Section 5

Resistance to Slavery: Baptists, Boycotts, Burchell and

Sharpe

Plaque on the memorial Cedar Tree planted in 2009 on Stoke Newington Common by Hackney Council.

Image © Local Roots / Global Routes project

Destruction of Roehampton Estate, St. James, Property of J. Baillie Esq. January 1832.

Image © the British Library

Samuel Sharpe Memorial, Montego Bay, St. James, Jamaica,photograph by D. Ramey Logan.

Josiah Wedgewood designed the emblem for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The emblem was reproduced on pottery and tea sets that would then act as discussion points to raise awareness of

slavery. Abolitionist plate, c.1830, ZBA2468. Image © National Maritime Museum.

Cease, Wilberforce, to urge thy generous aim!

Thy Country knows the sin, and stands the shame! The Preacher, Poet, Senator in vain Has rattled in her sight the Negro's chain; With his deep groans assail'd her startled ear, And rent the veil that hid his constant tear; Forc'd her averted eyes his stripes to scan, Beneath the bloody scourge laid bare the man, Claimed Pity's tear, urged Conscience' strong controul,

And flash'd conviction on her shrinking soul.

Extract from Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s poem ‘Epistle To William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the

Slave Trade’ (1791).

Quakers campaigning against slavery led a nationwide boycott of sugar produced by enslaved Africans. Three to four thousand people took part in

the campaign, many of whom were women and children. Image © Norfolk Museum and Archaeology Service.

‘I am at length become a practical anti-saccharist. I could not continue to be the only person in the family who used a luxury

which grows less and less sweet from the suffering mingled with it’ Fragment of letter from Dr John Aikin to his sister Mrs Letitia

Barbauld, 28 November 1791. Image © Hackney Archives

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