Barton, Irlam and Higginson
[6] William Barton returned from Barbados and took on for a time the house Thomas had had built at Sleepers Hill, Everton.
He had been knighted in 1816 when Mayor of Liverpool on presenting an address of congratulation to the Regent on the marriage of Princess Charlotte of Wales.
Like other Liverpool merchants of the period, they operated primarily on a commission basis, accepting shipments from plantations in Barbados on consignment, and arranging for their sale in Liverpool to interested parties, remitting the proceeds back to Barbados less their commission—usually between 2½ and 4 percent—and less a variety of deductions and charges: for duties payable, for port and handling charges, for shipping and insurance, for warehousing and other costs; as well as for any credit advanced or financial transactions facilitated.
[11] The firm also bought goods outright for cash on its own account; but the commission system allowed it to be much less exposed to price and demand fluctuations; and to operate with rather less up-front capital.
[16] After the declaration of war with France in February 1793, Allanson and Barton were quick to obtain letters of marque for their captains, authorising them to attack and try to capture French vessels.
Allanson and Barton's ship Harriot under Captain Caitcheon in April became the first to send a prize into Liverpool.
Agreeable, a "fine Bermuda-built brig... laden with coffee, sugar, indigo, and cotton", was taken on its way from Port-au-Prince to Bordeaux.
[17] Even before this in March Harriot and Speights Town, another Allanson and Barton ship, had re-captured Camilla, which had been taken by a French privateer while sailing from Salonica to London with cotton, sponge, figs and valonia.
The ship, sailing from Bombay to Lorient in France, had a particularly fine cargo, including silks and spices, fabrics, china, and mother-of-pearl, which realised £190,000.
Pope (2007) identifies Thomas Barton as not "one of the cohort of leading slave merchants of the second half of the eighteenth century" (criterion: those who had financed or part-financed 18 or more voyages), despite having amassed significant property outside the Borough of Liverpool,[21] while Krichtal (2013) classifies the firm as not a "major slave trader" (criterion: a firm which had backed twenty or more voyages).
[24] Merchants such as Bartons who had previously offered trade finance and managed bills of exchange for estates now increasingly found themselves offering mortgages, secured against plantations and slaves, to enable the proprietors to continue production—and even taking on whole estates themselves, bought either directly or out of the Chancery Court following bankruptcy proceedings, as mortgagees found their debt burdens become unsustainable.
[26] In 1823 William Barton bought the Sandy Lane plantation for £19,718, including 106 enslaved people;[27][28] while by the time of John Higginson's death in 1834 Higginson had become the owner of seven estates (Joe's River, Foul Bay (also known as Grettons), Rowans, Congo Road, Sandy Lane, Cane Garden, and Castle Grant) with the services of 867 "apprentices" (as former slaves, freed by the 1833 Act, but still bound to the estates, became known).
[33] Barton, Irlam and Higginson meet with considerable opposition in the Liverpool District Court of Bankruptcy.
[35] (The bankruptcy occurred during the great railway panic of 1847 and the Bank suspended operations between 18 October and 1 December.
