John Gomersall Platt (1938-2025) grew up in Cheshire and was educated at The King’s School, Macclesfield. Platt completed two years’ National Service with the Royal Navy, 1956-1958, serving for a period in the Caribbean, and visiting, amongst others, Jamaica, Trinidad and British Guiana [Guyana]. He began but never completed a degree at Keble College, Oxford, instead beginning his career at the Bank of America as a foreign exchange clerk and then at the Western Hemisphere Department of the London Chamber of Commerce. In January 1964, Platt was appointed on a two-year contract as Assistant Secretary to the Resident Board of the Booker Group in Georgetown, British Guiana. Having returned to Britain at the end of 1965, Platt was invited to join the Milton Keynes Development Corporation by its chairman, Lord Campbell of Eskan [Jock Campbell, 1912-1994], who had recently retired as chairman of Booker Bros, McConnell Ltd. Platt retired on the closure of the Corporation in 1992, having served over the years as Assistant Secretary, Information Unit Manager and Secretary to the Board. Platt began researching the early history of Booker Bros in the mid-1960s in Georgetown, only returning seriously to his research from 2000 onwards. He produced various draft histories, including a final, unpublished draft in 2015, and accumulated a mass of research notes. John Platt died in Louth, Lincolnshire, in 2025.

Josias Booker was the first Booker brother to travel to Demerara circa 1815, becoming Attorney and Manager of Broom Hall in 1818. However, he returned to Liverpool in 1827 where he established his own merchant firm. Booker Bros & Company, Demerara was established as a merchant house by George Booker in 1834, in partnership with his younger brother Richard. The business partners also owned sugar plantations, although there was little significant plantation ownership until the 1850s. The first entry into estate ownership in Berbice was the purchase of Rose Hall in 1872. Booker Bros & Company grew dramatically in the 1870s, quadrupling in size between 1860 and 1889. Booker Bros & Co [Demerara], George Booker & Co [Liverpool] and John McConnell & Co [London] were formally merged in 1900 to form the private limited liability company Booker Bros, McConnell & Co Ltd, becoming a Public Limited Company in 1921. Jock Campbell took over as leader of the group in 1945, following a 1939 merger with his family firm (Curtis Campbell) and he aimed to modernise and reform the business. ‘Bookers’ was eventually nationalised by the Guyanese Government in 1976. The UK based Booker corporate business evolved into a giant domestic food wholesaler, and is now owned by Tesco PLC. Compiling a detailed history of the company up to 1900 is difficult: most early company records were lost in Georgetown fires and in the German Blitzkrieg, which destroyed both the London and Liverpool offices of Booker Bros, McConnell and Co Ltd. Similarly, two early 20th century attempts at recording the story of the early years of ‘Bookers’ were lost.