Family fortunes founded on slavery

Historical records dating back to 1763, studied for the first time at the University of Cambridge, reveal how a single extended family accrued wealth and influence from the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

More than 600 letters, photos and papers – pieced together over 20 years from auction sites such as eBay – paint a vivid picture of a British dynasty who profited from enslaving people during the 18^th and 19^th centuries and indenturing people into the 20^th century.

The first tranche of the collection is now open to researchers and the public through a new digital resource hosted by the Cambridge University Library.

The research forms the basis of a new book published this week, ‘Searching for My Slave Roots: From Guyana’s Sugar Plantations to Cambridge’, by Malik Al Nasir, a PhD student at the University’s Faculty of History and St Catharine’s College.

Sandbach Tinne & Co. of Liverpool

From the above letter:

‘125 Negroes belonging to Mitah Mr. Heathcotes 66 Men, 30 Women 16 Boys & 13 Girls, were sold at the average of nearly £1800. and the late Mr. Samm's Estate, was sold late in Sept. Land & Building at £40,400 - & the average price of the Negroes Viz. 41 Men 23 Women, & 24 Boys & Girls & infants, was £1470 - This stamps a value upon Brothers Estate.’

This insight into the operations of Sandbach Tinne & Co. of Liverpool demonstrates the brutal business practices from which profit was generated by the Sandbach Tinne dynasty of shipowners, merchants, bankers, politicians, and plantation and slave owners.

Written by one founding partner of the dynasty (Charles Stuart Parker) to another (Samuel Sandbach), it shows how they owned thousands of enslaved Africans, while also acting as agents for the sale of the enslaved for other merchants.

Parker equates their sale (as agents for the owners) of a group of enslaved men, women and children to the likely value of a similar cohort they planned to sell on their own estate called ‘Brothers’. Parker goes on to inform Sandbach:

‘The Writer does not really know what to advise about the machinery - it is to be hoped the letter will soon cast up, and as he gives leave to take them from Fawcett it will begin in apt time. Something must be written to him about the purchase of more Negroes; of this the Writer will be glad to have Mr. S.'s opinion. The power of the Engine should no doubt correspond with the strength of Negroes.’

“Parker is clearly referring to the Africans in the same terms as livestock when ordering an engine from the Preston firm Fawcett & Preston whose engine strength was measured in horsepower,” said Malik Al Nasir, who unearthed the original letter, now part of the historical papers and carte de visit photos that make up the Sandbach Tinne Collection.

“In this case Parker tells Sandbach that ‘The power of the Engine should no doubt correspond with the strength of Negroes.’”

Moving from Liverpool in 2020 to start a PhD, Al Nasir arrived with far more than the average student: his own collection of over 600 items that he had unearthed over the previous 17 years by scouring auction catalogues and websites such as eBay.

Through five years of painstaking research, Al Nasir drew on this collection and other records around the world to unpick the complex web of kinship networks behind Sandbach Tinne & Co. and its exploitation of the victims of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.

He submitted the resulting PhD thesis entitled ‘Kinship Networks and Mercantile Hegemony in relation to the Case of Sandbach Tinne & Co., c. 1790–1840’ earlier this summer.

For Al Nasir, this research doesn’t just advance our understanding of the legacies of enslavement in British history; it has given him insight into his own family history.

He is himself a descendant of the enslavers in the Sandbach Tinne dynasty and the people they enslaved. His own father Reginald Wilcox Watson cut cane on what remained of Sandbach Tinne’s Blairmont Plantation in Guiana (later Guyana) in the 1930s. These deeply personal connections motivated Al Nasir to pursue their history through a PhD.

Origin stories

Al Nasir started amassing his collection when a TV documentary sent him down a historical rabbit hole, leading him to uncover his own connections to both enslaved people and their enslavers.

“My mum and I were stopped in our tracks late one night in 2003 as we watched a BBC documentary about Andrew Watson, the world’s first Black international football player,” Al Nasir said.

“I’d changed my name from Mark Watson when I became a Muslim but apart from the name, what really got my attention was our shared links with Demerara (now Guyana) and the uncanny photos of Andrew – he looked just like me but in Victorian dress!”

The documentary was enough to spark a whole new interest for Al Nasir in historical research, culminating in a PhD at Cambridge that reached far beyond Andrew Watson (who Al Nasir can now claim definitively as a cousin) to powerful individuals at the heart of the British establishment and its global empire.

“My father died in 1981, and I only had few clues to work off to trace his lineage in Guyana. Only when I visited in 2008 did I realise the true extent of the Scottish influence there and its legacy, from the Scottish surnames and place names,” said Al Nasir.

“I started to notice the same names appearing everywhere: Sandbach, Tinne, Parker, McInroy, Watson, Traill, Robertson, McBean and McLagan. Even the Guyanese Prime Minister’s residence was originally built for Samuel Sandbach.”

Al Nasir’s research started as a personal passion project, but he soon understood the wider historical relevance of his discoveries as he began interrogating the family connections captured in his archive and their influence on events in Britain, Guyana and around the world.

“As it grew, what is now the Sandbach Tinne Collection began to reveal an astonishing family who criss-crossed Scotland, England, Australia, India, the Americas, the Caribbean and beyond, encapsulating the complexity, cunning and callousness of the British Empire and its chief source of income – slavery,” said Al Nasir.

“Each familial line presented new narrative trajectories that were harrowing in their subject matter. The flippancy with which they discussed African people’s miserable plight, and how they accounted for such people in financial statements as amongst their ‘livestock’ haunted me.”

Much of the barbarity of the Sandbach Tinne dynasty towards those they enslaved was normalised and legal at the time. However, Al Nasir found evidence that Sandbach Tinne & Co were illegally trafficking enslaved Africans into Demerara as late as 1847.

“This trafficking falls well after Britain’s 1807 ban on the slave trade, the Emancipation Act of 1833 and even the Slavery Compensation Act of 1837, which the Sandbach Tinne family were both among the architects of, and its largest beneficiaries,” said Al Nasir.

“The family’s wealth before the ban was considerable – a valuation of the estates of just two slave owners in the dynasty totalled £541,325, over £50 million in today’s money – but they continued to enslave Africans for at least the next four decades.”

Al Nasir’s research shows that, even after emancipation, the Sandbach Tinne dynasty relied not only on the extensive compensation they received as former slave-owners, but also the continued flow of income which had shifted from enslaved labour, through apprenticeships and then finally to indentured labour. “This afforded them longevity where others had long since wound up operations.”

Legacies of enslavement

Al Nasir is clear that the Sandbach Tinne dynasty’s vast fortunes do not adequately account for the power they wielded in the 19^th century or since. His collection pinpoints how marriages and other family connections cemented the dynasty’s business interests and their position at the very heart of the British establishment.

A prime example is the 1802 wedding of Samuel Sandbach and Elizabeth Robertson, which connected the groom through marriage not only to his business partners Charles Stuart Parker and the late George Robertson, but also the slave-owning parents of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

“Business partnerships were often bound with marital unions which resulted in extended kinship networks, managing multi-national corporations with global reach,” said Al Nasir. “Maintaining these connections required the relentless exchange of letters and visiting cards, which make up a large part of the Sandbach Tinne Collection.”

The Sandbach Tinne Collection also reveals how, in the years that followed the Sandbach-Robertson marriage, the extended family capitalised on their connections to hold sway in business, politics and law, as well other civic offices of British colonial society.

“Their influence was perhaps greatest in Liverpool,” said Al Nasir, “where I grew up unaware of my connections to the founders of the Liverpool Royal Institution, a precursor organisation that spawned both the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, as well as many other institutions of knowledge production promoting pseudo sciences such as eugenics that underpinned what we today call ‘structural racism’.”

Going public

Alongside his PhD research, Al Nasir worked with digital humanities specialists from the Cambridge University Library to prepare the Sandbach Tinne Collection. “I tracked down almost all the photos, letters and other papers scattered across the country thanks to auction catalogues and eBay listings,” explained Al Nasir.

“On luckier days, I came across several stamp collectors who were keen to get rid of letters at a low price because the stamp was nothing special to them – one man’s trash truly is another’s treasure! However, others I paid a premium for.”

The decision to share his collection with others was an obvious one for Al Nasir, who has made public engagement an integral part of his research while at Cambridge.

During his first year at the University, Al Nasir worked as a consultant on a historical documentary called ‘Mark Walters: In The Footsteps of Andrew Watson’, broadcast by the BBC in 2021. Drawing upon on research by Al Nasir and others, this award-wining film was able to correct errors in the original 2003 documentary about Andrew Watson.

Al Nasir’s research also informed the ‘Colonial Legacies of the Liverpool Sandbach Family’ project. This community-led project was the first of its kind at the Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, and part of National Museums Liverpool's ongoing work to address the history and legacy of slavery, empire and colonialism across its venues.

This week sees the release of Al Nasir’s new book ‘Searching for My Slave Roots’ (2025, William Collins). It is a first-hand account of how his interest in the footballer Andrew Watson ultimately led to his research into the Sandbach Tinne dynasty, their role in enslavement and colonialism throughout the British Empire, and their impact on present-day society. The book begins with a dedication to his ancestors who were enslaved by the Sandbach Tinne dynasty:

"May this go some way to lifting the silence of their anguish, and ensure that future generations will never forget their immense sacrifice, so that we could exist."

Malik Al Nasir’s UK book tour began at the Walker Art Gallery at the weekend and other events are planned nationwide over the coming weeks.

An event in Cambridge is being organised by the Faculty of Education and the St Catharine’s College History Society at 5pm on 9 October, sponsored by Cambridge ThinkLab and the University's Legacies of Enslavement project. The event will be held at the McGrath Centre at St Catharine's College.