The latest Legacies of Slavery entries for People Australia shed light on the complex lives of historical figures who played pivotal roles in Australia’s colonial era. One recent addition by Caroline Ingram is Marshall Waller Clifton (1787-1861), a British naval administrator and Chief Commissioner for the Western Australian Company. Clifton was the grandson of James Clifton (?-1775), a resident slave owner who had a sugar plantation at Palmetto Point on the island of St Christopher (St Kitts). Clifton’s father, Francis Bingam, inherited one-eighth of his father’s estate, including two enslaved people, who he later liberated.

In 1840, following his forced retirement from the Navy’s Victualling Board, Clifton became involved with the Western Australian Company. The Company promoted emigration to Western Australia following the principles of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. In December 1840, Clifton and his family relocated to the newly purchased land 153 kilometres south of Perth which was to become Australind.

As a member of the Western Australian Legislative Council starting in 1851, he influenced colonial policies, notably advocating to remove funding for the colonial deficit and opposing certain criminal justice bills.

Clifton’s wealth and social standing, derived from his family’s investment in slave-worked sugar on St Kitts, were instrumental in furthering the land commodification central to settler colonialism by obtaining the position of Chief Commissioner of the Western Australian Company, in purchasing land in Western Australia, and in enabling others to do likewise.

Other Legacies of Slavery additions to People Australia include Sir Archibald Paull Burt (1810-1879), son of large scale slave owner George Henry Burt, and William Hickman (c.1800-1850), a formerly enslaved ‘man of colour’ brought to the Swan River Colony as an indentured servant.