Thomas Raikes Thomas Raikes Thomas Raikes ("the Elder") (28 March 1741 – 29 December 1813) was a British merchant particularly trading from London with Russia, a banker and newspaper proprietor. Notably, he was Governor of the Bank of England during the 1797 currency crisis, when the Bank was prohibited by the British Government from paying out in gold. Raikes was born at Gloucester in 1741, third son of Robert Raikes the Elder and Mary Drew. His brothers included Robert Raikes, the founder and promoter of Sunday schools, and William Raikes, a director of the South Sea Company. Raikes was Governor of the
Arthur Raikes M. Laronce the French consul and, in court with the Arab caid, pronounced a sentence of one years imprisonment on the slaver. The British consul Arthur Henry Hardinge pronounced that the likelihood was that the slaver was born in Pemba and even if from the Comoros his birth would have preceded the declaration of the French protectorate. In 1899 Raikes, on behalf of the Zanzibari sultan, accepted the line of demarcation proposed by Hardinge between British and Zanzibari possessions on the African mainland, this crossing the line of the Uganda Railway. By 1902 Raikes had been promoted to Captain of