The household of British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, identified for his main roles within the collection ‘Sherlock’ or within the movie ‘Doctor Strange’, may face authorized motion for his historic hyperlinks to the slave commerce in Barbados.
Joshua Cumberbatch, the actor’s seventh great-grandfather, bought the Cleland plantation within the north of the island in 1728, the place they owned as much as 250 slaves earlier than slavery was abolished greater than 100 years later. When the plantation closed, Cumberbatch’s household was awarded compensation of £6,000 (greater than $4 million in right now’s cash) for the lack of “human property”.
Now the Barbados authorities is waging a authorized battle to get the ancestors of slave-owning households to pay reparations. This was defined by the Secretary General of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, David Denny, within the British newspaper The Telegraph.
Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the DogDPA
Barbados desires the cash raised for use to “convert the native clinic right into a hospital, assist native colleges and enhance infrastructure and housing.”
The Barbados ambassador, David Commissiong, assures that Barbados has simply began this course of and “a lot of this historical past is coming to gentle.”
Slavery has been on the forefront of the controversy in lots of Caribbean communities lately, largely fueled by Barbados’ choice to grow to be a republic in 2021.