Duncan Campbell's reappearance: The partnership John Stewart and Campbell: Campbell visits Virginia: Commercial complexities: Official contracts to transport: The dread of gaol fever: Brutality on a convict ship:

 

The Blackheath Connection

Chapter 9

 

Duncan Campbell's re-appearance:

 

      In 1756 on 28 May, Rebecca Campbell was baptised at St. Mary, Whitechapel, the first child of Duncan and Rebecca Campbell of Hooper Square, London, her parents' first-known address. ([1]) It was probably the present-day Hooper Street, Whitechapel, only a short walk west to the American merchants' meeting places around Tower Hill, and close to the warehouse Campbell later had in Haydon Square.

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     Campbell from 1758 became a partner with John Stewart ("a Scotsman"). The partnership was denoted in correspondence and on hogsheads as "JS&C". Campbell's movements between his marriage in 1753 on Jamaica and his re-appearance by Stewart's side in 1758 are mostly unknown, and it is not known how he infiltrated his new lines of business. Campbell was being described in family papers as a "ship's captain" in notation of a document dated 19 May, 1761. ([2]) Commercially,  Campbell had strengthened his links with his Jamaican correspondents, but he was still of modest means - it took him until 1766 to raise the capital to buy a major share of a ship for the  Jamaica run.

 

     Kellock ([3]) notes that the address of JS&C was Black Raven Court, Seething Lane, Tower Street. (Campbell's second-known address). The access of  JS&C to newly-convicted convicts was aided by an article of agreement with Richard Burke at the Treasury, dated 5 September, 1764. About 1764, Campbell had an Edinburgh nephew, Somerville, sailing for him carrying convicts; the man was either the son of Duncan's sister Ann, or a nephew of Ann's husband John Somerville. ([4]) It appears JS&C were given this contract after the retirement of the former London government contractor, Andrew Reid, who by 1764 had been in the business for about 21 years, since 1742. ([5])

 

     Nepotism is oft-noticed in the Eighteenth Century, perhaps a little unfairly. The employment of relatives was part of a search for trust in an untrustworthy world where credit had to extend almost unnaturally over long distances. As Davis notes, the trade-off was in efficiency - brothers, sons, cousins, uncles or nephews could perhaps be trusted as partners, employees or agents; but this was no extra guarantee of efficiency or any provision of expert or authoritative activity and attention. ([6])

 

      John Stewart's origins remain unknown. According to Oldham, Stewart had been in the convict service from 1755, if not earlier; and it appears Reid and Armour had become Stewart and Armour by 1756. ([7]) Coldham notes, when Reid entered the business in February 1742, he was in trouble as convicts on his ship Sally for Virginia had taken the ship, and she had to be re-taken. Coldham says, Reid remains shadowy. He was earlier, 1742, Forward's agent in Port Tobacco, Maryland, perhaps working with Jonathan Forward Sydenham, son of Forward and his father's agent in Virginia. Both these men came to London when Forward retired from business, Reid taking London as main contractor, Sydenham taking other counties. Coldham notes, in 1747, Reid was accused of breaking agreements of 1742 with the owner of the ship Forward, Ralph Greene of London. Reid, Coldham says, developed an unsavoury reputation, and in all, it does seem as if the convict contractors were engaging in such risky business only for the opportunity it gave them of entrapping unwary planters in bonds of debt after they had bought "convict servants". In 1743 sailed from London for Reid,  Indian Queen, Capt. Maxwell, with many boys taken without their parents' consent, bound for the Choptank River area, but his agents had trouble selling the "servants". ([8])

 

     By 1747, Forward was wary of Reid and wanted to take over the firm Sydenham and Thomas Hodgson. As tobacco merchant, Forward gave his business debts in Virginia and Maryland to John Goodwin of London and his colonial trade to Jonathan Sydenham and Thomas Hodgson. ([9]) In December 1742, Capt. John Sargent on Forward wrote very apologetic to  Reid, he had dreadful seas, he had feared being killed by the felons, his doctor almost died. Sargent had lost 40 men and 43 women, dead. So Reid sued the ship's owners. Reid had it in for Sargent, also for Barnet Bond on Justitia with chief mate James Corrie. In March 1744 he made accusations to the Admiralty about their murder and felonies on the high seas. The crew recalled Bond's brutalities to the prisoners, including depriving them of water till they drank their own urine. Forty prisoners had died on Justitia in mid-1743. Bond was acquitted and went to settle in Maryland. Sargent's crime on Forward had been robbery on the high seas. The  dismissed Sargent then counter-sued Reid. ([10])

 

       New business arrangements finally by 1753 drove Reid into a partnership with John Stewart, then aged about 50. Hodgson had been a clerk for Sydenham, who used a Virginia agent named William Jordan (died 1757). Hodgson had "risen" to some stature as a dealer in slaves, and as a non-London convict contractor he worked outer counties and the Bristol area. Sydenham and Hodgson were in financial trouble by 1762.

 

     Coldham records ([11]) that Jonathan Sydenham (JP and coroner for King George County, Va.) the elder married Mary Morton, daughter of John Morton of Richmond, Virginia., and half-sister of John Morton Jordan of Annapolis, Maryland, agent for Lord Baltimore. (Morton was once sued by Jonathan Sydenham and Thomas Hodgson).

 

     Meanwhile, IGI records indicate one Jonathan Forward Sydenham; at Saint Mary-St.,  Marylebone Road, St. Marylebone, London. IGI records indicate Forwards intermarried with the following names of people and/or parishes: Marsh of Lydlinch, Dorset; George Hodges, Sparkford, Somerset; Lewis at Shillingstone, Dorset; Hanbury at St. Thomas the Apostle, Exeter; Perry at West Buckland, Devon; Hodge at Devon. Such surnames turn up regularly in information on the tobacco trade, or convict contracting.

 

*   *   *

 

The partnership: John Stewart and Campbell:

 

           John Creasey in his novel The Masters of Bow Street writes of the time (p. 159), "The government appeared to believe that by increasing the severity of the punishment they could discourage the crime ..." "It was true that many of the death sentences were now being transmuted to transportation, ..." Then Creasey refers to the risk of death from disease or malnutrition for the transportee... Another keynote of the day was lack of press freedom, and Creasey has his protagonist long after 1756 noticing calls such as Free the Press from Political Pressures.

 

      Departing England in 1753 were the following convict ships: April, Thames, Capt. James Dobbins for America; July 1753, Tryal,  Capt. John Johnston for America, probably for Stewart and Armour. ([12])

 

     Duncan Campbell's passport to Madeira was dated 3 November, 1756. The voyage to Madeira may well have been for wine, as Stewart's brother, James, was at Oporto in Portugal, active in wine trade. Once Campbell became partner with John Stewart,  nothing further was heard from Armour. On 4 February, 1758, Campbell was appointed a Younger Brother of Trinity House ([13]), an appointment of some prestige, since Trinity House managed the navigation of the River Thames. When a man wished to become a freeman of the City of London, he was obliged to become a member of a guild or other appropriate body, so Campbell here was probably making his way via a link with Trinity House.

 

    By 15 July, 1757, Thomas and Sarah, 150 tons, was sailing for R. Dingley and Co. of London, at Annapolis, with 46 London convicts. ([14]) The major London-based merchants still had little competition. Other London merchants, not beneficiaries of the subsidy, still trafficked on a small scale in convicts from counties and towns outside London. ([15]) During the late 1750s, transportation to America increased. Also, during the Seven Years War, from 1756, convicts were placed in the army, the navy, or in dockyards.

 

     Campbell soon went to Virginia and [upriver to] Loudon on the ship Thetis. ([16]). This may have been his first voyage on a convict ship, and it was presumably made to enable him to gain first-hand knowledge of conditions in the American colonies. On 30 March, 1758, with his partner John Stewart, his brother-in-law John Campbell of Saltspring, ([17]), and a Jamaican planter, Alex McKenzie, Duncan went to Portsmouth.  On 1 April (the turn of the financial year of the day) he boarded Elizabeth Capt. McTaggart for Loudon and Virginia. It was, anyway, Duncan's first voyage to America in respect of his partnership with John Stewart. He went out again on Thetis again in 1759. ([18]) Through 1764 ([19]), Campbell travelled as supercargo on the Tryal Capt. Alex Stewart. During 1764, Colin Somerville began sailing for JS&C on Justitia. ([20])

 

*      *     *

 

Campbell visits Virginia:

 

       A stirring rose amongst London's Virginia merchants, of which Campbell became a part, as reported by Olson. ([21]) In Autumn 1763, a committee of 15-20 merchants formed a lobby group to deal with the Board of Trade. Meanwhile, Campbell was preparing to visit Virginia. On 21 June, 1764, the Virginian planter Landon Carter referred to six hogsheads of tobacco to be set aside for JS&C, and 20 hogsheads sent to W. Hunter. ([22]) By 12 December, 1763 Campbell and Carter had been speaking personally, as Carter wrote in his diary: 12 Dec., 1763, Mr D Campbell merchant of London here. He was so kind as to offer to send me anything I might want. I wrote him the following invoice. [inc] 8 pounds Mysore tea, cloves and nutmeg, livery suits, saltpetre, raisins and currants, gloves. ([23])

 

     Landon Carter was of Richmond County, a neighbour of the Tayloes at Mount Airy; so we can presume Campbell also visited Tayloes personally. ([24]) It is said of The Mercantilist Merchant, that he gave poor service to clients and was mostly interested in handling commodities in bulk. This was not how Campbell ran his businesses - he was always willing to have his staff attend to any small items, such as Landon Carter wanted - eight pounds of Mysore tea. Presumably, Campbell hoped that courteous service in small things led to continued business in larger matters.

 

*    *    *

 

Commercial complexities:

 

     There are reports aplenty of the brutality of the convict service, as in Coldham's Emigrants in Chains. An aside is necessary to demonstrate the complexity of the commercial relations surrounding convict transportation to the American colonies. The name Russell became intimately connected with Duncan Campbell's career. ([25]) About 1729-1730 a young Scotsman aged about 21, James Russell, had settled in Maryland, ([26]) at Nottingham in Prince George's County. James' brother was William, who remained in the colonies: James later went to London to become one of the largest tobacco merchants there. By 1760, James Russell was set up in London as a commission merchant handling tobacco consignments from planters in Virginia and Maryland. At the time it was not uncommon for a merchant to move from the Chesapeake to Britain. ([27]) In 1762, James Russell's sister married merchant William Molleson. A new firm was set up, James Russell and Molleson. Molleson was aged 71 when he died in 1804, and he like John Nutt and Duncan Campbell fought long to obtain recompense for his American debts. ([28]) (Landon Carter mentioned the London merchant James Russell in his diary). ([29])

 

      By 1735, still in America, James Russell lent on mortgage or bought land and slaves. In the 1730s he part-owned a ship with John Buchanan of London, a young Scots merchant. ([30]) John Buchanan it appears was a partner with Gilbert Buchanan of London, Gilbert probably being John's father. In the 1730s, John Buchanan visited Maryland on Gilbert's behalf. Later, John Buchanan and Russell were partners in a Nottingham ironworks in Baltimore county. ([31])

 

      In 1738, widening his scope, the colonial James Russell registered the sloop Charming Molly, 15 tons. He presumably did well with her, since in 1742 he registered Nottingham, 150 tons, in partnership with his brother-in-law, James Wardrope, and with John Buchanan. ([32]) Before 1743, James Russell married a daughter of the Maryland Lee family. About 1750, Russell as sole owner had the ship Ogle, 300 tons. ([33]) By the 1750s, James Russell had a ship in partnership with the Annapolis shipbuilder James Roberts and an Annapolis merchant, James Dick. ([34]) ([35]) By 1776, as the tobacco trade disintegrated, some of these merchants and their associates were to become tangled up with Campbell's fall in the convict service.

 

      James Russell moved to London in 1752, later to be described as "first in the London tobacco trade", and by 1760, he had set up as a commission merchant soliciting tobacco consignments from planters of Virginia and Maryland. ([36]) Russell also maintained various interests in colonial ironworks, though not in William Lux's ironworks specifically. The Lux family, it seems, had interests in shipping felons, an interest in an ironworks dealings, and later the Lux boys branched out, keeping links with Russell and his associates. At this time also, whaling was becoming busier in New England, credit was getting longer in colonies. And a Capt. Johnstoun sailed on convict ship Tryal.

 

        In 1763, Russell had moved to London to create a counting house at Jeffrey's Square, St Mary Axe, but in 1769 he was at 2 Hylord's Court, Crutched Friars, nearer to the Customs House. Before the American Revolution, Russell retained a partner Lee with a store at Dumfries. (In 1759, Colonel John Tayloe and one George Mason had helped establish the port of Dumfries. It became prosperous, and housed "a distinguished group of merchants and gentlemen"...). ([37]) Much of Russell's stores and land lots were confiscated during the Revolution; he died in 1788. ([38]) Campbell, whose London address by the 1770s was Mincing Lane, would certainly have known of Russell.

 

*     *      *

 

Official contracts to transport:

 

     From the 1740s, one London contractor was a member of the Portuguese Jewish colony in London, Moses Israel Fonesca, a small player of whom little is known (His name is seen only in one isolated reference). ([39]) It may be but a guess, but John Stewart may have known Fonesca, as Stewart's brother James was later at Oporto, Portugal, in the wine business. Most of the merchants involved in the convict service have been regarded by historians as of a lower social status and not from established mercantile families. To observe this is to neglect inspection of the links between such merchants, but, that the convict service was not regarded as respectable. It was probably regarded with distaste by most English merchants of any self-esteem. John Stewart himself once observed, the transporting of criminals was left to "the most corruptible class" of traders, and once, with alarming candour, he described his former partner, Andrew Reid, as a "person against whom almost every species of complaint was made". ([40]) Stewart himself was complained of in the colonies as a disgusting profiteer, and must have been aware of it. ([41]) ([42])

 

     From the mid-1740s: Two London firms, Reid and Armour, and Sydenham and Hodgson, avidly competed for the "franchise" for the Coventry felons. The larger firm was Reid and Armour. ([43]) But about this time, Samuel Sedgley of Bristol and James Gildart of Liverpool were also becoming more heavily involved, developing business from the sentencing rates for convicts from West England. ([44]) Commercially, Bristol was the only centre besides London to produce a significant operation engaging in the convict service. ([45]) Between 1746 and 1775, Bristol shipped nearly 35 per cent of the almost 10,000 felons known to be sent from Britain to Maryland.

 

     Coldham sketches a disturbing impression of the convict contractor and slaver Samuel Sedgley. ([46]) Sedgley by 1739 was sheriff of Bristol. He was "a prosperous slave trader and owner of a small fleet of ships" used for carrying black or white slave labour. Captain of his "fleet" was Jonathan Tallimay, well-known in Maryland harbours. Sedgley built up the firm Sedgley, Hillhouse and Randolph, with  trade including convict transportation from the Western Counties. (With Sedgley a sheriff, the opportunities for corruption must have been ripe!). Sedgley died in 1754, his firm declined and bankrupted in 1767. He had been a mere "subcontractor" for Sydenham and Hodgson.

 

     The disturbing impression arising from evidence of the careers of convict contractors, with mention of the London-based Sydenham, is that from the time of the 1718 legislation, London-based merchants helped to institutionalise links between slave trading and convict contracting, also entrapping colonial planters in debt, and snaring future profits on future crops. (Westerfield finds that London merchants with their techniques of credit extension found it almost as easy to keep the Portuguese merchants in thralls of debt as they did the planters in the Caribbean and North America.) ([47]) And so, a great web of credit was extended over the colonies. A quite different situation applied in India, where the British had less control (till they took it militarily); and in China to 1800, only about 12 Chinese merchants were allowed to deal with "foreign devils". So in China, British merchants had even less control. Their response was to entrap the Chinese not in debt, but in opium addiction. ([48]) Which is to suggest that finally, profits from slavery and convict contracting were inseparable. The entire system was orchestrated from London; London interests had branches in outports, such as Bristol, a slaving port, and it would be interesting to know how much all of this represented the power and reach of the Africa Company, which had continued to develop with royal blessings. ([49])

 

*    *    *

 

       By 1739 there had been sufficient cases of transportees illegally returning from their punishment for the matter to be remedied by legislation, ([50]) as Daniel Defoe might have predicted in 1724. Meanwhile, if some merchants in the convict service were small players, the most-involved still tended to be the best connected. By 1739, Andrew Reid of London had appeared as a new and probably better-connected trader, a friend of the Secretary of the Treasury. ([51]) ([52]) Reid was placed on the government payroll, though Forward continued to transport felons from provincial jails until the late 1740s. Amongst Reid's associates were James and Andrew Armour of London and John Stewart. ([53])  Reid and Forward each sent about 240 convicts per year from the same areas, Reid  active until 1763. Between 1742 and 1745 Reid mounted at least seven voyages, averaging 92 felons per trip. ([54]) By 5 April, 1742, Andrew Reid had officially entrenched himself as the government convict contractor in London. ([55]) While it is not perfectly clear if Forward and Reid could be suggested as working together, they did take convicts from the same area. It may have been Reid who recruited Stewart into the convict service?

 

     While the trade was being steadied by the management of stable merchants, historians record that new forms of colonial resistance to accepting convicts were overridden by Royal or Proprietary orders. During this phase of the convict service, health issues especially began to cause more comment, a way for colonial authorities to harass Britain's convict contractors. In 1742, by 8 September, Reid wrote to Birch, a Coventry official, about convicts' health conditions for the voyage, emphasising cleanliness before departure. ([56]) Here, it was all too easy for a convict to contract a disease before or after embarkation, to be sold ill to a colonial employer, and then proceed to infect an entire family, some or all of whom might die. Colonial resentment at this must have simmered for years. The failure of the British government to make suggestions about quarantine facilities at any colonial ports speaks for itself about the moral carelessness of its penal measures. ([57])

 

       The aura of the convict service to North America is brutal, misted by rumours only of near kindness. The American historian Ekirch mentions Capt. Barnet Bond, sailing for Andrew Reid on Justitia in 1743, as amongst the most cruel of the regular captains on the run. There were to arise a spate of allegations about maltreatment of convicts aboard ships. In the 1740s, Forward Capt. John Sargent was still being used in the trade, her ownership unlikely to have changed. ([58]) Sargent robbed the convict Catherine Davis; and in 1743, Capt. Bond was accused of murder and robbery. ([59]) ([60]) From April 1743 the voyage London-to-Maryland of Justitia Capt. Barnet Bond, London to Maryland, owned by Andrew Reid, demonstrated some of the cruelties of the trade. Reid later prosecuted Bond, who barely escaped conviction at the Old Bailey on four charges of murder.

 

     Later, JS&C owned Justitia, 305 tons, then Campbell owned her solely, another example of close links between London convict contractors. (Since Stewart, then Campbell, later owned Justitia, which from 1776 was used as a Thames River hulk, it seems that Stewart bought out Reid's operation in entirety when Reid  retired from the business, by 1763). Departing England in April 1743, Justitia Capt. Barnet Bond was again bound for America. ([61])

 

*     *     *

 

     By working through all the treatments of transportation to America, it is possible to find or guess which merchants owned which ships. Capt. Barnet Bond left England in April 1743 on Justitia. Ship-name mysteries can abound. Also departing England in April 1743 was Bond Capt. Matt Johnson for America. ([62]) Bond's name suggests a link with Capt. Barnet Bond? Whereas, departing England in November 1743 was George William  Capt. Jack Campbell for America, one of the few captains named Campbell listed in the convict service from London. ([63]) As far as is known, this captain was not associated with Duncan Campbell, but if he was, he may have been one of Duncan's relatives from Scotland or Jamaica? Capt. Jack Campbell was leaving England again in May 1744 on Justitia, for America. ([64]) ([65])From the mid-1740s, reports Ekirch, two London firms, Reid & Armour and Sydenham & Hodgson ([66]) avidly competed for the "franchise" for Coventry felons. Sydenham appears to have been linked to Forward's long-standing operations, as a principal was named Jonathan Forward Sydenham. The larger firm was Reid and Armour. ([67]) Family partnerships by then appear to have been strengthening, as is suggested by the ship Italian Merchant, Capt. Alexander Reid, departing England in July 1745 for America. ([68]) ([69]) On 17 August, 1745 a legal official in Coventry, Birch, wrote to Andrew Reid about felons for transportation. ([70]) Duncan Campbell's Letterbooks, not opened till 1766, offer no information on any captain Jack Campbell. But on 31 May, 1766, Landon Carter sent 10 hogsheads of stemmed tobacco made in Northumberland to JS&C by Capt. Somerville. ([71])

 

*    *    *

 

By 1744, Captain James Dobbins was beginning a long career - he entered the trade to Maryland, made eight more voyages, and was well regarded. For five years he sailed on the Thames, 210 tons. ([72]) Dobbins commanded Savannah departing England in October 1744 for America; in 1746 his ship Plain Dealer was captured by the enemy. ([73]) ([74])

 

     Some London merchants contracted to carry felons, but were not beneficiaries of the subsidy. They trafficked in convicts from counties and towns outside London, on a small scale. Of 34 identifiable London firms involved in the trade to Maryland, from 1746 to 1775, 24 sponsored only one voyage. From 1749 to 1749, Stewart and Armour transported 1147 felons with 13 voyages. ([75]) ([76]) ([77]) From 1746 to 1775, 182 vessels carried convicts to Maryland. Only six were more than 250 tons; 9423 convicts were carried. ([78])

 

      A similar pattern was seen in Bristol. It has not been seriously asked if the dominant firms bribed legal officials, not that evidence would still survive. Bristol statistics include the following: from 1746 to 1775, from Bristol, eight companies transported felons to Maryland, but only four sponsored more than a single voyage. ([79]) Sedgely and Co. (1749 to 1768) and Stevenson, Randolph and Cheston, (1768-1775) accounted for almost 90 per cent of the Bristol trade, shipping 2954 felons over 47 voyages. James Cheston remained the agent in Maryland for that firm. Merchants usually contracted for felons in April after the winter assizes, but ships sailed at other times, notably after the  summer assizes. ([80]) Hence the Bristol trade as described by Morgan. ([81]) Meanwhile, in the colonies, one Ringold from 1767 worked as the Maryland agent for JS&C - Tom Hodge(s) worked as agent for JS&C in Virginia. (Hodge died in 1775, a merchant of Leedstown, JP in King George County. ([82])

 

*    *    *

 

      To 1750, three London interest groups were linked to groups in the American colonies; churches, ethnic groups, and mercantile groups. ([83]) Olson has not included Freemasons as a grouping, but Freemasonry was becoming extremely popular in the colonies, with an unknown effect on social and business life. The various English groups became the information-conduits for Americans attempting to convey views to authority in England, on matters affecting them, which could be varied by government, or by political or lobbying activity. Still, the comparative silence of the America core-group from 1733 to about 1751 does seem strange.

 

     Identified by Olson, the leading Virginia agents, Peter Leheup (1723-1754) and James Abercromby (1754-1761), negotiated with merchants on provincial laws and discouraged mercantile opposition. ([84]) The core of the American merchants included Edward Athawes, "dean of the Virginia tobacco merchants" since the 1750s, John Norton, the Quakers David Barclay, and Daniel Mildred, the Marquis of Rockingham's friend Sir William Baker and his lawyer son, and the Carolina merchants John Nutt (Nutt a pro-American) and Edward Brigden. Also, the New England merchants Alexander Champion (also a whaler investor) and Thomas Lane; Maryland merchants James Russell and William Molleson; the Virginia merchant Duncan Campbell; plus two traders New York-Pennsylvania, William Neate and Frederick Pigou. However, it is not easy to detect from Olson's research when Campbell became a member of the core-group, but possibly, by 1763.

 

     In 1763, two active merchants in the Rappahanock Valley were James Miller and James Robb, advertising convict servants. ([85]) (The Rappahanock River enters Virginia's Chesapeake Bay near the birthplace of George Washington). ([86]) Campbell was in Virginia in late 1763, as Colonel Landon Carter noted. ([87])

 

        Political differences in the core-group arose over time, with a destructive effect on its stability. James Russell and Dennys DeBerdt Jnr both signed the extreme October 1775 petition urging government to take steps to restore peace with America - as time was running out. During political debates within the core-group, Campbell remained a conservative, avoiding the divisive Wilkesite line with distaste.

 

*   *   *

 

     Capt. John Johnstoun became a link man in both the convict service and the tobacco trade, but little is known. Something is owed here to research by the American historian, Jacob Price. There departed England in September 1746 the ship Mary, Capt. John Johnstoun for America. ([88]) Departing England in June 1748 and January 1749 was Lichfield Capt. John Johnstoun for America. In April 1750, Capt. Johnstoun left England for America in Tryal, by then a ship with a longish career in the convict service. Johnstoun was aboard her again in May 1751. ([89]) In the 1770s, a London tobacco house dealing with colonials was Robert Cary and Co., with family connections in Virginia, who provided poor service; so Russells began to use Captain Johnstoun, who brought an annual ship in Russell's service right past Russell's door at Mount Vernon. ([90]) It appears then that a convict contractor - JS&C?- was willing to give doorstop service in the colonies! ([91])

 

     The convict contracting business was firming enough to encourage expansion. By 1747, William Cookson of Hull was a contractor, but with no great involvement. From 1749, in Maryland and/or London, working for Jonathan Forward as an agent, with a partner, Hodgson, was Forward's nephew, Jonathan Forward Sydenham, who was also  mentioned in Landon Carter's diary.

 

   As earlier noted, there had been a connection between the Luxs and Jonathan Forward since the 1720s. William Lux as a young man in 1750 had moved into retailing in the Baltimore area, taking over from his father, whose estate was finally worth only £3000.  In 1758 William Lux broadened activities, sending his brother Darby to  Barbados, shipping out provisions and backloading rum in particular. Assisting this new venture was the James Russell in London, whose fortunes by now were waxing full. William Lux, Charles Ridgely and one Dorsey managed Russell's business on the Patapsco River and dealt especially with planters around Elk Ridge. JS&C also dealt with merchants at Elk Ridge Landing, near Baltimore. William Lux, the Ridgelys, and John Buchanan and many others in the Chesapeake by this time were heavily involved in ironworks. As Jacob Price notes, dealing in iron, which was useful as ship's ballasting,  complemented the tobacco trade. ([92])

 

        The activities of William Russell and Duncan Campbell mirrored each other. Campbell had begun first in trade to the West Indies, later moving into the North American tobacco market. Russell had begun with North American tobacco and now wanted to supply the West Indies. Of course, linkages in the two operations could easily have been arranged between Russell and JS&C in London; but it is not known if that actually happened.

 

*    *    *

 

The dread of gaol fever:

 

     In 1750, using William, Samuel Sedgeley and Co. of Bristol were transporting most of the convicts of the western part of England to Maryland. By 1760 the firm was called Sedgeley and Hillhouse. ([93]) The most dreaded aspect of the prisoner environment was gaol fever, a louse-borne form of typhus. It began with a sudden attack of headache, chills, stomach pains, ending 21 days later, usually in death. ([94]). In the Spring of 1750, disease cast a long pall over convict handling in London - evidence that the deadly diseases afflicting convicts could also kill their keepers. In the "Black Sessions" at the Old Bailey, infections from convicts killed more than 50 people at the court, including four of six judges, the lord mayor, four counsel, the under-sheriff, forty jurors - and presumably an uncounted number of prisoners. ([95]) A similar problem arose in 1752 and another mayor died. There is no reason to believe that London's local government circles ever forgot these disasters. These were the first sensational cases of infection, which entrenched an understandable fear of disease amongst the London middle and upper classes who might come in contact with offenders. Almost naturally, one result was a greater punitiveness toward convicts who might spread such diseases. The fact that convicts in the first instance might catch such diseases due to grossly inadequate prisoner accommodation and medical ignorance about how such diseases were spread went unnoticed. And so prisoners - created very much as a class of victims - were blamed yet again for circumstances beyond their control. Increasingly, more so after 1783, fear of disease allegedly spread by prisoners would become entrenched in the political attitudes expressed towards transportable and other prisoners. Deplorable health conditions in English gaols represented yet another tightening of the screws on the poor of England. But efforts were later made to improve prisoner shipping conditions. ([96])

 

Brutality on a convict ship:

 

     Campbell between 1758 until the late 1770s possessed a certain fatalism about the medical aspects of handling felons infected with gaol fevers. There was a coldness apparent in the way Campbell felt about health conditions for felons on his ships, and the risk that colonials employing infected felons might also become infected. This fatalism may have reflected the views of the age? However, Patrick, one of Campbell's brothers, a medical student, had died aged only 24 on Jamaica in 1739, an event that could perhaps have reinforced any tendency Campbell had to fatalism about medical matters? Where medical knowledge was primitive, this, and a certain temperamental fatalism about physical life, seem the only explanations for his apparent callousness, which he displayed all his life to convicts, And profited from considerably, as his obituarist  observed.

 

     As the commercial sophistication of the convict service grew, so did the management questions involved. Convict recalcitrance was being reported more often. In April 1752 a vessel had not left its London moorings when 50 convicts mutinied, but were suppressed by alert sentinels. ([97]) Other issues compounded severely when colonial legislatures moved against the convict service, so that by 1755, Stewart was bitterly complaining that Maryland had imposed an import duty of 20 shillings per head on convicts entering that colony. ([98]) Convict transportation even encouraged guilt feelings. On 23 December, 1755, the principal secretary of the Lord Proprietor's Court in England had observed to the governor in Maryland that " 'tis truly hard upon the Province that the Scum and Dregs of the People here sent, should be the Cause of Ruin to Honest men there". ([99])

 

Endnote1: In time, Duncan Campbell as a tobacco lobbyist would associate with William Molleson. From about 1759, Buchanan and Simson in Glasgow used James Buchanan and Co. in London, but some of its Glasgow business also went to Fraser & Wharton (from 1760 Fraser, Wharton and Molleson) "a newer Scottish house in London that handled bills, made insurance, sold tobacco, purchased American-produced goods" and in turn for shipping resources it used Anthony Bacon and Co., Andrew Moffatt, Grant and Robertson, or Yule and Fairholme. ([100]) Jacob Price mentions that Buchanan and Simson sometimes dealt with a Manchester firm for textiles, such as Kennedy and Bell, or Marsden and Edward Kenyon. ([101])

 

Endnote2: Charles Turnbull from 1759 was an agent for Buchanan and Simson and David Dalyell at Petersburg, who according to his employers made the mistake of dealing with Col. William Byrd, by becoming Byrd's business adviser. The view taken was that Byrd's affairs were usually in "notorious disorder". ([102]) Price also details how Buchanan and Simson's trade to Virginia and Maryland slowly drew them into dealing in the slave trade using operators in St Kitts and in Liverpool. Their slaves ships often picked up hundreds of gallons of brandy from the Isle of Man, and handled East India Company goods, Manchester goods. Buchanan and Simson and similar Scots firms also dealt in insurance, supplementing insurance market offerings provided by Lloyd's, and the London Assurance, Royal Exchange Assurance companies, along with underwriting facilities available at Bristol, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Leith, and Glasgow.

 

Endnote3: French buyers for tobacco. When Buchanan and Simson began in 1759, the primary French buying agency in Britain was divided into two London firms, George Fitzgerald, and Gerard and Joshua Van Neck and Co. ([103]) Fitzgerald at that time purchased from Scots through William Alexander and Sons of Edinburgh; Van Neck and Co. did business with Buchanan and Simson (partly as George Buchanan's father had dealt with the French monopoly from the 1730s). Fitzgerald failed in December 1759, Van Neck seem to have gotten the now-undivided French business, and they then used Alexander and Sons [only?] in Scotland. But Buchanan and Simson were shipping for France via Fairholme and Malcolm of Edinburgh, whose precise role is unclear. From the 1750s to 1770, a Scots merchant, William Davidson, was very active in tobacco at Rotterdam, an important dock for Glasgow tobacco. Also at Rotterdam in tobacco were William and James Manson, a great rival to Davidson, a Dutch firm Willem van Rykevorsal and Sons; other Rotterdam firms Price lists were Bremen houses such as  Frederick Schroeder and Co. At French-controlled ports were merchants such as James Crawford of Rotterdam) Widow Archdeacon and Gamba at Dunkirk or Charles Anthony Casteleyn at Ostend. Or J. F. Casteleyn, per Ostend but of Groningen in the Netherlands.

 

Endnote4: (From Thomas Devine, Tobacco Lords, p. 55). There were various ways in which trade in the tobacco trade was conducted. Duncan Campbell used the system whereby the planter kept ownership of the tobacco whilst the merchant arranged risks such as insurance, and paid costs such as freight, port duties, etc. The merchant marketed the tobacco, then charged the planter for same, along with other charges including those for shipping goods ordered by the planter. Often there remained a balance owing with the London merchant house. The trader got his commission payment and cut his risks, the planter enjoyed expanding credit. In contrast, the Glasgow merchants used the store system, whereby the store as agent for the Glasgow firm bought a crop outright from planters, then shipped it to Britain, whilst the stores serviced consumer needs. Credit at the store was arranged on condition the planters sold their tobacco to the store-keeper, so the stores ended in extending longer-term credit to planters. ([104])

 

Endnote5: Curiously, there were merchants in tobacco in Glasgow named Somerville, but Campbell seems not to have dealt with them. ([105]) Devine records Ritchies along with Donalds, Oswalds, Dunlops and Murdochs as being lower-ranked tobacco merchants than Speirs and Cunninghames, yet all were from families with tobacco trade links  stretching back to the sixteenth century. Speirs was from an Edinburgh merchant family. The Glasgow name Sumervell is found in the context of the Darien Company. James Somervell was a middle-ranking Glasgow merchant by 1791; Devine lists his investments. ([106])

<Finis Chapter 9>

Chapter 9 words 6316 words with footnotes 8980 pages 17  footnotes 106