Murray Gladstone

Murray was appointed President and Chair of the Exchange on the 15th of March 1865 – after four years of the United States Civil War, as blockades on slave-grown materials had led to vast unemployment, poverty and hunger for workers in the Lancashire Cotton Famine and manufacturing grinding to a halt in most areas^[1] .

Despite the impact of the Cotton Famine for workers and their families, even while the war still raged, his time as Chairman was  framed by the pressure on the proprietors to build a new Exchange, one that could accommodate the now nearly 6000 subscribers. As Chairman, Murray took on significant responsibility in ensuring the reconstruction was a success; he headed the Building Sub-Committee, which negotiated with Manchester City Council and secured the passing of the 1866 Manchester Royal Exchange Act^[2].

The most pressing issue, however, remained the need to raise funds beyond that which was generated by the annual subscriptions paid by members, meaning those willing to invest took out mortgages^[3]. Murray’s name appears on six of these mortgages. Him, his brother Thomas, his business partner George Arbuthnot, and Henry Walker loaned a total of £33,000 to the Exchange (almost £4 million pounds in 2023). This was 24% of the total money raised through mortgages^[4].

One of the mortgages, and the signatures on it, is pictured below:

The current Manchester Royal Exchange building first opened  in 1874 and was 10 times the size of the original 1806 building, encompassing an imposing 206ft by 96ft^[5]. Murray’s wealth and influence was integral to enabling its grandeur but investigation shows how this wealth was derived from involvement in systems of slavery and colonialism.

Born in 1816, Murray was the fifth son of Robert Gladstone, a prominent Liverpool merchant. Robert, alongside his perhaps more infamous brother John, brought immense wealth and influence to the family as enslavers and plantation owners. Facilitating the production of sugar in Demerara-Essequibo (modern-day Guyana), and by 1820 the brothers “held £250,000 worth of investments in the West Indies”, which equates to over £24 million in 2023^[6]. The proudly paraded notion that Britain was at the forefront of abolition would suggest that figures like Robert and John would lose much of their wealth in the wake of abolition. Yet in fact, enslavers received substantial compensation from the British government for their loss of ‘property’. John, who enslaved over 2,500 people, was awarded £100,000 (£11 million today). This was the biggest single compensation claim made through the scheme^[7].

More directly impactful for Murray was his father’s claim for compensation^[8]. Robert died in 1835, leaving the £9225 16s 5d (£1 million today) he was awarded to be divided equally between his children fostering a “multi-generational dynasty” and enabling new colonial ventures^[9].

Reimagining Abolitionism

Even less visible in the public memorialisation surrounding abolition is the agency and resistance displayed by enslaved peoples. According to Jessica Moody, a “culture of abolition” exists within the UK that downplays Britain’s role in slavery and instead idolises parliamentary abolitionists, the most pertinent example being William Wilberforce^[10]. However, following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, growing emphasis has been placed on the integral role enslaved peoples had in securing their own emancipation^[11].

In a discussion of the Gladstone family, a brief exploration of the Demerara Uprising of 1823 illustrates clearly the value in re-inserting these narratives of resistance into the civic discourse. The Demerara Uprising began on the 18th of August on John Gladstone’s plantation ‘Success’. Led by an enslaved man named Jack Gladstone and his father Quamina, up to 13,000 enslaved peoples from ‘Success’ and its surrounding plantations locked up their overseers and gathered ammunition, demanding the Governor grant them freedom^[12].

The brutal repression in response sparked outrage amongst abolitionists in Britain and John, who was an MP at the time, was challenged in Parliament^[13]. In spite of their resilience and the significance of their actions in the push for abolition, enslaved peoples received no compensation and have barely been acknowledged in the public eye.

Manchester’s Gaze Shifts from West to East

Meanwhile, former slave-owning families used the wealth bestowed upon them to invest in commercial opportunities in Asia, continuing to profit from unfree and exploitative labour. Murray joined Gillanders, Arbuthnot, and Co. in Calcutta in the early 1840s. Two of its founders had trained under John in Liverpool, and the company provided indentured labourers for his plantations in Guyana.

Indentured servitude describes an unfree system of labour in which workers are contracted to work for a set period of time often in exchange for right of passage or the repayment of debts. It became more commonly used throughout the British Empire following the abolition of slavery and was particularly used to exploit migrant labourers from Asia. In this newly-devised labour system colonial exploitation and a “dynastic exclusiveness”, in which family connections are crucial, was thus key to Murray’s success^[14].

His status as a merchant grew so that in 1851 he returned to establish his own branch of the firm, which “acted as a direct conduit for…firms in India to deal with textile producers in Manchester”^[15]. By 1872, he was the largest shareholder in Gillanders, Arbuthnot and Co, making a profit of £6,092 in that year alone(almost £700,000 today)^[16].

Murray Gladstone’s crucial role in the construction of the second Manchester Royal Exchange was directly enabled by his inheritance of slavery-derived wealth and his perpetuation of the exploitative Anglo-Indian trade in cotton and textiles. Within the Exchange, trade in these and other commercial goods shaped a growing and changing system of colonial exploitation. The building therefore stands today as a striking display of the way in which “the fruits of slavery” and colonialism underpinned Manchester’s eminent institutions^[17].

Conversations about what reparations may look like are ongoing and are necessarily complex, as indicated by the mixed responses to the apology extended by descendants of the Gladstone family during their visit to Guyana last year^[18]. A distinct silence remains in particular around the lived experiences of those enslaved and unfree labourers who figures like Murray Gladstone profited from, and this must be rectified in order to tell more expansive histories of industrial Manchester.