George Orwell’s Great Grandfather: Charles Blair (1776-1854)

“In England, for centuries past, our so-called aristocracy has been recruited by successive waves of scoundrels who have enriched themselves upon the current swindle and whose position depends solely upon money.”
                                                                  George Orwell, New English Weekly, 30 April 1936

In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.
                                                                                .George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, 1936

Orwell knew of his aristocratic Blair lineage from the handwritten genealogy in the 18th century family bible and the numerous ancestral portraits that adorned his parent’s homes – but how much did he know about his great-grandfather, Captain Charles Blair (1776-1854), aristocrat, dragoon, absentee landlord, slave-owner, diplomat and Collector of Customs at Cape Town?

Blair’s life was well-documented in official government records, diaries, letters, newspaper reports and in portraiture. Even if Orwell did not know much of his ancestor’s ignominious behaviour (which is hard to countenance) the process of resurrecting his ghost from the archives illustrates the sorts of swindles, class-rackets and dirty work of empire Orwell rebelled against in his own times.

Captain Blair’s life-story is a masterclass in how patronage and reciprocity worked in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The story of his long life also illustrates what Orwell’s many biographers recognised, that although the Blairs tumbled down the social scale in the generations immediately preceding the birth of Eric Blair (1903-1950) there was still a strong memory of more prosperous times.

Charles Blair (1776-1854)

Orwell’s great-grandfather was born in Dorset. He was baptised in the village of Winterborne Whitechurch and educated at Westminster School in London. The network of his family’s political and social connections in the county, as well as nearby Somerset and Lincolnshire, was extensive as a result of his father’s marriage alliance.

Charles Blair (1743-1802), an absentee landlord, born after his own father’s death, married Lady Mary Fane (1741-1813) at St James’s Church, Westminster in 1762. This was the same year Mary’s father Thomas Fane inherited the title, Earl of Westmorland. This marriage meant that teenage Blair was politically and socially connected to the highest offices in the land. More than fifty members of Lady Mary’s family, the Fanes, had been elected to the British Parliament from the mid-16th century prior to the the electoral changes wrought by the Great Reform Act of 1832 broke their stranglehold on power. Thomas Fane’s own marriage to the daughter of Bristol sugar merchant, William Swymmer, ensured the family’s coffers were full.

There were many obscenely wealthy absentee landlords who resided in Dorset during this period, including the Drax and Beckford families. George III spent many summers in Weymouth, Dorset. On one outing in the county, he reputedly asked William Pitt the Elder who owned the ostentatious, bespoke carriage – supported by a retinue of liveried coachmen, outriders and other servants – that he spied in the distance. Pitt replied, “a Jamaican Sugar Baron”. The verisimilitude of this story, oft-repeated (with several minor variations) cannot be confirmed but the connections between slavery, this cash crop and the British aristocracy is well understood. Joshua Reynolds, and many other fashionable artists associated with the Royal Academy of Arts, benefitted financially from these riches with many commissions to paint portraits of these families. 

Contextually, Blair’s privileged youth and young adulthood was dominated by the Napoleonic Wars which followed the revolutions in France and America. On the 21 June 1790, Charles Blair Junior attended a meeting with his family at the Town Hall in Spa (Austrian Netherlands) aimed at addressing the “rumours and slanders” which were “discouraging foreigners” who might wish to visit by reiterating “that the utmost security and tranquility prevail” with “the Ballrooms, Assemblies, Games, etc., etc., are open”.

Robert Southey wrote colourfully about this period when the Blair family holidayed at Spa, the famous destination for the rich and aristocratic to amuse themselves. Southey was friends with Charles’ older brother, Henry:

Blair was a cousin of the present Countess of Lonsdale, and I was as intimate with him as it was possible to be with one who boarded in another house: though it would not have been easy to have found a boy in the whole school more thoroughly unlike myself in everything, except in temper. He was, as Lord Lonsdale told me, a spoilt-child—idle, careless, fond of dogs and horses, of hunting rats, baiting badgers, and above all of driving stage-coaches. But there was a jovial hilarity, a perpetual flow of easy good spirits, a sunshine of good humour upon his countenance, and a merriment in his eye, which bring him often to my mind, and always make me think of him with a great deal of kindness. He was remarkably fat, and might have sat for the picture of Bacchus, or of Bacchus’s groom; but he was active withal.“

Blair spent one summer holidays with his mother Lady Mary, at Spa, and used to amuse me greatly by his accounts of the place and the people, and the delight of travelling abroad, but above all by his description of the French postilions. He had brought back a postilion’s whip, having learnt to crack it in perfection; and that French flogger, as he called it, did all his exercises for him: for if Marsden, whom he had nominated to the office of secretary for this department, ever demurred when his services were required, crack went the French flogger, and the sound of what he never felt produced prompt obedience. The said Marsden was a person who could have poured out Latin verses, such as they were, with as much facility as an Italian improvisatore performs his easier task. I heard enough about Spa, at that time, to make me very desirous of seeing the place; and when I went thither, after my first visit to the field of Waterloo, it was more for the sake of poor Blair than for any other reason. Poor fellow, the yellow fever made short work with his plethoric frame, when he went with his regiment to the West Indies. The only station that he would thoroughly have become, would have been that of abbot in some snug Benedictine abbey, where the rule was comfortably relaxed; in such a station, where the habit would just have imposed the restraint he needed, he would have made monks, tenants, dependants, and guests all as happy as indulgence, easy good-nature, and hearty hospitality could make them. As it was, flesh of a better grain never went to the land-crabs, largely as in those days they were fed.” SOURCE

Spa was captured by French forces in 1794, the year Captain Henry Blair died of Yellow Fever while his regiment was endeavouring to quell a slave revolt, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803) on the French colony of Saint-Domingue. 

The death of his brother left the teenage Charles Blair, who was serving in Ireland from 1795 with the 4th Dragoon Guards, as heir to considerable wealth. In 1796, he married Charlotte Dawson (1777-1837) in Dublin, where he was stationed during this “disturbed time” as the Irish, inspired by the French and American revolutions, sought independence. His regiment was deployed to Ireland (1795-1799) and fought many significant battles against the rebellious Irish in 1798.

1793	Proceeds to England
1795	Returns to Ireland
1796	Disturbed state of Ireland
——	A French force arrives at Bantry Bay
1797	Alterations in the equipment, &c.
1798	Rebellion in Ireland
——	Action at Naas
——	———— Prosperous and Carlow
——	———— near Gorey
——	———— at Ovidstown, Goff’s Bridge, and Arklow
——	———— Vinegar Hill
——	———— Gore’s Bridge and Kildare
1799	Proceeds to England

SOURCE

Blair’s political connections at this time are worthy of explanation as they reveal how he came to be serving in Ireland and be the beneficiary of future diplomatic appointments. Blair’s cousin was the 10th Earl of Westmorland, John Fane (1759-1841). Fane, a member of the Privy Council for several decades, fiercely pro-slavery and a vocal opponent of the abolitionist movement, was appointed in 1789 as the Lord Lieutenant (Governor) of Ireland. Another cousin, Captain-Lieutenant Henry Fane (1778–1840) had purchased a commission in the 4th Dragoons Guards in 1793, as did a half-uncle, Major John Michel (1765-1844). Both held positions as aides-de-camp to John Fane (c. 1791-1793). A detailed study of the political, military and personal biographies of these three relations and their immediate families reveal much that is pertinent to Orwell’s background – but is not possible here (at what is already becoming a lengthy post, with more left out than included) – especially in relation to the family profits from slavery and their deep connection to Dorset and India.

Blair’s father died of fever at the Fane family manor in Lincolnshire in the June of 1802. During this same month, his brother-in-law, Henry Fane (1739-1802) – described unflatteringly as “very idle and careless of his duty and spending much time in the country” – died of the same illness. Forty years previously, they had been painted by Reynolds! Blair’s death meant the profits from his Jamaican estates now flowed to his son.

The benefits of political patronage from the powerful Fane family continued while Lady Mary lived. Her son was appointed Consul General at Naples by George III in 1805 (his Fane cousin was still a member of the Privy Council). However, the Napoleonic Wars (in which many of his Fane and Michel relatives were fighting) continued to disrupt old certainties. Blair’s predecessor had a very complex relationship with Lord Nelson and thus far there is a dearth of evidence about this period when he was replaced by Charles Blair, probably partly due to the political instability and the shortness of his tenure. Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz led to British diplomatic staff being evacuated from Naples.

Collector of Customs 

In 1808, Blair was appointed by the Treasury Board to a new government position, Collector of Customs at the Cape of Good Hope. He would be “leaving Ensbury” (in Dorset) for an extended period and auctioned many of his fine household possessions.

Orwell’s grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair (1802-1867), who was born in Ensbury, accompanied his parents to their new residence at Stellenberg, one of the “finest of the Cape Dutch gabled houses” in the colony. Charlotte was to bear three more children, while her husband performed his offical duties, in the first four years they lived here. Blair endeavoured to auction this estate before he returned to Britain on leave in 1819 but was not successful in selling it until 1820 (which was to become the subject of controversy in 1825). 

The Collector of Customs played a crucial role in administering trade, taxation, and maritime regulations in such a strategically vital British colony. The Cape, having been captured from the Dutch in 1795 and formally ceded to Britain in 1814 (the Dutch regained temporarily in control from 1803 to 1806) was a key naval and commercial station on the route between Europe and the East Indies during the Napoleonic Wars. For two decades, Blair was the senior official responsible for overseeing the collection of duties on imports and exports, ensuring compliance with colonial and imperial trade laws, and preventing smuggling and fraudulent trade activities. The office functioned under the authority of the British colonial administration and was closely linked to the Treasury in London.

There is an extensive record of the Blair family in the 18th and 19th century press. The first hint, which led to the story of Blair’s scandalous behaviour in Cape Town, was when I read a newspaper article about a very stormy trial. This led to the extensive documentation held in British Parliamentary archives.

An Act to “Prevent the Importation of Slaves, by any of His Majesty’s Subjects, into any Islands, Colonies, Plantations, and or Territories belonging to any Foreign Sovereign, State, or Power…prohibiting the importation of slaves (except in certain cases), into any of the settlements, islands, colonies, or plantations on the continent of America, or in the West Indies, which have been surrendered to His Majesty’s arms during the present war” effectively led to Blair having extra responsibilities for the distribution of “Prize Negroes” from the beginning of his appointment at the Cape of Good Hope. Enslaved people, on captured French, Portuguese and Dutch ships, were deposited with Blair who “apprenticed” these “prizes” for fourteen years in order that they might be prepared for “the responsibilities of freedom”. Kirsten McKenzie explains:

“The abolition of the slave trade had become an emblem of British virtue, more especially in the context of war with Napoleon (who had reopened the trade in 1802). Slaves rescued from foreign ships were held up as a symbol of national honour, a sign that right was on Britain’s side, and a powerful justification of divinely ordained victory over rivals. The fourteen-year apprenticeships that followed their rescue were intended to bring forth a suitably devout and industrious class of working people from the ranks of the ‘liberated Africans’. In practice, the system by which prize slaves were assigned and controlled at the Cape opened up rampant opportunities for personal gain.”

Blair was supported in this work by William Wilberforce Bird (1758-1836), the Comptroller of Customs. Named after his relative William Wilberforce, the leader of the anti-slavery movement in Parliament, Bird was to become related via Orwell’s paternal grandmother, Francis “Fanny” Blair née Hare (1823–1908) whose mother was Sally Bird (1793-1862). Bird, described as Blair’s “crony” by other residents of the colony, was the anonymous author (although it was not much of a secret) of a book published about the colony in 1823, just prior to the controversies which would overwhelm he and Blair.

Anyone who reads Bird’s book will find it more than a little self-serving, especially after they have consulted the lengthy Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry (printed by order of the House of Commons on 1st May 1827) which endeavoured to get to “the truth of the Statements and Affidavits … to the manner in which the Collector, Mr. Blair, has been in the habit of disposing of the Prize Slaves”.

Governor Somerset, Libel & the Press

The general public in England, who did not have connections to the colony, were initially informed about Blair’s corrupt practices, well-known to the citizens in Cape Town (many who were complicit) by British newspapers. The first non-government press in the colony, the South African Commercial Advertiser, was founded in January 1824 and closed by Lord Charles Somerset in May the same year for reporting the libel case.

Lancelot Cooke, described as “a most respectable merchant of Cape-town” (although we will see that one diarist vehemently disagreed) grew annoyed with Blair’s refusal to reassign an accomplished cook on the death of his master. It is a lengthy and complex story but their spat escalated and became very public when Cooke endeavoured to make a formal complaint about Blair’s conduct to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and Governor. The authoritarian Somerset responded by having him arrested for criminal libel against a public official. Blair himself had alerted Somerset to the complaint:

Custom-house, December 11, 1823.

My Lord,

I have this morning received from Mr. Bird a letter of complaint from Mr. Lancelot Cooke to your Lordship, the greater part of which is false. I certainly told Mr. Lancelot Cooke, that if he had said to me what he did to Mr. Pigou, I should have felt myself compelled to have kicked him. I regret that your Lordship should have been troubled on so trifling an occasion.

I have, &c. (signed) Charles Blair.

Somerset clearly made a tactical error. The subsequent trial not only acquitted Cooke of libel but also provided a platform for Blair and Bird’s corruption to be exposed. This led to a formal investigation by Commissioners Bigge, Colebrooke and W. Blair. This was just one of a number of (quite spectacular) controversies reported in British newspapers and by residents of the colony, in their letters and diaries, which ultimately led to the removal of Somerset. The story of the Governor’s further suppression of the press after he was accused of “buggering” the colony’s physician Dr James Barry, who one biographer describes as “transgender before the term was invented” (is in itself a study in authoritarian rule and as Somerset acted to prevent the spread of gossip about himself). It was only on Barry’s death that a post-mortem revealed the military surgeon – who Florence Nightingale described “as the most hardened creature I ever met” – was physically a woman.

The son of a grave-digger, slave owner, diarist, artist and purveyor of quality gossip, Samuel Eusebius Hudson (1764-1828)* recorded useful insights into the unfolding saga and character of the major participants in these controversies. He called Blair “a most egregious fool” and described Bird as having the “malice” of a “hyena”! On Monday 16th February 1824, he described “the nefarious business”:
… Blair’s cause comes on today with Cook, & I am pretty certain the Assertion is true that the prize Slaves have paid his debts tho’ it may be difficult to prove. As there is no more expectations in future, it may make some of them fearless and induce them to speak the truth … I have heard repeatedly that he has cancel’d considerable debts by this means and from those who actually had experienced it I make no doubt from a thousand circumstances that he is guilty, Wilberforce Bird more so … .

On the 3rd March 1824, Hudson has now read “the documents” and “must confess Blair’s conduct and language is most scandalous as a Man and a Servant of his Majesty”. He feels that the “Lords of the Treasury” will be astonished “when they peruse the damning proof of this Man’s rascally proceedings”.

A week later, on the 11th March, Hudson described Blair as “a public servant…whose conduct has been uniformly infamous – a compleat Blackguard in every respect without a gentleman’s-word qualification”. Hudson is concerned that Cooke has been “tempted by a pecuniary compensation to drop the suit” against Blair, a man who he sees as so “loaded with crimes sufficient to break the back of Hercules himself”. He feels strongly that to “desert a cause that must open the eyes of those whose Interest it is to see clearly the whys and wherefores of every public servant’s real conduct” stamps Cooke’s “character…with everlasting disgrace”.

*Edward Hudson includes useful footnotes in this edition of his ancestor’s diaries.

Other Voices

History is often a record of elite male voices. The reports published for the British Parliament included the testimonies of “Prize Negroes” who were on “exactly the same footing” as slaves according to witnesses who divulged their dealings with those under investigation. 

William Cousins, “a Prize Negro apprentice” who served Blair for fourteen years on his prestigious estate at Stellenberg had also travelled with “his master to England, and back to Table Bay” was particularly knowledgable about the more nefarious activities of the Collector of Customs. Cousins recounted Blair’s cruelty in some detail:

“…whilst he was at the house of a gentleman at Overberg, Mr. Blair went out shooting game, and took as a servant, to assist him in finding the game, a Prize Negro named Jack, then and now in the service of Mr. Blair, and that when the said Mr. Blair returned in the evening, the deponent was informed that the said Negro Jack had absconded, but he was afterwards found by a Hottentot, and brought to his master, soon after which the deponent inquired of the said Negro Jack why he had absconded, to . which he replied, that his master being offended with him, was going to flog him, whereupon he ran away, on which the said Charles Blair presented a doublebarelled gun, and shot the said Prize Negro Jack in his hand, which he thenproduced and showed to the deponent shockingly wounded by the contents of such double-barelled gun. And the deponent saith, that he hath been informed and believes, that the said Mr. Blair yesterday caused the police to flog a Prize Negro very cruelly, for absenting himself from his service, to which he had been taken from the service of one Mr. Koeké or his daughter, to whom he had been duly apprenticed…”

He reported that Blair “whips and flogs all the Prize Negroes in his service in a most cruel manner”. Cousins, according to another witness (Cooke) “preferred all the horrors of starvation rather than return to a master who had made him so miserable; and such must have been his fate, so great the terror of the Collector of Customs”.

The shady, usually informal financial dealings of Blair were revealed during the proceedings and it is notable that the sale of Stellenberg, near Cape Town, “was effected in the month of April 1820” after “being ineffectually tried both by auction and private contract” in 1819:

“Blair is stated to have pledged his word of honour, that if the estate should be sold, the Prize Negroes should not be withdrawn from it until their apprenticeships had expired…one of the witnesses (and we think with truth) that this circumstance alone would augment the value to a purchaser to the amount of twenty per cent.”

Blair claimed, in his defence, that he wanted to keep the families who served at the estate from being split-up when he visited England.

Mr, J.O. Williams was asked of any “previous acquaintance with Mr.Blair” considering had been given so many Prize Negroes? The answer illuminated the reciprocity of family connections as Williams acknowledged, “long acquaintance had existed between my family in Dorsetshire and that of Mr. Blair; his father and mine were very intimate.” Another individual frequently mentioned in the reports who benefitted from Blair’s patronage was Francis Dashwood, who was probably to have been related to Blair via the Fane family. However, when he left the Cape, Dashwood ensured all the enslaved people in his slaveholding were freed and given homes to start new lives.

Commissioners Bigge and Colebrooke’s report is dated the 22nd July 1825. Neither Blair nor Bird were dismissed:

“We certainly perceive that the Collector and Comptroller of Customs have either misunderstood or overlooked the meaning of the sixth clause of the Instructions of His Majesty in Council, respecting the reassignment of Prize Negroes, and that they have thus unnecessarily increased their patronage or their own accommodation without sufficiently keeping in view the advantage of the Negroes. We do not feel ourselves justified in declaring that their exercise of this patronage has been dictated by a corrupt motive, but we certainly observe that its effects, in several instances, have operated in relieving them from the pressure of pecuniary claims, which we believe to have been withheld from a sense of obligation, and which have continued subject to the same influence. It would not however be just to consider the Collector and Comptroller responsible for the existence of this influence in the minds of their creditors, where it has not been proved that they connived at it.”

It is hardly unusual that men like Blair, connected to powerful institutions and the individuals in charge are protected – but nevertheless his behaviour was viewed poorly by contemporaries, especially those genuinely committed to abolishing slavery.

However, Somerset was recalled to England. On the 5th March 1826, he boarded Atlas never to return to Cape Town. Press reports and Hudson’s diary describes his departure evocatively. A sizeable crowd cheered as the departing Governor and his family are ferried, on a barge with other dignitaries, including Charles Blair and Dr. Barry to the waiting ship. Guns from the nearby castle were discharged under grey skies. Hudson leave us in no doubt as to his opinion:

The Heavens were overcast as soon as his Lordship got on board, and they have been dropping Tears of Joy, of plenty and gladness at his departure – a bad Man goes and good weather returns. … Was caught in the rain: it falls peaceably, and we welcome it with more joy as ’tis auspicious, blessing the Colony doubly, and will make us hail the Fifth of March [by] removing a pestilential plague and blessing us with hope of another and better Man; and chearing the parched and expiring vegetation from a long drought by these fertilising welcome showers …

I am yet to confirm when Blair departed the Colony (some secondary sources suggest 1826) but his signature appears on an official document in 1830, a list of “Prize Negroes…whose Indentures expire on the 31st January” which suggests business as usual.

Reflection (The More Things Change…)

Anyone endeavouring to understand 20th century history, at least from a British point-of-view, will find George Orwell’s writings on class, ideology, imperialism, abuse of power, censorship, religion and political bastardry invaluable. Studying the man, with his many idiosyncratic beliefs and values, reveals a paradoxical writer but one always attempting to come to terms with the burdensome cultural baggage of his world. He is mostly honest with himself and about what he observes around him.

A nuanced understanding of Orwell’s ideas and values, including his personal biases and prejudices is broadened by studying his family history. Knowledge of Orwell’s ancestors illustrates many of the major themes in his writing – not least, his preoccupation with “the dirty work of empire” – and is invaluable for understanding reverberations from the past (never dead, not even past) echoing, often discordantly, in contemporary society.

It is important to understand the events of 1823-1826 at the Cape of Good Hope follow the first pan-Caribbean inquiry (1821) which resulted from William Wilberforce accusing “Caribbean customs officers and masters of re-enslaving Africans ‘liberated’ from slave ships and indentured in the West Indies under the terms of the Abolition Act of 1807”. Kirsten McKenzie and Lisa Ford, in a recent essay, explore the contradictions in British politics and policy during this vexed period (which have long confounded historians). They contextualise the scandals enveloping Somerset and Blair effectively by analysing the apparent paradox of Lord Liverpool’s ministry (1812–27) vehemently rejecting constitutional change yet simultaneously implementing a raft of improvements in governance. Studying the life and times of Charles Blair, with this larger, political context in mind provides a more nuanced understanding of why he escaped sanction.

Somerset was a member of the most conservative faction of the Tory party, “an aristocracy within an aristocracy” who happily ran the colony as an extension of his personal estates:

In a colony run almost entirely by the rules of the old Dutch regime, there were no inconvenient modern innovations such as checks on executive power or freedom of the press. The Cape also had a well-established tradition of linking administration with personal advantage.

The role of the Commissioners and the Inquiry at the Cape of Good Hope was to dampen “the wrath of parliament” regarding the failure to carry out policy by dealing with “colonial controversy in situ,” The Cape scandals directly “threatened the conservative alliance at the heart of the Liverpool regime”. There is nothing revelatory in McKenzie and Ford’s suggestion that the commissioners wrote “reports to meet the political needs of government” but they are correct to say “it is too simplistic to call them ‘cover-ups’, as critics did at the time. They combined reform with political management”. When the commissioners’ “investigated individual complaints…they played down individual wrongdoing, instead blaming government scandals on systemic flaws…malfeasance dissolved into recommendations for reform”.

Individuals were merely pawns in these political games. 

The witness statements about Blair’s treatment of his “apprentices” appalled contemporaries as it does us today. The fact that Blair received £4,442 (about £3 million today) in compensation for the 218 slaves he owned in Jamaica as an absentee landlord and another £102 7s 11d for two slaves in Cape Colony (received in 1835 and 1836) tells the larger story of British imperialism and vested interest. It was the owners who were compensated, not the slaves. It is worth noting that the Inquiry, held a decade previously recorded that Blair had been assigned a total of 54 “Prize Negroes”! 

The 1851 census reveals that the widower Charles Blair, born into wealth and privilege, was living with one servant at 15 Pulteney Street in Bath. Charlotte, his wife, had died at Leamington Spa in 1837. It is likely that Blair resided here on return from the Cape. His family had always enjoyed these fashionable spa resorts and the leisured classes they attracted.

Orwell’s paternal grandfather, Reverend Thomas Blair – transplanted as a young boy, from Dorset to the Cape of Good Hope in the first decade of the 19th century – returned to England in the year of his father’s death, 1854. There are some secondary sources which suggest Blair had a poor relationship with Orwell’s grandfather, who reportedly, with great missionary zeal wished to educate slaves. This poor relationship may explain why he did not return to Dorset until after Charles Blair’s death. Regardless, Reverend Blair’s inheritance (a 1/4 share of £8650) was sufficient for him to live in England with his ten children. His youngest son, Orwell’s own father, R.W. Blair, according to the law of diminishing returns left a much smaller estate of just £505 16s. 1d. in 1939!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A prosopographical approach to studying Orwell has proven incredibly useful for some years now. I admire how Matthew Lamb opened his recent biography of Frank Moorhouse and have appropriated some of his (and Moorehouse’s ideas about) “archival ghosts” for this draft piece of writing. Joline Young, whose research, philosophy and values impress me greatly, has been generous with her time. The dedication at the back of her excellent book, on Simon’s Town, quoting an academic mentor – “secondary sources are fool’s gold” – made me smile in appreciation. Edward Hudson has also been very enthusiastic in sharing knowledge about his ancestor’s important diary. I particularly appreciated Joline and Edward’s willingness to chat online and suggest other primary and secondary sources. Stephen Buckley, Jillian Young Gorton and Lynette Vigrass have taken an active interest in my work and their support is highly-valued. Sue Brown has also been a generous and knowledgeable supporter. She told me about her ancestor’s 1823 book on the Cape of Good Hope. Kevin Carter helped me out by visiting King’s College London Archives to see if their was any more information about Charles Blair’s diplomatic service in Naples. Sadly there was not but Kevin did confirm that Blair had taken the position. British Parliamentary records provide an extraordinarily excellent record of the controversies in Cape Colony during the 1820s for the many excellent historians who have written skilfully about Charles Blair’s unethical behaviour. Understandably, they have not connected-the-dots that he was Orwell’s great-grandfather (Saunders 1985; Reidy 1997; Holmes 2007; McKenzie 2016; Young 2023). Even though I read the primary sources prior to seeing their work, my understanding of period and place has been greatly enhanced by their intelligent insights and broad contextual knowledge of the history of abolition during this period of British imperial rule. The staff at the State Library of NSW are always professionally kind, especially to my online queries when I cannot make ProQuest work. Thanks to Erika Leroux and the Western Cape Archives and Records Service for permission to publish Hudson’s sketch. The great joy I gain from these and other Orwellian collaborations cannot be exaggerated. Thank you all!

REFERENCES
Blair, Charles, “An indenture between Charles Blair, Collector of the Customs at the Cape of Good Hope and his Slave”, 1st February 1813, Private Collection

Bird, William Wilberforce (1823) State of the Cape of Good Hope in 1822, London: John Murray

British Parliamentary Papers 1826–7 (282) Cape of Good Hope. Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry; I. Upon the administration of the government of the Cape of Good Hope: II. Upon the finances of the Cape of Good Hope, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online

Du Preez, M. and Dronfield, J. (2017) Dr James Barry: a Woman Ahead of her Time, London: Oneworld

Evening Mail, 21 June 1824

Evening Mail, 27 September 1826

Foreign and Commonwealth Office. et al. (1936) The Foreign Office list and Diplomatic and Consular Hand Book, London: Harrison and Sons

Hudson, Edward, Pepysian Perceptions of the Cape 1798–1828; Selections from the Western Cape Diaries of Samuel Eusebius Hudson, Cape Town: HiPSA, 2024

Holmes, Rachel (2007) The Secret Life of Dr James Barry: Victorian England’s Most Eminent Surgeon, Stroud: Tempus

Lincolnshire Archives Committee, “Archivists’ Report 17”, 1965-1966, p.19

London Courier and Evening Gazette, 28 June 1824

London Sun, 22 June 1802

McKenzie, Kirsten (2016) Imperial Underworld: An Escaped Convict and the Transformation of the British Colonial Order (Critical Perspectives on Empire), Cambridge University Press

McKenzie, Kirsten; Ford, Lisa (2022) “A Dance of Crown and Parliament: Empire and Reform in the Age of Liverpool”, The English Historical Review, Volume 137, Issue 589, December,  1606–1632pp, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead024

Millar, Anthony Kendal (1965) Plantagenet in South Africa: Lord Charles Somerset, Cape Town: Oxford University Press

Moore, Darcy (2020) “Orwell’s Scottish Ancestry and Slavery”, George Orwell Studies (2020) Vol. 5, No. 1 pp. 6-19

Morning Chronicle, 27 July 1824

Orwell, George (1998 [1903-1936]) A Kind of Compulsion: The Complete Works of George Orwell, Vol. X, Davison, Peter (ed.) London: Secker & Warburg

Parker, Matthew (2011) The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, And War In The West Indies, New York: Walker & Company

Philippart, John (1820) The Royal Military Calendar or Army Service and Commission Book (Volume III), London: A.J. Valpy

Reidy, Michael Charles (1997) The Admission of Slaves and ‘Prize Slaves’ into the Cape Colony, 1797-1818, University of Cape Town

Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 30 May 1808

Saunders, Christopher, “Liberated Africans in Cape Colony in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 18, no. 2, 1985, pp. 223–39. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/217741.

Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert (ed), The life & correspondence of the late Robert Southey, Volume 1, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849

Stansky, Peter and Abrahams, William (1972) The Unknown Orwell, New York: Alfred A. Knopf

UCL Department of History (2024) ‘Charles Blair junior’, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership Database, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership, University College London. Available online at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146630288

UCL Department of History (2024) ‘Cape of Good Hope 5025′, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership Database, Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership, University College London. Available online at http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/claim/view/2120016474

Whitehall Evening Post, July 29-31 1790

Worden, Nigel et al (1998) Cape Town: The Making of a City, Cape Town: David Philip Publishers

Worden, Nigel and Crais, Clifton (1994) Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press

Young, Joline (2023) An Uncomfortable Paradise: A History of Dispossession and Slavery in Simon’s Town, Cape Town: NagsPro Multimedia

FEATURED IMAGE: The signature of Charles Blair (1876-1854)