[3] London Bourne was a slave until he was twenty-three[4] or twenty-five[3] years old, at which time he was purchased by his father for the sum of five hundred dollars.
[5] By the late 1820s, with stores and a sugar brokerage business, London Bourne was already considered one of the wealthiest merchants in Bridgetown.
[3] By 1837 London Bourne was known to have owned three stores in Bridgetown, and had a net worth of between twenty and thirty thousand dollars.
"[4] In the mid 1820s, Bourne was a member of the St. Mary's Society for the Education of the Coloured Poor in the Principles of the Established Church and for other Charitable Relief.
[2] London Bourne was married in 1822[9] to a free, property-owning black woman named Patience Graham with whom he had seven children.