Lord Ducie and the Blood-Stained Foundations of the First Exchange by Destinie Reynolds
The turn of the nineteenth century marked a period of rapid growth in the cotton industry, which transformed Manchester into the world’s first industrial city. Increased production of raw cotton planted, tended, picked and packed by enslaved communities, alongside technological advancements like the creation of the cotton gin, fuelled Manchester’s rise to a position of international recognition as the ‘City of Cotton’.
In the industrial-imperial core, merchants and manufacturers gathered in pubs, warehouses and even on street corners to negotiate deals, primarily in cotton and textiles. These trades generated enormous profits, made possible by the exploitation of enslaved people, who were forced to endure inhumane labour.
The early nineteenth century saw the rapid growth of the cotton industry in Manchester; by 1800, the town had 42 mills, and by 1816, this number had doubled to 86[1]. This explosion in the industry, prompted Manchester’s elite to build a dedicated space for formalising business deals. A group of wealthy businessmen formed a company to create an exclusive trading space, which led to the creation of Manchester’s first Exchange which opened in 1809. This became the beating heart of Cottonopolis.
The Exchange was a large, grandiose building that dominated a huge area spanning the corner of Market Street all the way up to St Ann’s Square. The building occupied a significant portion of the high street and served as a stark, physical reminder of Manchester’s connections to the transatlantic slavery economy. Accessible only to the city’s industrial and business elite, along with the burgeoning middle class, the Exchange was built on land purchased from Francis Moreton Reynolds (28 March 1739 – 20 August 1808), also known as “Lord Ducie”, who had informally agreed to provide the land for the building before his death in 1808.
The previous historical narrative concerning the Exchange largely omits Lord Ducie’s land purchase, thereby silencing the brutal foundations of his wealth. This research employs an antiracist lens to interrogate Lord Ducie’s, and therefore the Royal Exchange’s, ties to enslaved labour and colonial violence
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Exchange Committee Meeting Minutes documenting Lord Ducie’s donation of the land for the first Exchange.. Archive of the Manchester Royal Exchange (Cotton Exchange), Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, GB127.M81/3/1/1[2]
The Reynolds Moreton Dynasty
Lord Ducie was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. His grandfather, Thomas Reynolds (24 April 1745 – 12 August 1773), was a director of the South Sea Company between 1715 – 1722[3]. The company was formed in 1711 to traffic thousands of Africans to work on plantations in the Americas . The company secured exclusive rights from the British government to traffic and sell 4,800 enslaved people annually to the Spanish colonies throughout the Americas, ensuring super profits for the company and its shareholders.
Thomas Reynolds was also an astute business and account manager who gained prevalence across the North of England. Reynolds had several clients, one of the most notable being Catherine Richards who owned the Strangeways Estate, which dominated the northern outskirts of Manchester. The Strangeways estate was a key strategic location perfect for middle-class merchants. The estates ‘green fields and pastures’ made it a desirable location for members of Manchester’s petty bourgeoise to build their homes, outside the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions of the industrialised town centre, while keeping proximity to the economic opportunities that the growing commercial and industrial centre of Manchester provided [4]. When Richards died in 1713, she left the Strangeways Estate to Reynolds, expanding the Reynolds family wealth and influence[5].
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A Plan of Manchester and Salford (1794). Image Provided by The John Ryland Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester, Reference number R15369 Mapping Manchester : A plan of Manchester and Salford’
The inheritance of the Strangeways Estate (see above) propelled the Reynolds family to regional notoriety as one of the most prominent landowners in the North of England. Thomas’s empire was passed down through the Reynolds family and inherited by Lord Ducie in 1785. Under Lord Ducie, large parts of the Strangeways Estate were leased out and occupied by several middle-class tenants such as Joseph Hague who lived on Market Street Lane in 1786[6].
Hague worked closely with the Levant Company, which imported raw cotton from the Eastern Mediterranean, to be spun by working-class Mancunians. There were also several merchants leasing land on the estate including George Lomas who is recorded as a fustian and calico printer on the Scholes’ trade directory of 1797, he also had a printing work which is annotated on the map above as ‘Mr Lomas’s Printing Works’[7].
Leasing the land, Lord Ducie capitalised on Manchester’s industrial expansion by creating a haven for the middle-class flight from the rapidly industrialising town. This strategy confined the waged working class to the urban core, while the profits of enslaved labourers on distant plantations in the Americas underpinned the lucrative cotton and textiles trade. Ducie reaped significant wealth through leasing and renting property connected to these industries; this exploitation of land and labour was a central to Manchester’s industrialisation, generating enormous profits for Ducie, whose family resided in the rural comfort of the Moreton Estate in Staffordshire.
Military Career and Sandy’s Rebellion
While enjoying surplus income from his land leases to textile businesses in Manchester and inherited wealth from the South Sea Company, Lord Ducie had a long military career, in which he led several violent interventions in West Africa and the Caribbean to strengthen Britain’s colonial project and protect the plantation regime.
One of the most notable instances of Ducie’s military involvement in suppressing resistance was his role in quelling Sandy’s Uprising in Tobago in 1770. This rebellion erupted amid worsening conditions on sugar plantations, exacerbated by increasing demands for sugar production. In 1770 alone, Tobago reported at least 71 freedom seekers (‘runaway slaves’), reflecting widespread discontent and resistance among the enslaved population against brutal plantation regimes[8].
On 11 November, Sandy a young African chief who was captured and sold into slavery, stabbed his master, Samuel Hall, multiple times, leaving him for dead. Sandy and his other comrades, also enslaved on Hall’s plantation, were trafficked from the Gold Coast (modern day Ghana) and were of the Akan tribe. Enslaved peoples deriving from this region were often known as Coromantee’s and were characterised, often by plantation owners, for their fierce resistance against systems of enslavement. They fled the plantation and started the uprising by attacking the Courtland Bay barracks and taking all available arms and ammunition to sustain their resistance. Sandy and his comrades had grown to a force of 30 to 50, burning plantations and gaining followers as they marched.
After the rebellion broke out, leading planters on the island requested a loan of one hundred stands of arms and ammunition from the Speaker of the General Assembly of Barbados. The request was granted, along with the deployment of 20 soldiers from Grenada to assist in destruction of the uprising. The swift and violent response from the planters highlights the threat the liberation fighters posed to the plantation regime. The urgency to suppress any form of resistance underscores the strength and agency of the enslaved community in their fight for freedom.
On November 21, Lord Ducie led his Royal Navy vessel, the HMS Quebec to Tobago to help suppress the rebellion. Soldiers from Grenada also joined the planters, ultimately crushing the revolutionary efforts of Sandy and his comrades. Extracts from a meeting of the Tobago Council on November 27 reveal the planters’ gratitude for Lord Ducie and the Navy’s intervention. The minutes stress the importance of thanking Lord Ducie “for the readiness he showed in coming voluntarily to the relief of this infant colony, at a time when it was not only feared to be in the greatest distress from internal unrest, but also shared the danger, along with other islands, of being attacked by the natural enemies of the Crown of Great Britain from without.”
The gratitude expressed by the Tobago Council reflects how crucial Ducie’s presence was perceived to be for the protection of the plantation economy. His involvement in suppressing Sandy’s Uprising exemplifies this, leading naval forces to quash the enslaved people’s pursuit of liberation, thereby reinforcing the exploitative plantation system.
Provost Marshal of Barbados
In the later period of his life, Ducie served as the Provost Marshal of Barbados, a tenure marked by torture, degradation and deterrent for enslaved communities. Ducie’s father, who previously held the same position, was central to the development and enforcement of the Slave Code in Barbados, a draconian set of laws designed to maintain control over the enslaved African population. The 1667 Barbados Slave Code outlines the definite responsibilities of the Provost Marshal, which particularly emphasised punishing runaway and rebellious slaves[8].
The 1763 Act of Assembly of Barbados offers an insight into the Provost Marshal’s role in managing the sale of enslaved people including, overseeing public auctions and court orders which often involved severe punishments for enslaved individuals to maintain the brutality of the plantation regime[10]. Reynolds was therefore an active and leading participant in the enforcement and maintenance of the system of slavery in Barbados, a lucrative paying job, secured by his generational position of wealth, status and colonial power networks.
Lord Ducie’s super profits laid the blood-stained foundations of the Exchange – creating inextricable links to the transatlantic system of enslavement and colonisation and highlighting a direct and previously unknown connection between the institution and site with Sandy and his fellow resistance fighters in Tobago.
The legacy of the first Exchange’s development is a testament to these concealed histories of oppression, but also of resistance. These hidden histories are vital to an understanding of the development and growth of the Exchange, by uncovering these histories, the dominant colonial narrative can be challenged, making space for a more inclusive, anti-racist historical memory that honours the struggle of the oppressed.
References
[1] Matthew Stallard, ‘How Slavery Made Manchester’s World’s First Industrial City’, The Guardian, 3 April 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/03/cotton-capital-how-slavery-made-manchester-the-worlds-first-industrial-city
[2] [Accessed via Manchester Central Library, Archives+], Board of Directors, Committee of the Exchange, minutes, 1804-1809, (M81 3/1/1)
[3] R Sedgewick, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1715 – 1754, 1st edition, (London: The Stationery Office, 1970), https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/reynolds-francis-1773
[4] Thomas McGrath, ‘Long Histories: Strangeways Hall, Manchester’, If Those Walls Could Talk, 2016 https://ifthosewallscouldtalk.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/long-lost-histories-strangeways-hall-manchester/.
[5]Ibid.
[6] Leyland Whittaker, ‘The Northwich Mill & Daniel Whittaker: The Cotton Twist Company of Holywell’, The Meister, (date unknown), https://www.themeister.co.uk/hindley/whittaker_daniel.htm and Thomas McGrath, ‘Northern Powerhouses: The Homes of the Industrial Elite, c1780 – 1875’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2021), p154, https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/629615/1/MCGRATH%20THESIS%20FINAL.pdf
[7] Scholes’s Manchester and Salford Directory or alphabetical list of the merchants and manufacturers, and principal inhabitants: with the numbers as affixed to their houses’, Printed by Sowler and Russell, Deansgate, (second edition), p79 https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/248974
[8] In line with the National Park Service ‘Language of Enslavement, I have used the term freedom seekers, rather than ‘runaway slave ‘, for more information on the language of enslavement please follow the link. https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/education/language-of-enslavement.htm.
[9] Slavery Law and Power, ‘Barbados Slave Code’, Slavery Law and Power in Early America and the British Empire, https://slaverylawpower.org/barbados-slave-code/
[10] (Accessed via https://fromthepage.com/harvardlibrary/colonial-north-america-harvard-law-school-library/barbados-laws-etc-an-act-of-assembly-of-barbadoes-to-regulate-sales-at-outcry-and-the-proceedings-of-persons-executing-the-office-of-provost-marshall-general-of-the-said-island-and-their-under-officers-1763-hls-ms-1046 )Barbados. Laws, etc. An Act of Assembly of Barbadoes to regulate sales at outcry and the proceedings of persons executing the office of Provost Marshall General of the said island and their under officers, 1763. HLS MS 1046, Harvard Law School Library.
Destinie Reynolds
Destinie is a penultimate year undergraduate student in History and Spanish at the University of Manchester. She focuses on race in modern Britain, considering how the Black community used space to navigate the post-Windrush hostile environment. She has worked on other projects including, the Windrush Scandal in its National and Commonwealth contexts with the Institute of Historical Research and our sister initiative, Global Threads, at the Manchester Science and Industry Museum.
“Working with Global Threads and Emerging Scholars has allowed me to investigate the human side to the Cottonopolis – highlighting the slave trade’s impact on enslaved communities in the Americas. Importantly, this project granted me the opportunity to reveal the diverse forms of resistance and self-determination during the plantation regime until Emancipation. I hope my research can be used to amplify the hidden voices of enslaved people to a broader audience.”