Malvina Wells
Today I’d like to tell the story of Malvina Wells, a woman about whom we sadly know very little despite the fact that she lived in Edinburgh for at least 37 years.
Malvina Wells was born into chattel slavery in Carriacou, Grenada around 1804 and died in Edinburgh in 1887. She’s the only known person buried in Edinburgh who was born enslaved, although it is likely there are others. Although the information we have about her is sparse, it points to a remarkable life.
We know that Malvina spent her early life as an enslaved person in Grenada. Records from 1817 list her as “in lawful possession” of a man called George McLean. Malvina was then 13 years old, and the records describe her as “mulatto”, a term which was usually used for someone with a Black mother and a white father. Malvina’s death certificate lists her father as John Wells, a “planter” – that is, a slaveowner – but doesn’t record who her mother was. Because her mother was presumably also enslaved, Malvina herself may not even have known who she was, as families were often forcibly separated. We do know that she had a sister called Frances Goulton, because she left money in her will to Frances’ children, Matilda and John.
Little more is known about the first half of Malvina’s life. The institution of slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, when Malvina was about 29, so she would have legally become a free woman at some point after that. Following abolition in the 1830s, the British government paid out £20 million in compensation to slaveowners, around £17 billion in modern money. It was given to 46,000 slaveowners, and of course there was no compensation for the people they had enslaved. The £20 million the government borrowed to fund this scheme was only finally paid off in 2015. That is not a typo. Until 2015, taxpayers’ money in the UK was still paying off loans that were taken out to compensate the tens of thousands of British citizens who owned enslaved people, including the George McLean who owned Malvina.
The door of 33 Great King Street, Malvina’s first recorded address in Edinburgh. Image: my own
It’s not currently known when or how Malvina came to Edinburgh, but the first census in 1851 records her living at 33 Great King Street. By then she was 48 and working as a lady’s maid to Joanna Macrae, whose husband was a prominent lawyer called John Macrae. A lady’s maid was a high-status position within service, and one of the better-paid roles available to women at the time. We cannot know whether Malvina willingly remained in the service of the Macrae family, but by the time we have records of her living in Edinburgh she was a paid servant and no longer legally enslaved.
Like Malvina, Joanna Macrae was also born in Grenada, where her family owned many enslaved people and ran a plantation. She was born Joanna McLean – in fact, she was the niece of George McLean, who is recorded as having Malvina “in lawful possession” in 1817. Although Malvina was in paid work for Joanna Macrae in Edinburgh, it’s likely the two women met in Grenada while Malvina was still enslaved. George McLean and his brother John (Joanna’s father) were both prominent slaveowners in Grenada, and records show that between them they made claims for compensation relating to 1,732 enslaved people after abolition. That figure, of course, does not include the many other people they had enslaved in the years before abolition occurred.
This painting may depict Malvina Wells in the background. The white woman is Janet McLean, Joanna’s mother, and the children are Joanna and her sister Dorothea. The Black woman is described as “their favourite slave Didi”, but is believed to be Malvina. Image: public domain, artist unknown.
By 1861, when she was in her fifties, Malvina had left service. The census of that year records her living at 42 Thistle Street as the head of her own household. She’s listed as an “annuitant”, meaning she received some sort of annual allowance, and she has a lodger called Mary Johnston, who was a dressmaker.
42 Thistle Street, where Malvina was head of household in 1861. Image: my own
Frustratingly, we don’t know how Malvina came to be living here, what kind of annuity she was receiving or from whom. Like so many of the records that survive about her, it gives us a tantalising glimpse into her life without filling in the details. All we know is that, exactly 160 years ago, Malvina Wells was living here with her lodger.
I would love to be able to talk to Malvina and find out what life in Edinburgh was like for her. There would have been very few Black people living here then, and fewer still who were head of their own household like Malvina was in 1861. The year before, the famous African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass made one of several visits to Edinburgh. Malvina must have heard about his speeches – she might even have been in Edinburgh by 1846, when he first came to the city – and maybe she even went to hear him. There was a thriving abolitionist movement in Edinburgh in the mid-nineteenth century and a great deal of public conversation about race and about slavery, which continued formally in the United States until 1865. Malvina could not have been unaware of these campaigns, which would have been widely discussed in the drawing rooms of the city’s wealthy homes, but sadly we have no way of knowing her private thoughts.
2 Randolph Crescent, where Malvina worked for Agnes Gordon. Image: my own
At some point in the following ten years, Malvina began working as a servant again. By 1871 she was at 2 Randolph Crescent in the household of Edward Strathearn Gordon, an MP, and his wife Agnes, who was Joanna Macrae’s cousin. There’s no record of why Malvina returned to service – perhaps her annuity wasn’t enough money to live on, or perhaps there was some kind of actual or perceived obligation through her lengthy service with Joanna Macrae. Whatever the reason, Malvina appears to have remained employed as a servant for the rest of her life.
By the final census of her lifetime in 1881, Malvina was once again a lady’s maid to Joanna Macrae, this time at 14 Gloucester Place. She was 75 by then, and she would remain in the household until her death in 1887 at the age of 82. Her death certificate records the cause of death as heart disease and states that Horatio Macrae, Joanna’s son, was present when she died. Malvina was buried in the Macrae family plot in the graveyard of St John’s Episcopal Church, where she has her own gravestone. Its inscription reads:
Malvina Wells
born in
Carriacou, West Indies
Died at Edinburgh
22 April 1887
Aged 82 years
For upwards of 70 years a faithful servant and friend in the family of Mrs MacRae, Edinburgh
"Faithful in all the house as a servant" – Hebrews iii 5
The area of St John’s churchyard where Malvina is buried. You can usually visit her grave, but the gates are currently locked as the church is closed because of covid. Image: my own
The last we know about Malvina Wells comes from her will, which was drawn up in 1873 at the family law firm run by Joanna’s son Colin. As I mentioned earlier, she left money to her niece and nephew. She also left £5 to “the young man in the Island of Grenada who sends me the newspapers periodically”, which tells us that she maintained some contact with people in Grenada throughout her life in Scotland.
The rest of Malvina’s estate is left to “Colin George Macrae, Horatio Ross Macrae and Jessidora Macrae, children of Mrs Joanna Isabella Maclean or Macrae”. By the time she died she had worked for the family “for upwards of 70 years”, as it says on her gravestone – a length of time that includes the period when Malvina was still enslaved in Grenada. We will never know why she decided to leave most of her money to the Macrae children, but it’s likely that she played a role in raising them during her decades working for the family in Edinburgh, and perhaps she felt great affection for them. Malvina never married or had children of her own, but she knew the Macrae kids for their whole lives. The fact that Horatio was present at her death could simply mean that he happened to be there, but it could also mean that he sat and mourned at the deathbed of a woman who had been a huge part of his life.
It wasn’t a particularly small amount of money, either – Malvina’s estate totalled £622 14 shillings and 9 pence, the equivalent of nearly £70,000 today. She had made several business investments and clearly done quite well out of them, which makes it all the more interesting that she returned to working in service in her sixties when she could perhaps have afforded to live on her savings and investments.
We will sadly probably never know how Malvina felt about it or why she chose to return to working for the Macrae family until the end of her life. Like so many fascinating women throughout history, and particularly women of colour, we have only traces of Malvina’s life that have been pieced together by archivists.
If you’re interested in reading more about Malvina Wells, check out this fascinating article from the National Records of Scotland that tracks her through the historical record. You can also read her biography and others from the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL, which has compiled a publicly accessible database of information from the records about British slave-owning. I’m also indebted to Lisa Williams of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association – without her fantastic tour of Edinburgh’s Black history, I would probably never have heard of Malvina.
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