John Bardwell Ebden

Sketch of JB Ebden from 1849.

John Bardwell Ebden M.L.C. (9 April 1787 - 22 Sept 1873) was an influential businessman and politician of the Cape Colony, South Africa. He dominated Cape Town commerce for over sixty years in the 19th century, and was an unofficial member of the Cape Legislative Council.

An ambitious and combative personality, he was known by the nickname "the storm petrel", due to his reputation of frequently being in fights.

Early life

JB Ebden was born in 1787 in Suffolk, England, the son of John Ebden, an army surgeon, and Sarah Norman. He went to sea as a young man in 1803, sailing to China, before settling in Cape Town in 1806, where he began work in the Royal Naval Victualling Office.

In 1808 he married Antoinetta Adriana Kirchmann, the daughter of an influential German immigrant businessman. He soon left his job and set up a wine merchant business, Ebden & Eaton. Richard Webber Eaton, his partner, was married to Ebden's sister Sarah Ebden in 1814.

He built Belmont, Rondebosch, in 1836. This estate became his home and he lived there for the rest of his life.

Business interests

A man of unusual proactivity, ambition and business acumen, he fought his way to the top of the Cape commercial scene and went on to establish a variety of important enterprises. He founded the Cape of Good Hope Bank, he established the Cape's Commercial Exchange in 1817, he helped to set up the Cape's first insurance company, and he was an early pioneer in the Copperfields.

In all of these enterprises, and others, he came to hold an increasingly dominant position, positions he held until his death. He was President of the CoGH Bank (1838-1873), Chair of the Commercial Exchange and President of the Chamber of Commerce (1861-1873).

The "JB Ebden Prize" and "JB Ebden Scolarships" became institutions in the Cape; the former won by J.H. Hofmeyr in 1916, and the latter enabled Jan Christian Smuts to graduate from Cambridge.

Political involvement

He soon became involved in Cape politics. He became an unofficial member of the Cape's Legislative Council - a relatively powerless body that was nonetheless the closest that the Cape had to a legislature at the time. (However one of the junior clerks in his merchant house was a boy named John Molteno, an Anglo-Italian immigrant who went on to wrest self-government for the Cape and become its first Prime Minister.)

Ebden was one of the leaders of the renowned anti-convict movement, together with Cape Town Mayor Hercules Crosse Jarvis and Attorney General William Porter, even chairing it in 1849.

Further reading

• M. George: John Bardwell Ebden: His Business and Political Career at the Cape (1806-1849). The Government Printer: Pretoria. 1986.