Thomas Hopkinson

Awarded part of the compensation for the enslaved people on Bachelors Adventure and Enterprise in British Guiana with John Grant and William Chichester, as executors of John Hopkinson (q.v.), the father of Thomas Hopkinson. Almost certainly the same man as the Thomas Hopkinson who received part of the compensation for Clonbrock.

1. Adm. pens. (age 19) at TRINITY, June 26, 1819. [Elder] s. of John. B. at Demerara, British Guiana. School, Anstey, Herts. (Mr Goodyear). Matric. Michs. 1819; B.A. 1825. Adm. at the Inner Temple, Sept. 6, 1825. (Inns of Court.)

2. In 1828, a court case concerning a fraudulent man of colour from Demerara, George Barrow, alias John Thomas Hopkinson, gave some details of the family. George Barrow appeared to have had some knowledge of the Hopkinson family, including 'Thomas Hopkinson of Cambridge College'. The press reports allude to 'Mr Hopkinson, the banker', 'the respectable banker in Regent-street' and to Thomas Hopkinson of Trinity College, now in Demerara, himself a man of colour possessed of estates in the West Indies.

3. Will of Thomas Hopkinson 'formerly of Aigburth Hall but now of Sloane Street' proved 25/07/1837. He left his estate in trust (the sole trustee was John Philips Beavan). The property he inherited under his father's will he left for his brother Hugh Hopkinson, or if Hugh died to his sister Rebecca, and if his sister Rebecca died to his two nieces Ann Johanna and Emma Rebecca, the daughters of his late brother John. The property he inherited from his mother Rebecca Rogers and under the will of his late brother Joseph he left to the same two nieces.

T71/885 British Guiana no. 568B, which identifies him as one of the executors of John Hopkinson but gives him only as T. Hopkinson. T71/885 no. 572 shows the executors as Thos. Hopkinson, John Grant and William Chichester. T71/885 British Guiana no. 577.

1. Ancestry.com, Cambridge University Alumni, 1261-1900 [database online].

2. Times 11/08/1828 p. 3; 14/08/1828 p.3; 25/08/1828 p. 4; 17/09/1828.

3. PROB 11/1881/354.