814, he fled to France and thence to the West Indies, where [h]e discovered that his plantations in Dominica had already been sold to satisfy his creditors and failed to recover them by legal action. In 1819 he made a fresh start with a coffee plantation in Demerara, transferring slaves from Dominica. This latter movement of people corresponds with the entry for Hope in the 1820 and 1823 Slave Registers for Dominica, which shows 56 and 160 enslaved people respectively removed to Demerara.

He has an entry in the ODNB as 'politician and fraudster.'

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/cochrane-%28afterwards-cochrane-johnstone-%29-hon-andrew-james-1767-1833 [accessed 17/02/2016]; T71/350 pp. 168 - 172 and T71/358 128- 133.

Sugden, John. 2005 "Johnstone, Andrew James Cochrane- (1767–1833?), politician and fraudster." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2 Jul. 2019. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-14954.