What prompted prominent American Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to say, “Mrs Heyrick was the highly respected, talented and uncompromising friend of liberty…”?
Two hundred years ago, in 1824, Elizabeth Heyrick published “Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition: or an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery,” which began:
“It is now seventeen years since the Slave Trade was abolished by the Government of this country – but Slavery is still perpetrated in our West India Colonies, and the horrors of the Slave Trade are aggravated rather than mitigated.”
Elizabeth Heyrick went on to argue:
“By making it felony for British subjects to be concerned in that inhuman traffic, England has only transferred her share of it to other countries. She has, indeed, by negotiation and remonstrance, endeavoured to persuade them to follow her example. But has she succeeded? How should she while there is so little consistency in her conduct? Who will listen to her pathetic declamations on the injustice and cruelty of the Slave Trade – whilst she rivets the chains upon her own slaves, and subjects them to all the injustice and cruelty which she so eloquently deplores, when her own interest is no longer at stake?”
England needed to get its own house in order before it could attempt to influence other countries to outlaw slavery. However, the main, male-dominated, abolitionist groups at the time were campaigning for a gradual abolition, over a period of decades. One of the chief campaigners, William Wilberforce, was resistant to women becoming involved in anti-slavery campaigns. Their logic was that the trading of slaves had been outlawed in 1807 so the ownership of slaves would naturally come to an end as the current generation of slaves passed on. However, this ignored the fact that not only were the slaves owned by their masters, but the slaves’ children were too, so they would grow up to replace their parents. As they were not traded, it would not be illegal to keep them as slaves. Away in the colonies, there was little deterrent for plantation owners to illegally trade slaves and those illegally traded had no funds to seek legal remedies.
Elizabeth Heyrick was very much alive to these possibilities:
“But a natural death, it never will die. It must be crushed at once, or not at all.”
She not writing from a position of ignorance. Although, on widowhood, she had an independent income, she was the daughter of a hosiery manufacturer and aware of the impact on business of the costs of wages. She’d also witnessed workers’ revolts against mechanical looms and spinning jennies that they thought would take away their jobs in a time when there were no welfare benefits. For the working class, to be jobless was to be destitute. In 1787, when Elizabeth Heyrick was in her late teens, she and her family had to leave her home for two weeks as a mob of rioters gathered outside to protest. The mob dispersed when her father promised to drop his plans to introduce a mechanical spinning jenny.
Elizabeth Heyrick believed that workers should have a fair wage and felt that:
“The interests and prejudices of the West Indian planters have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion of this great question. The abolitionists have shown a great deal too much politeness and accommodation towards these gentlemen… And is that a consideration to stand in competition with the liberation of eight hundred thousand of our fellow creatures from the heavy yoke of slavery? Must hundreds of thousands of human beings continue to be disinherited of these inherent rights of humanity, without which, life becomes a curse instead of a blessing;”
Elizabeth Heyrick felt that only immediate emancipation was the moral course:
“If compensation be demanded as an act of justice to the slave-holder, in the event of the liberation of his slaves; let justice take her free, impartial course; let compensation be first made to the slave, for his long years of uncompensated labour, degradation and suffering. It is in this quarter, that justice cries aloud for compensation, - and if our attention is turned, but for a moment, to these two substantial and well authenticated claims, - the demands of the slave-holder (even had they been couched in terms less arrogant and insulting) will become not a little questionable.”
Although the word “racism” was not in use in Elizabeth Heyrick’s time, she was alert to the concept. In her later pamphlet, “No British Slavery or An Invitation to the People to Put a Speedy End to it”, she observed:
"A West Indian or British slave is distinguished from his master by his black skin and is considered and treated by him not as a human being but as a beast of burden, who he buys and sells like cattle in a market...."
“Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition: or an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery,” was published anonymously. This was in keeping with the practices of the time. It was considered unseemly for women to publish their writing under their own names.
Publications also need readers. Elizabeth Heyrick was able to access two key networks often seen as secondary and inferior to the male abolitionist efforts. She was a Quaker and made trips to friends in Derbyshire and Yorkshire and beyond, enabling her to distribute her pamphlets among Quaker meetings as they were sympathetic to abolitionist aims. The second network was the women’s abolitionist groups and societies, whose part in history has been underestimated. With her friend, Susanna Watts, Elizabeth Heyrick founded the Leicester women’s abolitionist group. She also joined the Birmingham Ladies Society, one of the largest in the country where she was elected Treasurer.
Elizabeth Heyrick also took to Leicester’s streets, encouraging households to take part in the consumer boycott of West Indian and slave produced goods. She didn’t just target consumers but also grocers, urging them not to stock slave-produced goods, and confectioners who were among the biggest purchasers of sugar.
An American edition of “Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition: or an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery,” was published in 1825. Initial publications were also anonymous, but the pamphlet was credited with inspiring key abolitionists included William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass, who is quoted as saying that Elizabeth Heyrick had the
“head of a prophetess, and the heart of an angel ... She taught that what is right, is reasonable; and that what ought to be done, can be done, and that immediate emancipation was the right of the slave and the duty of the master. Her heavenly counsel was heeded.”
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