Dorothy Thomas (entrepreneur)
Though she owned hotels one of which had a French restaurant, her primary source of income was hiring out female hucksters to whom she supplied goods to be sold to plantation workers and slaves.
Known as one of the few black women who derived compensation from the government scheme to reimburse slave owners, she received £3,413 for the loss of her labourers when Britain abolished slavery.
She was influential among a wide circle of business and elite connections in the colonies of the British West Indies and used her networks when needed to improve her circumstances.
Andrew, in the wake of famine and hurricane damage on Montserrat, was in the process of moving to Demerara when Kirwan arranged for the manumission of her son Edward on 24 July 1781.
She was discharged from any debts she might owe him and the will specified that she had paid to him money to manumit herself and her three children, William, Charlotte, and a baby, Ann (also known as Nan), who was the daughter of Joseph Thomas, a minor merchant.
[16] The Grenada Assembly and the governor increasingly implemented measures to expel freed slaves, specifically targeting free women of colour.
Bridgetown was the home of the British Caribbean fleet and war offered opportunities for business, though competition from other free coloured women like, Suzy Austin, Nancy Clarke, and Betsy Lemon would have limited Kirwan's prospects.
[18] Within a year, she moved to the northern edge of Georgetown, to a new neighbourhood known as Cumingsburg, a fashionable and growing area adjacent to the plantation owned by Thomas Cuming.
[22] The closed plantation system, under which the estate provided for all the needs of its inhabitants, had ceased to exist when the British began occupying the colony at the end of the 18th century.
[22] Her largest hotel, which had a cistern capable of holding 5,000 or more gallons of water, began employing a French chef, Louis le Plat, in 1817 and that same year, she purchased a live lion from Africa as an amusement for her guests.
[31] In 1820, she owned 83 slaves and while her business was prospering, her white sons-in-law were frequently in need of financial assistance, which she provided, though at times grudgingly.
[2][32] The sons-in-law were subject to accruing debt to secure merchandise for overseas trade and ran the risk of having shipments seized by privateers during periods of war; whereas Thomas' income was stable and property based.
[2] The following year, she journeyed to England to press the claims of a group of free women of colour who had unsuccessfully petitioned the Court of Policy to reduce the tax on hucksters.
[38][39] The women lamented in their petition that competition had increased in the colony and that the new tax exempted free coloured men, slaves, and whites.
[38][41] When slavery was abolished in 1833 she participated in the government compensation scheme for loss of her labour and recovered £3,413,[30] equivalent to £400,000 in 2025, according to calculations based on retail price index measure of inflation,[42] the largest amount paid to a freedwoman in Demerara.
[7] Thomas survived the yellow fever epidemic which hit the area in 1837 and continued to use her influential business networks for the rest of her life.
The will implies that the only children who survived her were Catherina, Ann, Harry, and Christina and the witnesses to the will and codiciles "read like a roll call of influential white men in the colony".
[45] In her lifetime, Dorothy Thomas was a legendary figure and many apocryphal stories were written about her,[38] including accounts of visits to both houses of Parliament and a personal audience with George IV.
[2] Thomas' family tree stretched in a broad swathe across the British Empire and many of them became notable in their own right, thanks in part to the education she provided for her descendants.
[54] Their sister, Ann Thomas, was the common-law wife of John Gloster Garraway, who served in Grenada as the Master of the Court of Chancery.
[55] Fanny Owens remained in Grenada, conducting business there, but Eliza Thomas relocated to Demerara, where she became the wife of Gilbert Robertson in 1805.
[49] Eliza and Gilbert were probably the parents of Ann, an infant who died in 1806, and had a son, Henry Robertson, who became a licensed apothecary in 1828 and later had a successful surgical practice in London.
When he returned to Scotland with his regiment in 1821, she followed and gave birth that year to their son, Huntly George Gordon,[28] who became surgeon-general in the British Army.
