Sir John Reid, 2nd Baronet

Sir John Rae Reid, 2nd Baronet (1791–1867) was a British merchant and financier. He was a Tory and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1830 and 1847.

Reid was the son of Sir Thomas Reid of Ewell Grove and his wife Elizabeth Goodfellow. He succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1824[1]

Reid was the Member of Parliament for Dover, Kent from 1830 to 1831 and from 1832 to 1847.[2]

According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at the University College London, Reid was awarded a payment as a slave trader in the aftermath of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 with the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The British Government took out a £15 million loan (worth £1.43 billion in 2021[3]) with interest from Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Moses Montefiore which was subsequently paid off by the British taxpayers (ending in 2015). Reid was associated with seventeen different claims, he owned over 500 slaves in British Guiana, Jamaica, St Kitts, Trinidad and the British Virgin Islands. He received a large sum of money from this claims.[4]

Reid was head of the firm Reid, Irving & Co., and later a Director (1820 to 1847) of the Bank of England, except when acting as Deputy Governor (1837 to 1839) or Governor (1839 to 1841).[5] In June 2020 the Bank of England issued a public apology for the involvement of Reid, amongst other employees, in the slave trade following the investigation by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL.[6]

He married Maria Louisa, the daughter of Richard Eaton of Stetchworth Park, Cambridgeshire with whom he had 2 sons and a daughter.[2]