Steve Cushion on the Pennant family, who used the profits made by enslaved workers in Jamaica to expand the Penrhyn slate quarry
Your article (Welsh slate landscape becomes UK’s newest world heritage site, 28 July) did not mention the origins of the finance that enabled the expansion of the slate quarries at the end of the 18th century. In 1781, Richard Pennant inherited the family’s estates in Jamaica and in north Wales. He owned four sugar plantations in Jamaica, worked by more than a thousand enslaved workers. The money Pennant generated from sugar and slavery in Jamaica was invested in building road, railway and port infrastructure, as well as expanding the slate industry in Wales, in particular his Penrhyn slate quarry.
Pennant became MP for Petersfield in 1761 and, in 1767, one of the two MPs for Liverpool, Britain’s major slave trading port. He was chairman of the West India Committee, an organisation of merchants and plantation owners that campaigned for the continuation of slavery. He frequently spoke in the Commons against abolition of the slave trade.