Alfred Constantine Goffe (30 December 1863 – 27 October 1951) was a Jamaican businessman noted for his role in the banana trade.
Alfred was born in Jamaica to John Beecham Goffe and Margaret Goffe (née Clemetson).[1] He was the fourth of nine children.[2] A niece, Eileen Clemetson-Goffe joined the British Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service and in 1936 became a spy for the allies in WWII and later a diplomat. She hid her race and passed as white. Her father was Cecil, the second eldest of the Goffe brothers. A Nephew, Alan Powell Goffe developed the polio and measles vaccines. His father was Earnest. Alfred, Earnest and Cecil all married white women, in a time of Jim Crow and the Edwardian era.
The Goffe brothers, John Jr., Cecil, Robert, Alfred, Alec, Ernest, Clarence and Rowland took over proprietorship along with their mother of their late fathers businesses in Port Maria after he died of Malaria on 17 October 1882.[3] By 1887 the most profitable export from St. Mary was a weed, whose export value exceeded that of sugar and coffee in 1893–94, and they excelled, moving hundreds of tons of logwood to the United States.[4] In 1896 they sent 500 tons to Falmouth, U.K. After the market died for logwood, the brothers began exporting bananas in ernest.
In 1908 Goffe was arrested and charged with conspiring with organized crime in the attempted murder of a business rival. This was based on the testimony of one alleged witness. Charges were dropped against Goffe due to the testimony describing him as conspiring in Italian. Goffe was able to produce witness who attested to his not knowing the language.[5] Goffe also killed a man in Galina for the theft of 30 coconuts from his groves. He was later acquitted.[citation needed]