One of the country’s largest health boards is to launch a programme of reparations to atone for its links to slavery in the 18th century, prompting concerns that it will affect much-needed medical resources.
A report by NHS Lothian found that the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh had profited by almost £40 million from slavery in today’s money, through ownership of a Caribbean slave plantation.
Research backed by the health board, set up in its current form in 2001, found that the Royal Infirmary had been left the Red Hill Penn estate, in southeastern Jamaica, in 1750 in the will of a surgeon, Archibald Kerr.
The bequest included 39 slaves and the report said that over the next 143 years, “generations of enslaved people” would have