British Guiana 640 (Prospect)

Parliamentary Papers p. 121.

T71/885: claim from George Rainy etc., as holders of an assignment from J.M. Petermeyer.

Journal of J.C. Cheveley vol. 2 p. 124: J.C. Cheveley visited 'the tall gaunt-looking store of Messrs McInroy Sandbach & Co., looked up to as the Rothschilds of Demerara, rich and influential. Many estates were heavily  mortgaged to them, their whole business connected to the arrangements to which the mortgagers were strictly tied down. All the sugar must be shipped home in THEIR ships, under THEIR agency both here and at home, and so much every year; all plantation stores to be brought of THEM; and other pickings, highly profitable to the mortgagee, who got full rates and commissions: considerably more so than planting was to unfortunate mortgagers, who got about as much as would just keep them on their legs. Other produce such as coffee and cotton was subject to like conditions. Here I found the Executive of this formidable establishment, Mr George Rainey, whom Mr Pattinson had told me I would find "very keen": slow-spoken, he had a sharp visage , high thin nose, and a cold quiet calculating grey eye. He and his coadjutor Mr George Buchanan brought enormous gains to the Liverpool House and to McInroy Parker & Co. in Glasgow, though they dealt fairly: their business was money-lending'. Ibid p. 129: Rainy bought a cargo of timber arriving from St Johns, New Brunswick, from the Pattinson firm (who had no platform on which to store it) on 'terms, not by any means prejudicial to Scotch interests'.