Leith Sugar House
[2] The financial success of the Leith Sugar house in the seventeenth and eighteenth century demonstrates Edinburgh's economic connection to the Atlantic economy and enslaved labour.
In May 1677, an Edinburgh confitmaker , Thomas Douglas, was forbidden to boil his own sugar in a cellar workshop in Tailfer's Close to make confectionery, as the potential "occasion of sudden fire in the heart of the town".
Some of Baird's papers concerning his 1677 "copartnery" in the Leith "suggarie" survive, along with records of his involvement in the Carolina Company or Society and its failed colony at Stuart Town.
[16] However, surviving letters show that the Leith Sugar House was not yet fully exploiting the resource by distilling molasses to make rum in the years 1677 to 1683.
He brought back sugar and tobacco, but the cargo of his Hopeful Margaret of Leith was lost when the ship was impressed by Francis Willoughby to fight with the English government navy.
Edward Burd was badly injured in a sea battle with the French in 1666 at "Todosantes", but recovered from a gunshot wound to the head.
[19] Unlike Douglas, who had merchant burgess status, Burd was not permitted to deal in wine, and his new Leith chandlery business was strictly regulated to ensure he did not undercut existing shops and manufacturers.
[20] Sugar plantations had English owners and some Scottish staff, and in the 1670s a Glasgow merchant William Colquhoun was settled on Saint Kitts.
By around 1695, a Scot with an Edinburgh heritage, William McDowall, began managing a sugar plantation on Nevis as a slave overseer.
[22] In 1695, Robert Douglas, junior and senior, described as soap boilers in Leith, were investors in the Company of Scotland, the venture known as the Darien scheme.
[23] In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland recognised their flourishing trade with Greenland and Russia, and the setting up of soap and sugar works, and their plans for making porcelain.
[25] In 1703 Douglas applied to Privy Council for recognition for a manufactory "to be erected and set up" as a "Suggar work at Leith and a sullarie for distilling of Rhum".
[30] A Swedish traveller, Henry Kalmeter, described Robert Douglas's Leith soap works in 1720, apparently situated in Rotten Row.
