Marlow Ancestors: Victorian Trinidadians in Marlow

A report in the South Bucks Free Press of a children's cricket match in the summer of 1862 contains mention of a talented though very young "back stop" on the team of the prestigious Marlow Place Academy who was a "coloured" boy from the Caribbean island of Trinidad. His name was T.M Cadett. Also on the Marlow Place team were 3 other boys with the last name Cadett. Intrigued, I decided to see if I could find out more about these boys. It was far from easy but what an interesting group!

The especially talented little back stop was the youngest of 4 brothers (as they turned out to be). The middle initial M is not mentioned in other record of him (the newspaper did make several mistakes as to initials of the other cricket players) He is most usually referred to as Thomas Cadett Junior. He would have turned 11 in 1862. His brothers and fellow pupils were Thomas James aged 16, James Stuart aged 18 and William James (or William James Henry) aged 14. All were British subjects born in Port Of Spain, Trinidad.

At that time, British references to someone being "coloured" and from the Caribbean were usually to those thought be of mixed black and white heritage and this is the case with the Cadett boys. Their paternal grandparents were an English sugar plantation owner, James Cadett, who died before the boys were born, and his black Trinidadian (unmarried, at least at the time) partner Angelle. He had children with other women too, all of whom he acknowledged and provided for but not all of whom were allowed to have the family name Cadett. This and his will suggest that the children he had with Angelle were favoured above his others. Angelle had her own house in Port of Spain given to her by James along with other property. When he retired to a small house in London, she remained in Trinidad. There had been an estrangement between them and James asked for her to be paid no further maintenance after his death.

James was a significant slave owner. His first sugar plantation was the River Estate but in 1828 he moved to Carapichaima Hall and changed its name to the Waterloo Estate. Compensation for the loss of the slaves when slavery became outlawed was paid to his heirs through their representatives.

One of those heirs of James and Angelle was James, the father of our Marlow Place boys. James had his sons with a woman called Matilda. Her race and background is not known to me nor whether she was legally married to him or not. He was a doctor and remained in Trinidad. His brothers, our Marlow boys' uncles, moved to Scotland and London.

At an early age Dr James Cadett sent his sons to England to be educated. This was almost always done to the sons of the wealthy in Trinidad. Marlow Place Academy was a boarding school which had a high reputation for it's excellence and was located in Station Road Marlow in the former reputed home of a Prince Of Wales. You can see a photo of the building as it is today and read more about the school in https://marlowancestors.blogspot.com/2022/02/marlow-place-history.html. The history of the school is also expanded here

One feature of the school was the importance placed on cricket as a recreation. The school possessed its own meadow used for the sport. An optional extra subject at the school was French which might well have been taken up by the Cadetts, given the fact that the Cadett family is thought to have originally arrived in England as refugees from France many years previously plus the presence of French speakers in general on Trinidad itself.

Just three years after the Cadett boys were enjoying a sunny day's sport in the Marlow meadow, the brothers found themselves in difficulty upon the death of their father. James Stuart Cadett was already back in Trinidad by then, living on his father's Waterloo plantation and working as a civil, agricultural and mechanical engineer as well as millwright. In 1864 he applied for a patent for a steam ploughing machine which he had invented.

William James was still in England when his father died. Thomas James and Thomas Junior may well have been too. Certainly Thomas Junior might have been expected to still be at Marlow Place given that his brothers had remained in education there until their mid - late teens.

Doctor James died indebted to many individual people as well as owing money to a bank. All of these creditors were soon circling and demanding that their claims upon the estate be settled. His executors were a Thomas and a William Cadett, both of whom were living in Britain. These may be his brothers who bore those names and lived in Britain or perhaps his sons William James and Thomas James. The executors didn't at first appear to deal with the estate (but remember how hard it was to get mail from so far away at the time!) and so one of the creditors was granted permission to distribute the estate to the benefit of himself and the other creditors if the executors didn't soon arrive in Trinidad. It looks like the family money had virtually evaporated. In the end William James the son definitely voyaged to the island to help settle his father's affairs. This was either as one of the executors, instead of them or in addition to them. Court cases and disputes about the estate continued for some months and appear complex.

What happened to the inventive James Stuart Cadett can't be discovered by me. At least not yet. He had his own business premises in Port of Spain so hopefully his career as engineer progressed happily even if the hereditary family estate where he had lived was threatened by the creditors. I would love to see a picture of his steam ploughing machine, but search high and low as I have done, I cannot find one.

William James Cadett returned to England with the wish to become a civil engineer like his brother. He first got practical mechanical experience at the Watling Works in Stony Stratford. Following that stint he studied engineering at the Department of Applied Sciences at King's College London. Upon finishing his studies in 1871 he was elected an Associate of the College.

In January 1876 William James set himself up in business in Finsbury Chambers London, while continuing to be the assistant Engineer at the River Conservancy at Lee, Kent. The next month he was elected to the Institute of Civil Engineers. Along with his partner Edward Dudley he won several prizes for their submitted design for various proposed civil engineering projects. In the same year James married at Cookham Dean Helen Clark, daughter of George Clark of Bisham Park Farm near Marlow proving that he had maintained links to our immediate area. The future looked rosy for the couple with William James tipped for much success in his career particularly around river, water and sewage projects which were progressing at a pace in this era, but tragedy struck. Just over three months from his marriage to Helen, William contracted blood poisoning and died after 10 days suffering at Bisham Park Farm. He was only 29 years old.

Helen eventually remarried.

What of the last two brothers who studied at Marlow Place? That is the two Thomases. There is a suggestion that Thomas James Cadett emigrated to Australia and became a grocer (but went bankrupt). Thomas Junior the talented young cricketer is more mysterious. In the 1870s a man of this name was a poet causing some local Trinidadian excitement with his self published work "Timothy Cotton", in the style of Byron. It's sentiments were considered a bit too bohemian by some. Is this our Thomas? The author was said to have travelled the world extensively and used those travels for creative inspiration. Our Thomas was only in his early 20s when the substantial poem was published. Was he sufficiently old to have travelled extensively enough to be that poet? Probably, but without further biographical details for the poet I can't say for certain that they are one and the same person. It's tempting to think tales of the residence in Marlow of Byron's friend Percy Bysshe Shelley and rumours of Byron's visiting him here might just have inspired a young scholar, sitting at his desk in Marlow Place...

Written and researched by Charlotte Day.

Marlow Ancestors

Monday, September 30, 2024

Victorian Trinidadians in Marlow

No comments:

Post a Comment