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Gustavus Vassa / Olaudah Equiano - B/Ham connection
- Thread starter Aidan
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Thylacine
master brummie
[Aidan, thanks for that fascinating find! I've transcribed it (for those with eyes like mine):]
Liverpool Mercury (25 July 1828).
Poetry.
The Third Report of that most interesting body, The Female Society of Birmingham, &c, for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, has just reached us. We have not yet had leisure to peruse it, but we shall not fail to notice its contents in the next Mercury and Kaleidoscope. In the meantime, we shall here insert the introductory address.
The Slave's Address to British Ladies.
Natives of a land of glory,
Daughters of the good and brave,
Hear the injured Negro's story,
Hear, and help the kneeling Slave.
Think, how nought but death can sever
Your lov'd children from your hold;
Still alive — but lost for ever —
Ours are parted, bought and sold!
Seize the ev'ry favouring season —
Scorning censure or applause;
Justice, Truth, Religion, Reason,
Are your Leaders in the cause!
Follow! — faithful, firm, confiding, —
Spread our wrongs from shore to shore;
Mercy's God your efforts guiding,
Slavery shall be known no more.
Susannah Watts.
Liverpool Mercury (25 July 1828).
Poetry.
The Third Report of that most interesting body, The Female Society of Birmingham, &c, for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, has just reached us. We have not yet had leisure to peruse it, but we shall not fail to notice its contents in the next Mercury and Kaleidoscope. In the meantime, we shall here insert the introductory address.
The Slave's Address to British Ladies.
Natives of a land of glory,
Daughters of the good and brave,
Hear the injured Negro's story,
Hear, and help the kneeling Slave.
Think, how nought but death can sever
Your lov'd children from your hold;
Still alive — but lost for ever —
Ours are parted, bought and sold!
Seize the ev'ry favouring season —
Scorning censure or applause;
Justice, Truth, Religion, Reason,
Are your Leaders in the cause!
Follow! — faithful, firm, confiding, —
Spread our wrongs from shore to shore;
Mercy's God your efforts guiding,
Slavery shall be known no more.
Susannah Watts.
Thylacine
master brummie
Susanna(h) Watts was a very interesting Leicester bluestocking, abolitionist and pioneering animal rights activist. Here is her biography (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), with links to archive.org e-texts where found:
Watts, Susanna (baptised 1768, died 1842), writer and translator, was born in Leicester, and baptized on 5 July 1768, the youngest of three daughters (the two elder of whom died young from tuberculosis) of John Watts, the last of an impoverished genteel family (related to Alaric A Watts), and his wife, Joan née Clarke (died 1807), an 'uneducated country girl' whom he had married for her beauty. Susanna's father died when she was a baby. To support her mother, she learned French and Italian in order to teach and translate. Her remarkable landscapes composed of feathers won a medal from the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.
Susanna Watts's first book was Chinese maxims, translated from [Robert Dodsley's] The oeconomy of human life, into heroic verse (1784). Specimens of her verse translations of Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, and Verri, Roman Nights, circulated to warm critical praise; but 'unforeseen circumstance' prevented their publication. She wrote a scholarly life to preface the Tasso, and clearly identified with his confinement and melancholy. She wrote for public occasions and for magazines, 'fagging and scribbling whole summers & winters' (Watts, scrapbook, 2.166). Her Original Poems, and Translations, Particularly Ambra, from Lorenzo de'Medici (1802) includes some items by others. Her pioneer guidebook, A Walk through Leicester (1804) [Project Gutenberg version], remained anonymous until her death. Maria Edgeworth mentions, in 1802, that Watts had sold a four-volume novel (untraced) to William Lane for 10 guineas and that Richard Lovell Edgeworth doubted her talent too much to recommend her to the publisher Joseph Johnson; Watts seems to have kept a copy of Maria Edgeworth's condescending letter.
About 1806 Susanna Watts's mother became insane; next year a relative of her friend Elizabeth Heyrick secured her £20 from the Royal Literary Fund. Her mother died soon afterwards. She supported herself by teaching little girls, and, with Heyrick, won local fame for philanthropy: when slaves were emancipated in 1834, she was fêted. She published in many forms (often with wit and playfulness) against slavery and cruelty to animals, and founded (circa 1828) and held office in a Society for the Relief of Indigent Old Age. Her anthology of poems for children, The Selector (1823), ranges eclectically from Alexander Pope to Lord Byron and Jane Taylor. A well-kept secret until recently has been Watts's The Wonderful Travels of Prince Fan-Feredin, in the Country of Arcadia (1799), well reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine. She translated this from the French of 1735 (reprinted 1788) of G H Bougeant. The book is a spirited and intricate blend of romance and mock romance. Watts's anti-slavery periodical, the Humming Bird (twelve numbers, 1824–1825), shows equal panache. The professed editors are the three sisters Truth, Common Sense, and Philanthropy; when the magazine passes comment on pro-slavery views, Philanthropy is represented as so angry that Common Sense has to censor her. With Elizabeth Heyrick, Watts initiated an abolitionist sugar boycott in Leicester in 1824 — canvassing grocers rather than consumers — and by June 1825 almost one quarter of Leicester's population had given up sugar.
On Watts's death an anonymous memoir appeared in a volume of her Hymns and Poems (1842). A better picture of her lively intellectual life emerges from her scrapbook. This begins with her Tasso and diverges into immense variety — from poems (manuscript and printed, by herself and many others), mementoes, statistics, portraits (many of women writers), and data on Hindu and Arabic languages, to diagrams of the hold of a slave ship. She died in Leicester on 11 February 1842 and was buried at St Mary de Castro Church on 15 February. She was unmarried.
Another of her works is: The Insects in Council, Addressed to Entomologists, With Other Poems (London: Hurst, Chance & Co and Leicester: A Cockshaw, 1828). See also "Women Arise" (part of Leicestershire County Council's "Long Road to Freedom" online exhibition), which has a copy of the only known picture of Susanna Watts (attached below).Susanna Watts's first book was Chinese maxims, translated from [Robert Dodsley's] The oeconomy of human life, into heroic verse (1784). Specimens of her verse translations of Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, and Verri, Roman Nights, circulated to warm critical praise; but 'unforeseen circumstance' prevented their publication. She wrote a scholarly life to preface the Tasso, and clearly identified with his confinement and melancholy. She wrote for public occasions and for magazines, 'fagging and scribbling whole summers & winters' (Watts, scrapbook, 2.166). Her Original Poems, and Translations, Particularly Ambra, from Lorenzo de'Medici (1802) includes some items by others. Her pioneer guidebook, A Walk through Leicester (1804) [Project Gutenberg version], remained anonymous until her death. Maria Edgeworth mentions, in 1802, that Watts had sold a four-volume novel (untraced) to William Lane for 10 guineas and that Richard Lovell Edgeworth doubted her talent too much to recommend her to the publisher Joseph Johnson; Watts seems to have kept a copy of Maria Edgeworth's condescending letter.
About 1806 Susanna Watts's mother became insane; next year a relative of her friend Elizabeth Heyrick secured her £20 from the Royal Literary Fund. Her mother died soon afterwards. She supported herself by teaching little girls, and, with Heyrick, won local fame for philanthropy: when slaves were emancipated in 1834, she was fêted. She published in many forms (often with wit and playfulness) against slavery and cruelty to animals, and founded (circa 1828) and held office in a Society for the Relief of Indigent Old Age. Her anthology of poems for children, The Selector (1823), ranges eclectically from Alexander Pope to Lord Byron and Jane Taylor. A well-kept secret until recently has been Watts's The Wonderful Travels of Prince Fan-Feredin, in the Country of Arcadia (1799), well reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine. She translated this from the French of 1735 (reprinted 1788) of G H Bougeant. The book is a spirited and intricate blend of romance and mock romance. Watts's anti-slavery periodical, the Humming Bird (twelve numbers, 1824–1825), shows equal panache. The professed editors are the three sisters Truth, Common Sense, and Philanthropy; when the magazine passes comment on pro-slavery views, Philanthropy is represented as so angry that Common Sense has to censor her. With Elizabeth Heyrick, Watts initiated an abolitionist sugar boycott in Leicester in 1824 — canvassing grocers rather than consumers — and by June 1825 almost one quarter of Leicester's population had given up sugar.
On Watts's death an anonymous memoir appeared in a volume of her Hymns and Poems (1842). A better picture of her lively intellectual life emerges from her scrapbook. This begins with her Tasso and diverges into immense variety — from poems (manuscript and printed, by herself and many others), mementoes, statistics, portraits (many of women writers), and data on Hindu and Arabic languages, to diagrams of the hold of a slave ship. She died in Leicester on 11 February 1842 and was buried at St Mary de Castro Church on 15 February. She was unmarried.
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Thylacine
master brummie
[Here are the biographies (both by Clare Midgley and from the ODNB) of the founders of the Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the Female Society for Birmingham etc and the Ladies' Negro's Friend Society). What remarkable women!]
Lloyd [née Honeychurch], Mary (1795–1865), slavery abolitionist, was born on 12 March 1795 in Falmouth, the younger of the two daughters of Joseph Honeychurch (1735?–1818), a cooper, and his wife, Jane (1753?–1803), daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Treffry of Beerferris, Devon. Her parents were Quakers and her mother was a minister in the Society of Friends.
Mary's mother died when she was only eight, and a few years later her father became ill and she spent ten lonely years nursing him. After her father's death she stayed with a succession of relatives (at Camp Hill near Birmingham, Neath in Wales, and then Plymouth) before her marriage on 12 November 1823 to Samuel Lloyd (1795–1862). Samuel was a member of a prominent midlands Quaker family and was head of the firm of Lloyds, Foster & Co, which owned an iron foundry and a colliery at Wednesbury in Staffordshire. The couple initially lived at The Crescent, Birmingham, but soon settled in Wood Green, near Wednesbury. Mary Lloyd gave birth to nine children between 1824 and 1839, of whom one died aged only thirteen.
Mary Lloyd is best known as co-secretary of the first women's anti-slavery society in Britain. Women's contributions to the anti-slavery movement in Britain received little attention from historians until the late 1980s, being generally dismissed as small in scale, local in impact, and merely supportive in function, but since this date studies have demonstrated the distinctiveness and national significance of the activities of female anti-slavery societies. The Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the Female Society for Birmingham [etc] for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, then the Ladies' Negro's Friend Society) was founded on 8 April 1825 and Mary Lloyd joined her friend Lucy Townsend (died 1847) as joint secretary of the new society. The society was from its foundation independent of both the national Anti-Slavery Society and of the local men's anti-slavery society, in which Mary's husband, Samuel, was involved. It acted as the hub of a developing national network of female anti-slavery societies, rather than as a local auxiliary. It also had important international connections, and, through links with Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, it influenced the formation of the first female anti-slavery societies in America. Under Mary Lloyd's and Lucy Townsend's leadership, the society developed the distinctive forms of female anti-slavery activity, involving an emphasis on the sufferings of women under slavery, systematic promotion of abstention from slave-grown sugar through door-to-door canvassing, and the production of innovative forms of propaganda, such as albums containing anti-slavery poems, engravings, and tracts, and work bags embroidered with anti-slavery emblems. The society was at the height of its influence during the 1823–1833 campaign against British colonial slavery. From 1839 it aligned itself with the newly formed British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and combined support for the universal abolition movement with support for educational work among freed slaves. The society continued to be active until 1919, at which time its secretary was Mary Lloyd's daughter Sara Wilson Sturge.
Mary Lloyd maintained her commitment to the anti-slavery cause until her death, acting as secretary of the society into the 1830s, and as treasurer from the 1840s to 1861, and continuing to collect funds and preside at annual meetings until her death. She was also active in many other organizations. She set up a benevolent society, a mothers' meeting, and a provident society to help the local poor, and in 1834 she and Lucy Townsend set up a Juvenile Association in Aid of Uninstructed Deaf Mutes. In 1841 she was recorded as a minister in the Society of Friends and over the next twenty years she travelled to Quaker meetings throughout the United Kingdom as well as addressing local public meetings.
Supported emotionally and financially by her husband, Mary Lloyd thus successfully combined raising a large family with demanding religious and philanthropic commitments requiring leadership qualities, organizational skills, and a facility for public speaking. A portrait of her in her forties shows a woman with angular facial features wearing typical Quaker attire and holding a book inscribed 'The Chain is broken Africa is free Aug 21st 1839'. Mary Lloyd died on 25 January 1865 at Wood Green, near Wednesbury, Staffordshire, and she was buried on 1 February in Birmingham.
Townsend [née Jesse], Lucy (1781–1847), slavery abolitionist, was born on 25 July 1781, the daughter of William Jesse, a Church of England clergyman in West Bromwich, Staffordshire. On 6 July 1807 she married the Reverend Charles Townsend (1780–1865), rector of Calstone, Wiltshire, and perpetual curate of West Bromwich, Staffordshire; they had at least three daughters and three sons.
Charles Townsend was an anti-slavery campaigner, and his wife too became active in the movement. The Ladies' Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the Female Society for Birmingham [etc] for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, then the Ladies' Negro's Friend Society) was founded at a meeting held at her home in West Bromwich on 8 April 1825. Lucy Townsend and Mary Lloyd, whom she had met at meetings of the Bible Society, became joint secretaries of the society which was, from its foundation, independent of both the national Anti-Slavery Society and of the local men's anti-slavery society. It acted as the hub of a developing national network of female anti-slavery societies, rather than as a local auxiliary. It also had important international connections, and publicity on its activities in Benjamin Lundy's abolitionist periodical The Genius of Universal Emancipation influenced the formation of the first female anti-slavery societies in America.
Under Lucy Townsend's and Mary Lloyd's leadership the society developed the distinctive forms of female anti-slavery activity, involving an emphasis on the sufferings of women under slavery, systematic promotion of abstention from slave-grown sugar through door-to-door canvassing, and the production of innovative forms of propaganda, such as albums containing tracts, poems, and illustrations, embroidered anti-slavery workbags, and seals bearing the motto 'Am I not a woman and a sister?'. The society was at the height of its influence during the 1823–1833 campaign against British colonial slavery, which culminated in the passage of the Emancipation Act in 1833. From 1839 it aligned itself with the newly formed British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and combined support for the universal abolition movement with support for educational work among freed slaves; the society continued to be active until 1919. Lucy Townsend acted as joint secretary of the society until 1836, resigning this post when she moved with her husband to Thorpe, Nottinghamshire, but continuing as a committee member until at least 1845. She was the author of an anti-slavery pamphlet To the Law and to the Testimony (1832).
While anti-slavery was her main concern Lucy Townsend was also involved in a variety of other voluntary activities. With Mary Lloyd she established the Juvenile Association for West Bromwich and Wednesbury in Aid of Uninstructed Deaf Mutes in 1834, and she was also involved in Dorcas meetings, in the Ladies' Bible Association, and, with her husband, in campaigns to abolish bull baiting and other cruel sports.
Lucy Townsend was founder and co-secretary of the first women's anti-slavery society in Britain. Women's contributions to the anti-slavery movement in Britain received little attention from historians until the late 1980s, but their national significance and distinctive contributions to both the ideology and campaigning methods of the movement are now apparent. There are no known portraits of Lucy Townsend, despite the attempt by her friend and fellow campaigner Anne Knight to persuade her that, as 'the person who established woman agency' in the movement and 'the chief lady' of the anti-slavery campaign, she should 'in justice to history and posterity' put herself forward for inclusion in B R Haydon's commemorative group portrait of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention (A Knight to L Townsend, 20 Sept 1840; Townsend, 'Autographs', MSS Brit Emps, vol 5, 102). She was described by her fellow anti-slavery campaigners as skilful in devising plans and prompt in their execution, as energetic and persistent, and as successful in stimulating others to action. Lucy Townsend died on 20 April 1847 at the rectory at Thorpe, near Southwell, in Nottinghamshire.
[Attached below is a picture of Mary Lloyd — can anyone find a better version?]
Lloyd [née Honeychurch], Mary (1795–1865), slavery abolitionist, was born on 12 March 1795 in Falmouth, the younger of the two daughters of Joseph Honeychurch (1735?–1818), a cooper, and his wife, Jane (1753?–1803), daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Treffry of Beerferris, Devon. Her parents were Quakers and her mother was a minister in the Society of Friends.
Mary's mother died when she was only eight, and a few years later her father became ill and she spent ten lonely years nursing him. After her father's death she stayed with a succession of relatives (at Camp Hill near Birmingham, Neath in Wales, and then Plymouth) before her marriage on 12 November 1823 to Samuel Lloyd (1795–1862). Samuel was a member of a prominent midlands Quaker family and was head of the firm of Lloyds, Foster & Co, which owned an iron foundry and a colliery at Wednesbury in Staffordshire. The couple initially lived at The Crescent, Birmingham, but soon settled in Wood Green, near Wednesbury. Mary Lloyd gave birth to nine children between 1824 and 1839, of whom one died aged only thirteen.
Mary Lloyd is best known as co-secretary of the first women's anti-slavery society in Britain. Women's contributions to the anti-slavery movement in Britain received little attention from historians until the late 1980s, being generally dismissed as small in scale, local in impact, and merely supportive in function, but since this date studies have demonstrated the distinctiveness and national significance of the activities of female anti-slavery societies. The Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the Female Society for Birmingham [etc] for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, then the Ladies' Negro's Friend Society) was founded on 8 April 1825 and Mary Lloyd joined her friend Lucy Townsend (died 1847) as joint secretary of the new society. The society was from its foundation independent of both the national Anti-Slavery Society and of the local men's anti-slavery society, in which Mary's husband, Samuel, was involved. It acted as the hub of a developing national network of female anti-slavery societies, rather than as a local auxiliary. It also had important international connections, and, through links with Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, it influenced the formation of the first female anti-slavery societies in America. Under Mary Lloyd's and Lucy Townsend's leadership, the society developed the distinctive forms of female anti-slavery activity, involving an emphasis on the sufferings of women under slavery, systematic promotion of abstention from slave-grown sugar through door-to-door canvassing, and the production of innovative forms of propaganda, such as albums containing anti-slavery poems, engravings, and tracts, and work bags embroidered with anti-slavery emblems. The society was at the height of its influence during the 1823–1833 campaign against British colonial slavery. From 1839 it aligned itself with the newly formed British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and combined support for the universal abolition movement with support for educational work among freed slaves. The society continued to be active until 1919, at which time its secretary was Mary Lloyd's daughter Sara Wilson Sturge.
Mary Lloyd maintained her commitment to the anti-slavery cause until her death, acting as secretary of the society into the 1830s, and as treasurer from the 1840s to 1861, and continuing to collect funds and preside at annual meetings until her death. She was also active in many other organizations. She set up a benevolent society, a mothers' meeting, and a provident society to help the local poor, and in 1834 she and Lucy Townsend set up a Juvenile Association in Aid of Uninstructed Deaf Mutes. In 1841 she was recorded as a minister in the Society of Friends and over the next twenty years she travelled to Quaker meetings throughout the United Kingdom as well as addressing local public meetings.
Supported emotionally and financially by her husband, Mary Lloyd thus successfully combined raising a large family with demanding religious and philanthropic commitments requiring leadership qualities, organizational skills, and a facility for public speaking. A portrait of her in her forties shows a woman with angular facial features wearing typical Quaker attire and holding a book inscribed 'The Chain is broken Africa is free Aug 21st 1839'. Mary Lloyd died on 25 January 1865 at Wood Green, near Wednesbury, Staffordshire, and she was buried on 1 February in Birmingham.
Townsend [née Jesse], Lucy (1781–1847), slavery abolitionist, was born on 25 July 1781, the daughter of William Jesse, a Church of England clergyman in West Bromwich, Staffordshire. On 6 July 1807 she married the Reverend Charles Townsend (1780–1865), rector of Calstone, Wiltshire, and perpetual curate of West Bromwich, Staffordshire; they had at least three daughters and three sons.
Charles Townsend was an anti-slavery campaigner, and his wife too became active in the movement. The Ladies' Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the Female Society for Birmingham [etc] for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, then the Ladies' Negro's Friend Society) was founded at a meeting held at her home in West Bromwich on 8 April 1825. Lucy Townsend and Mary Lloyd, whom she had met at meetings of the Bible Society, became joint secretaries of the society which was, from its foundation, independent of both the national Anti-Slavery Society and of the local men's anti-slavery society. It acted as the hub of a developing national network of female anti-slavery societies, rather than as a local auxiliary. It also had important international connections, and publicity on its activities in Benjamin Lundy's abolitionist periodical The Genius of Universal Emancipation influenced the formation of the first female anti-slavery societies in America.
Under Lucy Townsend's and Mary Lloyd's leadership the society developed the distinctive forms of female anti-slavery activity, involving an emphasis on the sufferings of women under slavery, systematic promotion of abstention from slave-grown sugar through door-to-door canvassing, and the production of innovative forms of propaganda, such as albums containing tracts, poems, and illustrations, embroidered anti-slavery workbags, and seals bearing the motto 'Am I not a woman and a sister?'. The society was at the height of its influence during the 1823–1833 campaign against British colonial slavery, which culminated in the passage of the Emancipation Act in 1833. From 1839 it aligned itself with the newly formed British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and combined support for the universal abolition movement with support for educational work among freed slaves; the society continued to be active until 1919. Lucy Townsend acted as joint secretary of the society until 1836, resigning this post when she moved with her husband to Thorpe, Nottinghamshire, but continuing as a committee member until at least 1845. She was the author of an anti-slavery pamphlet To the Law and to the Testimony (1832).
While anti-slavery was her main concern Lucy Townsend was also involved in a variety of other voluntary activities. With Mary Lloyd she established the Juvenile Association for West Bromwich and Wednesbury in Aid of Uninstructed Deaf Mutes in 1834, and she was also involved in Dorcas meetings, in the Ladies' Bible Association, and, with her husband, in campaigns to abolish bull baiting and other cruel sports.
Lucy Townsend was founder and co-secretary of the first women's anti-slavery society in Britain. Women's contributions to the anti-slavery movement in Britain received little attention from historians until the late 1980s, but their national significance and distinctive contributions to both the ideology and campaigning methods of the movement are now apparent. There are no known portraits of Lucy Townsend, despite the attempt by her friend and fellow campaigner Anne Knight to persuade her that, as 'the person who established woman agency' in the movement and 'the chief lady' of the anti-slavery campaign, she should 'in justice to history and posterity' put herself forward for inclusion in B R Haydon's commemorative group portrait of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention (A Knight to L Townsend, 20 Sept 1840; Townsend, 'Autographs', MSS Brit Emps, vol 5, 102). She was described by her fellow anti-slavery campaigners as skilful in devising plans and prompt in their execution, as energetic and persistent, and as successful in stimulating others to action. Lucy Townsend died on 20 April 1847 at the rectory at Thorpe, near Southwell, in Nottinghamshire.
[Attached below is a picture of Mary Lloyd — can anyone find a better version?]
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Thylacine
master brummie
Getting back to our "main man" Olaudah Equiano: on 7 April 1792 he married Susan (or Susanna) Cullen of Soham, Cambridgeshire (where they settled). There were two daughters: Ann Maria (or Ann Mary 1794-1797) and Joanna (born 1795). In 1816, on attaining her majority, Joanna Equiano inherited her father's estate of £1,000. As recently as October 2004, it was discovered that Joanna Equiano's grave is at Stoke Newington cemetery: see N16mag.com.
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