James Laing (doctor)

James Laing (c.1749–1831) was a Scottish doctor and plantation owner in Dominica.

He was born in the parish of Crimond, c. 1748, the son of Alexander Laing and Jane Henderson. According to later testimony, he was resident as a young man in Dominica, by the later 1760s. There were other Scots of the same name in the Caribbean at this period, including Dr James Laing in Tobago, from Elgin, Moray.

Laing acquired lands in Scotland, at Haddo-Rattray, Buchan, in 1789. According to the Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (London, 1846), writing about Crimond, "There is an ancient seat called Haddo, and an elegant modern mansion has been built on the estate of Rattray." In that year Laing had given evidence on plantation life in Dominica to the Privy Council, later commented on by John Ranby, James Stephen and Eric Williams.

In 1793 Laing was Provost Marshal in Dominica. When a gift of £700 of plate was made to Henry Hamilton as Governor, for his efforts in repelling a French invasion of Dominica, Laing with Thomas Daniell was chosen for the formal presentation on 14 June 1796. In 1798 Laing was acting as Collector for the island.

In 1804 a parliamentary report recorded Laing as the owner of 51 enslaved people. During the 1805 French attack on Roseau, the island's capital, Laing was an eye-witness, and later gave testimony on it. In 1806, as Collector and member of the Dominica Council, he gave evidence to a committee of the House of Commons.

At the beginning of 1814, George Robert Ainslie was Governor of Dominica, and involved in a campaign against the island's Maroons. Laing was still holder of the position of Provost Marshal, but was in the United Kingdom on sick leave. Ainslie considered him old, and asked to have him replaced, by his own brother. He was rebuffed in March 1814 by Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, who considered Laing fit for his duties. During trials of Maroons of that summer, Thomas Laing was acting Provost Marshal. In 1815 Sir Robert Heron, 2nd Baronet, whose wife was a relation of the dismissed Ainslie, spoke in defence of his conduct on Dominica, and incidentally mentioned Laing's 48 years of residence on the island.

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