Thomas Collett

London merchant, partner and trustee of John Powell (q.v.), and mortgagee-in-possession of the Bagdale estate in St Elizabeth Jamaica with Powell in 1762 and then alone 1763-1769. Collett was alive in 1773 when John Powell's will was proved, but no will has been found for him.

1. Nicholas Newton, owner of Bagdale estate in St Elizabeth in Jamaica, surrendered it in 1761 to his mortgagees Lascelles & Maxwell, who according to Simon D. Smith sold it immediately to 'the London merchants Thomas Collet and John Powell' [q.v].

2. Probably the Thos. Collett who in 1753 was the owner of the slave-trading voyage of the Albinia from London to the Gold Coast and then to Jamaica, captain John Gilbert.

3. Possibly the Thomas Collett who was listed in the Jamaican Quit Rent books for 1754 as the owner of 5 acres of land in Westmoreland and 500 acres of land in St Elizabeth, total 505 acres.

4. Perry Gauci described Thomas Collett as William Beckford's 'general man-of-business' and then business partner in Beckford, Collett & Evans in Nicholas Lane (1763-1767) and Collett & Co (1767-1772), and gave a brief background on Collett as previously a captain in the West India trade.

1. S. D. Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648-1834 (2006) p. 183.

2. www.slavevoyages.org.

3. 'A List of landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of acres each person possessed taken from the quit rent books in the year 1754', TNA CO 142/31 transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples2/1754lead.htm.

4. Perry Gauci, William Beckford: First Prime Minister of the London Empire (Yale, 2013) pp. 152 and 262.