Sir Joseph Birch 1st Bart.

MP for Nottingham, and Liverpool merchant with an entry in the ODNB. Commercial interests included East Indian stock and West Indian 'property' [i.e. slave-owning], centred on Liverpool. He was also a slave-trader, with nine voyages from Liverpool in various partnerships.

Connected through marriage to the Heywoods of Liverpool.

Remade his will 10 July 1833 because of both the Jamaican rebellion and emancipation: ‘in consequence of the change of circumstances and from the unfavourable alteration in the prospect of my affairs in Jamaica’. Left the bulk of his landed and remaining personal wealth to his only surviving son, Thomas Bernard Birch (1791-1880), Liberal MP Liverpool, 1847-1852 (q.v.).

Notes on Thomas B. Birch include more about the Heywood connection.

Brief biographies in R. G. Thorne (ed.), The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (5 vols., London, Secker & Warburg for the History of Parliament Trust, 1986), vol. 3, D. R. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons 1820-1832 (7 vols., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press for the History of Parliament Trust, 2009), vol. 4. The former describes him inter alia as 'Jamaican proprietor', while the latter says Birch 'had various commercial interests, including East Indian stock and West Indian property.'

Stephen M. Lee, ‘Birch, Sir Joseph, first baronet (1755–1833)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46310 [accessed 26/09/2012], which describes his commercial interests as including 'landholding in Jamaica.'