Abraham Cumberbatch
Daily Mail article here
Telegraph
The Telegraph
David Denny
Scotland on Sunday
this Buzzfeed News report
Timothy Carlton
Cumberbatch’s seventh great-grandfather ran a sugar plantation with 250 slaves on the island nation.
Abraham reportedly bought Barbados’ Cleland plantation in 1728 — pictured in a 2015 — and the family reportedly made a motza off it over the next 100 years.
When slavery was abolished in the 1830s, the Cumberbatch family was paid thousands of pounds in compensation. In today’s money, that’s equivalent to about a million pounds.
Yep that’s right — slave owners really got paid for the inconvenience of LOSING ALL THEIR SLAVES. The mind boggles.
Barbados sought independence from British monarchical control in 2021 and according to a previous UK report, officials have ramped up the process of seeking reparations from descendants of slave-owning families and plantation owners.
reports that, general secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, said: “Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefitted from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family.”
“The money should be used to turn the local clinic into a hospital, support local schools, and improve infrastructure and housing,” Denny added.
While Benedict Cumberbatch hasn’t commented on the current reparation conversation, he has alluded to his family’s slave-owning in the past.
In a 2007 interview with (as quoted in ) he talked about his actor father ‘s reluctance to use the name Cumberbatch and his mother’s suggestion that Benedict ditch it, too.
In the same 2007 interview, Benedict Cumberbatch touched on potential reparations.
“Reparation cases are ongoing in the American courts. I’ve got friends involved in researching this scar on human history and I’ve spoken to them about it,” he said.
“The issue of how far you should be willing to atone is interesting. I mean, it’s not as if I’m making a profit from the suffering — it’s not like it’s Nazi money.” Though he did go on to admit his ancestors were “pretty dodgy”. The I just got from that sentence.
He also spoke about his decision to play former British PM in 2006’s , a film about the abolition of the slave trade.
“Maybe I was trying to right a wrong there,” he told the Scotland on Sunday interviewer with an “edgy smile”.
Benedict Cumberbatch also played slave owner in the 2013 film
As for the potential compensation, it might not happen for a while yet. , Barbados’ ambassador to the Caribbean community and deputy chairman of the island’s national commission on reparations, told the UK :
“This is at the earliest stages. We are just beginning. A lot of this history is only really now coming to light.”
“Cumberbatch — it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn’t it?” he laughs. “What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn’t keen on me keeping it. ‘They’ll be after you for money,’ she used to say.”ick William Pitt the Younger Amazing Grace William Ford 12 Years A Slave. David Comissiong Telegraph
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