In this extended third article in his series on Peter McLagan, MP for Linlithgowshire 1865-1893, Dr Martin Spychal explores the life of ‘Philly’ or ‘Filly’. Philly was enslaved at the domestic residence of McLagan’s father in Demerara (modern-day Guyana) at the time of McLagan’s birth. This article draws on research in the ‘Slave registers and records of the Slave Compensation Commission, 1812-1851’, held by the National Archives. The article uses contextualised quotations from contemporary sources, which contain language that is today considered offensive.

Philly (c.1790-unknown) was a Barbadian-born mother and enslaved domestic labourer who lived in Barbados and Demerara (modern-day Guyana). She was enslaved with her children in the Georgetown home of Peter McLagan, later MP for Linlithgowshire, around the time of his birth in 1823. McLagan left Demerara in 1825 with his father and brother, following which Philly and her children remained enslaved at the residence until 1834, when they were ‘apprenticed’ to McLagan’s father under the terms of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.

As well as considering the possibility that Philly was McLagan’s mother, this article incorporates the life of an enslaved woman integral to McLagan’s early years into his biography. It also provides a case study in the practical workings of the ‘compensation’ system for enslavers established by the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act, which paid McLagan’s father £196 9d. 6s (equivalent to at least £25,000 in 2026) for the eventual freedom of Philly and her children.

From Barbados to Demerara

‘Philly’ or ‘Filly’, whose surname is unknown and whose first name was spelled inconsistently by colonial officials, was born in Barbados by 1790. Little is known of her life prior to the birth of her daughter Henrietta by 1813, and son Joe by 1816. Both children were born in Barbados, while Philly was probably enslaved in the household of the enslaver, millwright and carpenter, John J. Gibson.

In 1816 Philly and her two children were ‘imported’ (the official contemporary term) into Demerara from Barbados. Even though British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade had ended following the 1807 Slave Trade Act, the earlier 1806 Importation of Slaves Act (46 Geo 3, c. 52) allowed enslaved persons to be moved between British colonies under certain conditions. Between 1808 and 1825, 7,350 enslaved persons are known to have been ‘imported’ under licence into Demerara from other Caribbean colonies. However, a loophole in the 1806 Act that allowed free people to travel between colonies with two ‘domestic slaves attending on the person’ without a licence, meant the actual number of enslaved persons ‘imported’ into Demerara during this time was probably higher.

It appears that Philly and her two children arrived in Demerara under this loophole, travelling with John J. Gibson and his family when they emigrated from Barbados. Four other enslaved persons appear to have travelled with the Gibsons from Barbados to Demerara: one adult man called Sam (b. c.1787), two adult women called Christian (b. c.1787) and Princess (b. c.1792) and one boy called Ben (b. c.1812). Following their arrival in Demerara, all seven people were enslaved at the Gibson domestic residence in the Werk-en-Rust area of Georgetown, Guyana. Sam was probably an enslaved ‘carpenter’ in John J. Gibson’s ‘Carpenter’s, Mill-Wright’s and Wheel Wright’s business’, rather than an enslaved domestic worker like Philly, Princess and Christian.

We know much of this detail on account of the triennial ‘slavery registers’ that were produced in the colonies of the British Caribbean between 1817 and the abolition of slavery in August 1834. These documents provide fragmentary, but significant, detail about the lives of enslaved persons such as Philly, who might otherwise have remained unknown. When used critically alongside other contemporary sources and wider contextual knowledge, they are an important source for ‘recapturing enslaved voices in nineteenth century Berbice and Demerara’.

In 1817, Philly’s entry in this register (which was effectively a census) described her as ‘black’, aged 27, and a ‘healthy’ ‘[enslaved] house [labourer]’ born in ‘Barbadoes [sic]’. In the context of these registers, the categorisation of Philly as ‘black’ indicated that her enslaver believed she was of solely African heritage.

Philly and her children continued to be enslaved at the Gibson residence until at least 31 May 1820.  In that year’s register, ‘Filly’, as her name was then spelt, was described as ‘Healthy’, ‘Black’ and an ‘[enslaved] Labourer’, aged 30, with no ‘bodily marks’.

The 1820 register also revealed that Philly had given birth to a ‘healthy’, ‘yellow’ son called ‘Robbart’ in Demerara between June 1818 and May 1819. In the 1820 register, the categorisation of enslaved persons as ‘yellow’ indicated that their enslaver, or the ‘registrar of slaves’, believed the person was of either African or mixed heritage but had lighter skin than a person recorded as ‘black’. In 1820, Henrietta and Joe were both described as ‘healthy’, ‘black’ children. It is unclear who the father of Robbart was. However, given his categorisation as ‘yellow’, it may have been the Gibson’s ‘[enslaved] carpenter’, Sam, who in the same register was also categorised as ‘yellow’.

Enslaved at Water Street

Between June 1820 and May 1823 Philly and her three children were ‘purchased’ from the Gibson household by Peter McLagan senior (1774-1860). McLagan senior (whose life I’ve explored here) was an enslaver and plantation owner in early nineteenth-century Guyana, and partner in the ‘mercantile conglomerate’ that later became Sandbach Tinne & Co.

Enslaved people were bought and sold in Demerara in the 1820s in a variety of ways, either at public auction (known as a ‘vendue’), as recompense for unpaid debts or taxes, or via private transaction. It appears that Philly and her children were purchased by McLagan senior in a private transaction. They were subsequently enslaved by McLagan senior at a still unknown residential property, probably on Water Street, Georgetown. Robbart’s probable father, Sam, was not purchased by McLagan. He was recorded as ‘absent’ from the Gibson household in the 1823 register and by 1826 was ‘withdrawn’ from the registration system on account of being ‘an old Runaway supposed off the colony or dead’.

The 1817, 1820 and 1823 registers indicate that Philly and her three children were the first people to be enslaved at this Water Street property, or any other residential property owned by McLagan senior. By contrast, McLagan senior had enslaved hundreds of persons on his plantations on the Essequibo coast during that time – 486 persons were recorded as enslaved at his Coffee Grove & Caledonia plantation in 1823.

By May 1823, it is probable that the unmarried McLagan senior was living at this Water Street residence with his first son John, who was born in Demerara around 1815, and his second son Peter, who was later MP for Linlithgowshire. Peter was born in Demerara in 1823, although his exact date of birth remains uncertain. The mothers of both children are unknown. A number of contemporary sources indicate that Peter’s mother was of African-Caribbean heritage.

It is not clear why McLagan senior purchased Philly and her children (all of whom were under ten years old at the time). It may have been to provide domestic service or childcare at a time when McLagan senior is known to have been ‘desirous to retire from mercantile business’. Another consideration is that men of the planter class, such as McLagan senior, are known to have purchased enslaved women for their domestic residences, who they had already, or subsequently, sexually exploited. This may also have been the case with Philly and McLagan senior.

Whatever the reason, Philly’s circumstances over the following decade reveal a continued connection with McLagan senior. In June 1825, McLagan senior left Demerara with Peter and John, and did not return. When leaving, he sold some of the residential property he owned in Georgetown. However, he continued to enslave Philly at Water Street, where she lived as an ‘[enslaved] domestic [worker]’ until at least August 1834 (and probably August 1838).

Philly’s daughter, Henrietta, died between 1823 and 1826. Her cause of death is not known. Philly’s two sons, Joe and Robert (as the latter was named in the registers from 1823), continued to be enslaved with their mother until at least 1834, when they were aged 18 and 15 respectively. From 1832 (when Demerara had officially become part of British Guiana), Joe and Robert, who had previously been recorded as having no ‘employment’, were identified as ‘[enslaved] domestic [workers]’.

The registration entries for Philly and her children in 1826, 1829 and 1832 (as well as their respective subsequent slavery compensation documents) were attested by McLagan senior’s attorney, the enslaver and merchant, George Rainy, who was also a partner in Sandbach Tinne & Co. This is significant, as it suggests the possibility that Philly and her two surviving sons were the only people residing in the Water Street property from 1825 until at least August 1834.

‘Compensation’, ‘Apprenticeship’ and freedom

At present, the last known surviving document to identify Philly, Joe and Robert by name is the 1832 slave register for British Guiana. However, all three are anonymously accounted for in the records of the slavery compensation commission, which was established to distribute the £20 million in ‘compensation’ paid to slave-owners following the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.

In October 1834, Philly, Joe and Robert were classified for the commission as three ‘Class 5’ ‘non-praedial’ adults (or ‘Head Domestic Servants’) ‘domiciled’ at Water Street in the parish of St. George, Georgetown. They were the subjects of compensation Claim 1303 for British Guiana, which listed McLagan senior as their ‘owner in fee’ (or an ‘unqualified beneficial owner’). The claim was attested by George Rainy in British Guiana on 29 December 1834. No other persons were recorded as living at the property.

Philly was initially ‘appraised’ (valued) for the commission at £160, while Joe and Robert were both ‘appraised’ at £180. This led to an initial claim by McLagan senior for £520. All initial claims for British Guiana were subsequently reduced, however, after each colony was allocated a fixed share of the total £20 million in ‘compensation’ based on their respective enslaved populations. As a result, on 14 December 1835 the commission awarded McLagan senior £189 0s. 3d for the eventual freedom of Philly, Joe and Robert.

Claim 1303 was available to collect from the National Debt Office at the Bank of England from 19 December 1835. It was collected on 21 December 1835 for McLagan senior by Henry Robertson Sandbach. Since August 1834, the initial award of £189 0s. 3d. had accrued £7 9s. 3d. in interest. This meant McLagan senior received a final payment for Philly, Joe and Robert of £196 9d. 6s. (equivalent to at least £25,000 in 2026). This was in addition to a joint share of £22,398 11s. 11d. collected on McLagan senior’s behalf a month later for 407 formerly enslaved persons on the Coffee Grove and Caledonia Plantations that he co-owned with Samuel Sandbach (the father of Henry Robertson Sandbach). In total McLagan senior received £11,396 3s. 12d., in ‘compensation’ following the abolition of slavery, which equates to at least £1.4 million in 2026.

By contrast, Philly, Joe and Robert’s classification as ‘head domestic servants’ by the commission meant they were required to serve a four year ‘apprenticeship’ for McLagan senior following the abolition of slavery in British Guiana on 1 August 1834. This regime of forced labour required Philly, Joe and Robert to work 75% of their time for McLagan senior for no wages. No record has been discovered of their apprenticeship being annulled, or transferred to another owner, prior to 31 July 1838. Philly, Joe and Robert’s status as apprentices to McLagan senior at Water Street probably meant that they remained at this address until they were granted freedom on 1 August 1838. It is unclear what happened to them, or McLagan senior’s connection to the property, following this.

If Philly survived until 1840 (when she would have been 50), she may have met McLagan senior’s eldest son, John McLagan, in person again. He had returned to British Guiana by 1840, where he worked as a doctor on various plantations until his death in 1850. John had a child, Emma Eugenia, in Georgetown around 1842 with Sylvia Lockett (1804-1860). Lockett was a former enslaver thought to have been of African heritage, who had previously had four children with George Rainy. John and Sylvia married in British Guiana, it appears, shortly before his death.

Peter McLagan’s mother?

What is unknown (and may remain unknown) is whether Philly was the mother of Peter McLagan (MP for Linlithgowshire between 1865 and 1893). As I’ve discussed elsewhere, McLagan was born in Demerara in 1823. His mother, whose identity is unknown, is thought to have been of African-Caribbean heritage. Philly’s enslavement in McLagan senior’s household coincides with McLagan’s birth. But was it possible that she was his mother?

It is well documented that plantation owners in Guyana (and other British Caribbean colonies) had children with enslaved women, who were subsequently educated and raised in Britain. As ‘slave’ status was inherited from a mother, these children were born enslaved. In the vast majority of known cases, these children were manumitted (freed) by their fathers prior to being removed from their mothers and sent to Britain.

There are no known records for Peter McLagan in the slave register for 1823. There is also no known manumission record for Peter McLagan prior to his departure from Demerara in 1825. These factors, however, do not preclude that Philly was his mother.

While rare, there is at least one documented case in neighbouring Berbice where the children of an enslaved woman and an enslaver were not registered with the colonial authorities before being removed to Scotland without being manumitted. While it is sensible to remain sceptical, a similar scenario could have occurred with Philly, McLagan senior and Peter McLagan. If this had been the case, once removed to Britain, Peter McLagan could not legally have been enslaved there on account of the 1772 Somerset vs. Stewart and 1778 Knight vs. Wedderburn cases.

Such a scenario may explain McLagan senior’s continued connection with Philly after he left Demerara in 1825. It may also explain why Peter McLagan never revealed the identity of his mother to the countless parliamentary guide writers, journalists and genealogists who enquired about his heritage during a three-decade public career. However, such circumspection would probably also have been the case if his mother had been a free woman of African-Caribbean heritage from Guyana. Furthermore, and irrespective of his mother’s ancestry, Peter McLagan’s status as an ‘illegitimate’ child in mid to late-Victorian elite society goes a long way to explaining his public secrecy about his mother.

Future research in Guyanese, Barbadian and British archives will hopefully uncover further information about Philly and her children. Furthermore, the digitisation of Guyanese newspapers for the nineteenth century (particularly for the period 1816-1835 which remain only searchable on microfilm), and the efforts of researchers to document data in the nineteenth-century Guyanese press, will make finding traces of Philly, Robert and Joe easier in the future.

Check back for the next article in the series later this year. This article reflects ongoing research into Peter McLagan (1865-1900). The author would like to thank David Alston 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.

To read Martin’s earlier articles on Peter McLagan:

Part 1: Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP

Part 2: Peter McLagan senior (1774-1860): enslaver, plantation owner and landed proprietor

Part 3: ‘Philly’ or ‘Filly’ (c.1790-unknown): mother and enslaved domestic worker of Barbados and Guyana

Suggested Reading

D. Alston, ‘A Forgotten Diaspora: The Children of Enslaved and ‘Free Coloured’ Women and Highland Scots in Guyana Before Emancipation’, Northern Scotland, 6, 1, (2015), 49-69

D. Alston, Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (2021)

B. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807-1834 (1986)

T. Burnard & J. Coffey, ‘Slave Registers and British Guiana: Life and Resistance on Slave Plantations’, Histories of People and Place, 18 (2023), 43-65

D. Paton, ‘Mary Williamson’s letter, or, seeing women and sisters in the archives of Atlantic slavery’, TRHS, 29 (2019), 153-179

R. M. Browne, L. Lindsay & J. Sweet, ‘Rebecca’s Ordeal, from Africa to the Caribbean: Sexual Exploitation, Freedom Struggles, and Black Atlantic Biography’, Slavery and Abolition, 43, 1 (2022), 49

D. Livesay, Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733–1833 (2018)

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)

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)

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)