Edward Gibbon Wakefield – sociopath?

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Real estate agent Edward Wakefield was a good friend of James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill. Both were educational philosophers, but Wakefield proved to be delinquent in respect of his son Edward Gibbon’s poor behaviour, having left most of his upbringing to his wife, Susanna (née Crash).

Unable to cope with young Edward’s tantrums, Susanna dispatched him off to her stronger-willed mother-in-law, Priscilla Wakefield, for her attention ……. to no avail, however.

When Edward was eleven in 1807, Priscilla wrote to Susanna: “my mind painfully engaged in the perverseness of dear little Edward – his obstinacy if he inclines to evil terrifies me“ (his) “pertinacious inflexible temper makes me fear for his own happiness and of those connected with him” (he) “has a mind that requires delicate handling“.

By 1811, at fifteen years of age, Edward Gibbon Wakefield had already been expelled from three schools.

When Wakefield found himself in the infamous Newgate prison from 1827 to 1830 for abducting and marrying his second heiress wife, Ellen Turner, he devised a brilliant idea to keep the plebs in their place. All the landed gentry needed to do in new countries such as Canada, the United States and Australia was to ensure that poor and middle-class people couldn’t afford the price of a block of land. Land prices must be kept sufficiently high that they could aspire to pay for a site in the longer term only. So, having virtual slaves working much of their lives to be able to pay off the cost of their own parcel of land, you didn’t need to import convicts or slaves to work for you!

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POSTSCRIPT

It works! Rather than keeping land prices at zero, by capturing the annual site rent to the public purse, taxing purchases and incomes and pumping land prices to the moon continues to work wonders for private banking and real estate interests – not so much for workers, though!

However, as we’re about to find out shortly, that can backfire badly!