Robert Porter

Returned Jamaica slave-owner, of London, with a portfolio of urban investment in Brighton and Cheltenham as well as land in Ireland. He was probably the man who appeared as a witness in the inquest of Miss Catherine Cashin in London in August 1830, when that Robert Porter was living at 84 Harley Street, and said he had been Surgeon-General in Jamaica for 22 years, returning to Britain in 1818.

1. In 1835 Dr George Dempster, late of Jamaica, sent from Fifeshire 3 mechanics and 12 agricultural labourers, indentured for five years, to the plantation of Dr Porter, Cocoa Walk, Jamaica. They were each to have bed, board, washing, clothing and about £5 yearly.

2. Will of Robert Porter [late of Jamaica but now of Upper Seymour Street in the parish] of St Marylebone [made in 1836] proved 28/10/1837. Under the will [parts of which are very difficult to read] he left lands in Co. Donegal in Ireland to his sister Jane Porter and then to Frances Keir formerly Frances Briggs late of Jamaica of Edinburgh. He left his wife Elizabeth an annuity of £400 p.a. secured on Cocoa Walk, and his daughters Jane Anne Porter and Anne Frances Porter £1000 each, as well as his partly-paid shares in the Jamaica Steam Navigation Company. He left his property at 3 and 4 Bloomsbury Place Brighton to his daughter Eliza Munro; his property at 33 and 34 Promenade Cheltenham to his daughter Jane Anne Porter; and his property called Hanover House and Warwick House in Brighton to his daughter Anne Frances Porter, instructing his executors to clear the mortgage on Hanover House from his personalty. He left the Jamaica property itself which he described as Cocoa Walk and Cambridge Hill in trust for his daughters and their families, in a priority that could not be reliably deciphered.

3. Of his heirs, Eliza had married Alexander Thomson Munro of the Royal Horseguards before Porter made his will; Jane Anne, his second daughter, married Jackson Villiers Tuthill (17th Regiment, of an Irish family) in 1837 and petitioned for divorce in 1861; and Anne Frances Porter married David Lynar Fawcett at St Pancras in 1838. Alexander Thomson Munro was tried and sentenced to death in 1847 for the murder of David Lynar Fawcett, after a duel which had been sparked by the sale of a house by Munro on behalf of Fawcett, presumably one of the two Brighton properties: the sentence was commuted and Alexander Thomson Munro died in Ireland in 1867 leaving effects under £200.

J. St John Long, Discoveries in the Science and Art of Healing (London, 2nd. ed. 1831).

1. Inverness Courier, 09/12/1835.

2. PROB 11/1885/361.

3. Times 02/03/1837 p 7; TNA J 77/55/T51 Divorce Court File: T51. Appellant: Jane Anne Villiers Tuthill. Respondent: Jackson Villiers Tuthill. Type: Wife's petition [wx],1861; Ancestry.com, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-192 [database online]; https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18470816-1762 [accessed 18/08/2017]; National Probate Calendar 1867.

We are grateful to Paul Hitchings for his assistance with compiling this entry.