Slavery and the early railway industry in the United Kingdom – directorial connections

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Scholars have recently explored in more detail how wealth generated from slavery stimulated industrial development in the United Kingdom and how the £20 million compensation money of the 1830s, provided to slave owners for the loss of their ‘property’ on emancipation, constituted a considerable economic stimulus. 

Nonetheless, the connections between early railway development and slavery-generated wealth have only been touched on. This paper illuminates this subject, by exploring the backgrounds of early railway directors using an expansive range of sources. Whilst not a perfect proxy for gauging the overall connections between railway investment and slavery, this approach has proven revealing. Of the 439 directors of 34 railways in 1841, around 10% are known to have derived at least part of their wealth from the direct ownership of enslaved individuals inside or outside of the British Empire. Another 6% have been identified as being active in slave-linked supply chains (e.g. Cotton, Sugar). Whilst further research might increase these figures, they suggest that slavery-linked wealth played a notable role in early railway development. 

The paper then proceeds to dig deeper into the data. It assesses where the directors of railways connected to Birmingham (six railways) and Leeds (five) in the early 1840s generated their wealth, using as a starting point director lists for 1841 and 1844. In the former case, 23.1% of the 91 directors, half of whom were based in the North West, derived some of their wealth from enslavement. By contrast, of the 75 directors of Leeds connected railways, only 6.7% did, none of which came from Yorkshire. This suggest that slavery-linked wealth was not uniformly distributed in the capital of the early railway industry.

This paper will therefore illuminate an under-researched topic, but also will demonstrate more broadly the nature of slavery-derived wealth in the UK economy in the 1830s and 1840s.

This session ties in with the ‘Railway 200’ programme, being marked nationally during 2025.