Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Moody

Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Moody, who together with his wife Martha Moody (q.v.) was awarded the compensation for one enslaved person in British Guiana.

1. Moody was involved as one of two Commissioners in the inquiry in Tortola in the 1820s into 'apprenticed' people taken off slaving ships, and came into sharp conflict with his co-Commissioner John Dougan.

2. Thomas Moody was a claimant on the insolvent estate of Daniel Allt in Berbice in 1827; in 1852 an advertisement ran in the Times for around £120 unclaimed stock standing in name of Lt-col Thomas Moody of Waltham Abbey, dividends unclaimed since 1839. Col. Moody was among the spokesmen for slavery targeted by the Anti-slavery Monthly Reporter.

3. The will of Major Thomas Moody in His Majesty's Corps Engineers of 7 Alfred Place Bedford Square was proved 29/10/1849. A death notice for Col. Thomas Moody of the Royal Engineers who died 05/09/1849 at Berrywood House, near Southampton was for the same man: his death notice said he was a native of Longtown (now Cumbria) and uncle to the Rev. Clement Moody of Sebergham 'in this county.' In the will made 29/03/1821 his executors were his father-in-law Richard Clement senior of Barbados, Richard Clement jun, of Inner Temple brother of my wife, and 'my friend Thomas Dougan' of Demerara, the latter suggesting that at least at the time he made his will he had property in Demerara, although the will makes no reference to specific 'slave-property' or to estates either in the Caribbean or England. A codicil of 09/01/1843 identified him as 'now a Lieutenant-Colonel', and identified his eight surviving children; he also replaced his (dead) executors with his wife Martha, her brother Hampden Clement and Michael McChlery of Finsbury Circus.

T71/886 British Guiana claim no. 1376.

T71/1610 09/01/1836 letter from Thos Moody Waltham Abbey re. certificate for this claim.

1. Anita Rupprecht (2012) ‘When he gets among his Countrymen, they tell him that he is free’: Slave Trade Abolition, Indentured Africans and a Royal Commission, Slavery & Abolition, 33:3, 435-455, DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2012.668300

2. Times 04/04/1827 p. 4; Times 02/06/1852 p. 1.

3. PROB 11/2101; The Carlisle Patriot 22/09/1849 [accessed via http://longtown19.website.orange.co.uk/some_soldiers_from_longtown.45.html 30/11/2011].