Abolition of Slavery

At our February meeting Brian Payne talked us about all the work done to achieve the Parliamentary Act to Abolish Slavery in 1807.
He began by speaking of the Clarkson Family.
Thomas Clarkson senior was headmaster at the Wisbech Grammer school & was curate at the Walsoken Church. He & his wife Ann had two sons, Thomas Clarkson junior & his brother John.
Thomas Junior was a book loving man & started his training for the church at the St.John’s College Cambridge, & eventually reached the position of Deacon.
John was the adventurous son & eventually took to the sea as a ship’s captain.
Whilst Thomas was at Magdelin College the Master set an essay competition & Thomas entered with an essay entitled ‘Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their wills’.
He won the competition & attended several meetings about this subject & on a journey to London he was considering what he had written & received what he believed was Divine intervention & knew that ‘God wanted him to follow through his belief about the urgent need to stop human slavery’
So he started to call on other bodies to help in his task in getting slavery abolished.
Thomas travelled to America & the Caribbean & saw for himself the terrible living & working conditions of the slaves.
He met with disapproval from all quarters such as sugar plantation owners & the owners of the ships that carried the slaves.
He needed support from parliament & was helped amongst others by William Wilberforce M.P.
Eventually The Act was passed with a small majority on 25th March 1807 & The Royal Assent obtained.
It was thirty years before the Act became in any way effective.
Ships captains were fined £100 for each slave they were found to be carrying in their ships & if approached at sea by the authorities the slaves would be thrown overboard.
Brian then told us that the chest of artefacts brought back by Thomas Clarkson from his travels abroad is on display at the Wisbech museum & that in this 200th year celebration it was being loaned to the London Westminster Palace. Throughout this year many activities are being arranged locally & elsewhere to celebrate the work of Thomas Clarkson including the refurbishment of Clarkson Statue situated near the river in Wisbech. 1807 was the beginning …the end is still not in sight.
[Barbara Holmes]