Sir John Wedderburn of Ballindean, 6th Baronet of Blackness (1729–1803) was a Scottish landowner who made a fortune in slave sugar in the West Indies.

In 1769 he returned to Scotland with a slave, one Joseph Knight, who was inspired by Somersett's Case, a judgment in London determining that slavery did not exist under English law.

Wedderburn was sued by Knight in a freedom suit, and lost his case, establishing the principle that Scots law would not uphold the institution of slavery either.

Sir John Wedderburn's expectations of an inheritance were not fulfilled and he raised his large family in "a small farm with a thatched house and a clay floor, which he occupied with great industry, and thereby made a laborious but starving shift to support nine children who used to run about in the fields barefoot".

[3] In 1745 Sir John joined the rebellion of Charles Edward Stuart against the Hanoverian crown,[4] serving as a colonel in the Jacobite army before being captured at the Battle of Culloden and hauled off to London to face trial and execution.

His mission failed, and he was to witness his father's execution as a traitor by hanging, drawing and quartering, after which he was forced to return to Scotland where he found himself cut off from his inheritance and, without prospects, obliged to take ship to the New World.

[4] Some time in early 1747 Wedderburn landed in the British Colony of Jamaica, an island which had been seized from the Spanish in 1655, and was fast becoming an important centre for the production and export of sugar.

The young Wedderburn settled in the west of Jamaica, near Montego Bay, and tried his hand at a number of occupations, even practising for a few years as a medical doctor, despite having no qualifications.

[6] In 1762 Wedderburn attended a "scramble" (an early form of slave auction) and purchased a young African boy aged 12 or 13 years, named Joseph Knight after the captain of the ship that had brought him to the West Indies.

[5] Rather than set Knight to work as a field hand, Wedderburn made him a house servant, teaching him to read and write and having him baptised as a Christian.

], Joseph Knight fell in love with a servant girl from Dundee, one Annie Thompson, and Wedderburn gave permission for the couple to marry.

Perhaps assuming (wrongly) that a ruling in an English court applied equally in Scotland, Knight demanded his freedom, and even asked for back wages, which Wedderburn refused.

In an unexpected decision, Lord Kames stated that 'we sit here to enforce right not to enforce wrong' and the court emphatically rejected Wedderburn's appeal, ruling by an 8 to 4 majority [19] that: In effect, slavery was not recognised by Scots law and runaway slaves (or 'perpetual servants') could be protected by the courts, if they wished to leave domestic service or were resisting attempts to return them to slavery in the colonies.