Robert Milligan was a key figure in the development of the City of London as a global financial centre. Milligan exploited African people as slaves in the eighteenth century. Londoners walked past his statue for over 200 years. But no more. Protestors have forced the removal of Milligan's statue from a Canary Wharf quayside.
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| The statue of slave owner Robert Milligan at the West India Docks has been removed after 211 years (Photo © London Intelligence ®) |
By Paul Coleman
Robert Milligan was a major figure in the growth of the City of London as a financial centre. Milligan was also a slave-owner.
At the time of his death, Milligan owned 526 enslaved Africans.
They were forced to work on his two plantations in Jamaica.
When Milligan died in 1809, the West India Dock Company erected a statue in his honour (above photo).
Genius
They were forced to work on his two plantations in Jamaica.
When Milligan died in 1809, the West India Dock Company erected a statue in his honour (above photo).
Barbaric
Milligan is chiefly responsible for the construction of the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs in the late eighteenth century – one the first systems of enclosed docks built anywhere on Earth.
Milligan's statue stood for nearly 200 years at West India Dock's main gates. Then it was repositioned outside the Museum of London Docklands.
Milligan's statue stood for nearly 200 years at West India Dock's main gates. Then it was repositioned outside the Museum of London Docklands.
The Museum is housed in Warehouse No.1, one of nine West India Dock warehouses used to stash sugar, rum and coffee harvested by African slaves. The Museum includes a gallery that graphically depicts the central involvement of Britain's wealthy elite in the barbaric system of African slavery. Surprisingly, the Museum did not incorporate the statue or link it to its gallery's grim narrative about slavery.
Genius
The West India Dock Company's statue and its plaque stood unexplained for over two centuries. The plaque states: ‘To perpetuate on this spot, the memory of Robert Milligan, a merchant of London to whose genius, perseverance and guardian care the surrounding great work principally owes its design, accomplishment and regulation.
'The directors and proprietors deprived by his death on the 21st May 1809 of the continuance of his invaluable services by their unanimous vote have caused this statue to be erected.’Escape
West India slave traders, plantation owners and sugar, rum and spice merchants – people like Robert Milligan –felt they needed secure docks in London to safeguard their precious cargoes. Their profits needed protection from criminal elements, drawn from London’s masses trying to escape poverty, starvation, disease and violence.
The plantocracy and merchants in the West Indies, drawn from Britain's wealthy merchant elite, boomed sugar exports to England. Slave-harvested exports from Jamaica, for instance, rose from 21,730 tons in 1699 to 49,738 tons in 1729.
West India Committee
War and slave revolts threatened the lucrative trade in sugar and slavery. The 1775 outbreak of the American War of Independence against British colonial rule cut off the West Indian plantation owners from their cheapest sources of flour, meat, dairy produce, fish, and lumber.
Rising prices for such American goods threatened the plantation owners financially.
Milligan’s lucrative slavery and sugar trade was in peril.
Milligan, and other slave traders and plantation owners, like the enormously wealthy George Hibbert, held an emergency meeting at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate, in the heart of the City of London.
They formed the West India Committee, a pressure group designed to flex political muscle against vested interests in Parliament and rival wealthy merchants in the City of London.
This West India lobby also helped to defeat attempts by the anti-slavery movement and its supportive minority of MPs to abolish the slave trade.
Revolt
The tumultuous 1791 slave revolt in Haiti, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, led to the temporary abolition of slavery in France's Caribbean colony. Plantation owners throughout British colonies in the West Indies – and merchants like Milligan and Hibbert – feared similar revolt. African slaves outnumbered white people in British colonies by almost three to one.
West Indiamen
In 1793 France declared war on England, forcing ‘West Indiamen’ – merchant ships – to convey their precious cargoes in convoys guarded by navy warships.
West Indiamen
In 1793 France declared war on England, forcing ‘West Indiamen’ – merchant ships – to convey their precious cargoes in convoys guarded by navy warships.
Even as the war intensified, convoys of West Indiamen ships still arrived in London laden with 40,000 hogsheads (large barrels) of sugar at a time.
Sugar
Warehouses in the chaotic and cramped port of London could only accommodate 327,000 hogsheads of sugar in one year. In 1798, 120,000 sugar hogsheads arrived.
Sugar, rum and coffee piled up on quaysides.
Eight thousand vessels of all sizes clogged the Thames up to four miles east of London Bridge.
Streets off the river were constantly blocked.
Corruption and chaos reigned.
Violent
Patrick Colquhoun, a former Virginia merchant, estimated the value of total booty in the Port of London at £75 million – “all of it subject to speculation, fraud, embezzlement, pillage and depredation”.
Thousands of lightermen, watermen and porters all benefited from delays, inefficiency and corruption in the handling of West Indian slave-harvested produce.
Licensed by City of London aldermen, these groups formed tight and violent brotherhoods.
Sugar
Warehouses in the chaotic and cramped port of London could only accommodate 327,000 hogsheads of sugar in one year. In 1798, 120,000 sugar hogsheads arrived.
Sugar, rum and coffee piled up on quaysides.
Eight thousand vessels of all sizes clogged the Thames up to four miles east of London Bridge.
Streets off the river were constantly blocked.
Corruption and chaos reigned.
Violent
Patrick Colquhoun, a former Virginia merchant, estimated the value of total booty in the Port of London at £75 million – “all of it subject to speculation, fraud, embezzlement, pillage and depredation”.
Thousands of lightermen, watermen and porters all benefited from delays, inefficiency and corruption in the handling of West Indian slave-harvested produce.
Licensed by City of London aldermen, these groups formed tight and violent brotherhoods.
Ships watchmen were robbed or bribed by crooked watermen known as ‘night plunderers’. ‘Scufflehunters’ disappeared as soon as they had hidden enough produce under their long aprons. ‘Mudlarks’ - groups of children – pretended to sift through the low tide silt for scraps but acted in cahoots with dockers who dropped merchandise over the side of ships. Sugar, coffee and rum was removed under darkness from their casks and hogsheads.
Ratcatchers sneaked the same rats from one vessel to another to claim payments.
Opposed
Colquhoun told Parliament only a high-walled, fortress-type dock system would protect the sugar, rum and coffee. Patrolled by a river police, such docks would secure revenues and profits.
However, many City of London aldermen and owners of the existing legal quays fiercely opposed Milligan and Hibbert’s desire for a walled and policed docks.
A lengthy tussle ensued for power and profit.
West India Dock Act
Using Colquhoun’s proposals, the West India Committee members lobbied Parliament and the City of London over six years from 1793.
Eventually, their lobbying led to the West India Dock Act 1799.
The Act decreed all West India produce - whether for import or export - had to go through the West India Docks.
The Act led to the formation of the West India Dock Company (WIDC).
It was a corporation that would enjoy a lucrative monopoly.
Over 120 initial subscribers, some investing as much as £500,000, sought to consolidate their profits from African slave trading and West Indian sugar plantations.
Ornament
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and his cabinet joined the WIDC directors at the ceremonial laying of a foundation stone at two o’clock in the afternoon of 12 July, 1800.
Inset into the stone were two glass bottles; one contained coins marking the reign of King George III, the other a Latin inscription that said of Milligan and Hibbert: ‘The two latter distinguished to direct an undertaking, which, under the favour of God, shall continue Stability, Increase and Ornament to British Commerce’.
That day was declared a public holiday.
Newspapers reported that ‘elegant entertainment’ followed at the London Tavern where the ‘nobles and gentlemen’ made repeated and prolonged toasts to the ‘prosperity of the West India colonies’.
Devoted
The Act decreed all West India produce - whether for import or export - had to go through the West India Docks.
The Act led to the formation of the West India Dock Company (WIDC).
It was a corporation that would enjoy a lucrative monopoly.
Over 120 initial subscribers, some investing as much as £500,000, sought to consolidate their profits from African slave trading and West Indian sugar plantations.
Ornament
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and his cabinet joined the WIDC directors at the ceremonial laying of a foundation stone at two o’clock in the afternoon of 12 July, 1800.
Inset into the stone were two glass bottles; one contained coins marking the reign of King George III, the other a Latin inscription that said of Milligan and Hibbert: ‘The two latter distinguished to direct an undertaking, which, under the favour of God, shall continue Stability, Increase and Ornament to British Commerce’.
That day was declared a public holiday.
Newspapers reported that ‘elegant entertainment’ followed at the London Tavern where the ‘nobles and gentlemen’ made repeated and prolonged toasts to the ‘prosperity of the West India colonies’.
Devoted
By 1802, the West India Docks were completed under the protection of a military guard armed with muskets and bayonets.
The Docks comprised two parallel stretches of water, both 2,600 feet long and between 400-500 feet wide; one, an Import Dock, and the other an Export Dock.
Both docks were surrounded by large five-storey warehouses ‘devoted to the storage of merchandise’.
On the south side of the Import Dock was a quay reserved for Jamaican slave-made rum held in underground vaults.
Marred
At each end of the docks a basin connected them to the Thames itself.
The Blackwall Basin to the west was for the West Indiamen cargo ships, and the Limehouse Basin at the east for lighters, the small vessels used to unload moored West Indiamen.
Tragedy ought to have marred the opening of the West India Docks.
On 22 July, 1802, a labourer called Kent warned building site foremen about a weakening coffer dam wall at the Blackwall Basin.
The foremen ignored Kent.
The wall collapsed soon afterwards.
Water from the Thames burst into the basin where 20 men were working.
They scrambled to save themselves but six workers drowned; Richard Bough, supervising the work, four labourers, and a young boy.
Shame
The WIDC paid compensation to their families.
The Times reported their deaths.
However, white working people's lives seemed to matter almost as little as the lives of black African slaves.
Resident docks engineer Ralph Walker was not struck by grief and guilt but angered by alleged inaccurate reporting and by implicit criticism of his engineering.
‘That the number of unfortunate persons who lost their lives which were six, should be multiplied into sixty is consistent to a practice nothing uncommon with persons who feel pleasure in misfortune,’ wrote Walker.
‘May those who feel conscious of deserving this reproof let shame have its proper effect on their minds.’
Vessel
The six ‘navvies’ were little more than dispensable drowned rats as far as Milligan and Hibbert and the WIDC shareholders were concerned.
Just weeks later, on 22 August 1802, the West India Docks were publicly opened by the new prime minister, Henry Addington.
Various press reports estimate that between 10,000 and 30,000 people attended.
The opening of the West Indies Docks was a celebrated national event.
Bands played and crowds cheered.
The first vessel that entered the dock system that day was The Henry Addington, bearing the ‘flags of all nations’.
Immediately behind came the Echo. The West Indiaman, carrying 900 hogsheads of slave-harvested sugar, moored opposite Warehouse No.8.
The company shareholders and its 21 directors, eight representing the Corporation of London, rubbed their hands with anticipation on the quay.
Hibbert and the company men toasted Milligan once again.
Sweat
Profits flowed. Shareholders received 10 per cent dividends from 1803 until 1829.
Vessel
The six ‘navvies’ were little more than dispensable drowned rats as far as Milligan and Hibbert and the WIDC shareholders were concerned.
Just weeks later, on 22 August 1802, the West India Docks were publicly opened by the new prime minister, Henry Addington.
Various press reports estimate that between 10,000 and 30,000 people attended.
The opening of the West Indies Docks was a celebrated national event.
Bands played and crowds cheered.
The first vessel that entered the dock system that day was The Henry Addington, bearing the ‘flags of all nations’.
Immediately behind came the Echo. The West Indiaman, carrying 900 hogsheads of slave-harvested sugar, moored opposite Warehouse No.8.
The company shareholders and its 21 directors, eight representing the Corporation of London, rubbed their hands with anticipation on the quay.
Hibbert and the company men toasted Milligan once again.
Sweat
Profits flowed. Shareholders received 10 per cent dividends from 1803 until 1829.
The WIDC accumulated a large fund.
Milligan’s West India Docks ensured London’s wealthy mercantile class was able to massively enrich itself through surpluses generated by the rapaciously systematic and brutal exploitation of African men, women and children in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. People like Milligan and Hibbert invested in land and property in London and beyond.
Capital surpluses generated from slavery - a trade justified by a racist God-fearing ideology - helped this strata of British society to further exploit and sweat the labour of white working people across Britain.
Logical
Milligan and Hibbert and their West India Docks were a logical outcome of slavery and racism.
Without slavery and racism, there would have been no West Indian plantations.
Without the plantations, there would have been no trade in African slave-made sugar, rum, spices and molasses from the West Indies.
Without the West Indian produce, no docks.
With no docks, no development of the Isle of Dogs marshlands and no working class community in that part of London’s East End.
Today, Canary Wharf, the City of London's continuously expanding financial centre, looms over the West India Docks now calm waters.
Many of the former West Indian colonies are now tax havens fuelled by City of London financial institutions.
Epicentre
Capitalism, slavery and racism created much of the wealth and power that led to the growth and consolidation of the City of London as a financial centre.
That wealth accumulation led eventually to the City of London being an epicentre of the global banking and financial meltdown of 2008-09.
Lehman Brothers - where that meltdown intensified - had its London HQ close to the West India Docks.
Plain sight
Yet little of these connections are part of the curriculum taught in London schools where pupils and teachers struggle with the harsh cruelties of contemporary racism.
Protestors in Bristol drew mass attention to these connections when they hauled down and pitched a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Docks.
That action too was driven by a global reaction to the brutal killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer now charged with his murder.
It has taken a racist killing in the United States to reveal an aspect of London's history concealed in statuesque plain sight for many years.
Epicentre
Capitalism, slavery and racism created much of the wealth and power that led to the growth and consolidation of the City of London as a financial centre.
That wealth accumulation led eventually to the City of London being an epicentre of the global banking and financial meltdown of 2008-09.
Lehman Brothers - where that meltdown intensified - had its London HQ close to the West India Docks.
Plain sight
Yet little of these connections are part of the curriculum taught in London schools where pupils and teachers struggle with the harsh cruelties of contemporary racism.
Protestors in Bristol drew mass attention to these connections when they hauled down and pitched a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Docks.
That action too was driven by a global reaction to the brutal killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer now charged with his murder.
It has taken a racist killing in the United States to reveal an aspect of London's history concealed in statuesque plain sight for many years.
At last, perhaps, a rudderless and depressingly repetitive present can navigate to a better future by means of its painful past.
This article is adapted from an original written by the author and published in The Weekly Journal newspaper on 20 July, 1995.
© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence ®, June 2020.
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