Tracey Thorne

Selected Bibliography & Notes 

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Boulton and Watt Co. Collection MS 3147/4, Library of Birmingham Archives.

Craton, Michael & Walvin, James (1970) A Jamaican Plantation: A History of Worth Park 1670 -1970.

Morrison, Toni (1995) The Site of Memory, taken from Inventing the Truth, edited by William Zinsser, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Mullen, Stephen, (2020) James Watt and Slavery blog available here 

Renton, Alex (2021) Blood Legacy Reckoning With a Family’s Story of Slavery.

Satchell, Veront, Steam for Sugarcane Milling: The Diffusion of Boulton & Watt Stationary Steam Engine to Jamaican Sugar Industry, 1809-1830 in Jamaica in Slavery & Freedom, (2002) pp 242 - 258

Tann, Jennifer, Steam and Sugar: The Diffusion of the Stationary Steam Engine to the Caribbean Sugar Industry 1770–1840 in the History of Technology, Vol 19 (1997), pp 63 - 84.

 

Tracey Thorne, (2023) List of Sites of Boulton & Watt Steam Engines supplied to Jamaica between 1808-1850, PDF copy available on request. 

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Maps & Engine Engravings

 

Robinson, James (1804) Map of the Island of Jamaica, digital edition available at David Rumsey Map Collection, original copy in the Boulton and Watt Collection MS3147/31/83-86 

 

Lord Penrhyn (1796) Plan of a steam engine, shows different views/sections. Probably installed at one of Penrhyn's sugar plantations in Jamaica, REF BAW/3/1, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 

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Notes on Engines/Sugar Estates/Enslavers in Jamaica 

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Matthew Boulton and James Watt were directly involved in developing a scheme to adapt their independent steam engine for sugarcane milling between 1760 and 1800. During this period, they supplied various goods to businesses connected to the sugar trade and transatlantic slavery. They also liaised directly with enslavers to establish a scheme for exporting their engines to the colonies.

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Around 1790, Watt was approached by planters to develop a prototype steam engine for sugarcane milling. Evidence in the archives suggests that Lord Penrhyn had a steam engine erected on his estate, although it may have been a pirate version rather than an official Boulton & Watt engine.

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Between 1803 and 1808, Boulton & Watt supplied steam engines to several colonies, with the first recorded order going to Trinidad. The first official order for a steam engine supplied to Jamaica was in 1808. A Boulton and Watt steam engine was delivered to the Dalvey Plantation, owned by Sir Alexander Grant, 7th Baronet, where 191 enslaved people were recorded. The company continued supplying steam engines to Jamaica between 1808 and 1852.

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As part of the research project, the artist traced some of these sales during two fieldtrips to Jamaica 2022 -2023, photographing the remains she found and reflecting on Birmingham’s connection to sites of historic enslavement. Not all of the locations visited were included in the exhibition, but they will contribute to further research.

 

Bog Estate, Vere, Jamaica, Legacies of British Slavery

Dalvey Estate, St Thomas in the East, Jamaica, Legacies of British Slavery 

Denbigh Estate, Clarendon, Jamaica,  Legacies of British Slavery 

Duckenfield Hall Sugar Estate, Legacies of British Slavery

Drax Hall, St Ann, Jamaica, Legacies of British Slavery

 

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Frome Sugar Factory, in Westmoreland is one of only a few sugar estates in Jamaica that still process sugar. Sugar grown nearby on what would have been the former Midgham Sugar Estate  (formerly estate owned by the Ricketts of Westmoreland, planters and slave owners) is taken to the factory at Frome for processing. Boulton & Watt Co., steam engine order was recorded in 1816 for the estate. In the twentieth century, Tate and Lyle bought sixteen estates in Westmoreland and built the sugar processing factory at Frome. In 1938 Frome was at the centre of a nationwide labour dispute that ended in violence, tragedy and the transformation of Jamaican politics.

 

Green Park, Trelawny, Jamaica. An extensive historical site survives in the community of Green Park, including the ruins of William Atherton's Green Park Plantation Manor, an 18th-century windmill, and the remains of the sugar works.

Inside the plantation manor, the artist discovered a 1990s shower cubicle constructed from concrete on the ground floor. Embedded in the cubicle’s walls were numerous fragments of smashed British ceramic pottery. In response to these findings, the artist created cyanotype works, photographs, and exhibited artifacts exploring the site’s connections to colonial pottery. The work also highlights links between Josiah Wedgwood and James Watt, as well as Watt’s involvement in Delftfield Pottery in Glasgow, which exported its ceramic wares to the West Indies.

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Anthony Macfarlane, bequeathed Glasgow University a set of astronomical instruments that had arrived from Port Royal, Jamaica which James Watt in 1756 repaired. He was paid £5 for the repair and the opportunity to establish his workshop within the University where he later assumed the title of "Mathematical Instrument Maker to the University." This marked a pivotal moment in Watt's early career, providing him with the privilege and opportunity to conduct experiments on the Newcomen Engine.  Legacies of British Slavery

 

Worthy Park Estate, St John, Jamaica, Legacies of British Slavery 

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Estates/Sites in Britain (connected to this trade that benefit from Transatlantic slavery) 

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Aston Hall, Birmingham, property managed by Birmingham Museums Trust. James Watt Junior who was leading operations at Boulton and Watt Co and its colonial trade to sites of enslavement in the colonies, during the nineteenth Century, lived in the Jacobean mansion between 1817 and 1848. During this period he funded significant improvements to Aston Hall house and estate. 

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Penrhyn Castle and Gardens, North Wales, Richard Pennant, property managed by the National Trust. Owned by the Pennant family, and the staunch anti-abolitionist, Richard Pennant whose fortune was gained from sugar plantations in Jamaica that used enslaved labour including at Denbigh in Clarendon. Pennant was intimately involved in discussions with Boulton and Watt on a scheme to make available steam engines for sugar cane milling in Jamaica, c1780s onwards. The estate later ordered engines from Boulton & Watt, during the early part of the 19th century. 

​James Watt Junior,  portrait of Watt Junior enclosed within a gold fob watch, crafted around 1830, held in the collection at Aston Hall, Birmingham Museums Trust.

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Soho Foundry (now in Sandwell) is a Scheduled Monument, Historic England.

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Trengwainton Gardens, Cornwall, George Price, gardens managed by the National Trust. The estate near Madron, Penzance was once owned by Sir Rose Price (1768-1834) who had inherited sugar plantations in Jamaica, which included Worthy Park. Price became a powerful Jamaican planter and slave owner using the wealth to create a landed estate at Trengwainton with gardens in the picturesque style in Cornwall. George Price whose name is on the Boulton and Watt Co. engine drawings was Rose Price's son.

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Art

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Denbigh sugar plantation in Jamaica (1871)  Watercolour of painted at Penrhyn Castle bangor Wales, National Trust

​​James Watt Junior (1830) portrait of Watt Junior enclosed within a gold fob watch, held in the collection at Aston Hall, Birmingham Museums Trust.

​Blue Willow Pattern Sugar Bowl & Jug, Josiah Wedgwood, from Tracey Thorne's Jamaica Collection. Wedgwood is inappropriately celebrated on the Boulton Watt & Murdoch (Golden Boys) Statue, memorial in Centenary square linked to anti-slavery campaign.

​Statue of James Watt, (1868)​​​​ by A Munro, at Birmingham (engraving) printed in London Illustrated News

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Articles/Blogs & Talks Linked to the Exhibition

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Rachel Segal Hamilton (2024) The Library of Birmingham hosts a world class photo collection. Unfortunately, most of it is sitting in boxes. Birmingham Despatches. Available here 

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 Carol Ann Dixon (2024) Undoing 2007; Preparing for 2038: Reflections on the Making Freedom Exhibition and Emancipation 1838 Project, Musuem Geographies. Available here

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Workshop Rewrite the Margins to the Centre, Stuart Hall: Positions and Trajectories Confernce (2024), Stuart Hall Archive Project, Deatils available here.  

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