Benjamin Buck Greene
Benjamin Buck Greene | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1808 |
| Died | 1902-04-03 |
| Occupation(s) | Financier, banker, plantation owner |
| Known for | Governor of the Bank of England (1873–75), plantation ownership, merchant and shipowner |
Benjamin Buck Greene (1808 – 3 April 1902) was a prominent British financier, banker, and plantation owner. He inherited considerable wealth derived from the Atlantic slave trade and the Caribbean sugar industry, establishing himself as a leading merchant and shipowner based in London. Greene held a directorship at the Bank of England for five decades starting in 1850, including appointments as deputy governor (1871–73) and governor (1873–75).
Career
Benjamin Buck Greene, son of Benjamin Greene—the founder of Greene King brewery and a slave proprietor—received his education at King Edward VI School in Bury St Edmunds. In 1829, he took charge of his father’s lucrative cotton and sugar plantations located in Saint Kitts, which operated through enslaved labor. The Greene family possessed numerous sugar estates throughout the Caribbean islands of St Kitts, Montserrat, and Antigua, managing a total of eighteen plantations.
Benjamin senior also founded Benjamin Greene & Son, a London-based company specializing in West India trade and ship ownership. Leveraging connections through his wife’s family, Greene entered into partnership with James and Henry Blyth in 1846; together, Blyth and Greene developed one of the largest colonial merchant and shipping enterprises in London. Their business imported sugar from Mauritius, the East and West Indies, India, and France while exporting British manufactured goods to Mauritius. During the 1870s, Greene introduced steam-powered milling technology at Spooner's Estate on Saint Kitts to modernize operations.
In 1856, Greene acquired Midgham House in Berkshire and later served as High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1865. His tenure at the Bank of England spanned from 1850 to 1900, including roles as deputy governor beginning in 1871 and governor during the financial crisis known as the Panic of 1873. Greene passed away at his residence in Berkshire on 3 April 1902.
Following the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1833, the government compensated slave owners with £20 million—a sum representing approximately 40% of the Treasury’s annual budget—financed through loans that were only fully repaid by taxpayers in 2015. In June 2020, amidst worldwide demonstrations sparked by George Floyd’s murder, the Bank of England issued a formal apology for the involvement of Greene and other former governors and directors in the slave trade.
Family
In 1837, Greene wed Isabella Elizabeth Blyth, daughter of Thomas Blyth, a prosperous ship merchant and slave owner. Isabella passed away in 1888. The couple had six children: three sons and three daughters. Their son Henry David Greene pursued a career as a barrister and served as a Conservative Member of Parliament. One of Benjamin’s brothers, Edward, represented Bury St Edmunds (1865–1885) and Stowmarket (1886–1891) as a Conservative MP.
The Greene family established a distinguished English lineage comparable to that of the Darwins or Huxleys: Sir Hugh Greene held the position of Director-General of the BBC, Raymond Greene was senior physician and intellectual leader during the 1933 Everest expedition, Graham Greene gained renown as a major novelist of the twentieth century while engaging in espionage activities for British intelligence from the 1920s through the 1980s, Elisabeth Greene contributed to operations within MI6, and Sir William Graham Greene co-founded Naval Intelligence during World War I and remained active in intelligence services throughout World War II.
Bibliography
- Jeremy Lewis: Shades of Greene. One generation of an English family. London: Jonathan Cape, 2010
External links
- Database created by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at University College London
- Susan Gardiner: Outrageous Fortune: the Greene family of Bury St Edmunds and Slavery in the Leeward Islands, published in Suffolk Review, Autumn 2018
- Susan Gardiner: The Heart of the Matter, featured in Those Who Will Not Be Drowned, April 30, 2018