Anti slavery manuscripts12/25/2023 However, direct appeals to children changed over time and widespread production of antislavery literature for children was common in 1820s and 1830s Britain. Those below the age of 14 were discouraged from signing antislavery petitions. Many 19th-century notables recalled taking part in the abolitionist sugar boycotts of the 1790s and 1820s as junior 'anti-saccharists." Looking back on her childhood in Bristol in the 1820s, the physician Elizabeth Blackwell claimed that the 'children voluntarily gave up the use of sugar' because it was a 'slave product." Scientist Mary Somerville remembered taking 'the anti-slavery cause so warmly to heart' as a girl that she 'would not take sugar in my tea, or indeed taste anything with sugar in it." Thomas Fowell Buxton, who in the 1820s took over from William Wilberforce as the leader of the parliamentary campaign, claimed that he was first made to think about slavery as a young boy because his sister Anna participated in the boycotts. The family were also visited by the famous black abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who chatted at length with the children about anti-slavery and gifted them a signed copy of his autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative." After discussing the issue with Clarkson, young Jane declared that she would only eat sugar grown in the new abolitionist colony of Sierra Leone. She also recorded how Panton and his two sisters Jane and Josepha spent time chatting and putting together a jigsaw puzzle of Africa with her friend, the anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. In 1792, Katherine wrote that her seven-year-old nephew Panton had been refusing to have his shoes shined because he had heard that the polish contained sugar. In April 1792, she recorded the family's early history of sugar abstention and said: "I have before noticed in this particular instance as among those children who are inform'd on the subject I have heard of more readiness to give up the use of sugar than among grown people." Plymley was the sister of the local archdeacon, Joseph Corbett, a key figure in the antislavery movement, and cared for his children. Researchers examined hundreds of newspaper reports, manuscripts and letters as well as the diaries and notebooks of Katherine Plymley, a member of the Shropshire gentry, which provide one of the most detailed insights into children's responses to the British antislavery movement. Many of those grew up to be leading lights in abolitionism and other reform movements. In late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain children were especially active in the boycotts of sugar produced by enslaved people. For instance, girls as young as nine invested dozens of hours of their leisure time producing intricate needlework with anti-slavery themes. Ryan Hanley from the University of Exeter and Professor Kathryn Gleadle from the University of Oxford found young people were influenced by their parents and abolitionists to protest, but many of their actions were taken independently. The research shows the scale of children's involvement in the abolitionist movement, from avoiding all products made from sugar, and learning about the horrors of the slave trade as part of lessons at school.ĭr.
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