Joseph Foster Barham

Joseph Foster Barham, the younger (1759–1832) was an English politician, merchant and plantation owner.^[1]

Life

He was the son of Joseph Foster Barham I and his wife Dorothea Vaughan.^[1] Thomas Foster Barham was his brother.

In 1789 Foster Barham inherited his father's Mesopotamia estate in Jamaica, and a partnership in the West Indian merchants Barham & Plummer.^[1][2]

Political career

In 1793 Foster Barham was elected as Member of Parliament for Stockbridge, and was in partnership with Thomas Plummer, Member for Ilchester.^[1] In that year he also broke off dealings with the Atlantic slave trade.^[3] In a debate on an 1815 bill to abolish slavery, he stated that British capital upheld the Spanish slave trade, half of the Danish, and part of the Portuguese.^[4]

Later life

Foster Barham sold his Stockbridge borough to Earl Grosvenor in the early 1820s.^[5] He died on 28 September 1832 near Bedford, at the house of his sister Mary Livius.^[6]

Works

• Considerations on the late Act for continuing the prohibition of corn in the distillery (1810)^[7]
• Considerations on the abolition of Negro slavery, and the means of practically effecting it (1823).^[8] Foster Barham was an abolitionist in principle, though his views were hedged with caveats. He produced plans for introducing Asian labour to run Caribbean plantations (as did William Layman and Robert Townsend Farquhar); and they circulated in government.^[9] He also gave an estimate of the cost of raising a plantation slave, lower than that of George Hibbert.^[10]

Family

Foster Barham married Lady Caroline Tufton, daughter of Sackville Tufton, 8th Earl of Thanet. They had three sons and two daughters:^[1]

• John Foster Barham, eldest son, MP for Stockbridge; certified as of unsound mind in 1837, and died 1838. He married Lady Katherine Grimston, daughter of James Grimston, 1st Earl of Verulam.^[11]
• Charles Henry Barham, MP for Appleby.
• William.^[11]
• Caroline Gertrude married Sanderson Robins.
• The other daughter, Mary.^[12]

Notes

1. "Foster Barham, Joseph (1759–1832), of Trecwn, Pemb., History of Parliament Online". Retrieved 7 January 2016.
2. J. C. S. Mason (2001). The Moravian Church and the Missionary Awakening in England, 1760-1800. Boydell & Brewer. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-86193-251-1.
3. Ira Berlin (1993). Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas. University of Virginia Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-8139-1421-3.
4. Hugh Thomas (16 April 2013). The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870. Simon and Schuster. p. 590. ISBN 978-1-4767-3745-4.
5. s:Stanley, Edward George Geoffrey Smith (DNB00)
6. Edward Cave; John Nichols (1832). The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, for the Year ... Edw. Cave, 1736-[1868]. p. 573.
7. Joseph Foster Barham (1810). Considerations on the late Act for continuing the prohibition of corn in the distillery: addressed in a letter to the Right Hon. Lord Holland. James Ridgway.
8. Foster Barham, Joseph (1823). "Considerations on the abolition of Negro slavery, and the means of practically effecting it.". Internet Archive. London: James Ridgway. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
9. James Epstein (22 March 2012). Scandal of Colonial Rule: Power and Subversion in the British Atlantic During the Age of Revolution. Cambridge University Press. pp. 210–1. ISBN 978-1-107-00330-9.
10. Higman (31 May 1979). Slave Population 1807-1834. CUP Archive. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-521-29569-7.
11. "John Foster Barham Profile & Legacies Summary 1799 – 22nd May 1838, Legacies of British Slave-ownership". Retrieved 7 January 2016.
12. Thomas Hare; Sir James Wigram; Sir James Lewis Knight Bruce; Sir George James Turner, William Page Wood Baron Hatherley (1843). Reports of Cases Adjudged in the High Court of Chancery: Before the Right Hon. Sir James Wigram, Knt., Vice-Chancellor, [1841-1853]. A. Maxwell & Son. p. 126. Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors= (help)