Thomas Whitfoot Barton Hendy

Owner of the Swans estate on Barbados in the 1820s, for which he registered the enslaved people as 'Thomas W. B. Hendy.' Also probably the counterclaimant 'Thomas B. Hendy' under Barbados no. 5187.

1. Thomas Whitfoot Barton Hendy, baptized 9 December 1787, St Peter, Barbados; married Frances James Johnson 11 August 1810, St Lucy, Barbados.

2. In 1833 Hendy claimed that planters were open to the emancipation of the enslaved but that they would only cooperate with the government if adequate compensation were paid; and only full compensation would avoid the ruin of the planters.

3. Hendy was the author of two pamphlets: (1) ‘Hints on the Propriety of Establishing by Law the Civil Rights of the Free People of Colour in the British West India Colonies as a Preliminary Step to Emancipating the Slaves . . .' printed for him by R. T. Edgar (Newcastle: 1824); and ‘An Attempt to Prove the Fallacy of Inflicting Corporal Punishment to Prevent or to Lessen the Commission of Crime, and the Propriety of Immediately Restricting it to Slave Women.' (Bridgetown: The Globe Office 1833). It is not yet known what was his connection with Newcastle that underpinned the local printing of the 1824 pamphlet.

1. Barbados Church Records, 1637-1887, FamilySearch; Caribbean Marriages, 1591-1905, FamilySearch, accessed 18 February 2016.

2. Kathleen Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados 1823-1843 (1995), p. 23 citing letter of Hendy to Edward Stanley, 15 July 1833, CO28/112.

3. Mitchell's West Indian Bibliography http://www.books.ai/9th/Hen-Hik.htm[accessed 11/08/2016].

We are grateful for the help of Sean Creighton with this entry.