Simon Watson-Taylor (1811 – 25 December 1902) was a British landowner in Wiltshire and Jamaica who briefly served as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Devizes between the 1857 election and that of 1859.
His father used the wealth from their Jamaican plantations to acquire estates in Wiltshire, at Erlestoke, Coulston (including Baynton House),[3] and Edington,[4] along with a large art collection.
[5] The Taylor (Tailzour before anglicisation[6]) family – and Watson-Taylor's father, through his marriage – derived its wealth from sugar and slavery in the Colony of Jamaica.
However, the vast majority of the wealth created by her great-uncle Simon Tailzour had been largely squandered by George Watson-Taylor.
[7] Watson-Taylor maintained a strong interest in the affairs of Jamaica and offered public support to Governor Edward John Eyre, after he brutally suppressed the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865.