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Abstract
This article makes a case for the institution of a research project on the neglected topic of charitable trusts in Barbados (and in the Commonwealth Caribbean). What little information has so far been recovered clearly establishes that these trusts existed in most, if not all, parishes from the late seventeenth century, and that some of these trusts made significant contributions to the provision of social amenities while expressing and reinforcing policies of social control and racial discrimination. The prime objective of the research project would be to create the evidential base, in the fashion of W.K. Jordan and David Owen, both to permit an authoritative assessment of these trusts (their activation, administration, achievements) and to enable government to regulate them efficiently.
Charitable trusts in Barbados should be examined in detail for at least three reasons. First, such research should provide information on and insight into the island's social history by showing how some social amenities developed, by pinpointing the role played in that development by charities, and by demonstrating the objectives that the dispensers of charity sought to achieve. second, a large gap in information in the available literature on the extent of charitable activity mandates research. There is mention in the general histories of various charitable donations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in support of education but hardly anything about the very extensive charitable donations for poor relief. That gap in information exists mainly because much of the necessary research has not yet been done and partly because the general historical literature has not yet caught up with the research that has been done. Third, the topic touches on issues of public policy. From the seventeenth century there have been suggestions that both the activation and administration of charitable trusts have been far less than perfect. Therefore, there is both a need to test those claims and a legitimate concern about the status of charitable trusts that, for one reason or other, seem no longer to be functioning.1
What Is a Charitable Trust?
It was a legal instrument, "an invention of equity",2 developed in England probably in the thirteenth century, to ensure that endowments for charitable purposes could operate in perpetuity without the necessity for incorporation. Originally, it was intended...