Elihu Yale: colonial administrator, senior representative of the East India Company, President of Madras, philanthropist and founding benefactor of Yale University. His bones lie in a tomb in St Giles churchyard in Wrexham, flesh and shroud long gone. Upon the tomb is an epitaph:
Born in America, in Europe bred
In Africa travell’d and in Asia wed
Where long he liv’d and thriv’d; In London dead
Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all’s even
And that his soul thro’ mercy’s gone to Heaven
You that survive and read this tale, take care
For this most certain exit to prepare
Where blest in peace, the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the silent dust.
The ‘some ill’ of his time in India is glossed over. The slave trading, forced labour and arbitrary executions are not mentioned. Nor is the lynching of his stable boy who took a horse and rode it without permission. But his name lives on in Wrexham. A name like a nasty taste in the mouth. A Wrexham sixth-form college was named after him until it was rebranded as Coleg Cambria. But there is still the Elihu Yale, a large Weatherspoon’s pub in the centre of town. Formerly a cinema, it now provides cheap beer for the town’s drunkards, money siphoned into the deep pockets of the chain’s EU-hating owner.
