Isabella Hazlitt formerly Bridgwater (née Shaw)

Isabella Bridgwater or Bridgewater nee Shaw married William Hazlitt as her second husband in 1824: they separated in 1827. She had firstly married Henry Bridgwater or Bridgewater of Grenada at Forres in 1813, having travelled to Grenada to join her sister Mary Downie. Under Henry's will made in December 1819, she was left an annuity of £300 p.a. The nature and extent of the family's slave-ownership is not yet clear: by the time of the Slave Registers, Henry Bridg[e]water was shown with no more than a half-dozen enslaved people in St George's, but the annuity to his wife suggests a much larger scale of wealth. Henry's father Thomas Bridgewater (q.v.) was probably a large-scale owner on Tobago, but again his holdings on Grenada have not been identified to date.

Stanley Jones, 'The second Mrs Hazlitt - a problem in literary biography', The W.D. Thomas Memorial Lecture delivered at University College Swansea 17/11/1981 (Swansea, 1982).