Raikes Currie

Raikes Currie (15 April 1801 – 16 October 1881) was Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton from 1837 to 1857. He was a partner of the bank Curries & Co., which became part of Glyn, Mills & Co. in 1864, along with his father, Isaac Currie, in Cornhill, City of London, and had several interests in the newly developing colony of South Australia. He restored Minley Manor and made substantial improvements to the estate, work which was continued by his son and grandson. The family bank was connected to slavery in the British West Indies and contributed some £9,000 (possibly as much as £50,000) to the creation of South Australia in 1836. Family His father, Isaac Currie (1760–1843), of Bush Hill, Middlesex, England, was a senior partner of the bank Curries & Co. and the son of William Currie, Distiller and Banker, of Gatton Park, Surrey. Currie and his sons were financially connected to slavery and benefited from compensation awarded to slaveholders upon the emancipation of slavery in the 1830s. The Curries belonged to an old Scottish family descended directly from the Curries of Duns, Berwickshire. His mother, Mary Anne Raikes, was the daughter of William Raikes and granddaughter of Robert Raikes, printer and newspaper proprietor. Her uncles included Thomas Raikes, Governor of the Bank of England from 1797 to 1799 and personal friend of William Wilberforce, the leader of the campaign against the slave trade; and Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools. Her brother Job Mathew Raikes was married to Charlotte Bayly, daughter of Nathaniel Bayly, MP, and colonial plantation owner in Jamaica. On 28 June 1825 Raikes Currie married the Hon. Laura Sophia Wodehouse, with whom he had four sons and two daughters. She was a daughter of John Wodehouse, 2nd Baron Wodehouse of Kimberley, and Sophia Berkeley. Their four sons were George Wodehouse Currie (1826–), Bertram Raikes Wodehouse Currie (1827–1896), the Reverend Maynard Wodehouse Currie (1829–1887) and Philip Henry Wodehouse Currie (1834–1908), 1st Baron Currie of Hawley.