Genealogy Page One

News in July 2006: The history websites on this domain now have a companion website, and an updating website as well, on a new domain, at Merchant Networks Project, produced by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens (of London).

This new website (it is hoped) will become a major exercise in economic and maritime history, with much attention to London/British Empire and some attention to Sydney, Australia.

This article below is in follow-up to The Blackheath Connection - a website book by Dan Byrnes...

The question - who owned the convict ships bringing prisoners to Australia from Britain? - has been one of my long preoccupations. It has already produced The Blackheath Connection, (discovered in 1989), which outlined how a major proportion of ship managers chartering ships to government for convict transportation 1786-1800 were residents of a compact suburban area of London, Blackheath, or had strong connections there. ([1]) Blackheath was then, and it remains, "a stockbroker belt", and in the 1780s, various of it residents were "names" at Lloyd's of London, ship insurers. There were also at Blackheath, questions of intermarriedness amongst families, hardly surprising given tendencies to coherence in the maintenance of social class at a time, when, for the affluent, land acquisitions and opportunities for secure investment provided new opportunities, despite a war with France, and after damaging mercantile scatterings due to the American Revolution, when the highly-valued West India trade was at issue due to the outcome of the American war.

Given those difficulties, from the 1790s, new trends in the British (and Scottish) exploitations of Eastern trade became a way out, as this paper hopes to demonstrate. The exploitation of opportunities arising in Australasia were a sub-set of this trend, although to say this might initially suggest that one agrees with the theory of V. T. Harlow, that the phased-in colonisations of Australasia were part of Britain's ponderous but successful "swing to the East" as an Imperialistic exercise after the American Revolution. ([2]) I do not agree here with Harlow, since the British colonisation from 1786-1788 of eastern Australia was a unique venture, a disposal of social scum that had later to be rationalised. How the decision to undertake the venture has been rationalised-over-time forms the many substances of "the Botany Bay debate", which I take to be decided in the following terms - Botany Bay was settled chiefly, and rather desperately, as a convict colony, and any other concerns were entirely subsidiary. The venture was contradictory and full of the paradoxes for social philosophy that oppress any society as it handles criminals, often the merely semi-criminal, or the merely hapless. The early Australian colony was not meant to develop a mature economy, but hopes were held out for the rehabilitation of the hapless - the unorganised integration of mutually exclusive propositions, it was hoped, would result in respectable (and profitable?) colonies in a land that was suitably distant as far as the managers of convict transportation were concerned. (In Australian political history generally, the beginnings of the resolution of these grotesque contradictions are much discussed in respect of the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, the first governor with a military background to appear after the variable success of governors drawn from a naval background.)

Prior to completion of this article, I used a genealogical database holding up to 65,000 individual entries to make a longitudinal study of the genealogies of English merchants. ([3]) Perhaps the most fruitful book in this line of research is the quite-recent title, Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.) Brenner, I take it, demonstrated that there was greater genealogical coherence in trading history, and in merchant biographies, than had been previously thought. Which is to say, that families engaged in England's international trade tended to stay together in trade (and often in clusterings of trade, such as the Levant Company, or East or West India trade) where possible, whether or not their members entered politics, or married into the aristocracy. This was due to many factors, including class consciousness, the maintenance of family fortunes, commercial and family tendencies in favour of the employment of nephews, and also to the ability of such families to place money in secure investments. This was more so after the disaster of the South Sea Bubble (1720-1723) produced an investment house which could give secure returns to annuities, while the East India Company also provided useful investment returns to the affluent. These tendencies can also be noticed in some London-based families engaged in aspects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

It is evident from one study I undertook in this longitudinal light, A Bitter Pill ([4]), on the scattering of British merchants by the American Revolution, that many British merchants with investments in North American, and/or the West Indies, should not be seen as individuals, or even partnerships, but as part of family groupings wielding economic power. Given that they were so scattered, the outcome of the American Revolution was presumably painful commercially and financially, as well as emotionally in family terms for both the British and Americans. This scattering left great rents in any fabric of continuity that British merchants families might have expected to enjoy, to 1775.

Given such evidence, later from 1786, it becomes noticable just how few London-based merchants became interested in commercial opportunities in the Pacific, and nearby regions, due to Britain establishing a convict colony at Sydney. It is also remarkable that of the merchants who were involved, and here one can hardly fail to notice the Enderby whalers, so few have been examined by Australian historians, at least to 1800, or even to the close of the Napoleonic wars, in 1815. In this context, what we also find from an examination of Australian writings, is a somewhat picaresque set of tales of commercial adventuring, also involving New Zealand and various Pacific islands, that was both land and sea-based. Wool production of course was being promoted as a way to better develop New South Wales. These picaresque tales, involving figures such as merchant Robert Campbell "of the Wharf" at Sydney, the officers of the New South Wales Corps, Alexander Riley, John Macarthur, a variety of ships captains, arguments over the establishment of a banking house (Bank of New South Wales), have provided a great deal of popular history, and also a more sober theory on the economic development of eastern Australia, staple theory, where the paramount author is Hainsworth.

However, the development of this body of Australian writings has never been greatly informed by observations about concurrent developments in British commerce. So in this paper, I have tried to realign relevant information. My finding is that from 1810 to the time of the gold rushes, the 1850s, the dense intermarriedness of many merchants, most of them based in London, should be recognised as a significant factor by Australian writers. Given the use of a genealogical database, for periods prior to 1850, one can hardly notice one London-based investor in an Australian colony without also noticing a likewise-interested father-in-law, son-in-law, brother-in-law, uncle, cousin, nephew, or some network of affiliations that were almost as close as family affiliation. And this, in an atmosphere where rising Whiggish hopes and expectations were suffused with the ideology of expansive Imperialism.

Increasingly to 1850, as the population compositions of colonies changed, "the convict taint" of Australian colonisation was noticed less frequently. Meanwhile, in New South Wales, the families who became more affluent due to their regular employment by government, or successful economic activity, plus successful investment, also tended to intermarry densely. This is seen for example in Mowle's somewhat snobbish genealogical treatments of pioneering families. ([5]) This meant that Australian development was dominated by two sets of intermarried groups. Also, that any cross-marriages between the two sets of intermarried groups, an intermediate zone where the Macarthurs of NSW figure noticeably, only served to make existing sets of affiliations more dense. But such cross-marriages happened relatively seldom, the two sets of intermarrieds - British and Australian - tended to communicate via agency set-ups or banking arrangements of varying complexity and success, rather than via relatives. Sometimes the agents, of course, can be seen to have their own useful family networkings, but here, their networkings forms kinds of sub-patterns in the patterns overall - the metaphor of a tapestry with a complicated design is appropriate.

And all this is complicated by another little-recognised set of factors - the affairs of merchants active in India or at Canton, China, who had links with London-based Anglo-Australian merchants, and/or their connections in Australian colonies. These sets of merchant linkages - further sectors needing to be examined - also remain difficult to trace. (Here, and oddly enough, it is perhaps illustrative to mention that Australian writers have produced almost nothing which allows one to tell which of any tea dealers, anywhere in the world, became dominant in bringing tea to Australian colonies, or whom were their overseas associates might have been; or which ships were used notably for tea import. In a country so devoted to tea-drinking as Australia became, this lack of information is remarkable! It is also illustrative of precisely the kinds of problems of lack of information that this paper addresses)

With all this, it becomes apparent that if the regular business of transporting convicts is seen not as penal history, but maritime history, it might have been strange if the ship managers (or charterers) involved, did not invest in Australian colonial business. With trying to tackle this aspect of the overall genealogical patterns involved, it becomes apparent that Australians and English writers, both, have shied away from making observations. The information is complex to handle. Many convict contractors are listed in Bateson's 1959 book, The Convict Ships, as are the ships bringing 160,000 convicts to Australia. It still remains impossible to find genealogical information on many of these convict contractors. ([6]) Those who can be usefully identified are treated as accurately as possible in proceeding section of this paper, from about 1800. (Convict contractors active till 1800-1810 have been treated in my earlier writings).

This notable aspect of The Blackheath Connection - intermarriedness - becomes a main theme for this paper, as my finding is that, using the shipping lists provided in Bateson's book, The Convict Ships for an examination of the ownership and management of convict shipping from 1800, intermarriedness is a powerful theme, but too-little explored. Intermarriedness, that is, of ship owners or their connections, and in Britain, mostly about London, and not in the Australian colonies. This intermarriedness is so strong a theme, that Australian nineteenth century economic history, of banking, investment, provision of shipping, will remain inadequate until the theme is treated seriously.

Behind this remark is knowledge drawn from The Blackheath Connection. Given that nineteenth century Australia, and New Zealand, were heavily reliant on British shipping, the one factor that Australian historians have continually overlooked in discussions of economic history, of "finance", of staple theory, of business development, even of convict transportation, is ship insurance. I here propose a simple-enough proposition as explanation for what this paper presents - a claim that the charterers to government of convict shipping to Australia, to 1865, and their associates, were businessmen who came from families which were often genealogically or otherwise socially interconnected. These families were often interconnected as to their finances and business dealings. If they were dealing with distant Australia, they all had one financial pressure in common - the costs of ship insurance. Quite simply, they insured each others' ships. As the men of "the Blackheath connection" had earlier done, John St. Barbe, the Enderby whalers and their South Whale Fishery associates, the slavers Camden Calvert and King, alderman George Macaulay - against the wishes of the East India Company. ([7])

It is this factor which helps explains why such narrow groupings of merchants, and families, retained their grip on Australasian business developments - apart from questions related to the strictly maritime conduct of convict transportation. (And one here recommends that historians should view convict shipping to Australia as Broeze does - as intercontinental shipping ) From the time of the first major transportations of Irish convicts, it had been moralistically observed that an in-group of merchants based in London were dominating convict transportation. ([8]) The problem is that an explanation has never been advanced for such moralistic complaints.

Also, from about the 1830s, the ship-management aspect of convict transportation tended to fall into fewer hands. Frustratingly, some members of this shrinking band of ship managers still elude investigation. The biography of any of them that is most dense with useful information on commercial patterns is Broeze's treatment of Robert Brooks, a boringly commercial man with a sedate family history. ([9]) Brooks' own family situation was less widely-intermarried with others of like interests in Australia, but his usual business networks were often composed of men whose families were closely-linked, genealogically, and this makes Broeze's biography of Brooks valuable. However, given that by 1860, convict transportation as a system had shrunk to Western Australia only, and was in very few hands, it is necessary to ask - what become of merchant and merchant-family groupings that had been active earlier? They and their affiliations had largely diffused into the banking system generally, that is, into banker and other partnerships and affiliations which had made their nest-eggs in Anglo-Australia, and by 1860 also been stimulated by exciting gold rushes. And so, between 1830 and the 1860s, networks of intermarried people, and their agents, in both Britain and Australasia, had made a skein-work of Australian colonial banking systems in a way that provided stability to the financing of Australian development. Apart from questions of mining in Australian economic history, perhaps the last colonial merchant who can be treated in the tradition of picaresque story-telling in a pioneering environment is Robert Towns. For what we find from Salsbury and Sweeney's set of biographies in the context of the development of stock exchanges, is a relatively open economic system which newcomers could enter with relative ease. ([10]) There was little point by 1870 in picaresque story-telling about "economic development".

But from the 1830s till 1900, handling the data arising from banking history still involves the researcher in treating long skeins of genealogical data. ([11]) So it was that the economic management of convict transportation, as maritime business, passed into the general schemes of things economic in nineteenth century Australia - with some surprises found when data is regathered. Surprises concerning what can be regarded as literary heritage in Australia... while, by early 2000, resources to be found on the Internet provide relatively little help on inspecting a complicated century-long pattern. ([12])

Any follow-up to The Blackheath Connection would need to proceed from 1800-1810. Even from studies on London businessmen/shipowners around then, it is evident that business from 1800 operated in a modified institutional setting. This was partly due to changes in the attitude of the East India Company, Britain being on a war footing with France, and a generational change in the composition of merchant groupings. A fresher attitude prevailed, one less burdened by the traumas of the outcome of the American Revolution.

In respect of the ownership of the convict ships sailing to Australia, an unexpected literary element enters into discussions. It is the fact (or, observation), that until 1800, the narratives of the British colonisation of eastern Australia are often picaresque. This quality of the picaresque also enters into discussion of maritime history - until 1803. But after 1803, the management of convict transportation became more systematic; the shipowners involved in the business, which was increasingly monitored by government, and government surgeons, tended to be more sedate and also commercially responsible. From 1800, apart from tales of mutinies, difficult voyages and so on, the stories arising from convict transportation become less picaresque, and ironically, long later, the element of the picaresque attaches itself to the tales of the arrival of free migrants - or tales of bushrangers harrassing authority in eastern Australia. Or land explorers moving south, north, or west. Or the settlement, without convicts, of Western Australia and South Australia. Later, the wildcat adventures of gold rushers become evident. Do Australians come to expect strong presence of picaresque elements in their history-writing?

Taking this sort of literary conditioning for granted, I had assumed until a few years ago that the picaresque would be the tradition for an Australian writer to continue to work in. This assumption failed to work. The material needing treatment in this sector of maritime history is non-picaresque, and has first to be handled in terms of genealogy. This is in order to find which material should then be regathered so that further inquiry can proceed. Perhaps this has occurred to other Australians, who have remained puzzled? That is just one reason to present this material...

Bateson's book, The Convict Ships, is still the only comprehensive source of such maritime information, and any improvement of his listings would entail a large research project. ([13]) Australian researchers still lack registers of migrant/commercial shipping that can be tied usefully to information on ship ownership.

A problem associated for the historian with Bateson's appended information is that a ship sailing to Australia, even a convict transport, can become so to speak, multidimensional in terms of the information a historian might wish to register. A convict transport voyage might present the experience of crew members or passengers - as registered in a diary, a ship's log, or other information - and potentially could be used for natural history, penal history, social history, to supplement maritime history. A voyage to Australia is often seen as a central episode in the biography of an emigrant to Nineteenth Century Australia. In this sense, it is useful to regard the convict ships as "mailmen" between Britain and Australia, and to keep track of the messages that mariners (and/or their employers) created, carried, sent, or answered. Viewing ships simply as "mailmen" between Australasia, the Pacific, and Britain seems to be an idea that has occurred to few Australasian historians.

One thing Bateson did not attempt with his book was to explain the commercial motives of any ship owner for chartering a vessel as a convict transport. Trying to explain this became the point of departure for my own research; one could see this perhaps as simply the beginnings of "the business history of a new ocean, the Pacific". I found, that information abounds on some convict contractors. With others, information can be pieced together only slowly. Annoyingly, some contractors still remain resistant to research. ([14]) ([15])

It should be explained, that Bateson's book also emphasises many of the contradictions inherent in convict transportation - such as, the risk of a ship mutiny, needless cruelty and callousness, unavoidable illness aboard a ship, versus, voyages which were notable for the good health and safety of the convict passengers... not to speak of the inherent contradictions of Britain's penal policy - or indeed, the contradictions of any handling at all of the so-called criminal classes of any society, during any era.

Here, anecdotes gave opportunities for Bateson's gift for narrative (he was a newspaper man). Further, Bateson's anecdotalism appears to have met a cultural need in his readers - his candid comments (and his use of relevant, reliable citations) can serve to underpin cultural prejudices on the cruelties of the convict transportation business - which were picaresque cruelties on the move. Thus, one could read Bateson's anecdotes, then Clark's novel, For The Term Of His Natural Life, then Robert Hughes' indictment of convict transportation, The Fatal Shore, and feel comfortable with drawing drastic conclusions about man's inhumanity to man, in general. Nor would one wish to dispute Bateson here. (Or his picaresque-minded literary companions). But a problem arises. Which is with deciding how much odium the convict contractors should be wrapped in by historians of the future, and how permanently. It seems, they became increasingly respectable, though not by dint of research and judgement by Australians.

When I began research on these matters, little had been done to follow-up Bateson. Evidently, few Australians have taken it seriously, that standing cultural prejudices wrap the convict contractors in considerable odium. With this, I find several problems. One was the discovery in 1989 of "The Blackheath Connection". ([16]) This research breakthrough amplified biographical information on many convict contractors operating to 1800, including personnel associated with the London Missionary Society (LMS). In fact, the LMS ought to be regarded as a "convict contractor", and odious in that regard. ([17])

This only re-illuminated the original question which Australians still seem to want to avoid: if the system of convict transportation was, as many think, unjust and unfair, how should the convict contractors be regarded? After 1800, the patchwork quilt of information on convict contractors grows larger, more elaborately worked, but the patterns are still not entirely clear. The Pacific had been "opened", the motives of individual convict contractors changed. Development of the Australian colonies provided some attractions for ship managers to send ships - and investments? - to the new continent's shores. In order to assess the motives of an individual convict contractor, it is also necessary to assess nineteenth century developments in business practice, to assess changes in the angling of financial dealings in both Britain and Australasia; as well as in India and China as the British perceived those eastern countries. A good deal of straightforward business history needs to be reviewed.

In short, then, to regard the convict contractors as necessarily or uniformly odious is simply inappropriate for the history of convict contractors between 1800 and 1865-1867, when transportation to Western Australia ceased. What is appropriate to say, is harder to say. Providing the requisite genealogical information is this paper's main purpose. ([18])

Some formal problems persist for the researcher. Despite the useful information-base for maritime history provided by Bateson's listings of convict ships, Australasian researchers still lack - in the longitudinal sense - useful regional overviews of British shipping landing people and goods on regional shores, or sailing away with regional products. It is still not possible to place the career of an individual convict contractor - such as Robert Brooks ([19]) - within a useful cross-century framework or overview of maritime business. This makes for further difficulties with trying to assess the value of "Australasian business" to any London-based businessman, ship manager, or convict contractor.

The other side of this coin is that it is equally difficult to assess the comparative impact of the role of any particular British merchant on Australasian developments. This situation will remain until such time as a database appears enabling a researcher to standardise information on any ship, or sole businessman, or groups of co-owned ships, or groups of merchants, in terms of an adequate regional overview of maritime history. On reflection, that this lack in Pacific maritime history still exists, and is so seldom complained about, is itself remarkable. ([20]) At present in Australia, reliable maritime information seems to be regarded by many institutions as chiefly an aid to genealogical pursuits. And in that particular context, the present writer hopes that this article will be a useful contribution.

One of the main problems with considering the convict contractors after 1800 is that so far, relatively few generalities can be ventured confidently. Commercial careers varied, biographies varied. Many convict contractors can - and perhaps should - be viewed as commercial individualists. Sometimes, they, or members of their extended families, associated with movers and shakers who were interested in Australasia for a complex of reasons, but had no connection whatsoever with dealings in convict transportation. All this tends to diffuse any Australian cultural prejudices about the systemic cruelties of convict transportation. Inevitably at times, we are left merely with the vagaries of genealogy, and we have to consider where we end up. In that case, I hope that readers of this article will feel prompted to research something - anything - further. Some findings may be unexpected. As they might be in any labyrinth...

Though it is not widely recognised, the transportation of convicts to Australia from 1786 required the making of a contract between the British government and a shipowner, and/or his agents, when it was understood the captain's name would also be used on a contract. Bateson by 1959 had listed all the convict ships necessary to mention, but not all their owners. Some mysteries still remain regarding the names of ship managers making such contracts, which from 1786 till 1829 were made with Thomas Shelton "at the Old Bailey". (Shelton died in 1829.) That is, Shelton was the only official given the authority to make out such contracts. ([21]) Many of the ship managers Shelton dealt with, especially after 1800, cannot be traced, due to simple lacks of corroborative genealogical or other historical information. ([22]) And also because of two major mysteries in formal arenas of documentations.

(1) It is so far still impossible to find the names of shipowners making contracts for the transportation of Irish convicts from Ireland; in fact, it is still not possible to ascertain if such contracts were made in London, some other English port, or in Ireland itself. As for the situation for London-based contract-making, information presents itself in terms of the still-extant contracts made out by Shelton to 1829, except for the Irish problem, and one other matter. (I have not looked at sets of contracts made after 1829).

(2) Between June 1817 (Contract 63 made out by Shelton) and June 1829, (Shelton's Contract 228), Joseph Lachlan took 84 contracts to transport convicts. This seems an unreasonable number, more so if Lachlan's associates are unknown, as they are. (Bateson does not elaborate on Lachlan and may have been unaware Lachlan was so deeply involved in "bulk contract-taking"). ([23])

After the discovery of The Blackheath Connection in 1989, Lachlan's activities may be seen as having been relatively innocuous. But so long as it remains unknown for whom he operated as an agent, reliable listings cannot be made or annotated. My original research was concerned with the ownership of the convict vessels, and in elaborating on any information gained. The elaboration of genealogical information, made easier with a large database, is also beset by lacks of information concerning merchants or others interested in developing Australasian colonies, or dealing with them.

While the first Australian colonies grew, groupings of merchants in the East (as the British saw it) changed. As the East India Company was further drawn into the sophistications of governance in India after the military successes of Clive in the 1750s and 1760s, more merchants who could remain semi-independent of the Company spread their wings - as we find from narratives on the growth of "the country trade", stories on the activities of "free traders", and from information on the morally-grey opium trades of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ([24]) Discovering the family history of such merchants is still fraught with difficulties.

Actually, research problems ramify. As lacks in British commercial history, generally, we still know too little about the London-based convict contractors to Australia, and the (British) merchant groupings of India/China; so that if any of the India/China merchants did deal with Australian colonies, it is difficult to ascertain clearly if they also organised long-term links with London-based merchants for any Australasian dealings. ([25]). Too little is known, for example, of the Calcutta merchant, William Fairlie. He supplied the East India Company's Bengal army with elephants, bullocks and victuals, and became one of the two largest shipowners of Calcutta. When he returned to England, Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, supposed Fairlie to be one of the greatest European merchants ever returning home from India. ([26]) Yet it seems impossible to discover Fairlie's family history, or the names of his senior European employees. Fairlie's name is one of too many little-known but often-mentioned merchant names encountered as one researches merchant biographies of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. Certainly, it can be complained that too many historians merely parrot the names of merchants of whom they have read on their travels, so that little new and useful information on merchant careers actually surfaces.

Perhaps, if it could be found who Joseph Lachlan took contracts for, these sorts of problems might vex each other less. Even so, in consideration of London-based merchants generally, it is necessary to mention that from about 1800, some changes in merchants' attitudes occurred, due to institutional change in London, that bore on commercial relationships with the Australasian region, small though that region's trade was. In brief, the East India Company dropped its resentment of the Australian convict colony; merchants sending ships to New South Wales no longer had to be defensive in the face of the Company attitude; and little more was heard of Company resentment about South Whale Fishery vessels cruising the Pacific. By 1800, of course, little more was heard of whaling ships regularly shipping convicts on an outward voyage, since the South Whale Fishery had found the western coasts of South American the most useful . And since the annexation of New Guinea from 1793 came to nothing of commercial moment, we also know little of John McLuer's association in a syndicate with Capt. John Hayes that was concerned with New Guinea.

Given the research problems outlined above, for the period from 1800 or so, is it of help to inspect lists of merchants whose careers might provide helpful information?

We find: East India agency houses developed from the 1780s as agency or commission houses for East India Company servants, civil or military, and later moved into banking, insurance, ship owning, freight and general merchandise, and managing plantations, as for indigo, and also saltpetre works. ([27]) They ended with overlapping interests in London, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and the United States, Canton, the Cape of Good Hope, and New South Wales. Such houses to 1819 had worked alone; then in 1819 they formed the East India Trade Committee (EITC). By 1819-1824 the EITC committee was led by GG de H Larpent. Several other shareholders of the Australian Agricultural Company shareholders were members also, and they wanted recognition by Britain of the new free port of Singapore, established by the governor of Bencoolen, Stamford Raffles, near the Straits of Malacca and in an exclusive East India Company trading zone. ([28])

(names to be discussed below in relation to trade with Australia are asterisked):

Thomas Amos and Co of 35 Camomile St or 17 Devonshire Street; Robert Anderson and Co of 3 Old Pay Office on Broad Street; Richard C. Bazett of 45 Lothbury; Edmund Boehm of Bishopsgate Churchyard; Begbie and Hunter of 17 New Broad Street; Bruce, do Ponthieu and Co of 17 New Broad Street; Andrew Burgie of 55 Mark Lane; Herbert Cooke and Co. of Birchin Lane; Davis, Watts and Co. of Broad Street; Dorin, Strange and Co. of New Broad Street; W. H. Duncanson of Kensington Square; George Illiot of 16 South Street at Finsbury Square; John Forbes of 9 Fitzroy Square; Gillett & Edwards of Old City Chambers; Lambert, Prinsep* and Saunders of 148 Leadenhall Street ([29]); Richard, William and I. Lee of 33 Old Broad Street; Lubbock, Colt and Co. of 2 St Mildred's Court at Poultry; Lushington and Mavor of 33 Mark Lane; Marsh and Sibbard of 6 Berner's Street; William and Horsley Palmer* of 28 Throgmorton Street; Paxton, Cockerell and Co. of 57 Pall Mall; Porcher, Redhead and Co. of Devonshire Square; William and Thomas Raikes of 9 Bishopsgate Churchyard; David Scott* and Co. of 9 Broad Street Buildings ([30]); Edwas Shaw of 2 Great St Helens; Short and Smith of 147 Fenchurch Street; Urquhart and Co. of 5 Bury Court, St Mary Axe; Wedderburns and Co, 35 Leadhenhall Street; Matthew White, 33 Finsbury Square; Wigram* and Co. of 3 Crosby Square ([31]); James Williams of 4 Old City Chambers. ([32])

In 1803 the Bengal (Calcutta) agency houses were: Cockerell, Traill and Co.; Fairlie*, Gilmore and Co., ([33]) Colvins, Gilmore and Co.; Barber, Palmer and Co. ([34]); Lambert, Ross and Co.; Hamilton & Aberdeen; Gardiner and Alexander; Henry and Robert Abbott; Campbell and Co.; Clark and Maclean; Campbell and Radcliffe; G & J Jonston, Vialers and Co; Gibson and Dent; ([35]) Joseph and Louis Barretto. [36] In 1803 the Fort St George (Madras) Houses of Agency were: Harington, Burnaby and Cockburn; Colt, Baker and Hart; Abbott and Maitland; Chase (Chace), Chinnery* and McDouall, Tulloh ([37]); Connell and Brodie; Francis Latour* and Co.; Lys, Satur and deMonte; Adrian, John and Lewis De Fries; Hunter and Hay; Binney and Dennison. ([38])

Despite the existence of extensive lists of such traders, it remains surprisingly difficult to gain useful genealogical information on many names. ([39]) Very often, available information jumps an historian's topic boundaries; only to become a genealogical non-homing pigeon. For example, in lists associated with the West Australian Company, the name is found of Lt.-General Peter Augustus Latour (1788-1866). ([40]) The links with Francis Latour noted above are not yet clear.

Colonel (Lt.-General) Peter Augustus Latour (1788-1866), an investor in the West Australian Company, once of the 11^th Dragoons, son of Louis Francis Latour of Madras and his wife Anne Hordle; spouse of Una Cameron Barclay Innes. ([41]) Louis Francis Joseph Latour of Madras was also of Heaton Park, Bedfordshire. He was son of Francois Latour and Barbe Ruhn, and married Anne Hordle. He left France before the Revolution and went to Madras as a banker and merchant, then repaired to England about 1795. ([42]) Georgiana Latour, the third daughter of Louis Francis Latour and Anne Hordle, married banker Edward Coutts Marjoribanks. ([43]) Her sister Maria Frances Geslip Latour married Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar (1776-1830), Baronet, an investor in the Australian Agricultural Company. ([44]). ([45]) We might here be interested in the name Latour, or even their Madras connections; but the names Marjoribanks and Farquhar require more adumbration

Such information-handling problems beset much of the following discussion. To proceed...

And so we find that while there are no formally or direct historical connections between the families of Duncan Campbell the hulks overseer, and Thackeray the novelist, genealogical interconnections nevertheless abound. Historians generally ought to be aware of such connections, if for no other reason than that interconnections, sometimes unexpected, existed amongst families who had members "working for the Empire" in India. Presumably, other interconnections will in time come to light which may bear more forcefully on questions in Australasian history, proper. In this vein, the story of John Prinsep becomes more entertaining. ([49])

[1] Dan Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806', The Push, A Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98. The Blackheath Connection as discovery was greatly due to the generosity in information sharing of noted local historian there, Neil Rhind.

[2] Vincent T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763-1793. Vols. 1 and 2. London, Longmans Green and Co., 1952 and 1964.

[3] Just a few of the books and articles consulted yielding the fruit of longitudinal-type studies include: Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Youssef Cassis, 'Bankers in English Society in the late eighteenth century', Economic History Review, Series 2, Vol. 38, No. 2, May 1985., pp. 210-229. Youseff Cassis, City Bankers, 1890-1914. Cambridge University Press, 1994. S. D. Chapman, 'British Marketing Enterprise: the changing roles of merchants, manufacturers and financiers, 1700-1860', Business History Review, Vol. 53, 1979., pp. 205-234. W. E. Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants: Jardine Matheson and Co: A China Agency of the Early Nineteenth Century. London, Curzon Press, (Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Series, No. 26), 1979. Maurice Collis, British Merchant Adventurers. London, William Collins, 1942. M. J. Daunton, 'Australian merchants in the City of London, 1840-1890', Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Collected Seminar Papers, [The City and the Empire], Vol. 2, No. 36, 1987., pp. 134-142. Thomas M. Devine, The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities, 1740-1790. Edinburgh, Donald, 1975. D. E. Fifer, 'The Sydney merchants and the economic downturn of 1827-1830', Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 32, Vol. 1, March, 1993., pp. 73-84. D. E. Fifer, 'The Sydney merchants and the wool trade, 1821-1851', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 78, Parts 1 and 2, 1992., pp. 92-112. David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Maggie Keswick, (Ed.), The Thistle and the Jade: A Celebration of 150 years of Jardine Matheson and Co. Sydney, Octopus Books Ltd., 1982. David Kynaston, The City of London: A World of its Own, 1815-1890. Vol. 1. London, Chatto and Windus, 1994. R. G. Lang, `Social Origins and Social Aspirations of Jacobean London Merchants', Economic History Review, 2, V, 27, 1974., pp. 28-47. Jacob M. Price, 'One Family's Empire: The Russell-Lee-Clerk Connection in Maryland, Britain and India, 1707-1857', Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 72, 1977., pp. 165-225. Theodore K. Rabb, Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575-1630. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1967. F. M. L. Thompson, `Life after Death: How Successful Nineteenth-century Businessmen disposed of their Fortunes', Economic History Review, Series 2, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1990., pp. 40-61. H. R. Fox Bourne, English Merchants: Memoirs in Illustration of the Progress of British Commerce. London, Chatto and Windus, 1886. [Kraus Reprint Co., New York, 1969 in Two Vols. Also, T. H. Hollingsworth, 'A demographic study of the British ducal families', pp. 73-102 in Michael Drake, (Ed.), Population in Industrialisation. London, Methuen, 1969. Various titles cited below on the careers of individual banks or businesses often carry useful genealogical tables.

[4] Dan Byrnes, A Bitter Pill: An assessment of the significance of the meeting between Thomas Jefferson and Duncan Campbell of the British Creditors in London, 23 April, 1786. Unpublished. Armidale, NSW, Australia, November 1994.

[5] L. M. Mowle, A Genealogical History of Pioneer Families of Australia. Fifth edition. Sydney, Rigby, 1978.

[6] The contractor of the First Fleet, William Richards Jnr., fell foul of ship insurance arguments with Leightons, following the scuttling of Friendship that Leightons owned, due to her crew suffering scurvy on her way home. (Copies of documents indicating this are held by the Mitchell Library, Sydney.) By 1793, Richards was bankrupt, but since we know nothing of his other business dealings, 1786-1793, it is impossible to tell if his failure was due or partly due to any of his difficulties with ships to Australia. The Times, London, 7 October, 1793, page 2, (column B), carried the following item: Bankruptcies: William Richards, jun of Walworth, Surrey, ship-broker to surrender Oct. 12, 19 and Nov 16 at Guildhall. Attornies, Messrs Kilham and Johnson, Hatton Gardens. I am grateful to Gillian Hughes of London for finding this information.

[7] See my article, `The Blackheath Connection'.

[8] Sir Jerome Fitzpatrick (1740-1810) - also known as Jeremiah - became inspector of health to the British army, and was known to feel that shipping contractors should pay more attention to military passenger health. Fitzpatrick by 1792 had seen Irish convicts being loaded for Australia, and had the same view there, about convict contractors we can name easily. Fitzpatrick suspected that ship managers had developed a "ring" in order to keep contracts for convict transportation in certain hands. Having researched the merchant careers involved, I can only think of one strong motive for the formation of any such "ring" - and that would be to reduce the costs of ship insurance by men cross-insuring with each other in order to more capably defy the resistance of the East India Company to British ships entering the Pacific. On these points, see Oliver MacDonagh, The Inspector-General, Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick and the Politics of Social Reform, 1783-1802. London, Croom Helm, 1981., here, pp. 47ff, p. 139, p. 254, pp. 267-269, p. 274, p. 290.

[9] See Frank J. A. Broeze, Mr Brooks and the Australian Trade: Imperial Business in the Nineteenth Century. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1993.

[10] Stephen Salsbury and Kay Sweeney, Sydney Stockbrokers: Biographies of Members of the Sydney Stock Exchange, 1871-1987. Sydney Hale and Iremonger, 1992.

[11] S. J. Butlin, The Foundation of the Australian Monetary System, 1788-1851. Sydney, Sydney University Press, 1968. S. J. Butlin, Australia and New Zealand Bank: The Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia Limited, 1828-1851. Longmans, London, 1961. R. F. Holder, Bank of New South Wales: A History. [Two Vols.] Vol. 1, 1817-1850. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1970. See also, for the later Nineteenth Century, Stephen Salsbury and Kay Sweeney, Sydney Stockbrokers: Biographies of Members of the Sydney Stock Exchange, 1871-1987. Sydney Hale and Iremonger, 1992.

[12] Some genealogical websites have been inspected prior to completion of this article. One might conclude that while website managers have been working hard, technically, their information resources are so far inadequate, for too many reasons to refer to here (copyright questions may be pertinent here?). These websites include: Australian First Families: http://www.firstfamilies2001.net.au / History and Cultural Site for Milton, Ulladulla South Coast NSW, Australia, with Cathy Dunn. http://www.shoalhaven.net.au/~cathyd/ IHR NSW Family History Documents, Free Records: http://www.ihr.com.au/free.html / First Mariners to Western Australia: http://www.rainbowis.com.au/~greeve/firstmariners.html / Scott's End in Africa for Pattle family history: http://www.home.pix.za/ms/ms73/SITE.HTM /
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~pattle
Also Scott's End on Pattle family history: http://www.home.pix.za/ms/ms73/ALPHKTOQ.htm#Pattle / For a Canberra-based website on family histories rooted in India in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: http://www.interfusion.net.au/~shazzac/IRDP.html

[13] Sources of genealogical material used for this article include (in no particular order): J. Shakespear, John Shakespear of Shadwell and his Descendants, 1619-1931. Newcastle, UK, Self-Published. 1931. (On another family line out to India and linked to family of novelist W. M. Thackeray) W. A. Shaw, The Knights of England. Two Vols. London, Heraldry Today, 1971. Pamela Statham, (Compiler), Dictionary of Western Australians, 1829-1914. Two Vols. Vol. 1, Early Settlers, 1829-1850. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia, August, 1979. Michael Stenton, (Ed.), Who's Who of British Members of Parliament: A Biographical Dictionary of the House of Commons. Peterhouse, Cambridge, UK. Harvester Press. 1976-1978. (Four Vols.). Vol. 1, 1832-1885. Vol. 2, 1886-1918. Canadian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 4, 1771-1800. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1979. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, The Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to 1900. London, Milford/Oxford University Press, 1917ff. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Vol. 1, 1769-1869. Wellington, New Zealand, Allen and Unwin and the New Zealand Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1990. Ian R. Christie, British `non-elite' MPs, 1715-1820. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995. Alan Valentine, The British Establishment, 1760-1784: An Eighteenth Century Biographical Dictionary. Two Vols. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1970. Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754-1790. [Two Vols.] London, Parliament Trust of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1964. Paul Bloomfield, Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Builder of the British Commonwealth. London, Longman's Green and Co., 1961. With genealogical table. Burke's, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry. London, Edn. 18., John Burke and John Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland and Scotland. Second edition. London, John Russell Smith. [Facsimile of the 1964 edition]. Or, Burke's Extinct. Charles Kidd and David Williamson, (Eds.), Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage. London, Macmillan's/Debrett's Peerage Ltd., 1985. Patrick Montague-Smith, (Ed.), Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage. Australasian edition. London, Debrett's Peerage, 1980. Rica Erickson, (Ed.), The Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians, pre-1829-1888. In Vols. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 1988. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vols. 1-12. London, Melbourne University Press, 1966ff. Also, CD-ROM versions: The Pioneer Series, 1788-1888. Published in 1994. The Federation Series, 1889-1918. Published in 1993. Informit, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, City Campus, Melbourne. The International Genealogical Index, microfiche version, Scotland; Salt Lake City, Utah, Genealogical Society of Utah, 1992 for England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Channel Islands, Australia and New Zealand. Also, computerised versions, various. Davis McCaughey, Naomi Perkins and Angus Trumble, Victoria's Colonial Governors, 1839-1900. Melbourne University Press, 1993. H. A. Doubleday and Lord Howard De Walden, (Eds.), The Complete Peerage or A History of the House of Lords and All Its Members from the earliest times. Vol. XIII, Peers Created 1901 to 1938. London, The St Catherine Press Ltd., 1940. Bombay Civil Servants, 1780-1839. (Pub. 1839; Madras Civil Servants, 1760-1837. (Pub. 1839). India Registers (dated 1799, 1803, 1806, 1813 incl., and 1815, 1816), Bengal Civil Index. PRO. A useful source at the India Office Library, Covenanted Overseas Civil Servants of the East India Company 1600-1858, has compilations. Edward Dodwell and James Samuel, Bengal Civil Servants, 1780-1838. London, Miles, 1839. John Burke and John Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland and Scotland. Second edition. London, John Russell Smith. [Facsimile of the 1964 edition]. Hereafter, Burke's Extinct. Vicary Gibbs, (Ed.) (GEC), The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. [Extinct, extant or dormant]. London, St. Catherine's Press, 1910. W. A. Shaw, The Knights of England. Two Vols. London, Heraldry Today, 1971.

[14] Some convict contractors intractably resistant to research include: Anthony Calvert (died 1809), of the slaver firm of the Africa Company, notorious for mismanaging the Second Fleet, Camden, Calvert and King. George Lyall (1784-1853); the firm Birch and Ward; Samuel Somes and Joseph Somes (1787-1845); Duncan Dunbar; and a man named Tower. Some of the best work yet done on any early convict contracting firm, on Camden, Calvert and King, is by: Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1993. See also, Michael Flynn, Settlers and Seditionists: The People of the Convict Ship Surprize, 1794. Sydney, Angela Lind, 1994.

[15] Of the post-1800 convict contractors, Robert Brooks is the figure followed-up in greatest detail. See Frank J. A. Broeze, Mr Brooks and the Australian Trade: Imperial Business in the Nineteenth Century. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1993.

[16] Dan Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806', The Push, A Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98.

[17] Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868. [Orig. 1959] Sydney, A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1974. On the London Missionary Society or its associates, see pp. 177, on Royal Admiral II. Also, Byrnes, The Blackheath Connection, variously

[18] With the preparation for this article, I am indebted to many helpers, but especially to two women with family linkages to the name Pattle as discussed here. One is Georgina Bennett (surnamed changed to Chaseling by deed poll); the other is Mary (Pattle) Hover, who grew up in Suffolk the UK and now lives in Florida. (Mrs. Mary Pattle Hover, #117, 2920 Alt. 19 N., Dunedin, FL 34698, USA. New information on the Pattle line has arisen by email exchange from the following: Mary Pattle Hover, of Florida, USA; Prof. Joan Steven, of New Zealand, who has been looking freshly into the family history of the father of systematic colonization, Edward Gibbon Wakefield. (See Paul Bloomfield, Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Builder of the British Commonwealth. London, Longman's Green and Co., 1961. With genealogical table.)

[19] Frank J. A. Broeze, Mr Brooks and the Australian Trade: Imperial Business in the Nineteenth Century. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1993.

[20] Here perhaps, one could observe on other remaining lacks in maritime history, generally. Britain in the eras of sailing ships enjoyed regular and extensive trade with Russia, yet there is still no useful maritime history on Britain's Russia trade; and many of the late eighteenth century's British abolitionists were wealthy due to their involvements in the Russia trade. For the period before the American Revolution, we still lack an overview-history of the maritime aspects of the Anglo-American tobacco trade - in which convict transports were regularly involved, as is indicated by the career of the overseer of the convict hulks, Duncan Campbell (1726-1803). Perhaps the single best set of citations yet gathered on the first decades of US (post 1783) shipping to India and China is contained in a quite-recent book, James Gibson, first published in 1992. James R. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1992. Paperback edition of 1999.

[21] Dan Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806', The Push, A Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98., here on Shelton, pp. 95ff and notes thereto.

[22] For example, at present it is still unknown what significance a formerly unknown merchant name such as that of Martin Lindsay might hold. Nor is it known if he was any family connection to the convict contractor, William Lindsay (1816-1877). William Schaw Lindsay began as an orphan, and his DNB entry is scarcely clear on how he became "one of the largest shipowners in the world".

[23] Byrnes, The Blackheath Connection, pp. 87ff and notes thereto.

[24] S. B. Singh, European Agency Houses in Bengal, 1783-1883. Calcutta, Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1966. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-1842. Cambridge University Press, 1951. See also, W. E. Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants: Jardine Matheson and Co: A China Agency of the Early Nineteenth Century. London, Curzon Press, (Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Series, No. 26), 1979., p. 10.

[25] D. R. Hainsworth, `The New South Wales shipping interest, 1800-1821', Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 8, No. 1, February, 1968., pp. 17-30. D. R. Hainsworth, `Exploiting the Pacific frontier: the New South Wales sealing industry, 1800-1821', Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 2, 1967., pp. 59-75. D. R. Hainsworth, In search of a staple: the Sydney sandalwood trade, 1804-1809', Bulletin of the Business Archives Council of Australia. Vol. 5, No. 1, February, 1965., pp. 1-20. D. R. Hainsworth, 'The New South Wales shipping interest, 1800-1821: a study in colonial entrepreneurship', Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1968., pp. 17-30. D. R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: Simeon Lord and his Contemporaries, 1788-1821. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1972. D. R. Hainsworth, Builders and Adventurers: The Traders and the Emergence of the Colony, 1788-1821. Melbourne, Cassell, 1968.

[26] William Fairlie earlier was a partner with John Fergusson. Another firm was Fairlie, Reid and Co. of Calcutta. I remain unaware of any links the Calcutta operations had with Fairlie and Bonham of London, except that Charles Magniac and Co. in China once "inherited" Fairlie and Bonham (London) as their London agents. From about 1800, Fairlie's Calcutta operations seem to have enjoyed useful links with David Scott and Co., noted London-based operators for the East India Company. Given the codes of the day for marriage, and the employment of relatives in successful firms, it remains frustrating that a merchant impressive enough to come to Dundas' attention is so little commented, but this remains the situation.

[27] S. B. Singh, European Agency Houses in Bengal, 1783-1883. Calcutta, Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1966.

[28] This information has been extracted from Pennie A. Pemberton, The London Connection: The Formation and Early Years of the Australian Agricultural Company. Ph.D. thesis. Canberra, Australian National University, 1991., pp. 58-59.

[29] The figure of note here, John Prinsep, is discussed below.

[30] The father Robert of David Scott Senior (1746-1805) was an MP. David Senior was a free merchant at Bombay prior to 1786, when he returned home and became an influential East India Company director. Alan Frost, Convicts and Empire: A Naval Question, 1776-1811. Oxford University Press, 1980., p. 192, sees Scott as more friendly to (convict) shipping going via Australia than most East India Company directors. Scott's firm had perhaps the EICo's first 1000-tonner, David Scott. Scott has the repuation of having "worked himself to death" on EICo business. His son David followed him in Indian trade. Christie, non-elite MPs, p. 7.

[31] For the Green-Wigram partnerships, more information is extant on Wigrams, a large family with some men operating as convict contractors. Greens seem resistant to genealogical research, although they are referred to in E. Keble Chatterton, The Mercantile Marine. London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1923., pp. 94ff. On Wigrams, see Burke's Landed Gentry for Arkwright of Sutton Scarsdale and Long of Sydenham. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Wigram. There is no date in Shelton's Contracts No 25, for Coromandel and Experiment, contracts with Messrs Reeve and Wigram, 382 cons, Shelton charged £381/14/8d. with three Scotch convicts; as found in Byrnes, `The Blackheath Connection', p. 97, Note 156.

[32] Information is drawn here from Pemberton, The London Connection..

[33] As noted above, Information on the merchants Fairlie remains difficult to compile. In October, 1806, in London, William Fairlie, of the India house Fairlie, Fergusson and Co., and William Wilson, offered themselves as guarantors/security for the further financial good behaviour of Robert Campbell of Sydney. However, "the Lady Barlow affair" had destabilised Wilson's own affairs too much, and after his bankruptcy in February, 1811, he ceased to act as agent for Robert Campbell the Sydney merchant. On William Wilson as a convict contractor, Byrnes, The Blackheath Connection, pp. 89ff.

[34] With the name Palmer here, it is difficult to know if the name had any connection with the trading house Palmer, or if there was any connection with the family of John Palmer the first commissary of New South Wales. See Michael Edwardes, The Sahibs and the Lotus: The British in India. London, Constable, 1988., p 25. In the early nineteenth century, one Henry Russel was Co-Resident at the Court of Hyderabad, who stood over the Muslim Nizam; Russel appointed a minister, a Hindu. The area had been ravaged by other Indian rulers, Hyderabad became a desert without law and order, the population rose against the tax collector. Russell suggested sending a British military force at the Nizam's expense, and this was done. Paying salaries, especially the absurdly high salaries of the (non-Indian) officers commanding the military force, Russell suggested use also of the services of the banking house of William Palmer and Co, head of which was the Eurasian son of an English general. So in time, Palmer and Co. became "almost rulers" of Hyderabad, its agents collecting revenue, sometimes besieging villagers for payment. Nicholas Tarling, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Malay World, 1780-1824. St Lucia, Cambridge University Press/University of Queensland Press, 1962. Nicholas Tarling, 'Pirates and convicts: British interest in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the mid-nineteenth century', Chapter 10 of Nicholas Tarling, Imperial Britain in South-East Asia. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1975. Chapter 3, 'The Prince of Merchants and the Lion City' [On John Palmer, the "Prince of Merchants"].

[35] Dent headed a notable agency house in India by 1810, and Dent and Co were the second agency house to establish at Canton. S. B. Singh, European Agency Houses, pp. 12-13.

[36] Here, more information has been used from Pemberton, The London Connection.

[37] By 1805, Chace, Chinnery and Co. at Madras had bought "Australian" sandalwood. By March 1805, we can note of death in Sydney of William Tough, local agent for Chace, Chinnery and Co of Madras. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders, p. 88.

[38] I am indebted here to correspondence with Dr Pennie Pemberton.

[39] On Latour, see Burke's Landed Gentry for Parker (formerly Wells) of Houghton Lodge.

[40] P. Statham, 'Peter Augustus Latour: Absentee Investor Extraordinaire', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 52, 2, 1987.

[41] Burke's Landed Gentry for Parker (formerly Wells) of Houghton Lodge. J. M. R. Cameron, Ambition's Fire: The Agricultural Colonization of Pre-Convict Western Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 1981., p. 114. (Cameron's book has many citations listed on colonization for various parts of Empire in the period, of the more intellectually respectable kind, and some other articles of interest). Latour is seen as a member of the WA Co in Alexandra Hasluck, Thomas Peel of Swan River. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1965., p. 218. He sent 100 colonists to his land-claiming agent (103.000 acres) in WA, Richard Wells; went bankrupt in 1829 and his venture failed. Lack of funds prevented development. Indentured servants were freed. Latour later sold his grant to the WA. Co. which funded "Australind". Latour also became involved land deals in Tasmaniam and later in 1829 in Peel's scheme for colonising Swan River. He was a brother-in-law of Stewart Marjoribanks. Pemberton, London Connection, p. 377.

[42] Jane De Falbe, Dear Miss Macarthur: Recollections of Emmeline Maria Macarthur, 1821-1911. Kangaroo Press, Australia, 1988., pp. 68ff, on family links later in time. Stenton, British Parliamentarians, Vol. 1, p. 260. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Farquhar. DNB for Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar.

[43] Her sister married into the Farquhar family: Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Farquhar. Edna Healey, Coutts and Co., 1692-1992: The Portrait of a Private Bank. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1992., genealogical tables. Stenton, British Parliamentarians, Vol. 1, p. 260, for Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks.

[44] Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Stirling-Hamilton of Preston. The name Latour is seen in the lines of Burke's Landed Gentry for Innes. See De Falbe, Dear Miss Macarthur, p. 68 on family connections.

[45] As to Philip Augustus Latour, there may be some dispute on the family of his wife, Una Cameron Innes, but see Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Innes of Balvenie. Una Cameron Innes was daughter of John Innes and his wife Une Cameron Barclay.

[46] Elizabeth Currie (1726-1807) was of the extended family of the hulks overseer Duncan Campbell (1726-1803) as follows. Duncan's father was principal Neil Campbel of the College of Glasgow (Glasgow University). Neil had an uncle, Colonel John Campbell, who became the first Campbell to settle on Jamaica in 1700. Colonel John married Catherine Claiborne of a Virginian family. Catherine Caliborne had a daughter Anne Campbell (1700-1783) who married a London-West India merchant, David Currie (died 1771); they had a daughter, Elizabeth who married London alderman John Shakespeare. One of her sons was Arthur (1748-1818) an MP. This is not clear from an otherwise helpful book, J. Shakespear, John Shakespear of Shadwell and his Descendants, 1619-1931. Newcastle, UK, Self-Published. 1931. I am indebted to Virginian genealogist John Dorman for information on Catherine Claiborne's marriage. These Curries were no relations of the family Currie noted in Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Currie, of which family, incidentally, Sir Frederick Currie (1799-1875), Bart1, married to Susannah Larkins of the Larkins family noted in Byrnes, `The Blackheath Connection', p. 89, Note 134.

[47] Lt.-General Sir John Low. He is denoted as Major in the family tree produced by Lt. Col. Shakespear, noted above. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Metcalfe.

[48] Surprisingly little information can be found on this family in Australia.

[49] A. C. Staples, 'Memoirs of William Prinsep; Calcutta years, 1817-1842', Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, April-June 1989., pp. 61-79.