Day 19. Henry learns accountancy

Unlike his brother, Henry Beckles Gall became a merchant like his father had done before him. But I don’t think he could have done this initially. Perhaps he had an apprenticeship with a merchant, possibly with Mr Lewis who had been his father’s partner. More likely he was pointed into the direction of business management and the importance of proper estate records. The Lascelles, one of the most important planters in Barbados at the time, had appointed managers and attorneys for their estates and had instructed them to complete plantation journals and ledgers according to model examples. These replaced the previous irregular and inconsistently maintained systems of accounting that might not be drawn up from one year to another. Experienced accountants were regarded as key personnel. Their salaries were enumerated separately in the surviving accounts of the Lascelles’ properties.

______________________________________________________________________________________ 

Henry Beckles junior was better prepared than his brother to start his new life. Although his father had increasingly been busy with his duties as a doctor, there was always the background of the running of the business: the ordering of medicines from the Apothecaries Society of London; the arrangement of shipments; the payment for the supplies and transport; and the onerous task of the collection of unpaid debts from his customers. Henry had acquired some knowledge of business from watching his father. As he learnt the skills of accountancy he was diligent in the keeping of records and he took great pride in his neat handwriting taught by his mother and the accuracy of the neat columns of figures he entered into daily journal and then monthly transferred to the leather bound ledgers. Henry would have stayed in his master’s home during the week in a small back room and perhaps he ate with his master and his master’s wife. On Saturday afternoons, after shutting down the office in Bridgetown he would make his way to his brother at Aunt Elizabeth’s estate until early on the Monday morning when he returned to town.

❖❖❖❖

In 1819 William and Henry’s need to earn a living was brought into sharp focus with the shocking news of their father’s death at sea. Their mother Sarah had not been left much to live on. There was no pension from her husband’s service in the Imperial Service and the uncollected debts of more than a decade were no nearer to collection. She was able to live with her sister-in-law, Mary Judith Benjamin until tragedy struck the family again on 23^rd June 1824 with the death at sea of Park Benjamin and their eldest son William Christopher Benjamin when he was not yet 18. Mary Judith and her remaining children were left as penniless as Sarah. They arranged to travel to Connecticut where they spent the remaining days of their lives living with Park’s brother. Sarah remained in Demerara only for a short while before moving back to her birthplace of Barbados. Sarah was now 45 and her prospects of remarriage were diminishing. But her daughter was just 18, pretty and good mannered. A marriage was soon arranged and Sarah Mary Gall married William Carberry on the day before Christmas 1825.

And so it was in the New Year 1826 that Sarah settled her affairs in Demerara and made for Barbados to live with her son at Spencer’s. It was not to her liking. The house was sparsely furnished; fit only for a bachelor. Nor was the arrangement to William’s liking - he had accepted the intrusion of his mother in his household with ill grace despite the otherwise welcome break in his solitude in between his brother’s visits. 

It was clear to Sarah that her sons would have to marry well and with a good dowry so that her sons could support her. They had not socialised with planters or merchants with marriageable daughters nor had they bothered themselves to attend dances or other social events on the island. Indeed, their attendance at church was limited to Christmas and Easter and their residence on the island was hardly noticeable to the local population.

❖❖❖❖

Sarah was not satisfied with her first grand daughter who had been christened Sarah Carberry after her but carried neither the Gall nor Beckles name. She was determined that at least one of her sons should marry and give her some grandchildren who would carry on the Gall name. There was also the matter of a dowry.  Although public and private balls were a frequent occurrence during the season, which was considered to commence with the setting in of the cooler breezes between December and Lent, the boys had shown little inclination to attend. In any case, Sarah had her eye on the daughter of a well placed Dutch family from Demerara for the young Henry Beckles. She raised the subject when corresponding with the girl’s father. Sarah Halman Margaret Hitzler had been born in Sint Maarten in 1807 and by 1827 her father had begun to despair of finding a suitable match for her in Demerara after she had refused the hand of a good friend on the grounds that at 55 he was too old for her. Her father could not understand why she had turned down such a beneficial match and had been sorely embarrassed to explain the reason to his friend. She was headstrong and the matter was dropped. When he received the letter from Sarah Gall it did not take him long to arrange a trip to Barbados on some pretext so that they could arrange for the two young people to meet.  She was an austere looking young woman but used to the socialising of the Dutch elite in Demerara and would be at home in the middle echelons of Barbadian society as she had learnt to speak English from an early age. She also came with a dowry. She never returned to Demerara and was married on 2^nd March 1827. 

Henry Beckles’s station in life now changed and he had to set up his own home. He took up residence in Dalkeith Cottage adjacent to The Garrison rented out by the Dallas family. This was his residence for the rest of his days.  He was also able to afford to set himself up as a merchant in Bridgetown on his own account and he needed to live within daily travel of his premises in Bridgetown. Sarah came to live with her son and daughter in law.
A man of substance