Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract: The Story of a Tangled Inheritance

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Our closing speaker is Richard Atkinson, author of “Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract”. His talk which will follow his journey in researching his name sake ancestor, Richard Atkinson, as he uncovered wealthy merchants and sugar planters in Jamaica. There were few aspects of the slave trade in which his ancestors had not been involved. Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded - the age at which his father died - when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard.

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