Castle Wemyss Estate Papers

Castle Wemyss was a sugar estate situated in the parish of St James in Jamaica, on the north side of the island, inland and east of Montego Bay, and close to the area known as the Cockpit Country. By 1802 it had become the property of Gilbert Mathison who had inherited it from his father, also Gilbert Mathison. The younger Gilbert inherited a debt of some £16,000 along with the estate, and in January 1802 obtained a mortgage to pay off half this sum. Later in the same year, a settlement was drawn up prior to the marriage of Mathison to Catherine Farquhar, including provision for the payment out of the estate to the future Mrs Mathison, of an annuity of £600, beginning from the death of Gilbert Mathison. Subsequently, Mathison had to raise further mortgages to meet further debts he had incurred. Latterly the estate was mortgaged to one Simon Halliday, the husband of Catherine Mathison's half-sister, who took on all previous mortgages, and in 1823 Gilbert Mathison was obliged to convey the estate to Halliday to resolve his financial problems. There followed a few years which saw reasonable returns on the sugar and rum produced at Castle Wemyss; but by 1830, by which time the estate was held by Rev Walter Mathison (the son of Simon Halliday, who had died in 1829) as the heir in tail under his father's will, it was proving less profitable. Gilbert Mathison had died in 1828, triggering the payment of the annuity to his widow, but because the estate was giving low returns, it was not possible to pay it regularly or in full. Further, in 1830 investigations showed that the first mortgage taken out by Gilbert Mathison pre-dated the annuity, which meant that Walter Halliday had a prior claim on the estate and was not obliged to pay the annuity: however, he continued to make payments when returns from the estate permitted it, out of consideration to Mrs Mathison. The Abolition Act, which took effect in 1834, had serious implications for Walter Halliday as the owner of the Castle Wemyss estate. Despite receiving a substantial compensation payment under the Act (after resolving counterclaims for this money from Mrs Mathison and from Peter Wallace and JP Hopkins, all of whom claimed entitlement to annuities payable upon the estate), the estate became very difficult to run owing to the scarcity of affordable labour. There was also the long-standing problem of the relatively lengthy journey from Castle Wemyss to local ports (usually Montego Bay or Falmouth) along poor roads, frequently made particularly difficult by wet weather. The amount of sugar produced dwindled significantly, and by 1843 the estate was considered to be unable to support itself, and Halliday was seriously seeking means of extricating himself from the financial demands it placed on him. Sale or lease were both considered (although sale was made difficult by the fact that Walter Halliday was only tenant for life), as well as placing the estate in the hands of the Chancellor's Court to be managed for the interests of the heirs in tail. Halliday took steps to put into effect a fourth option, by instructing that Castle Wemyss had to support itself - he would not authorise payments of any debts arising - and indicating that the estate should be abandoned if it was not possible to cover the costs of planting a crop from the sale of the sugar and rum it produced. It is not clear to what extent these instructions were carried out. However, at the end of the period covered by these documents, an agreement appeared to have been reached for the lease of the estate by a Dr Macarthey. Meanwhile, the practical management of the estate and sale of its produce had been continuing. Gilbert Mathison had instituted a system of management developed by himself, on principles of treating the slaves on the estate with greater humanity. These methods had been outlined by him in his published work, 'Notices respecting Jamaica 1808-1809-1810' (London: printed for J Stockdale, 1811), and although an advance on the treatment of slaves by many of Mathison's contemporaries, did not reject the principle of slavery itself. Mathison lived on the estate himself at one period and saw to its management directly, but latterly he became an absentee owner and his last attorney, J R Phillips, was Simon Halliday's first when he became the owner in 1823. Halliday appointed a new attorney in 1825: there are indications that he was dissatisfied with Phillips' performance. David McNish, the next attorney, died in 1827, and following an interim period when John Irving was informally in charge, was replaced by William Reeves who continued in the post until at least 1835. In the 1840s, the brothers Dewar and Peter McLaren held the post. The attorneys reported on all aspects of the practical and financial management of the estate on the island, including the work and state of health of the slaves. Simon Halliday initially used the firm of Mathison, Jenkins and Co. to receive shipments of and sell the sugar and rum produced by the estate, an arrangement inherited from Gilbert Mathison. When that firm of merchants became bankrupt (causing significant financial loss to Halliday) in 1824, he used David Lyon and Co., one of the partners of which was a personal friend, John Watson. On the retirement of David Lyon, Watson continued on his own account, and his assistant, Robert Hawthorn, appears eventually to have set up the firm of Hawthorn and Sheddon who dealt with Walter Halliday's interests in the 1830s and 1840s. Besides receiving shipments of produce, these firms arranged despatch of supplies to Jamaica for the use of the estate. While Simon Halliday took a direct interest in the running of Castle Wemyss, his son Walter Halliday appears to have left much of the responsibility for the estate's management with others: his solicitor, Nash Hilliard; the merchants Hawthorn and Sheddon; and his attorneys in Jamaica itself.