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6 unusual facts about British Guiana


British Guiana

The London-based Booker Group of companies (Booker Brothers, McConnell & Co., Ltd.) dominated the economy of British Guiana.

Edward Angelo Goodall

Moritz Richard Schomburgk was commissioned by the Prussian government to map British Guiana's boundaries, accompanied by his brother Robert, who was to collect natural history specimens for the Royal Museum and the Botanical Gardens in Berlin.

George Samuel Jenman

In 1879 Jenman moved to British Guiana where he was appointed as Government Botanist and Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens.

He was superintendent of Castleton Botanical Garden, Jamaica from 1873 to 1879, and Government Botanist and superintendent of the Botanical Gardens in British Guiana (now Guyana) from 1879 to 1902.

Jan Shinebourne

The Last English Plantation (1988) is set within a labyrinth of political chaos in British Guiana in the 1950s.

Richard Henry Alvey

In 1896, as Chief Justice, Alvey served as a member of an American commission tasked with resolving a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana.


1963 Pan American Games medal table

Barbados, debuting at the Pan American Games, won its first medals (three bronze), while British Guiana won its first ever gold medal.

Arthur Jaques

Jaques played 8 matces on tour for the club, with his final match coming against British Guiana.

British Guiana during World War II

Like all the other British colonies in the West Indies, Guiana gave full support to the Allied war effort by providing personnel for the British Armed Forces, land for an American military base, and raw materials for war production.

East Caribbean dollar

In 1949, the British government formalized the dollar system of accounts in British Guiana and the Eastern Caribbean territories by introducing the British West Indies dollar (BWI$) at the already existing conversion rate of $4.80 per pound sterling (or $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence).

Everard F. im Thurn

In December 1884 he led the first successful expedition to the summit of Mount Roraima, in Venezuela's Gran Sabana region, along with Harry Perkins, an Assistant Crown Surveyor who was also living in British Guiana.

Ivan Madray

Ivan Samuel Madray (born 2 July 1934, Port Mourant, British Guiana (now Guyana), died 23 April 2009, Georgetown, Guyana) was a West Indian cricketer who played in two Tests in 1958.

New Amsterdam Public Hospital

New Amsterdam Public Hospital, in New Amsterdam, Guyana, is outstanding example of timber architecture, and one of the two surviving architectural masterpieces designed by Cesar Castellani, an architect employed in the Public Works Department of British Guiana.

Park Benjamin, Sr.

He was born in Demerara, British Guiana, August 14, 1809, but was early sent to New England, and graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. He practiced law in Boston, but abandoned it for editorial work there and later in New York.

Tom Tutin

After graduating in 1930 he stayed in Cambridge, interrupted by biological expeditions in 1931 to southern Spain and Spanish Morocco, and in 1933 to British Guiana, where the expedition was based on the banks of the Essequibo River.

Victor Quelch

Captain Victor Quelch (December 13, 1891 in Georgetown, British Guiana – September 1975 ) was a farmer, a soldier in the Canadian Army, and was also a long serving Canadian federal politician.

Walter Roth

In 1906 Roth was made protector of Indians in the Pomeroon district of British Guiana.

Zahra Freeth

She accompanied her husband to the bauxite mining town of Mackenzie, now known as Linden, in British Guiana (now Guyana) and wrote Run Softly, Demerara (1960) about her experiences there.


see also

Alfred P. Thorne

His career as an economist began in 1945 when he was recruited by Sir Winston Churchill’s cousin, Oscar A. Spencer, first economic adviser to the Governor of British Guiana, to assist with the country's first economic development plan.

Arthur James Williams

Art Williams arrived in British Guiana in August 1934 piloting an Ireland amphibian biplane, NC183M, powered by a Pratt & Whitney "Wasp", 9-cylinder 450 HP radial engine, landing on the Demerara River.

Lionel Luckhoo

Luckhoo was born in New Amsterdam, British Guiana, and was one of three sons and two daughters born into a prominent family of lawyers.

Regional Four Day Competition

The final unofficial tournament (which does not appear on records in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack or Cricinfo) was held in 1964, with Barbados, British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad competing in a league, which British Guiana won.

St. Rose's High School, Guyana

Six nuns and two postulants from the Ursuline convent in Athlone, Ireland traveled to the then-colony of British Guiana in 1847.

University of Guyana

Drayton returned to British Guiana in December 1962, and it was on his advice that Jagan wrote to socialist scholars in the United Kingdom and United States, including Joan Robinson at the University of Cambridge, Paul Baran at Stanford University, and Lancelot Hogben at Birmingham to involve them in the recruitment of staff.