Dorothy Thomas (entrepreneur)

Dorothy Thomas (also known as Dolly Kirwan or Doll Thomas; 1756 – 5 August 1846) was a Caribbean entrepreneur and former slave who engaged in business in Montserrat, Dominica, Grenada, Barbados, and Demerara. Having purchased her own manumission, Thomas spent nearly sixteen years securing the freedom of her children, mother, and several other relatives. Though she owned hotels one of which had a French restaurant, her primary source of income was hiring out female hucksters to whom she supplied goods to be sold to plantation workers and slaves. She also hired out her slaves as labourers, earned income from lodging houses, ran a plantation, and rented out properties which she owned. Known as one of the few black women who derived compensation from the government scheme to reimburse slave owners, she received £3,413 for the loss of her labourers when Britain abolished slavery.

Thomas travelled frequently to London, and ensured that her descendants were educated in Britain. Although her daughters were all partnered with prominent white businessmen, it was Thomas who kept the families afloat when they were in financial peril. She was influential among a wide circle of business and elite connections in the colonies of the British West Indies and used her networks when needed to improve her circumstances. In 1824, in London, she protested a discriminatory law against free women of colour and was successful in having it overturned by the colonial authority. She lived until 1846 and left not only a large and prominent family scattered throughout the British Empire, but a significant historical legacy which provides insight into free women of colour and their lives in her era.