George Canning Backhouse (1818-1855) graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1838 and worked as a clerk in the Foreign Office. In December 1852 he was appointed Commissary Judge in the Havana Mixed Commission for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. He and his wife, Grace, and infant daughter Alice, arrived in Havana, Cuba in March 1853. A second child, John Sandham, was born there in October 1853. Grace and her two young children returned to England for an extended holiday in April 1855. She was pregnant and their third child, Beatrice Margaret was born in England in July 1855. George was murdered in his house in Havana by two intruders in August 1855. He was buried in Cuba but his remains were exhumed the following year and he was re-interred in Kensall Green cemetery in November 1856. His widow married Reverend William Jeudwine in 1861 and they had one son, Hugh Sandham.