Abolitionists
In 1787 twelve men met in a printing shop at 2 George Yard, London EC3, where a modern high rise now stands, to set up The Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.
Voices raised against the slave trade were rare in Europe and America at this time but, on both sides of the Atlantic, there had been discussion of the issue for several years and small groups of both black and white activists had formed in London to challenge the legality of the trade.
The Committee became a campaigning society and was to grow over the next twenty years into one of Britain’s biggest ever mass political movements and single-issue parliamentary lobbying campaigns. Those supporting Abolition boycotted slave-grown produce, invented new ways to publicise their views such as badges and iconic images, and delivered enormous petitions to the House of Commons – tactics which have been re-used many times since by other political campaigns.
Although the purchase of slaves directly from Africa was made illegal under the Abolition Act of March 1807, the condition of slavery remained legal in the British Caribbean. It was not until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act passed through Parliament, coming into effect a year later. Even then, adult slaves were not automatically free but had to become "apprentices". Notionally, the 4-6 year apprenticeship would prepare former slaves for independent living, but many abolitionists saw these conditions as "but another name for slavery" because the apprentices received very low or no wages and were still subject to the excesses of plantation discipline. Public pressure led to the early abolition of apprenticeships on 1st August 1838.
An end to slavery in British Caribbean territories was not however a complete end to the involvement of British business in human trafficking that was carried out by other European powers throughout the Americas.
Abolitionist and author Granville Sharp (1735-1813), often called “the father of the Cause” by contemporaries, has a memorial in the churchyard at All Saints, Church Gate, Fulham, London SW6 where he is buried and another in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey.
His interest in the plight of Africans in England began with his encounter in 1765 with Jonathan Strong. Strong was a slave from Barbados, beaten and abandoned in London by his master who later attempted to kidnap him and send him back to the Caribbean. Sharp successfully defended Strong’s rights and those of other Africans as well.
Granville Sharp helped bring the case of James Somerset before Lord Mansfi eld in 1772 and was one of the founder members of the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.
Olaudah Equiano (about 1745-1797) wrote in his autobiography that he was enslaved as a child and bought by an English naval captain who named him Gustavus Vassa after a famous Swedish king. He was baptised at St Margaret's Church , St Margaret Street, Westminster SW1 in 1759 when his master brought him to Britain.
Equiano later fought in the Seven Years War as an able seaman in the British Navy, worked for a Montserrat-based Quaker travelling throughout the Caribbean, bought his freedom and worked as a hairdresser in London.
He became the defender of black interests, trying to prevent people from being kidnapped and sold into slavery and sometimes working with other black Londoners known as "The Sons of Africa". He was appointed commissary in the scheme to send hundreds of London's black poor to Sierra Leone, but left after exposing official corruption and ill-treatment of the migrants.
His autobiography, The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, told the story of enslavement from the point of view of the enslaved. It was a best-seller which helped strengthen the abolitionist campaign. Equiano spent the rest of his life travelling the country, promoting his book and speaking out against slavery. When his book was published in 1789, Equiano was living at a house on the site of 73 Riding House Street, Westminster, London W1 currently marked with a green plaque by Westminster Council.
Equiano married Susanna Cullen at St Andrew's Church, Soham, Cambridgeshire in 1792 and had two daughters. Anna Maria Vassa died when she was four, possibly from a measles epidemic, four months after her father, and is buried at St Andrew's Church, Chesterton, Cambridgeshire. A commemorative plaque is found on the side of the church. Joanna Vassa is buried in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington High Street, London.
Ottobah Cugoano (about 1757 - unknown) was a friend of Equiano and one of the first African Britons actively engaged in the campaign for the abolition of slavery.
His book, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, published in 1787, rejected all arguments that supported African enslavement.
From at least 1784 Cugoano had been employed as a servant by the fashionable painters Richard and Maria Cosway at their home, now Schomberg House, 81 Pall Mall, London SW1 which can be seen from the street. Cugoano was baptised in the name of John Stuart in 1773 at St James's Church, 197 Piccadilly, London W1 and used that name. Nothing is known of his life after 1791.
Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) was a leading abolitionist who, as founder and main researcher for the Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, travelled the country investigating the conditions on slave ships and interviewing sailors and ship’s surgeons, often at personal risk.
A monument at High Cross Hill, Thundridge, East Herts marks the spot where, in 1785, Clarkson resolved to devote his life to bringing about the abolition of the slave trade. Clarkson visited the main trading ports in England – at one point boarding 317 ships in London, Portsmouth and Plymouth in a single three-week period.
A Bristol City Council plaque at The Seven Stars pub, Thomas Lane, Redcliffe, Bristol, marks where Clarkson stayed in 1787 while gathering evidence. He made friends with Thompson the landlord, who passed on much valuable information from the seamen employed on slaving ships in Bristol.
Clarkson wrote many books and pamphlets on the slave trade as well as travelling all over the country to promote the campaign through boycotts and petitions. He travelled to France in 1789 and tried to persuade the revolutionaries to abolish the slave trade. After the slave trade was outlawed in 1807, he continued to campaign for the abolition of slavery, forming a new organisation with Thomas Fowell Buxton and organising an anti-slavery convention in 1830.
Clarkson came from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire where there is a memorial erected in 1880 to his memory . There is an obelisk outside and memorial inside St Mary's Church, Playford, Suffolk where he is buried.
Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) was born into slavery on a ship bound from Africa to the Americas. Brought to London as a young boy, he worked as a child slave for two sisters at Greenwich. He was named Sancho by them after Don Quixote's squire. The sisters did not believe in educating slaves but Sancho taught himself to read and write.
He eventually encountered the 2nd Duke of Montagu (1690-1749) who lived nearby at Blackheath. The duke took an interest in him, gave Sancho books and encouraged his mistresses to let him be educated. They continued to refuse, so Sancho ran away to the Montagus around 1749 where he eventually became butler to the duchess. When she died in 1751, leaving Sancho £70 and an annuity in her will, Sancho left the Montagus and developed a large circle of friends in the world of the theatre. He appeared on stage and was a musician and composer. His life is recorded in the large number of letters he wrote. Sancho counted Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, David Garrick and Thomas Gainsborough amongst his friends and correspondents.
Ignatius Sancho went back to the Montagus in 1758, acting as valet to the 3rd Duke and married Anne Osborne that year.He published a letter to Sterne in 1766 and Gainsborough painted his portrait in 1768, when Sancho’s reputation as a man of letters was growing. Sancho retired from service in 1773 and established himself as a grocer in what is now King Charles Street, Westminster, a site currently occupied by government buildings. He died in 1780 and his collected letters, which were influential in championing abolition and condemned the slave trade, were published. Sancho was buried at the former St Margaret’s Church in Broadway, Westminster. The small park on the Broadway, Westminster, London SW1 offers some information about him on a plaque.
Travelling Quaker speaker John Woolman (1720-1772), was one of the earliest objectors to slave ownership and came to England from New Jersey in 1772 to gain support from English Quakers. After receiving this in London he set off for York.
Woolman refused to use any slave plantation produce, including fabric dyes such as indigo, and so wore completely white clothes. He also opposed cruelty to animals and, as he believed coach horses were driven too hard, he travelled to York on foot. A memorial plaque can be seen from the street at Littlegarth, Marygate Lane, York where he stayed and later died of smallpox.
Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838) had been a bookkeeper on a Jamaican plantation and became very involved in the campaign to abolish the slave trade. Macaulay was a leading member of the "Clapham Sect", a group of Evangelical Anglicans, including William Wilberforce, who campaigned for social reforms such as the abolition of the slave trade. His home at 5 The Pavement, Clapham Common, SW4 is marked with a London County Council plaque.
In 1790 Macaulay went to Sierra Leone, to help emancipated slaves from Britain’s former American colonies who had gone to create a new settlement there, and came home on a slave ship to gather facts about conditions for the abolitionist campaign. He brought 21 boys and 4 girls back from Sierra Leone to be educated by the Clapham Sect in their African Academy. Sadly, many of the children were to die from measles once in London. One of the buildings occupied by the African Academy between 1799 and 1805 can be seen at The Rectory Centre, Rectory Lane, Clapham Old Town SW4 0EL.
Elected to the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade in 1804, he was a leading fi gure in the parliamentary campaign to ban the trade. In 1823 he helped organise the Anti-Slavery Society. Macaulay is buried at St George's Gardens, off Handel Street, Camden, London WC1.
Most famous as the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace", John Newton (1725-1807) captained two Liverpool slave ships in his youth. He embraced religion during this time and in 1755 gave up the sea for the church. He later developed deep regrets over his involvement in the slave trade and supported William Wilberforce in his abolition campaign.
He gave evidence to the Privy Council hearings on the trade and wrote a tract supporting abolition, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (1787).
He was curate at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Church Street, Olney, Bucks and from 1780-1807 Rector at St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London EC3, where there is a memorial to him inside the church.
Hull MP, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was the leader of the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade. While others, notably Clarkson, worked on gathering evidence and mobilizing public opinion through the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, Wilberforce complemented their work in the House of Commons. His house in Hull is now the Wilberforce House Museum.
Wilberforce was a member of the “Clapham Sect” of Evangelical Anglicans and often worshipped at Holy Trinity Church, Clapham Common North Side, London, where a Greater London Council plaque commemorates their campaigning work against slavery. Wilberforce had already begun to collect evidence about the slave trade before, in May 1787, his friend the Prime Minister William Pitt urged him to make the campaign his own, under the shade of what came to be called the “Wilberforce Oak” near Holwood House in Kent.
A London County Council plaque marks the site of Wilberforce’s London base throughout his campaign against the slave trade, Broomfield House, 111 Broomwood Road, London SW11, which can be seen from the street. At first, Wilberforce fought only to abolish the slave trade, but later supported the complete abolition of slavery, dying three days after Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. There is a monument to him in Westminster Abbey.
Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845), MP for Weymouth and social reformer, was asked by William Wilberforce to continue the campaign against slavery in Parliament when Wilberforce retired. He founded, with Wilberforce, the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1823.
He became vice-president of the Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1839 he established the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilisation of Africa. He is commemorated along with his fellow campaigners by the Buxton Memorial Fountain, put up by his son, which now stands in Victoria Tower Gardens, London W1 . A memorial statue of Fowell Buxton was put up by public subscription in Westminster Abbey. A plaque on the Friends' Meeting House, Upper Goat Lane, Norwich commemorates his life.
Joseph Sturge (1793-1859), a Quaker abolitionist, co-founded the Agency Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1831, which pressed for immediate and entire emancipation. Between 1836 and 1837, he travelled throughout the West Indies, gathering evidence to prove that the apprenticeship system was no different from slavery.
In 1840 he organised the World Anti-Slavery Convention. A statue commemorating him and his achievements stands in front of the Marriott Hotel, Five Ways, Birmingham. His sister, Sophia Sturge (1795-1845) was a co-founder of the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves.
Described as "Liverpool’s greatest citizen", William Roscoe (1753-1831) was MP for the city in 1806-7. He founded the Liverpool branch of the Anti-Slavery Society, helped to establish the African Institute and campaigned in parliament to ban the slave trade, despite violent protests against him.
A statue to him stands in St George’s Hall, Lime Street, Liverpool 0151 233 2457, and there is a memorial in the Roscoe Memorial Gardens, off Mount Pleasant, Liverpool.
Britain’s oldest memorial to the abolition of slavery, the Anti-Slavery Arch, Farmhill Road, Paganhill, Stroud, Gloucestershire, was erected in 1834 by Henry Wyatt (1793-1847) to celebrate the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
A supporter of the Stroud Anti-Slavery Society, Wyatt built the arch as an entrance to the carriage drive of his country house.
As Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, Charles Grey, (Earl Grey) (1764-1845) was responsible for seeing the act abolishing the African slave trade through parliament.
In 1833, as Prime Minister, Earl Grey led the government in enacting the law that was to end slavery in the Caribbean. Earl Grey was MP for Northumberland and a memorial to him was erected in the very centre of Newcastle, on Grey Street , in 1838.
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