Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital

The Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital owned Golden Vale reportedly between 1788 (TNA gives 1793) and c. 1811, having taken it over 'for a debt of £55,000.' The estate had been advertised for sale by auction at Garraway's Coffee House on 28/01/1803, apparently unsuccessfully. James Hakewill states it was sold to Alexander Kinloch and John Steel in 1811 but Charles Pole MP mentioned in a Parliamentary debate in 1816 that Golden Vale was still in the ownership of the Hospital. The path to its ownership is not yet fully clear to LBS. The Hospital also claimed the compensation for a series of Jamaican estates in the Chancery suit of Pratt v Willis (q.v. under John Willis).

The date of 1788 and the debt of £55,000 are given in review of Captain Layman's 'Outline of a Plan' in Literary Panorama Vol. 3 p. 264; the 1793 date appears in The National Archives, 'British transatlantic slave trade records', http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/british-transatlantic-slave-trade-records/ [accessed 04/02/2019]; Advertisement dated 31/12/1802, London Gazette 15551 p. 97, in which it was said 'The Estate being the Property of Greenwich Hospital, and the Chief Object of the Commissioners being to realize the Value thereof in England, they will allow a reasonable Time for the Payment of the Purchase-Money by Instalments, the Principal being secured to their entire Satisfaction'; James Hakewill, A Picturesque Tour of Jamaica, 'Golden Vale, Portland'; Parliamentary Debates from Year 1803 to the Present Time (1816) pp. 560-564.

We are grateful to John Wood for his assistance with compiling this entry.