In this second article in his series on Peter McLagan, MP for Linthgowshire 1865-1893, Dr Martin Spychal explores the life of McLagan’s father, Peter McLagan senior (1774-1860). A farmer’s son from Perthshire, McLagan senior acquired considerable wealth as an enslaver and plantation owner in Demerara (modern-day Guyana) during the early nineteenth century. He relocated to Edinburgh in the 1820s, following which he received extensive ‘compensation’ under the terms of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act and established himself as a landed proprietor in Linlithgowshire (modern West Lothian).
Peter McLagan senior was born in 1774 in Moulin, Perthshire. He was the son of a tenant farmer, John McLagan, and Girzel ‘Grace’ McLagan, née McInroy. McLagan senior had travelled to Demerara (modern-day Guyana) by around 1797, where his uncle, James McInroy, was an enslaver, merchant trader and plantation owner. McInroy was a founding partner of McInroy, Sandbach & Co., part of the ‘mercantile conglomerate’ that later became Sandbach Tinné & Co.
McLagan senior managed the enslaved labour forces on several plantations on the Essequibo coast during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, most of which were owned by (or financially connected to) McInroy, Sandbach & Co. Two of these plantations were the Coffee Grove and Caledonia estates. In 1820 467 enslaved persons were recorded on both estates, where a mixture of coffee, sugar and cotton were grown. The slave-produced coffee, sugar and cotton (and rum) was exported primarily to the UK, where it was distributed by the Liverpool and Glasgow partner branches of McInroy, Sandbach and Co.
McLagan senior managed Coffee Grove and Caledonia as a joint enterprise from at least 1804. By 1815 he had made sufficient income to become a co-owner of the estates and a partner (with a 5% stake) in McInroy, Sandbach & Co. He sold out of McInroy, Sandbach & Co. in 1821, when his 5% share was worth at least £12,500, but continued to own Coffee Grove & Caledonia until at least the late 1830s. In 1829 his 50% stake in these plantations (his co-owner was Samuel Sandbach) was valued at £31,200 (for more on calculating wealth in modern terms see below).
Outside of plantation management on the Essequibo coast, McLagan senior lived in the elite Kingstown district of Georgetown from at least 1814, probably at a property he owned on Water Street. A Presbyterian, in 1815 he was a founding committee member and benefactor of St Andrew’s Kirk, Georgetown. Two years later he purchased a second Georgetown property in the Cummingsburg district.
Although he did not marry until his return to the UK, McLagan senior was the father of two sons born in Demerara, John (1821-1850) and Peter junior (1823-1900). The latter served as MP for Linlithgowshire between 1865 and 1893, and a number of contemporary sources indicate he was of African or Caribbean heritage. No formal record identifying either boy’s mother has yet been discovered. However, between 1820 and 1823, McLagan senior purchased a Barbadian-born enslaved woman named Filly and her three children (Henrietta, Joe and Robert) from another domestic residence in Georgetown.
Filly and her children were enslaved at McLagan’s senior’s Water Street residence between 1820 and 1823, where they continued to live until at least August 1834. Filly, whose story I’ll explore in the next article in this series, may have been John and Peter’s mother, or possibly their wet nurse. Alternatively, the timing of her sale to McLagan senior, and the birth of his two sons, may have been a coincidence.
McLagan senior left Demerara with his two sons John and Peter in June 1825 on board the Boode. The boat, which was owned by McInroy, Sandbach & Co., was loaded with an extensive cargo of sugar, rum, cotton, coffee and ‘one pipe’ of madeira wine. McLagan senior and his children arrived in Liverpool in August 1825, following which they lived between Perth and Edinburgh. In 1827 McLagan senior married Elizabeth Hagart Steuart. The family subsequently moved to 77 Great King Street, Edinburgh. Elizabeth died in November 1833.
Over the following three decades McLagan senior played a limited role in Scottish public life. Politically he was a Conservative: he was probably the Peter McLagan who signed the Edinburgh anti-reform petition in April 1831, and in the later 1830s he offered some financial assistance to Conservative electioneering efforts. He supported the authority of the Court of Session over rights of patronage in the Scottish church in the lead up to the Disruption, and remained a member of the Kirk following the establishment of the Free Church.
By January 1836 McLagan senior had been awarded extensive ‘compensation’ under the terms of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act for formerly enslaved persons at his Water Street residence and Coffee Grove and Caledonia estates in British Guiana (formerly Demerara). On 14 December 1835 he received £189 0s. 3d. for Filly and her two surviving children (Joe and Robert), who continued to live at Water Street. On 18 January 1836 he was awarded a share (probably 50%) of £21,480 10s. 10d. for 407 formerly enslaved persons on the Coffee Grove and Caledonia plantations.
In 1842 McLagan senior purchased the Pumpherston and Calderbank estates in Linlithgowshire (modern West Lothian), which covered around 1,000 acres. Following this he referred to himself as a ‘landed proprietor’ in official documentation. That said, he continued to live primarily in Edinburgh, while entrusting the management of the estates to his son, Peter McLagan junior. McLagan senior died of a ‘disease of [the] heart’ in April 1860, aged 85, at his Great King Street residence.
An exact probate valuation for McLagan senior’s estates has not yet been discovered. However, in a subsequent interview, Peter McLagan junior claimed that his father had been ‘worth £100,000’ at his death. While this may have been a retrospective embellishment, it is in keeping with McLagan junior’s own place in Britain’s ‘Upper 10,000’ by the 1870s.
If McLagan senior had died with an estate worth around £100,000 in 1860 it would have comfortably made him one of the richest 10,000 people in the UK, and one of the 1,000 richest people in Scotland. Trying to make modern comparisons of estate values and personal wealth of historic figures is an imperfect science. However, the online historical financial tool MeasuringWorth does offer some comparative figures. It suggests that dying with an estate worth £100,000 in 1860 is equivalent to leaving assets with a ‘relative income’ value of around £128 million in 2025.
Check back for the next article in the series in early 2026. To read the first article in Martin’s series click here
This article reflects ongoing research into Peter McLagan (1865-1900). The author would like to thank Dr Alison Clark for sharing her research on McLagan senior and Sandbach Tinne & Co. and the participants of a workshop on Peter McLagan held at the National Archives in October 2025. If you would like to discuss this article and the sources used, please contact Martin at mspychal@histparl.ac.uk.
Suggested Reading
A. Clark, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Empire, 1790-1838: Scottish Traders in the Southeast Caribbean: Slavery, Cotton and the Rise of Sandbach Tinné & Co.’, PhD Univ. Edinburgh (2024)
M. Al Nasir, Searching for My Slave Roots: From Guyana’s Sugar Plantations to Cambridge (2025)
M. Al Nasir (ed.), ‘Sandbach Tinne Collection’, Cambridge Digital Library
D. Alston, Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (2021)
N. Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (2013)
C. Hall, N. Draper, K. McClelland, K. Donington & R. Lang, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (2014)
‘Peter McLagan’, Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/41631
E. A. Cameron, ‘McLagan, Peter (1822/3-1900)’, Oxford DNB (2023), www.oxforddnb.com
Scotlands People, ‘Our records: Peter McLagan (1823–1900, British Liberal Party politician and Scotland’s first black MP’ (2022)