TV presenter and former footballer Alex Scott discovered that one of her Jamaican ancestors owned 26 slaves.
During filming of the BBC series *Who Do You Think You Are?* in 2021, Scott learned that her four-times great-grandfather, Robert Francis Coombs — a free person of colour in Jamaica — owned 26 enslaved people between 1817 and 1832.
When Britain abolished slavery, Coombs submitted a claim and received compensation from the British government for those 26 individuals, as was standard policy at the time for slave owners.
Scott was visibly emotional on the programme, saying she had expected to find ancestors who were enslaved, not owners. She stated it went “against everything that I stand for.”
The case highlights a less frequently discussed historical reality: free people of colour in the Caribbean also owned slaves, and the British government paid compensation to owners (not the enslaved) upon abolition.