Joseph Lamb

Newcastle coal merchant, and trustee and executor (with James Graham-Clarke) of John Graham-Clarke (both of whom q.v.), the mortgagee of several estates in Jamaica.  

1. Coal-merchant and partner with John Graham-Clarke in the Northumberland Glassworks. Subscriber in January 1839 to an appeal in the Newcastle Chronicle for funds to establish a salary for George Thompson, 'The Distinguished Advocate of Universal Emancipation', and to the retirement appeal for the leading abolitionist William Turner, whose Unitarian school he had attended in the 1780s.

2. Mayor of Newcastle 1836-7. In 1851 he was living aged 60 Alderman and Coalmerchant with wife Amelia aged 40, son Richard aged 22 (also a coal merchant), daughter Amelia aged 21, son Wentworth (an officer in the Dragoon guards) and daughters Josephine 17 and Blanche 7 at Axwell Park Winlaton, Co. Durham. By 1861, Amelia Lamb was a widow, still living at Axwell Park Winlaton aged 55, with son Robert aged 24 coalowner and daughter Mary aged 17.

3. Joseph Lamb and Amelia Michael, eldest daughter and second child (born 15 March 1803) of Dr. Joseph Michael and Amelia Michael née Wilson of Stamford, married 4 May 1824.

T71/1212 and T71/872 Hanover No. 41 (Bamboo); T71/857 St Ann No. 481 (Thatchfield); T71/874 Trelawny No. 423 (Schawfield).

1. John Charlton, Hidden Chains. The Slavery Business and North East England 1600-1865 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2008), pp. 140 and 142; Joseph Lamb is described as among 'owners of plantations in Jamaica run by agents' and as a 'slave-owner', ibid pp. 140 and 142 (sourced in the former case to the Graham Clarke Papers in the Gloucester Record Office), but the evidence in the compensation records suggests his connection was as trustee and executor; his involvement in the compensation claims is noted and may have been the source of confusion, ibid p. 144; for the two subscriptions ibid, pp. 82 and 145.

2. Charlton, Hidden Chains, p. 144; 1851 census online.

3. Mabel Lamb, Some Annals of the Lambs: A Border Family (privately printed, 1926), p. 76. Lamb's book has extensive information about Lamb's personal, business and public life. See chs. IX-XIII. (The book is available in the Internet Archive.)

There are Lamb family papers in the Northumberland Record Office: see TNA-NRO: Lamb papers.