Jane Austen’s aunt the Barbados Heiress

Jane (Jenny) Leigh Perrot, nee Cholmeley

Whenever Jane Austen’s links to enslavement are mentioned, it causes a furore, or if you will, a storm in a teacup sweetened by Caribbean sugar. But one story, with a lot more depth and drama has hitherto been largely overlooked: that of her aunt, Barbados heiress Jane Leigh Perrot, the wife of Mrs. Austen’s brother James Leigh Perrot. 

When Jane (who I refer to by her nickname Jenny to distinguish her from her famous niece) makes a cameo appearance amongst the ever-increasing plethora of Austen scholarship, it is as Jane’s wealthy yet stingy aunt, who was put on trial for alleging stealing lace from a shop in Bath: facing possibly transportation to Australia, or even the death penalty. 

Yet even when Jane Austen’s other and much more indirect links to colonialism and enslavement are placed under a magnifying glass, few delve into Jenny’s origins in Barbados. I’ve now laid these bare, featuring Jenny as one of nine women who inherited wealth founded on the exploitation of enslaved men, women and children, in my new book, Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery, out this week. ​

A ruined sugar mill in the vicinity of Brace's plantation, St. George.

Taking her incomplete biography in the UCL Legacies of Slavery database as my starting point, I pieced together her Barbados backstory from family papers held in Hampshire and Barbados, uncovering the details of how Jenny’s own inheritance from her parents: Robert Cholmeley, a lawyer who had made his fortune in Barbados’s capital Bridgetown by dealing with the endless litigation required by the island’s enslavers, and her mother, Ann, who had a large financial stake in a plantation in St. George’s parish, named Brace’s (which I made a road trip to visit), was threatened by the avarice of her dastardly stepfather Thomas Workman…

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Jenny's niece, Jane Austen

Jenny’s life took many more twists and turns; she lived to over ninety! Like many of us, Pride and Prejudice was her favourite Austen novel. On re-reading Emma, years after Jane's untimely death, she declared:

"I still cannot like it so well as poor Jane’s other novels. Excepting Mr Knightly & Jane Fairfax, I do not think anyone of the characters good. Frank Churchill is quite insufferable. I believe I should not have married him, had I been Jane. Emma is a vain meddling woman. I’m sick of Miss Bates. Pride & Prejudice is the novel for me."

Harsh and forthright opinions came naturally to her. Scholars have drawn parallels between Jenny and three Austen characters: Northanger Abbey's Mrs. Allen, Aunt Norris in Mansfield Park, and Lady Denham of Sanditon. 

​To decide for yourself and find out the whole story, including more about Jenny's - mostly malign - influence on the life of her niece Jane Austen, turn to Chapter Four of my new book Heiresses, available to order now!

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Order heiresses now