William Burge

Attorney-General for Jamaica, then from 1830 parliamentary Agent for Jamaica, MP at £1,500 a year; anti-abolitionist campaigner and writer. Through his wife he became the owner of an estate and enslaved people in Jamaica. In 1848 he was jailed for debt in Leeds, and died intestate in 1849. He has an entry in the ODNB as 'barrister, slave-owner and anti-abolition advocate'.

1. Matriculated Wadham College Oxford, 29 March 1803 (aged 16); BA, 1806. MA 1830; DCL 13 June 1834. Lawyer. Burge admitted to the Inner Temple 11 February 1803; called to the bar 20 May 1808; bench date: 20 January 1835. Treasurer of the Inner Temple November 1844-December 1845. Father was John Burge, esquire, of Castle Cary, Somerset.
   Joined Colonial Service and became Attorney General for Jamaica, 1819(?)-1831 and subsequently Agent for Jamaica. As Attorney General, Burge was instrumental in the arrest and exile of Louis Celeste Lecesne and John Escoffery in 1823 under the Alien Act. Louis Celeste Lecesne (c1798 – 22 November 1847) an anti-slavery activist from the Caribbean, on a committee to improve the rights of free men of colour, was arrested twice, and transported for life from Jamaica with John Escoffery, his brother-in-law.
   Burge was described by Holt as 'Jamaica's British lobbyist who had earned the contempt of the abolitionists during the preceding decade with his strong defense of slavery and of the [Jamaica] Assembly's prerogatives.' (Holt, p. 445 n.18) although the Assembly had divided over whether to grant Burge a gift of silver plate: (see Holt, p.222)
   Author various works in law and on Jamaica: see Historical Legacies.
   Living at 50 Wimpole Street in 1829 when his son Robert Sutton Burge was baptised in Marylebone. Three children baptised in St Catherine, Jamaica: Eliza Best (1810), Alexander McGregory Murray (1822), William Lee Baston (1819).

William Burge: History of Parliament online, entry by David R. Fisher / Margaret Escott [accessed 26/04/2018]; Whyte, William. 2016 "Burge, William (1786–1849), barrister, slave owner, and anti-abolition advocate." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 14 Jul. 2019. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-109602.

1. Ancestry.com. Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online]. Burge's [membership of the Inner Temple] (http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad/index.asp) [accessed 14/08/2012]; Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Freedom. Race, labor and politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 (Baltimore & London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Ancestry.com, London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 [database online].