Robert Thorpe | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Robert Thorpe | |
| Chief Justice of Sierra Leone | |
| In office 1808–1815 | |
| Succeeded by | Dr. Robert Hogan |
| Member of the Upper Canada Legislative Assembly | |
| In office 1806–1807 | |
| Preceded by | William Weekes |
| Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island | |
| In office 1801–1804 | |
| Preceded by | Peter Stewart |
| Succeeded by | Caesar Colclough |
Robert Thorpe (1773 – May 11,1836) was a judge and political figure in Upper Canada and was later chief justice of Sierra Leone.
Thorpe was born in Dublin,Ireland in 1773. [1] He was the second son of Robert T. Thorpe and Bonna Debrisay. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1788 and a degree in law in 1789 from Trinity College Dublin. He was admitted to the bar in 1790. At some point before 1815 he was given a Legum Doctor. [2]
In 1801,he was appointed as Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island,arriving in the colony in November 1802. [3] He encouraged the attorney general Peter Magowan to prosecute minor crimes that were annoying to the population. [2] Since he was not paid on time,he sailed to England in 1804 with a plan to unite Prince Edward Island,Cape Breton and Newfoundland. He was captured by a French privateer and taken to Spain. [2] Thorpe later escaped and was appointed a puisne judge of the Court of King's Bench in Upper Canada on 5 July 1805. [4] In 1806 William Weekes was killed in a duel and Thorpe was elected as his replacement to the 4th Parliament of Upper Canada. He advocated that the executive council should be responsible to the elected representatives. [1] He advocated for ideas that would be later called responsible government and home rule. Lieutenant Governor Francis Gore suspended Thorpe from the legislature in July 1807 for advocating against the powers of the Lieutenant Governor. [2] He left Upper Canada in 1807 when he believed he would be removed from his role as a judge due to his reform ideas. [1]
In 1808,Thorpe was appointed the first chief justice in Sierra Leone (chief justice and judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court). [5] He arrived in Sierra Leone in 1811. [2] He presided over the cases of Samuel Samo (7-10 April 1812),Joseph Peters (11 June 1812) and William Tufft (12 June 1812). [6] [7] Thorpe left Sierra Leone in 1813 after he was given a health leave by the governor of Sierra Leone. [8] He was ordered to pay £630 for a surrogate who presided as a judge for him. In 1815 Thorpe brought charges against Charles William Maxwell and supposedly tried to blackmail the colonial secretary Lord Bathurst. Thorpe was dismissed from his judgeship for not bringing the charges to Bathurst sooner. [2]
Thorpe was married and had seven children. [2]
In 1815 he published A Letter to William Wilberforce,Esq. M. P.,Vice-President of the African Institution which was critical of the Sierra Leone Company and the African Institution which succeeded it.
He died in London on May 11,1836. [2]
William Wilberforce was a British politician,philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull,Yorkshire,he began his political career in 1780,and became an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785,he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian,which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.
James Stephen was the principal English lawyer associated with the movement for the abolition of slavery. Stephen was born in Poole,Dorset;the family home later being removed to Stoke Newington. He married twice and was the father of Sir James Stephen,grandfather of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and Sir Leslie Stephen,and great-grandfather of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.
Brigadier-General Sir John Johnson,2nd Baronet was an American-born military officer,magistrate,landowner in the British Indian Department who fought as a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War. He was the son of Sir William Johnson,1st Baronet,who was the first British Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He inherited his father's baronetcy and estate in 1774.
Michael Linning Melville was a Scots Barrister,Judge and Lieutenant Governor of Sierra Leone. He was commissioned by King William IV of the United Kingdom to suppress the slave trade by force off the West Coast of Africa.
Vice Admiralty Courts were juryless courts located in British colonies that were granted jurisdiction over local legal matters related to maritime activities,such as disputes between merchants and seamen.
Black Loyalists were people of African descent who sided with the Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. In particular,the term refers to men who escaped enslavement by Patriot masters and served on the Loyalist side because of the Crown's guarantee of freedom.
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade,also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787. The objective of abolishing the slave trade was achieved in 1807. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies followed in 1833.
Thomas Perronet Thompson was a British Parliamentarian,a governor of Sierra Leone and a radical reformer. He became prominent in 1830s and 1840s as a leading activist in the Anti-Corn Law League. He specialized in the grass-roots mobilisation of opinion through pamphlets,newspaper articles,correspondence,speeches,and endless local planning meetings.
Thomas Peters,born Thomas Potters,was a veteran of the Black Pioneers,fighting for the British in the American Revolutionary War. A Black Loyalist,he was resettled in Nova Scotia,where he became a politician and one of the "Founding Fathers" of the nation of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Peters was among a group of influential Black Canadians who pressed the Crown to fulfill its commitment for land grants in Nova Scotia. Later they recruited African-American settlers in Nova Scotia for the colonisation of Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century.
Black Nova Scotians are Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen,later arriving in Nova Scotia,Canada,during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Census of Canada,28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia,most in Halifax. Since the 1950s,numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities. Before the immigration reforms of 1967,Black Nova Scotians formed 37% of the total Black Canadian population.
Black refugees were black people who escaped slavery in the United States during the War of 1812 and settled in Nova Scotia,New Brunswick,and Trinidad. The term is used in Canada for those who settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They were the most numerous of the African Americans who sought freedom during the War of 1812. The Black refugees were the second group of African Americans,after the Black Loyalists,to flee American enslavement in wartime and settle in Canada. They make up the most significant single immigration source for today's African Nova Scotian communities. During the antebellum period,however,an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 Black refugees reached freedom in Canada,often traveling alone or in small family groups.
The Nova Scotian Settlers,or Sierra Leone Settlers,were African Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown,Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone,on March 11,1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African Americans,mostly former slaves,who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War,leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters,a former soldier,and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century,the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory,tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.
The African Institution was founded in 1807 after British abolitionists succeeded in ending the slave trade based in the United Kingdom. The Institution was formed to succeed where the former Sierra Leone Company had failed—to create a viable,civilised refuge for freed slaves in Sierra Leone,in West Africa. It was led by James Stephen and William Wilberforce. From 1823,its work was mostly taken over by the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions,and it ceased to exist sometime between 1826 and 1828.
The Supreme Court of Sierra Leone is the highest court in Sierra Leone. It has final jurisdiction in all civil,criminal,and constitutional cases within Sierra Leone,and its decisions cannot be appealed. The Supreme Court has the exclusive constitutional power to overturn ruling of lower courts within the jurisdiction of Sierra Leone. The Supreme Court,along with the Court of Appeals,High Court of Justice,and magistrate courts form the Judicial branch of the Government of Sierra Leone.
Rivington,or Rivington's,also called Rivington &Co.,was a London-based publishing company founded by Charles Rivington (1688–1742),originally from Derbyshire,and continued by his sons and grandsons.
The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American,Afro-Caribbean,and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British,supported by abolitionists,under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today,the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.
Kenneth Macaulay (1792-1829) was a merchant and colonial official in British Sierra Leone during the early nineteenth century. Macaulay served as Acting-Governor of Sierra Leone and was appointed as a member of His Majesty's Colonial Council. He was a second cousin of Zachary Macaulay,the abolitionist and member of the Clapham Sect.
Samuel Samo was a Dutch slave trader who was the first person to be prosecuted under the British Slave Trade Felony Act 1811.
The Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 was a piece of British legislation that made engagement in the slave trade a felony. The earlier Slave Trade Act 1807 merely imposed fines that were insufficient to deter entrepreneurs from engaging in such a profitable business. The contexts in which it could be applied and how these sat within international criminal law gave rise to controversy. Henry Brougham was the principal proponent of the act.
Rose in June was a galliot built in Denmark in 1808 and taken in prize in 1810 by the British. The French navy captured and burnt her in 1813 off the coast of West Africa.
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