People Australia

Raikes Currie was a member of the British parliament and a partner in the bank Curries & Co.[1] He was born on 16 April 1801 to Isaac Currie (1760–1843), a banker, and Mary Ann Raikes (c.1769–1834), the daughter of William Matthew Raikes (–1824), an East India merchant.[2] Currie’s paternal grandfather, William, was a successful banker and distiller who generated significant wealth. The Raikes family also had links to banking: Mary Ann’s brother, Robert, had joined Curries & Co. two years earlier; her uncle, Thomas Raikes, was governor of the Bank of England from 1797 to 1799; and her cousin, George Raikes, joined Curries & Co. in 1806, before marrying her daughter, Marianne, in 1814.[3]

Currie had five siblings: Marianne (1790–1857), Isaac George (1792–1858), Emma (1796–1851), Louisa (1796–1884), and Georgina (1806–1885).[4] He grew up in Bush Hill in Enfield, Middlesex, and was educated at Eton.[5] In 1825 he married Laura Sophia Wodehouse (–1869)—the daughter of John, the second Baron Wodehouse of Kimberley, Norfolk, and his wife Sophia Berkeley—and the following year he became a partner in Curries & Co. along with his brother Isaac George.[6]Raikes and Laura Currie had six children together: George Wodehouse (1826–1887), Bertram Wodehouse (1827–1896), Maynard Wodehouse (1829–1887), Mary Sophia (1833–1920), Phillip Henry Wodehouse (1834–1906), and Edith Harriet (1842–1905).[7]

The Currie family had interests in slavery in the West Indies. In 1834 Isaac Currie was executor for his deceased brother-in-law, Matthew Job Raikes, who had married the daughter of a plantation owner. He claimed compensation for Roslin Estate, Brimmer Hall Estate, Trinity Estate, and Tryall Estate in Jamaica, amounting to a total of £15,381. His son Isaac George, acting as one of the trustees for John Graham Campbell, claimed £20,000 for seven estates in Jamaica. Raikes Currie himself acted as a trustee for another claimant, collecting £256 3s 7d in compensation for seven enslaved people at the Cape of Good Hope.[8] Curries & Co. was one of four banks that acted as trustees or executors for slave-owners and as agents for collecting compensation.[9]

Currie was elected to the British parliament in 1837. He was an admirer of Bentham’s philosophies, supported the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and worked to bring in the Bank Charter Act 1844.[10] He took part in debates relating to the colony of South Australia, which was founded on Wakefieldian principles—a particular interest of his.[11] Currie was one of the founding members of the board of directors for the South Australian Company, a commercial enterprise formed to encourage emigration to the new colony by meeting the financial requirements of the South Australia Act 1834. The British parliament made emigration dependant on land in the colony being sold to the value of £35,000 and a loan of £80,000 being raised.[12] Insufficient land was sold, and it appeared that the colony might never be founded until the formation of the South Australian Company. People bought shares in the company at £25 each. Currie bought 394 shares, with his cousin Henry Currie and brother Isaac George also purchasing some.[13] The South Australian Company formed the Bank of South Australia in 1837.[14] Currie’s name appeared in advertisements for the Bank of South Australia until 1840. After that date advertisements for the bank included the name Curries & Co.[15]

No records have been found of Currie actually visiting South Australia, but he continued to hold a keen interest in the colony. He was involved with the South Australia Schools Society committee, which was founded to establish and conduct schools in the new colony, and the Australasian Loan Company, formed for the purpose of lending money to those who could use land in Australia as security. He was also treasurer of the South Australian Church Society.[16] In 1839 Curries & Co. served on the provisional committee of the Australasian Loan Company.[17]

Between 1858 and 1860 Currie commissioned Henry Clutton to build a country residence, Minley Manor, in Hampshire. Modelled on a French chateau, the house was a testament to the family’s wealth: with over thirty bedrooms and situated on a 2,500-acre estate, it was decorated with paintings, ‘ornate and fabulous tapestries, precious vases, plates, and crockery from as far afield as India and China’.[18] Currie died on 16 October 1881 at Minley Manor and was buried in the vaults of St Andrews, a small church he had built in memory of his wife. He left a legacy of over £280,000.[19] Currie’s family’s banking interests in the slavery business supported his privileged lifestyle in Britain as well as his investment in the new settler colony of South Australia, which helped facilitate the sale of land to South Australian colonists.

[1] Raikes Currie, St Botolph parish register, 9 May 1801, P69/Bot4/A/004/Ms04518/001, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), via Ancestry; John Powell, ‘Currie, Raikes (1801–1881), banker and politician,’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/48015.

[2] Death, Isaac Currie, FreeBMD, June 1843, https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?scan=1&r=6791867:6181&d=bmd_1721815511; Burial register St Mary the Virgin Little Ilford, D/P 175/1/5, Essex Archives Online; ‘Births, ‘Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries,’ Morning Post (London), 14 July 1834, 4; ‘Births, Marriages and Deaths,’ Galgnani’s Messenger (Paris), 26 April 1824, 10; Powell, ‘Currie, Raikes.’

[3] Powell, ‘Currie, Raikes.’

[4] Marianne Raikes, 1851 England Census, HO107 1492 f. 176 34, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, England, via Ancestry; Marianne Raikes, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, PROB 11, 2259, TNA, via Ancestry; Isaac George Currie, 1851 England Census, HO107 1703 f. 245 p. 15, TNA, via Ancestry; Isaac George Currie, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry, London, England, via Ancestry; 1851 England Census, HO107 1487 f. 326 p. 82, TNA, via Ancestry, Louisa Fisher, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry, London, England, via Ancestry; Death, Emma Currie, 1851, FreeBMD, https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl; Georgina Currie, 1885, National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry, London, via Ancestry.

[5] ‘Isaac Currie,’ NatWest Group, https://www.natwestgroup.com/heritage/people/isaac-currie.html; ‘Mr. Raikes Currie and Eton School,’ 23 November 1839, Bucks Herald (Aylesbury), 2.

[6] Raikes Currie and Laura Sophia Wodehouse, St George Hanover Square Parish Register, 28 June 1825, DL/T/089/020, LMA, via Ancestry; Sir Bernard Burke, The Peerage and Baronetage (London: Harrison and Sons, 1915), 1148; ‘Isaac Currie,’ NatWest Group.

[7] Ian C. Mattison, Minley Manor (Bloomington: Authorhouse, 2018); ‘Raikes Currie,’ The Peerage, https://thepeerage.com/p19799.htm#i197982.

[8]  ‘Isaac Currie,’ Legacies of British Slavery, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/14445.

[9] Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 243.

[10] Bertram Wodehouse Currie, Recollections, Letters and Journals (Roehampton: Manresa Press, 1901), 82.

[11] ‘Raikes Currie,’ Natwest Group.

[12] C. J. Coventry, ‘Links in the Chain: British Slavery, Victoria and South Australia,’ Before/Now 1, no.1 (2019): 37.

[13] South Australian Company and London Office, Deed of Settlement 1836, State Library of South Australia, https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/BRG+42/11/5/62.

[14] ‘The History of a Colonial Bank,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide),11 April 1892, 6.

[15] ‘Advertising,’ South Australian Register (Adelaide), 6 November 1847, 1.

[16] ‘A Plan for the Establishment of Schools in the New Colony of South Australia,’ South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (Adelaide), 6 January 1838, 3; ‘Loan Company,’ South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, 3 November 1838, 6; ‘Advertising,’ South Australian Record (London), 15 January 1840, 11.

[17] ‘Loan Company,’ Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (Perth),16 February 1839, 28.

[18] 1871 England Census, RG10, 1231, f. 95, TNA, via Ancestry; Mattison, Minley Manor.

[19] Currie Raikes Esq., National Probate Calendar, Principal Probate Registry, London, via Ancestry; Kelly's Directory of Hampshire 1898 (London: Kelly’s Directories Ltd, 1898), 232.