‘The King of Bristol’ Unknown, as he was not a philanthropist...

The abolition of slavery in 1833 resulted in compensation payouts to owners. Now with just a mouse-click, you can find out more about the surprising range of Bristolians who were reimbursed. Eugene Byrne reports

- Eugene Byrne reports

BANKER and ship owner Thomas Daniel (1752-1854) was variously known as “the King of Bristol” or “the Father of Bristol’, because he was fabulously wealthy and because of his influence on the city’s affairs.

But if you were to quiz people on the streets nowadays, hardly anyone would know anything about him, partly because he didn’t leave any money to ensure his name lived on.

“Nobody bar people who are interested in history has heard of him because he was not a philanthropist,’ says Ruth Hecht.

“T've read his will. He does not give to anything in Bristol, and yet he was on the council for 56 years continuously.

“He had his finger in every single pie, but is completely unknown now because he didn’t give a penny”

Edward Colston, on the other hand, left large amounts to various charitable causes. That's how he got remembered.

Thomas Daniel is one of Ruth Hecht's indirect forebears. His sister married her great-great-great-great grandfather, which is one reason why she became interested in what she calls Bristol’s “slavery economy’, something which forms a new “layer” on the Know Your Place Bristol website.

She explains why she prefers the term “slavery economy’.

“The ‘slave trade’ - shorthand for the Transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans - is limited to those people who were directly involved in the transportation of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, and those who had ownership over them,’ she says.

The “slavery economy” on the other hand, not only refers to the traffic in enslaved people, but all of the activities around it - the provision of finance, and the transport and sale of slave-produced goods such as sugar, tobacco and cotton. There's also shipbuilding, the manufacture of goods for trade in Africa (e.g. copper and brassware) and British-made goods for those living on the plantations.