The slave-owner's daughter: Mary Hyde Tharp

John Tharp exploited men, women and children in Jamaica to generate his fortune and funded expeditions to Africa to kidnap and enslave more. There's no question that this was evil, but there are two strands to his story which suggest he had a softer side. 

When Tharp retired to his country estate in Cambridgeshire in the late 1790s, he brought with him his second wife Ann (born Ann Virgo), and her daughter from a previous marriage, Sarah Gallimore. He also brought his own daughter, Mary Hyde Tharp, and Mary's mother was an enslaved woman called Harriet Phillips, who lived on the inappropriately named Good Hope plantation.

Slave-owners and the men they employed routinely subjected enslaved women to rape and sexual exploitation -- about a tenth of all babies born on Tharp's plantations had a white father, and that figure was pretty consistent across the island. Most of them lived out their days in slavery.

But Tharp appears to have cared what happened to his mixed-race children. A son, John Harwood, helped to run the Jamaican plantations in his absence, and he gave Mary a substantial settlement when she married, though only a fraction of what he left to his legitimate white children. 

Pigot & Co. map of Cambridgeshire, 1842 
(source: Wikimedia Commons)

Mary's husband was Robert Hayward, a farmer and miller from Fordham, near to Chippenham (in the top right-hand corner of the map). When Tharp went back to Jamaica he wrote to his son (another John) to make sure he was treating his half-sister with the respect she deserved. He wasn't, but took the trouble of explaining why that was entirely Mary's fault: 'Mrs R. Hayward has been foolish enough to let her tongue run and given [herself] horribly great airs'.

Mary's life story is quickly told. Her daughter, Mary Ann Hayward was born in 1805, Robert died in 1830 and Mary re-married in 1834. She presumably lived with her second husband, Robert Dix, in his home in Ely for the duration of their marriage, but it seems that the second marriage wasn't as happy as her first. When Dix died in 1838 he left most of his money to his sister, but Mary still had means of her own. She moved back to Fordham, and in the 1861 census, she was described as a 'land and house proprietor'.  On her death, in 1864, she left around £4000 (worth about £3.6m today).

Mary Ann had died before her mother, and although Mary left keepsakes and bequests to friends and servants, the bulk of her fortune went to her son-in-law, the Reverend Tansley Hall. In his turn, Tansley Hall left a legacy that funded the construction of the Victoria Hall and Hayward Institute in Fordham. 

Without any blame attaching to those who use it today, the hall is a tangible example of the benefits that British people still enjoy from the proceeds of slavery. As far as I can tell, the residents of Fordham don't know how their village hall was funded. A History of the County of Cambridgeshire claims that the hall was named after Tansley Hall's father-in-law, although Robert Hayward had been dead for three years when he married Mary Ann. Perhaps it was intended as a monument to Mary herself.

It would be naive to think that providing for his mixed-race children in his later years is testament to Tharp's enlightenment. It was his blood that elevated them, so treating them well was, I believe, an expression of self-regard (think Trump). I suspect Tharp enjoyed the power trip of requiring the people around him to accept Mary as part of the family. 

Dido Belle

Mary was about 16 years younger than the much better known Dido Belle, who lived on the same fault-lines of family and race. Like Dido, she made a life for herself in England, and the keepsakes she left to her friends and neighbours demonstrate that she was embraced by her local community if not by her blood relations. Her two volume Haweis Bible with commentary, a framed Lord’s prayer, two bookcases and ‘all my books’ suggest Mary enjoyed reading and had a strong Christian faith. She left a ‘very old white and gold tea service’, a ‘gold and purple dinner service’ and a selection of silverware: a mustard pot, coffee pot, teapot, cream jug, four salt cellars and various spoons. The listed furniture and ornaments indicate that her house and greenhouse were comfortable and well-furnished.  

Mary may have travelled to the continent or been given gifts by people who did, because she left a French paperknife, ‘my brooch purchased at Rome and called Adrian’s cup’, ‘my Roman key’, ‘my leaning tower of Pisa’, ‘my Genoa silver ornament stand and glass’, ‘my German glass goblet’ and ‘my Italian figure of lava with shade and stand’.

Mary's final request was 'that my body may be buried at Fordham … by the side of my first husband, the late Robert Hayward'.