December 15, 1764 - Thomas Handasyd Perkins
Perkins built one of early America's great mercantile fortunes through the opium trade, supplying Turkish opium to China at a scale that helped establish patterns of addiction and exploitation that would define the era's commerce. His Boston-based firm operated across the Pacific and Atlantic, intertwining legitimate trade with narcotics trafficking in ways that were legal at the time but carried consequences measured in human suffering across continents. The respectability he later cultivated through philanthropy in Boston made him a study in how the origins of great wealth can be absorbed into civic legend.
From Wikipedia
Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, also known as T. H. Perkins (December 15, 1764 – January 11, 1854), was an American merchant, slave trader, smuggler and philanthropist from a wealthy Boston Brahmin family. Starting with bequests from his grandfather and father-in-law, he amassed a huge fortune. As a young man, he traded slaves in Saint-Domingue, worked as a maritime fur trader trading furs from the American Northwest to China, and then turned to smuggling Turkish opium into China. His philanthropic contributions include the Perkins School for the Blind, renamed in his honor; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; McLean Hospital; along with having a hand in founding the Massachusetts General Hospital.
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