Pennant’s family owned four sugar plantations in Jamaica and he used some of the profits to develop the Penrhyn slate quarry. After his death, the estate passed to his second cousin, George Hay Dawkins Pennant, a fierce opponent of abolition. After the Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833, Dawkins Pennant was awarded compensation of £14,683 for the 764 enslaved men and women that the law no longer recognised as his property. The freed men and women received nothing and were initially compelled
