Correspondence, Original - Secretary of State: Letters from 'offices' (Government...

CO 318/147

1840

Correspondence, Original - Secretary of State: Letters from 'offices' (Government departments and other organisations) on matters relating to the West Indies. Correspondents and subjects are as follows:

• House of Commons (immigration circular called for, request for correspondence concerning liberated Africans);
• Admiralty (orders given for the conveyance of sugar soils, response to Lieutenant Munro's proposal concerning the packet route, guard for the Romney, employment of transports for double service of carrying convicts and invalid soldiers, the Romney not allowed by the regulations to have a chaplain, in reply to Lieutenant Fitzgerald's plan for putting down the slave trade at Cuba, expense of having invalid soldiers brought home separately and not coming with convicts in transports);
• Agents (import duty and packet route, letter to Lord Palmerston concerning slave trade);
• Commander in Chief (interchange of 'black' troops, payment of passage of invalid soldiers and opinion that soldiers and convicts should be sent home separately, report on state of barracks, force to be assigned to each island, further on barracks);
• Board of Trade (duties on British goods imported into West Indies);
• East India Board (Mr Stikeman's application respecting sugar soils);
• Foreign Office (extract of despatch from the minister at Copenhagen concerning a plan for amelioration of slave conditions in the Danish West Indies, sends slave trade papers, exportation of camels to the West Indies, cases of individuals detained in slavery at Cuba, concurs in opinion relating to abduction by a British subject of six slaves from the island of St Martin);
• Board of Ordnance (alterations to barracks, barracks required at Windward and Leeward Islands, instructions to ordnance officers to inform the governors of any communications sent home affecting them);
• Treasury (arrangements for the termination of functions of the commissioners of compensation, payment of Dr Madden's salary, expenses incurred for captured Africans from the Spanish schooner Caridad Cubana, funds for Slave Registry Office, abolition of Slave Registry Office, approves instructions relating to expenses connected with reception of captured Africans, copy of contract entered into with Steam Packet Company, colonies paying part of the expenses of captured Africans, Steam Navigation Company's application for certain facilities, termination of Mr Stewart's contract for conveying the mails, repayment by the colonies of expenses of liberated Africans, further on termination of Mr Stewart's contract and measures adopted in consequence, conveyance of mails between Demerara, not considered necessary to grant to Mr Turnhill any further allowance than the £100 already issued for outfit to Havana, letter from Treasury to commissioners of Customs relating to expenses of liberated Africans, circular instructions on security from persons in charge of offices of trust, whether D Clarke is entitled to receive half salary for acting as superintendent of liberated Africans, regulations for customs officers in respect to expenses for liberated Africans, circular on advances from military chest, circular on regulations for incorporation of banking companies, circular on regulations for casual expenses for ordnance services);
• War Office (supply of cocoa to the troops, recommends that the surgeon to the Romney should have the care of captured Africans, report from General Maister on the insufficiency of barrack accommodation, circular concerning exemption of military from payment of tolls);
• Compensation Commissioners (notice to be inserted in the London Gazette, forwarding certificates and lists of claims [covering letters only in volume]);
• West Indian Immigration Society [Mr Hendricks and others] (report of Land Board on Mr Hendricks' plan for promoting European emigration, emigration of labourers to Jamaica, emigration from Sierra Leone to the West Indies);
• Colonial Registry Office (discontinuance of office, requests funds for office to make good deficiency);
• Colonial Society (requests an interview and sends memorandum on immigration from India to the West Indies [with earlier copy of memorandum with 36 signatures or names]);
• General Post Office (regrets he could not send instructions to postmasters as directed, will adopt course recommended in corresponding with colonial authorities);
• Custom House, Falmouth (sends receipt for eight boxes addressed to the Colonial Office);
• Chamber of Commerce, Greenock (memorial seeking a supply of free labourers for the West Indian colonies);
• Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (requests letter of introduction for James McQueen appointed to be their commissioner in the West Indies).

Public Record(s)

Open Document, Open Description

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Canals and river transport

International

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