Biography

George Hibbert was a British merchant and politician from Manchester, the son of Robert Hibbert, constable of Manchester (1759) and born into a wealthy family of planters, merchants and shipowners with some of the finest estates in Jamaica. He traded mainly in sugar, rum, cotton, coffee and tropical hardwoods but his interest in the triangular trade between the West Indies, Britain and Africa meant that part of his wealth came from slavery.

Hibbert was appointed the Agent for Jamaica in Great Britain (until 1831) and in the period immediately before slavery was abolished in England he defended the position of the planters in the West Indies. He was a major shareholder of the Isle of Dogs canal scheme and dockland development north of the Thames and became the first director of the West India Docks Company. Together with the Lord High Chancellor Lord Loughborough and the Chancellor of the Exchequer William Pitt, George Hibbert laid the foundation stone of the West India Docks (1800).

His company operated a ship The Hibbert (1785-1813) which was one of the largest vessels in the West India trade at the turn of the 19th century. A model of the ship was placed above the main gates of the West India docks and later appeared on the coat of arms for the London Borough of Poplar. He became an alderman for the City of London (1798-1803) and MP for Seaford, Sussex (1806-1812), representing West Indian interests to Parliament.

Hibbert was an avid collector of books and something of a philanthropist. He advised Sir William Hillary (1774 -1847) and assisted him in organising the meeting at The Tavern in Bishops Gate Street, London on 4 March 1823 that resulted in the establishment of The National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later to become the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He was also a keen amateur botanist and established a substantial private botanical garden at Clapham. Joseph Knight was employed as head gardener and the two of them indulged in a passion for Proteaceae, which were considered very fashionable at the time. Hibbert commissioned James Macfadyen to collect for him in Jamaica and employed a Scottish gardener, James Niven, to collect in South Africa (1778-1803). Niven sent seeds and voucher specimens from the Cape back to his employer, including many new taxa. Knight set about writing a book on the cultivation of Proteaceae, particularly the experimental techniques found to be effective in growing and propagating many species for the first time in Europe.

On 17 January 1809 Robert Brown presented an important paper on the Proteaceae to the Linnean Society of London. This major new revsion, including many new taxa, was based largely on the private collections of Joseph Banks but he also included new material from Niven. In the audience was R.A. Salisbury, one of the founders of the Horticultural Society of London and considered to be a difficult individual. Brown's paper was not published in the Transactions of the society until March 1810 but Knight's book on Proteaceae appeared earlier in 1809 containing a controversial revision that originated from Salisbury including a number of descriptions and new taxa memorised from Brown's paper, thereby gaining priority over Brown's names. This overt plagiarism resulted in one of the most enduring controversies in Botany; Salisbury was effectively ostracised by the botanical establishment of the time and his botanical publications would receive little credit during his lifetime.

Around 1829 Hibbert retired to the countryside, his living collections going to Joseph Knight who had a nursery selling exotic plants on King's Road, Chelsea. The sale of Hibbert's substantial library lasted 42 days. His private herbarium was acquired by the Linnean Society (LINN), but much later transferred (c. 1960) to BM.