Waxing

Last weekend’s Cheddar and the Manchego-type cheese I made three weeks ago were ready to wax today. I dipped them in hot cheese wax three times, which gives them a decent covering. They had both developed nice rinds and they can now mature safely inside their protective coating in the cheese cave: the Cheddar for six months, the Manchego for three. 

I’m falling behind with commenting on blips and responding to the lovely comments on mine.

The reasons for this are two-fold. Keeping up with jobs Chez Mima obviously take a bit of time. But the second reason is the main one. My brain isn’t focussing very well thanks to discoveries this week which I am slowly processing.

As you know I am enormously proud of my Orkney roots; and to a large extent when I think of paternal ancestors my mind goes directly to Orkney. To the farmers, fishermen, ministers and even Earls. 
 
But of course that is only a sliver of the whole picture. My genes come from far more places than Orkney. And not surprisingly, given that I was born on the Wirral, there are a large number of antecedents from that area.
 
I’ve known most of my life that my great-great-grandfather, Clarke Aspinall was Coroner of Liverpool and was considered one of the ‘great and good’ of that city. I’ve always felt vaguely proud of him. 
 
However after listening to The Guardian’s new podcast “Cotton Capital” about the links of that newspaper’s founders to the slave trade, I realised it was fairly unlikely that anybody in a prominent family in 19th Century Liverpool (or Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow among others) was far removed from slavery.
 
So I opened up my computer and started to dig. 
 
The very first metaphorical spade I stuck into the soil of history confirmed my suspicions. And shockingly little further research took me directly to some real unpleasantness. 
 
Clarke’s wealth was indeed based upon the slave trade. Directly based on it. His grandfather, John Bridge Aspinall, is recorded as having been a ‘merchant and trader of enslaved African people’. He became Mayor of Liverpool in 1803.
 
John’s father, James (my 5th great-grandfather) was a member of the Gregson Syndicate of slave traders who owned several ships which trafficked African people to the Americas. 
 
One of their ships became infamous for the Zong Massacre in 1781. The detail is in Wikipedia. In brief, the crew of the slave ship the Zong threw 142 enslaved African people overboard when they found themselves short of drinking water thanks to making navigational errors when crossing the Atlantic. 
 
The ship owners – the Gregson Syndicate – made a claim of 30 pounds sterling for each slave who went overboard. Had they died at sea of natural causes there would have been no possibility to claim. Such was the price of a human life. 
 
The insurance claim was unsuccessful and caused public uproar, strengthening the British abolition movement in the process. It was so notorious an event that J. M. W. Turner’s painting “The Slave Ship” is reputed to depict the scene. But it didn’t prevent any of the syndicate members’ continued involvement in the movement of enslaved people from Africa.


This is just one brutal event. There must be many more harrowing tales, as yet undiscovered or forgotten forever. 
 
James’ grandson, also James Aspinall (Clarke’s father) under the moniker An Old Stager penned the booklet “Liverpool: a few years since” in 1852. It aspires to celebrate “the heroes of the day” from the early 1800s.
 
It is available online thanks to Project Gutenberg. If you are inclined to read it you will find some fascinating historical descriptions of the city and the docks. 
 
However brace yourself for attitudes and language straight from the period. Among other topics Aspinall proudly describes experiences that wealthier inhabitants of the city had in the West Indies, and encounters with enslaved Africans. 
 
It is likely that generations of Aspinall merchants married into families with similar histories, and therefore chances are that many more of my ancestors had direct links to the transatlantic slave trade. 
 
I’m not game to investigate at the moment. 
 

I was reduced to tears reading about the Zong Massacre and its aftermath. Discovering this line of my family with such stark links to slavery shocked and discomforted me.


I know I don’t live in the 18th or 19th Centuries. I don’t share the same life as my greats and great-greats. But it is true that the wealth they accumulated from being involved in the trade of enslaved Africans contributed to my existence. I don't feel any sense of culpability, but I do feel that I have gained a privileged life on the backs of people who were subjected to horrors. 
 

I shall do some concentrated gardening to put it into perspective. It is the best place to make sense of life. And death.