Why are slave traders still being commemorated? | Letters
Robert Beckford writes about the decision to keep a statue of William Beckford, a former master of the Ironmongers’ Company, on display in the Guildhall in London (A plaque on a statue can’t cover a cruel slave trader’s mass murder. My ancestors deserve better, 19 September).
The Ironmongers’ Company commemorates another enslaver, Sir Robert Geffrye, whose portrait hangs on the main staircase of the Ironmongers’ Hall. There is also a statue of Geffrye outside the Museum of the Home in Hackney in east London. He was a director and shareholder in the Royal African Company, as well as being the part owner of a slaving ship, the China Merchant. The Royal African Company trafficked more enslaved Africans to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade.
When Geffrye died in 1704, he left around £13,000, worth £30m in today’s money. This was split equally between surviving friends and relatives on the one hand, and charitable donations on the other. Nothing was given to ameliorate the conditions of enslaved workers in the West Indies. Philanthropy and charity were useful ways to disguise the shabby origins of so much wealth, but to be effective, this apparent generosity had to be very public. Thus the proliferation of statues, portraits and other memorials to these ruthless businessmen.
Geffrye’s major charitable bequest was to pay for the building of the almshouses that were eventually to become the Geffrye Museum, recently renamed the Museum of the Home. Of course, there is a statue of Robert Geffrye prominently displayed on the front of the building.
When local campaigners, including the MP and the mayor of Hackney, called for the statue to be removed, the government used its powers under the planning regulations to forbid its removal. The Ironmongers’ Company does not require planning permission to remove a portrait of an enslaver. They could replace it with an image showing the evils of the slave trade.
Dr Steve Cushion
London
Robert Beckford rightly calls out the City of London Corporation for its dismal attitude to the slave trade. As a white man, aged 77, it has taken me until this year to read my first book about slavery. I have no excuse. I possess a portrait of a direct ancestor, one Thomas Snow, “Goldsmith of Temple Bar” (1685-1748), who managed to lose vast sums for his clients on the unsuccessful South Sea Company. He was sufficiently notorious for Jonathan Swift to pen a savage poem about him which begins “Disdain not, Snow, my humble verse to hear … / Whether thy counter shine with sums untold / And thy wide-grasping hand grows black with gold / Whether thy mien erect, and sable locks / In crowds of brokers over awe the stocks”.
It so happens that in the 1950s I was occasionally taken by my mother to St Bartholomew’s hospital, also in the City, to call on her sister, my Aunt Flora, “identified as Sister Colston” doubtless because her ward had benefited from the largesse of the famous Bristol-based slaver.
Tom Snow
London
I must disagree with Robert Beckford when he says that the statue of William Beckford should be removed to a museum, though I thoroughly endorse his choice of words for the explanatory plaque. Left where it is now, with the addition of a plaque worded as he suggests, it would remind those who pass by whose ancestors also benefited from slavery of the ultimate origins of their fortunes. It might even make them feel a twinge of guilt.
Terence R Adams
Birmingham
Robert Beckford’s proposal for the removal and placement of William Beckford’s statue offers the perfect solution for all such statues. If necessary, a new museum of national shame could be built to contain them all.
Diana Francis
Bath
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