Sir John Reid, 2nd Baronet

Sir John Rae Reid, 2nd Baronet (1791–1867) was a Scottish merchant and financier. He was a Tory and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1830 and 1847.

Early life

Reid was the son of Sir Thomas Reid of Ewell Grove and his wife Elizabeth Goodfellow. He succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1824[1]

Political life

Reid was the Member of Parliament for Dover, Kent from 1830 to 1831 and from 1832 to 1847.[2]

Slave ownership

According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at the University College London, Reid was awarded compensation in the aftermath of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 with the Slave Compensation Act 1837.[3]

Reid was associated with seventeen different claims, he owned over 3000 slaves in British Guiana, Jamaica, St Kitts, Trinidad and the British Virgin Islands. He received over £62,000 in compensation from these claims (worth £6.26 million in 2023) [4].[5]

Career

Reid was head of the firm Reid, Irving & Co., and later a Director (1820 to 1847) of the Bank of England, except when acting as Deputy Governor (1837 to 1839) or Governor (1839 to 1841).[6] In June 2020 the Bank of England issued a public apology for the involvement of Reid, amongst other employees, in the slave trade following the investigation by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL.[7]

Personal life

He married Maria Louisa, the daughter of Richard Eaton of Stetchworth Park, Cambridgeshire with whom he had 2 sons and a daughter.[2]

References
  1. Debrett's Baronetage of England (1835)
  2. "REID, Sir John Rae, 2nd bt. (1791-1867), of 8 Broad Street Buildings, Finsbury Circus, London and Ewell Grove, Surr". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
  3. "Sir John Rae Reid 2nd Bart". University College London. Retrieved on 20 March 2019.
  4. UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
  5. "Sir John Rae Reid 2nd Bart". University College London. Retrieved on 15 September 2021.
  6. http://carlyleletters.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/full/22/1/lt-18471002-TC-AC-01#FN1_REF (footnote 1)
  7. Jolly, Jasper (18 June 2020). "Bank of England apologises for role of former directors in slave trade". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 June 2020.


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