West Indian Incumbered Estates Acts


The West Indian Incumbered Estates Acts were Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of 1854, 1858, 1862, 1864, 1872, and 1886 that allowed creditors and other interested parties to apply for the sale of estates in the British colonies in the West Indies despite legal encumbrances that would normally prevent such a sale. The legislation was modelled on the acts that created the Irish Encumbered Estates' Court after the Great Famine of the 1840s that allowed indebted and moribund estates to be sold.

Background

The acts were modelled on the legislation that created the Encumbered Estates' Court that allowed indebted Irish estates to be sold following the great famine of the 1840s. The Irish act came into force in 1849 and by July 1853, 3.5 million acres of land had been sold, creditors repaid according to the rulings of an independent tribunal, and estates purchased with a Parliamentary title guaranteed to be free of encumbrances.

The West Indies

The difficult financial situation in the West Indian colonies arose following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 that disrupted the labour supply to West Indian plantations. The financial situation in Ireland and the West Indies was similar in that landowners in both places had taken on excessive debt when times were good that now matched or exceeded the value of the underlying security. In addition, as estates become less profitable, there was a lack of capital investment in them causing them to become moribund. In both places complicated charges, mortgages, estates and trusts often prevented the calling-in of debts or the sale of estates to owners prepared to make the capital investment necessary to make them more productive.
Often the owners of West Indian estates were resident in Great Britain meaning that increasing numbers of estates were managed by attorneys in the colonies, to maximise short-term income. The Lieutenant-Governor of Saint Vincent complained in 1854, for instance, that of the 87 sugar estates on the island 64 were run by attorneys due to their owners being absent and that one attorney managed 15 estates.

The Acts

The Acts provided for a chief commissioner and up to two assistant commissioners to be appointed in England together with commissioners in the participating colonies. The first commissioners took office in February 1857.
Colonies could apply, with the permission of their local legislatures, to participate in the scheme, the first to do so being Saint Vincent in 1856 which also submitted the first petition under the Acts in August 1857. The next colony admitted to the scheme was Tobago in 1858. Deficiencies in the original Act soon became apparent and an amended Act was passed in 1858.
Colonies were admitted as follows:
The first plantation sold under the Acts was Arnos Vale Estate in Saint Vincent, formerly in the ownership of William Samuel Greatheed who left it to his widow and children. It was stated to have been entirely unproductive from 1854. The case was heard in March 1858 and the estate sold by auction in London in November that year, the purchaser being the reverend F. R. Braithwaite of Saint Vincent for £10,050, a sum that Reginald Cust, commissioner and historian of the legislation, noted was much higher than expected.

Legacy and records

Reginald Cust's detailed history of the legislation was published in 1859 with a second edition in 1865 and a supplement in 1874. The 1883 Report on the Working of the West Indian Incumbered Estates Court Acts was printed for Parliament in 1884 and is held by the British National Archives. Many of the auction sale particulars are available as scans in the collection of the Library of Congress.

Estates sold under the Acts

1850s

, 1820-21.