Henry Sidgwick, the reformer and philosopher, was a co-founder of Newnham College. Eleanor Sidgwick (née Balfour) was the second Principal of the College and a generous donor towards college buildings and the land on which it stands. Her experience in managing the extensive Balfour family estates informed her astute direction of Newnham’s early financial strategy. Both were original shareholders in the Newnham Hall Company, along with Henry Sidgwick’s brother William Carr Sidgwick.
Henry Sidgwick came from a long line of cotton manufacturers from Skipton, Yorkshire. The Sidgwicks owned High Mill (established 1784) and Low Mill, some of the oldest mills in Skipton. It is likely that the Sidgwick mills spun slave-grown American cotton for a significant portion of their existence. There is little indication that much money found its way to Henry. His father, a clergyman and headmaster, died when he was very young and Henry made his way by scholarships.
The resources controlled by Eleanor, who married Henry in 1876, were in a different league, but the researchers were unable to explore the East Indies connections of the Balfour family as far as they would have liked. The slavery Abolition Act of 1833 excluded India, so in addition to using apprenticeship and indenture to replace enslaved workers, companies sought out enslaved people from India. Further study of the relationship between Atlantic slavery and Indian slavery, and of Newnham’s legacies of enslavement outside of the Atlantic, would produce a fuller picture of the contributions of enslaved labour to the College.