Albert Henry Baba Cipriani, II

Albert Henry (Baba) Cipriani was qualified as an engineer, but made a fortune for himself in cocoa. He bought Perseverance estate from Dr. George Latour and in the 1920s added many embellishments to it, living there in extravagant style. (Olga Mavrogordato Informant) He became a director of Gordon Grant and as a businessman he was apparently quite astute, diversifying out of cocoa just in time to avoid the recession in the cocoa economy in 1929. He had also invested in the sugar industry and became a millionaire many times over. A visionary, his plans and schemes included the draining of the Caroni Swamp for planting food crops and a railway to Chaguaramas Bay. The Caroni Swamp drainage scheme fell through and he and many others lost large sums of money. He eventually lost Perseverance estate and was forced to sell to an Englishman, one James Evans. (Ibid)