Part V / City Walk
Walk past building no. 56 and continue down the road.
In 1909, a steamship was built by the Orient Steam Navigation Company or the Orient line as one of its five passenger lines sailing between Britain and Australia. This was the fourth and final ship named after Osterley Park - at the time the family seat of a senior-partner of Child & Co: the 7th Earl of Jersey who had previously served as a governor in New South Wales. Much later, the Orient Line was merged into the Peninsular and Oriental Company, or the P&O, an entity that was instrumental to the expansion of the British empire and was involved in the East India Company’s infamous opium trade between China and India. 37
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In 1923, the 8th Earl of Jersey would sell Child & Co. to Glyn, Mills & Co., which would later be subsumed into the Royal Bank of Scotland and much later, into the Natwest Group Holdings.38
By the year 1950, both Child & Co. and Osterley Park - fruits of the Child family’s political influence and labour at the EIC, and heirlooms of the Child-Villiers family - were now no longer in their possession.
In 2022, Child & Co closed its operations at 1 Fleet Street. Today, the Natwest Group is an amalgamation of several individual banks - at least 18 of the partners and directors of these banks were associated with transatlantic slavery.39
You will now see the Temple Bar memorial ahead of you: a pedestal in the middle of the road with a statue of a dragon. Stop at the building on your path that lies right beside it.
We are now at 1 Fleet Street - home to one of the oldest banks in the world: Child & Co.
Colonial pasts run deep into the veins of the present.
It survives as the Natwest Group -
of which Child & Co was a subsidiary -
bankrolls the climate crisis,40 wars and settler-colonialism.41
It prevails in the brutal policing and custodial deaths43
in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
It survives in the EIC-founded Madras Bank,
known today as the State Bank of India:
an investor in cluster munitions.44
It lingers in the exploitation of workers by P&O Ferries,45
who owned the builders of the fourth Osterley ship.
We bear witness to the story of Child & Co.,
and of Natwest that the bank became a constitute of,
and the Childs that owned the bank,
and the riches that the Childs owned,
and the ships that brought them the riches,
and the East India Company that fed them riches,
and Fort St. George that was its citadel -
in Madras that was its port -
in the state of Tamil Nadu that was its Madras Presidency -
and the far-reaching impacts of British imperialism
and Indian neocolonialism.46
We bear witness to our colonial present.
Image above: S.S. OSTERLEY. c.1911. Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive—Gift of Leonard A. Lauder © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2014.4291). Public Domain.
37 Armstrong, Allan. 2022. “P&O and Life Under Empire 2.” Bella Caledonia, 2022. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2022/03/27/po-and-life-under-empire-2/
38 “Child & Co”. Natwest Group Heritage Hub. Accessed June 08, 2024. https://www.natwestgroup.com/heritage/companies/child-and-co.html
39 Carlile, Clare. 2020. “Banks historical links to the slave trade.” Ethical Consumer. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/money-finance/banks-historical-links-slave-trade
40 Gayle, Damien. 2024. “HSBC and NatWest accused of financing North Sea oil extraction despite pledge.” The Guardian, March 22, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/22/hsbc-and-natwest-accused-of-financing-north-sea-oil-extraction-despite-pledge
Financial Times. 2024. “NatWest chair played down ties to oil company caught up in 1MDB fraud.” September 6, 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/80832480-84fb-40c2-a147-d6baf093ceba
41 Don’t Bank on the Bomb. Scotland. “6.1.1 Natwest Group’s Policy.” Accessed 22 September 2024. https://nukedivestmentscotland.org/rbs-groups-policy/
Don’t Bank on the Bomb. 2020. “Natwest, update your policy!”. Accessed 22 September 2024. https://natwest.dontbankonthebomb.com/
International Company to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). “Change NatWest! Join the call for the banking group to divest from nuclear weapons.” Accessed 22 September 2024. https://www.icanw.org/change_natwest#:~:text=NatWest%20Group%27s%20current%20defence%20sector,in%20the%20nuclear%20weapons%20industry.
Don’t Buy Into Occupation (DBIO). 2023. “European Financial Institutions’ Continued Complicity in the Illegal Israeli Settlement Enterprise Report.” Accessed 22 September 2024. https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf
43 Deeksha, Johanna. 2024. “Tamil Nadu police's brutal violence against the state's weakest citizens.” Scroll.in, July 8, 2024. https://scroll.in/article/1068691/the-tamil-nadu-polices-brutal-violence-against-the-states-weakest-citizens.
TheCommuneMag. 2024. “A Continuing Story Of Custodial Deaths In Tamil Nadu - The Commune.” January 13, 2024. https://thecommunemag.com/a-continuing-story-of-custodial-deaths-in-tamil-nadu/.
Radhika, Sudhakar. 2020. “Jeyaraj, Bennix case and the RSS in Tamil Nadu.” Round Table India. https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/jeyaraj-bennix-case-and-the-rss-in-tamil-nadu/
44 Press Trust of India. 2016. “SBI in 'Hall of Shame.'” Business Standard, 2016. https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/sbi-in-hall-of-shame-116062000016_1.html
Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor. “Cluster Munition Ban Policy - India.” Accessed 4 October, 2024. http://the-monitor.org/country-profile/india/cluster-munition-ban-policy?year=2023
45 Armstrong, Allan. 2022. “P&O and Life Under Empire 2.” Bella Caledonia, 2022.
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2022/03/27/po-and-life-under-empire-2/.
46 Stanton, Gregory H. 2023. “India.” Genocide Watch. https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/india.