James Blyth

London merchant, in Mauritius 1830-38 before returning to Britain, awarded the compensation with his brother for two groups of enslaved people as owners-in-fee and a further larger group of enslaved people on an unnamed estate (but probably Bon Accueil) as vendee under a colonial court judgement.

1. Son of Thomas Blyth (d. 1839), and partner in H.D. and James Blyth and Greene, later Blyth, Greene, Jourdain & Co. Ltd., a major Indian Ocean and Far Eastern trading house and shipowner. His partners were his brother Henry David Blyth and Benjamin Buck Greene (both of whom q.v.). James Blyth was in Mauritius 1830-38, establishing the basis of the firm's future success, and reportedly made £25,000 in intermediating between the London money markets and Mauritian resident planters, who were awarded government loan stock (rather than Treasury cheques) in the compensation process.

2. High Sheriff of Berkshire 1863-64, left £250,000 on his death in 1873.

3. Blyth was in Mauritius, September 1830 until January 1839 and was a member of the Legislative Council, 1833-1839.

4. His firm began to withdraw from the Mauritius trade and to turn to the Brazilian sugar trade after 1846 and the passing of Sugar Duties Act. See his lengthy evidence to the SC for discussion of this and the fortunes of his firms.

T71/903 Mauritius no. 2663; T71/904 Mauritius no. 3994; T71/906 Mauritius no. 5695.

1. Augustus Muir, Blyth, Greene, Jourdain & Company Limited 1810-1960 (London: Newman Neame, 1961).

2. Rubinstein 1873/10

3. House of Commons Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting, 1st Report, PP1847-48 (123) XXIII Pt. I, p. 251.

4. See the Select Committee, pp. 251-82.