#guyana

Women of the 1. Fulani (Mali) and the 2. Biafade (Guinea-Bissau), 3. Queen of Rwanda Rosalie Gicanda (1928 - 20 April 1994), 4. a woman of the Mangbetu (Democratic Republic of Congo), as well as women of the 5. Zulu (South Africa) and the 6. Oromoo (Ethiopia)

On this day in 1834, slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Britain played a key role in the dehumanisation, oppression and trading of West African slaves. The British Empire was built on this slavery. The British Government paid slaveowners and their descendants reparations up until 2015, whilst descendants of slaves, including the Windrush Generation, were given nothing. Slaveowner statues and streets named after them still exist in the UK to this day.

Emancipation Day is celebrated by various West Indian countries that were colonised and brutalised by the British Empire: Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Belize, the Bahamas, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Guyana, Turks and Caicos and the Cayman Islands.

It is also celebrated by Black people in other parts of the diaspora such as Canada, the USA and South Africa.

Born into slavery, Dorothy Thomas (1756–1846) bought her own freedom, liberated her family, and built a vast business empire.

Dorothy steps forward

First known as Dorothy Kirwan, she was born in the Leeward Islands in 1756. Her mother had been the property of the Kirwan family, an influential local dynasty. Dorothy’s father was white and likely one of the Kirwan men.

By 1780, Dorothy had three children—Elizabeth, Catherina, and Edward—each with a different father. In 1784, she was purchased and brought to Dominica by William Foden, a planter and estate manager. Surprisingly, although the transaction had been made in Foden’s name, it was Dorothy who had supplied the money for her own purchase. After Foden’s death, Dorothy oversaw the execution of his will, insisting on receiving a formal deed of manumission.

Not only did she secure her own freedom, but she also obtained that of several family members, including her children William, Charlotte, and Nan, her son Edward, and a woman likely to have been her grandmother.

Nan’s father, Joseph Thomas, would become a lasting presence in Dorothy’s life. The two lived together as husband and wife, and although Dorothy later insisted on being called Mrs. Thomas, their union was probably never formalized.

Business beginnings

In 1787, Dorothy and Joseph moved to Grenada. The bustling port of St. George offered many business opportunities. Because she was not legally recognized as Joseph’s wife under English law, Dorothy had full control over her money and her enterprises.

By 1793, she was doing better financially than Joseph. Undeterred by her successive pregnancies, she established a thriving business. Judging from her later ventures, she was probably engaged in huckstering—employing enslaved women to sell goods door to door and on plantations. She likely owned at least one shop and possibly a hotel in St. George as well.

Dorothy turned her attention once again to her family, determined to free them. Over the next sixteen years, she arranged the manumission of her two eldest daughters, as well as several relatives, including her mother and sister.

The queen of Demerara

After Joseph’s death in 1799, Dorothy moved to Barbados. Records from this period of her life are scarce, but after the British takeover of Demerara, she relocated there and began building what would become her business empire.

In Demerara, Dorothy ran hotels or boarding houses and employed hucksters. By 1808, she had moved to an affluent district where she owned several lots. A shrewd networker, she cultivated strong mercantile connections, and by 1817 she had opened a fine dining restaurant.

Because her ventures were not exposed to losses from shipping convoys or French privateers, her fortune continued to grow. Dorothy became a local celebrity. Nicknamed “the Queen of Demerara,” she was considered the wealthiest person in the colony. She secured advantageous marriages for her daughters and provided for their families.

Though illiterate throughout her life, Dorothy understood the value of education. She paid for her grandchildren to attend an elite private school in Britain—an investment that ensured her family’s continued success.

Her influence in the colony was undeniable. In 1820, she obtained justice for the death of her slave Sally, ensuring punishment for the four men responsible. Dorothy herself owned many slaves until the end of her life. She was not known for leniency—there is no record of her manumitting any of her slaves, and she always ensured the recovery of any who tried to escape.

A long reign

Dorothy remained remarkably active, traveling frequently between Demerara, Britain, and Grenada to manage her properties. She boasted of having met King George IV. Though the story is difficult to confirm, it is possible she met Prince William Henry, the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV.

She also successfully petitioned for the abolition of a discriminatory tax imposed on free women of color like herself.

Throughout her later years, Dorothy continued to assert her status and wealth. She strode through the streets in extravagant dress, accompanied by slaves carrying a box of gold coins, dispensing both advice and patronage.

She lived to an advanced age, surviving a yellow fever epidemic that claimed several of her children, and remained mentally sharp to the end. Before her death in 1846, she carefully dictated her will, ensuring the distribution of her vast fortune and estates.

Her life inspired the novel Island Queen by Vanessa Riley.

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Further reading:

Barker Matthew Henry,  The Victory: Or, The Ward Room Mess

Bell Carole V., "A New Novel Gives Wings — and a Megaphone — to a Complex Woman"