“that wickedness, whereby an hundred thousand Africans are annually murdered” ………stories of Chorlton and slavery .... part 1

I doubt that anyone will be surprised that there are links between Chorlton-cum-Hardy and the slave trade.

Thomas Walker, 1794

I first visited the links* a few years ago prompted by a new onsite database on the Legacies of British Slave-ownership and reprised the story recently. **

But long before that, I had come across the remarkable Thomas Walker, who had lived at Barlow Hall, and was the Boroughreeve*** for Manchester.

He was at the centre of radical political thought arguing for civil liberty, constitutional reform and the abolition of the slave trade.

In a letter to John Cartwright he condemned “that Christian wickedness, whereby an hundred thousand Africans are annually murdered” and in another letter sought  help from Edward Cartwright, the  inventor of power loom to procure “me a list of Wool Spinners and other manufacturers to whom our [abolitionist] papers might be sent with effect.”

And as Chairman of the Manchester Anti Slavery committee along with Thomas Cooper, and others, he saw the opportunities for building on the growing opposition in Manchester to the slave trade.  He turned the visit of Thomas Clarkson in 1787 into a major propaganda event by persuading Clarkson to preach at the city’s Collegiate Church.

It was a great success, as Clarkson remarked “when I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publicly given.  I was surprised, also, to find a great crowd of black people standing in the pulpit.” ****

The success of that Sunday sermon was followed up by a petition to Parliament which the Committee had already planned.  In all over 11,000 people called for an end to the African trade.  This amounted to one fifth of the city’s population reflecting working class opposition to the slave trade and the practical campaigning skills of Walker and the others.

But for every Thomas Walker there was a Wilbraham Egerton whose family had owned great chunks of south Manchester including Chorlton-cum-Hardy since the mid 18th century.

I missed his connection to the Slave trade but was alerted to it by Cllr Dave Rawson of Chorlton Park Ward, and I went looking on that database.

The Insurrection, 1824

And there he was, listed as, “a trustee and executor for Mrs L.W. Boode in place of James Dannett, a role he shared with John Earl Brownlow".

Together as trustees they applied for and were granted on November 30th, 1835, £10058 15s 4d as compensation for the 185 individuals who had been slaves on the Greenwich Park plantation in Demerara in British Guiana.

The same database records that Greenwich Park had been owned by Margret Boode, née Dannett from 1817, passing to her daughter in 1826.

Back in 1817 the plantation owned 201 slaves, which had fallen to 190 in 1832.

Just how Wilbraham Egerton came to be a trustee is as unclear, but I know he took over from James Dannett, and that his fellow trustee, was related to the Egerton’s.

Nor is that quite all, because the Legacies database also records a young Emily Lawes Pink, who was born in Jamaica in 1819, lived in Chorlton on Medlock and was buried aged just 19 in our own parish graveyard, here in Chorlton.

The Egerton's proposed three routes for their new road, 1853

The Pink family also owned slaves, but as yet I can not make a connection with Chorlton-cum-Hardy, but it will be there, and in the fullness of time will be revealed.

I did however come across an account of the “Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara” ***** in 1823, which was published the following year.

And this may offer up more information on Greenwich Park.

All of which leaves Wilbraham Egerton, who was a class ridden old representative of the aristocracy, opposed to any progressive moves during his time in Parliament and after.

And that in turn offers up the uncomfortable link with the road that bears his name.

The favoured route crossing Barlow Moor Lane, 1853

Or maybe not.

Wilbraham Road was planned in the 1850s and was not cut for another decade.

By which time Wilbraham Egerton was dead.

And it is likely that this superhighway linking Stretford through Chorlton to Fallowfield was the work of his son or grandson.

Wilbraham Egerton died in 1856 and was succeeded by his son William, who named his son Wilbraham.

Of course, the Egerton Papers, may well include details of the deliberations that led to both the road and to its name. *******

We shall see.

Location; British Guiana, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Thomas Walker, 1794, front cover, Account of An Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara, 1824, proposed routes for what was to become Wilbraham Road, 1853

*Who in Chorlton owned a slave in the summer of 1831? https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-in-chorlton-owned-slave-in-summer.html

**Legacies of British Slave-ownership, UCL, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/


***"The regulation of the police is in three officers, viz a Boroughreeve or Head-Borough, and two constables.  These officers are annually elected in October by a jury of the Leet summoned by the Lord of the Manor.  The Boroughreeve is considered the principle officer, presides at public meetings, is applied to upon all public business, has the distribution of certain charities...”  Walker, Thomas, A Review of some of the events of the last five years, London 1794 page 23, Google edition page 194

**** Correspondence of Thomas Walker, quoted from Culture Minister defers export of anti slavery campaigner’s letters, Department of Culture, Media and Sports, February 25 2010

*****Clarkson, Thomas, History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishments of the Slave Trade, John Parker, London, New Edition 1839, Page 244, Google edition page 263

******Account Of An Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara which broke out on the 18th of August, 1823, Bryant, Joshua, 1824

********Egerton Papers, M24 /1/15, Central Ref

Who in Chorlton owned a slave in the summer of 1831?

One who didn't, Jeremiah Brundrett

This is not such a sensational question as you might think.  

Slavery permeated deep into both our economy and our society and contrary to the popularly held belief it was not just the big cities of Liverpool, Bristol and London that benefited from both the Slave Trade and the produce grown and made by slave labour.

And even after the abolition of the trade in 1807 it would be another twenty-six years before slavery itself was abolished and on terms that saw the owners compensated to the tune of £20 million.

Now I had assumed that most of that tax payer’s money went to a small group of large plantation owners based mainly in the West Indies, but the final settlement according  to Legacies of British Slave-ownership extended to  "over 45,000 claimants, and about 3,000 of them were living in Britain in the 1830s. 

Although claimants living in Britain were in the minority, they tended to own the largest stakes of property; about £10 million of the total £20 million compensation was paid to these 3,000 people in Britain. 

Many were very wealthy but there were a wide range of claimants, from rich landowners to widows with children who wrote to the compensation commission complaining of their poverty." 

The site  and can be found at Legacies of British Slave-ownership, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

It is the “umbrella for two projects based at UCL tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, now complete, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833.

Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present. 

The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-owners, and we hope that the encyclopedia produced in the first phase of the project, while at present primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching enslaved people.

We are now tracking back to 1763 the ownership histories of the 4000 or so estates identified in that project. At the core of the completed project is this online Encyclopedia of British Slave-ownership containing information about every slave-owner in the British Caribbean, Mauritius or the Cape at the moment of abolition in 1833. 

Entries include information about the activities, affiliations and legacies of these men and women, with a particular emphasis on the "absentee" owners based in Britain.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission, set up to manage the distribution of the £20 million compensation, provide a more or less complete census of slave-ownership in the British Empire in the 1830s. The individuals named in these records form the starting point of the Encyclopedia.

And the data base can be searched by name, or browsed through the subject headings of “commercial, cultural, historical, imperial, physical and political.”

So armed with the names of our most prominent residents I trawled the data but so far have drawn a blank.

Even The Rev William Birley who had lived here in the 1840s before moving to Salford and who publicly supported the Confederate States in the American Civil War is missing from the list.

But it is early days, and there are still plenty of people who may have an interest.

Leaving that aside here is a wonderful introduction into that world.  Just looking at the 36 who applied each with the surname of Brooks there was Joseph Walrond Brooks who was awarded £32 16s 5d for two slaves in Antigua, Amelia Brooks from St Elizabeth in Jamaica awarded £253 15s 8d for her 10 slaves and George Brooks from Manchester in Jamaica who was paid £2478 13s 1d for his 212 slaves.

Nor is that all, for abolition did not actually mean abolition for only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies.  All those over the over the age of six were re designated as "apprentices", which was abolished in two stages; the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840.”

Ah well as I often maintain history is messy, and with a sideways nod to my old self, it is a story which often chronicles those with power and money coming out on top again and again.

Pictures; Jeremiah Brundrett leading Chorlton Wesleyan, Chorlton, detail from the OS map of Lancashire 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

On that statue of Mr. Colston …..…and thoughts on Annie Kenney, the Sheffield Women of Steel and Totò

Now I am not precious about statues in public places.

Manchester statues, Sir Robert Peel, Piccadilly, 2018

Augustus, one that survived, Rome, 2008

Most of the ones I pass are of people I have little knowledge of, and belong to a specific time and outlook frozen in the past.

And I am reminded that the Romans were never over bothered about their own great and good, to the point where some statues of dead emperors were melted down for coinage or to start the process of commemorating another live emperor.

Which of course brings me to the current debate on those past public figures connected with our Imperialist past and in particular Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and in slavery.

I have listened carefully to the case against Edward Colston the Bristol slave trader, Robert Milligan who owned two sugar plantations and 526 slaves and Cecil Rhodes, and the arguments against them and others like them are very powerful.

After all, as one Liverpool activist reflected yesterday, we wouldn’t tolerate statues of Adolf Hitler on our streets.

Manchester statues, James Watt, Piccadilly, 2018

But I also paid attention to the comments of those who expressed concern about “air brushing out of history” the exponents of slavery, which in their words runs the danger of actually contributing to a dilution of Britain’s involvement in both the slave trade and slavery.

This was an involvement which permeated many aspects of our economy in ways we might not at first realize, and was central to the economic activity of cities like Bristol, Liverpool and London.

So it is possible to trace the links back from the plantations to the sugar, tobacco and textile industries of Britain, as well as the ship builders who built ships, the bakers and cake makers and of course those who worked in the cotton mills and refineries.

But then Manchester, which directly benefited from the production of cheap cotton grown by slave labour, came out in the late 18th century and organized a petition for the abolition of the trade, and again in the 1860s, supported the war against the Confederacy in the American Civil War.*

All of which makes history messy.  The current campaign to take down the statues of Sir Robert Peel and William Gladstone in Manchester are predicated on their family involvement in slavery and in the case of Gladstone some very iffy comments about why slavery should not be abolished.

Annie Kenney, Oldham, 2018

And yet Peel supported Catholic emancipation, abolished the Corn Laws, argued for Parliamentary reform having at first opposed it, and established the Metropolitan Police Force.

That doesn’t vindicate his earlier position on some issues, only to point out the contradictions in the outlook of those we have come to commemorate, and how some of them moved politically and came to embrace different ideas.

Personally, I think the statues of men, and they are almost always men, who supported and profited from the slave trade have had their day, but perhaps we should retain them with very prominent descriptions of what they did as a reminder of what collectively we did in the past.

Or perhaps they should re-appear in museums with those appropriate descriptions of their activities, and why some individuals or groups in certain communities felt the need to erect a statue in the first place.

Women of Streel, Sheffield, 2016

In that way the mature debate on issues like slavery, and its legacy along with the historic and present-day inequalities experienced by ethnic groups can go on with out celebrating people whose actions are a challenge to the concepts of humanity and equality.

It may be that it is time to evaluate all those public statues of the “great and good”.

This is already underway in cities and towns and perhaps even villages across the country, with calls for local debates on the merits of what stands in our squares and buildings.

Prince Albert, Albert Square, 2020

And that in turn requires some careful balancing of the “good and bad” actions of individuals.

So, Oliver Cromwell has been rightly condemned for his actions in Ireland, but celebrated as an important  factor in the defeat of King Charles and the defence of Parliament, despite his later actions as “Lord Protector”.

Emmeline Pankhurst came out in support of the continued prosecution of the Great War, when fellow women suffrage campaigners argued against it, and Nye Bevan instrumental in the formation of the NHS, opposed calls for Britain to abandon its nuclear deterrent.**

Totò, who makes me laugh, Naples, 2017

Added to which some have had more public recognition than others, so while Mrs Pankhurst is is up there in the text books, the media and of course on plinths, Annie Kenney remains a less well known figure from the campaign for female suffrafge.

Of course, there is also another thought, which is not mine, but my friend Eric who on more than one occasion has pondered on why we need statues of the good and great in public places anyway.

Perhaps such things have had their day, and on every plinth in every city there should just be a piece of artwork, commissioned by the public, displaying the work of everyone from the “renowned" to those of the local art college and community centre.

Or if we must have people, why not a celebration of the men and women history usually ignores like Annot Robinson,  the Sheffield Steel Women,***  or  the actors and comedians who have made us laugh.

Now that’s a thought.

Location; Manchester, Rome, Naples

Pictures; Manchester statues, Sir Robert Peel, James Watt and Prince Albert, 2018/2020, and Totò in Naples, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the unveiling of  Annie Kenney's statue in Oldham, courtesy of Matthew Benham, 2018,  Women of Street statute, Sheffield, 2016 courtesy of Sheffield City Council

*Sugar Lane, an industry and a campaign, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/04/sugar-lane-industry-and-campaign.html

**Annot Robinson, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Manchester%20Women

***Women of Steel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_of_Steel