Anne Jemima Clough was the co-founder and first principal of Newnham College. She donated £500 to the College before 1880, held thirteen shares in the Newnham Hall Company (three personally, and ten in trust for the politician Joseph Chamberlain). She left £1,000 to the college on her death.
Her father James Butler Clough was a cotton merchant operating between Charleston and Liverpool. The 1830 federal census records that Clough hired five enslaved people from their owners to work in his household. Lizzy was an enslaved woman who worked for the Cloughs throughout their time in Charleston and was imprisoned for harbouring a fugitive from slavery. Anne Jemima recalls that her father ‘with great difficulty saved [Lizzy] from being flogged’ and she was sentenced to two weeks on the treadmill instead (arguably a worse punishment).
“As time went on I became more and more aware of the great evils of slavery, the immorality of the men, the sufferings of the slaves – it was fearfully painful” - Anne Jemima Clough, Recollections 1822-1836
James Clough and his associates weathered the instability of 1837 but did not survive the deeper slump that followed. He had few or no profits to contribute to his family’s survival. Anne Jemima Clough’s own financial security came from a legacy from her maternal uncle, William Perfect, at the end of 1857. He, however, was a country banker and no doubt had had dealings in cotton among other commodities.