Nassau William Senior

Nassau William Senior, born 1790, was a political economist. After attending Oxford as a demy (a form of scholarship) and then achieving a first in Classics, he became a lawyer with an active interest in political economy. He had a particular humanitarian concern which fuelled his interest in the subject; he would call for understanding the causes of poverty as a crucial step for elimintating it in society. This already alienated him as this was not a commonly held view by political economists at the time, and he was further alienated due to his advocation for consfiscating and transferring to the Roman Catholic Church, an opinion which lead to his resignation from the chair of political economy at King’s College London in 1830. His connection to slavery seems to mostly be through his wife, Mary Charlotte, who inherited one-third of the estate of John Mair of Clifton which included mortgages over enslaved people. He was also a trustee for the widow of Laurence Nihell for the El Dorado estate in Trinidad.