Notes on North Lambeth’s connections with slave trade, slavery and abolition

KOV Area Forum Local History/Heritage Forum

PREPARING FOR 2007

Introduction

The KOV area Local History/Heritage Forum has agreed to explore whether there is enough material on North Lambeth’s connections with the slave trade, slave ownership and abolition, to undertake joint activity between member organisations and individuals during the remembrance of the abolition of British involvement in the trade in 1807. This can include the support for anti-slavery post 1807 including up until the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Initial Analysis Findings

There appear to be at least 9 potential areas for more detailed research.

1.           Slaves

·                     The St Mary’s Parish Registers, Lambeth Church wardens accounts and Lambeth Settlement Examinations show that a number of black slaves and freed slaves were baptised and buried. Only one is specifically  referred to as a slave: Sarah Poleson (1790)

·                     The full list is in Jon Newman. Windrush forbears. Black people in Lambeth. 1700-1900 (Lambeth 2002)

·                     Not all of them are listed as being ‘the servant’ of anyone. Identified owners are:

                                         i.    Mr Wood

                                       ii.    John Knott of Kennington Lane

                                     iii.    Thomas and Mary Geils

                                      iv.    Mr Fox

                                        v.    John Gray (from Jamaica)

2.           William Bligh

·                     Bligh lived along Lambeth Rd, is buried in St Mary’s Church, and imported breadfruit into the West Indies as a foodstuff for the slaves.

·                     Max Boucher is doing work on Bligh as his contribution to 2007

3.           Archbishops of Canterbury and Lambeth Palace

·                     The Anglican Church was involved in slave ownership and the trade and later abolition.

·                     The Society for the Propogation of the Gospel owned the Codrington Estate in Barbados from 1710 (later Codrington College).

·                     Archbishop Juxon is thought to have been involved in the trade before he became Archbishop in 1660. His coat of arms included ‘blackamore’ hgeads, and the Palace as stone heads of ‘blackamores’.

·                     The present day Church Synod has apologised for its role in slavery

·                     It is unclear what the Archbishop and the Place Library are doing

·                     The Archbishops:

o   Juxon, 1660-3

o   Gilbert Sheldon 1663-76

§  Staley, Vernon. The Life and times of Gilbert Sheldon. London: Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co, 1913. 8vo

o   William Sancroft 1678-1690

o   John Tillotsen 1691-94

o   Thomas Tenison 1695-1715

o   William Wake 1715-37

o   John Potter 1737-47

§  His son John was an MP in 1753

o   Thomas Hemming 1747-57

o   Mathew Hutton 1757-58

o   Thomas Secker 1758-68

§  His friend Joseph Butler was Bishop of Bristol, the slave trading town. http://www.dur.ac.uk/m.d.eddy/HoSinDurhamButler.html

o   Frederick Cornwallis 1761-83 (son of Charles, 4th Baron Cornwallis)

o   John Moore 1783-1805

§  It appears that this Archbishop helped Wilberforce approach the King about his proposed Society for the Reformation of Manners. (Jonathan Bayes. Wilberforce: His Impact of Nineteenth Century Society. The Churchman. 108/2 1994

§  www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_108_2_Bayes.pdf

o   Charles Manners Sutton 1805-28 (son of Lord George Manning – son of 3rd Duke of Rutland)

o   William Howley 1828-48

o   John Bird Sumner 1848-

·                     Lambeth Rectors

o   George Hopper 1675-1703 (Queen Mary made him Dean of Canterbury 16910; he then became Bishop of Bath and Wells 1704-1723

o   Edward Gibson, 1703-17. Became Bishop of Lincoln 1720-48

o   Reginald Ibbetson 1717-31

o   John Deane 1731-67

o   Beilby Porteus 1767-76. Became a Bishop 1776-87, then Bishop of London 1787-1808

o   William Vyse 1777-1781

o   Charles Word…. 1816-20

o   Gordon D’Oyly 1820-46

·                     Beilby Porteus

o   He collected publications on slavery and anti-slavery which are housed in his collection at the Porteous Library at Senate House Library. www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/masc25/full.php?CollectionID=229

o   In 1783 he lectured to the SPG advocating withdrawal from involvement in slave trade and improvement I condition of the slaves on plantations..

·                     SPG

o   Might be worth looking at Journal of Religious History. Vol 30. No. 2, June 2006. A Vision of an Anglican Imperialism: The Annual Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1714. Rowan Strong. http://anglicanhistory.org/wi/index.html

4.           Members of Parliament for Lambeth

·                     The following were Lambeth’s MPs from the Great Reform Act in 1832:

o   Charles Tennyson (later D'Eyencourt) and Benjamin Hawes (1832-1847)

o   Charles Pearson and Rt Hon Charles Tennyson D’Eyencourt 1848-50

o   Rt Hon Charles Tennyson D’Eyencourt and William Wilson 1851-2

o   William A Williams and William Wilson 1853-56

o   William Roupell and William Wilson 1853

·                     What was their voting record on abolition of slavery?

5.           Radical Activity

·                     Is there any evidence of Lambeth Radicals from the London Corresponding Society through to the 1860s being involved in abolition activities?

o   John George provided continuity from the LCS through to Chartism) (see below)

o   Colonel Despard and his black wife lived in Lambeth after his return from the West Indies

o   Robert Wedderburn is thought to have preached on Kennington Common

6.           Vauxhall and other North Lambeth Pleasure Gardens and Other Entertainment Venues

·                     Is there any evidence that owners took their slave black servants to these Pleasure Gardens?

·                     Lambeth Theatre playbills listed in Jon Newman Windrush Forebears (see above) provide details of performance of plays and melodramas about slavery from 1824.

7.           Anti-Slavery Campaigning

·                     Is there any evidence of preaching against slavery by the Wesleys at Kennington Common?

·                     William Blake illustrated John Gabriel Stedman’s ‘Narrative, of a five years’ expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guinea.’ (1796)

·                     Were there specific Lambeth anti-slavery committees?

·                     If not which ones would Lambeth residents have been able to join?

·                     Price’s Candles at Vauxhall used anti-slavery imagery to sell their distilled palm candles around 1850. (see Jon Newman)

8.           Landowners and Prominent Residents

·                     Which landowners might have been involved in the slave trade, slavery and abolition?

·                     At one stage Henry Lord Moore, later the  Earl of Drogheda was a landowner in the Manor of Kennington

·                     William Robert Clayton inherited Moore’s landholding and became MP for Marden

·                     Sir John Thornicroft was a landowner in the Manor of Stockwell during William III’s reign

·                     Richard Summersell is buried under the floor of St Mary’s Church. He died on 16 November 1772.

  • His grandfather had come to London when he was 13 and went to sea living in St Kitts until he was 70, when he returned and lived in Rotherhithe and dying in Greenwich Hospital.

  • His father taught a school in Lambeth, then vestry clerk and then bailiff of the manor of Kennington until his death in 1732.

  • Richard succeeded to all his offices, and became bailiff of the manors of Vauxhall, Lambeth and Walworth, surveyor of the parish roads and Thrales’ Brewery. (J Tanswell. The History and Antiquities of Lambeth 1868, p. 155)

·                     Sir Joseph Mawbey ran a distillery at Vaux/Copt Hall

9.           Industries using slave produced raw materials?

·                     Sugar refiners?

·                     Furniture makers?

·                     Tea and coffee producers?

·                     Dyers?

·                     Snuff and tobacco

·                     Coffee

Sean Creighton
October 2006

John George was a radical reform activist from at least the late 1790s through to Chartism. He was one of the members of the London Corresponding Society who resigned in August 1797 to form the British Union Society in dispute with how the direction of the Society in the wake of repression by William Pitt’s Government. Malcolm Chase, who has written about George for the Dictionary of Labour Biography, says that the British Union Society ‘contained revolutionary elements, including United Englishmen’. He became a supporter of the ideas of Thomas Spence and by 1817 was an active member and speaker for the Society of Spencean Philantropists. Although he lived in South London he was active across London. In 1817 he was involved in an armed section and supported political assassination.  He avoided being arrested following the capture of his fellow Spencean Cato St conspirators in 1820.  He also supported constitutional political reform agitation and was involved in the Huntite Political Union. In a split within the Spenceans he supported Robert Wedderburn and the setting up a chapel in Archer St, Soho. He was a painter and decorator, and in order to keep his job he seems to have had to go politically quiet or ‘underground’ in the 1820s. His work was in the West End and he earned enough to have a large family and not live in poverty.  In 1830 he joined the Radical Reform Association and the National Union of the Working Classes, and became a prominent speaker. In August 1831 he seconded a resolution proposed by William Lovett at a mass meeting in Copenhagen Fields in Islington on the first anniversary of the 1830 French Revolution. ‘That all me are by nature entitled to equal, civil, religious and political rights, and that all institutions of society or governments not formed on these principles, are Tyrannies; and it is our opinion, that the people are bound by reason, as well as by nature to resist them, and to seek their destruction.’ (Poor Man’s Guardian. 6 August 1831. cited by Malcolm Chase).

He became a NUWC class (branch) leader. He lived at 1 Clarence Place in Vauxhall. He was well known enough to be advertised as a speaker at political meetings. He was particularly interested in Irish issues, freedom of speech, anti-clericalism and republicanism. ‘He was strongly conscious of the radical tradition and the debt owed to those who had gone before, carefully cultivating an image of having undertaken – in his won words – ‘an apprenticeship of fifty years to democracy.’ (Operative, 2 December 1838). He spoke all over London. In 1831 he supported attempts to establish the Metropolitan Trades Union and a general union of the London trades for suffrage reform and the replacement of all indirect taxation by a graduated property tax.

He was involved in organising the Cold Baths Fields demonstration of 1833 at which two Metropolitan policemen were killed during the police attempt the disperse the crowd. George defended himself and an injured woman with an umbrella.

He spoke at the meeting to set up the Metropolitan Reform Association in 1835.

As he grew older his health deteriorated aggravated by ‘painter’s colic’ – white-lead poisoning). In 1838 neighbours, colleagues and fellow radicals organised a subscription for him at the Good Intent in Lambeth because he had slipped into poverty.

He was active in helping to set up and support branches in South London of the Chartists. He was a member of the East London Democratic Association and the London Working Men’s Association. In Lambeth he spoke at meetings of the Lambeth Democratic Association and after it was established he chaired the meetings of the Lambeth Political Union which had its own premises in Whittington St, off Waterloo Rd. In May 1839 the Union resolved to form a Surrey Political Union to co-ordinate radicals in the Council.

He was now in his mid-70s and had to appeal for financial support to keep him and his wife out of the Workhouse. He died during the period of fund raising on 9 August, his death being reported to the North Star Chartist newspaper by George Huggett another Lambeth Chartists.

He and was a manual labourer when he died in 1842

(Malcolm Chase. George John (1766/7-1842), in J Bellamy and J Saville (eds) Dictionary of Labour Biography Vol X (2000)

Malcolm Chase regards George as important because ‘as an organiser And POPULAR SPEAKER George helped sustain Spenceanism’s influence in the changing radicalism of the 1830s and early Chartist periods.’

The National Union of the Working Classes opposed compensation to the slave owners in 1833. In Battersea for example ‘On Tuesday 18 June Reeves, Comley, Branchfower and others discussed the following subject: 'That this Union impress upon their fellow slaves   of Great Britain and Ireland, the necessity of making themselves acquainted with the monstrous and iniquitous proposition of the Secretary for the Colonies, (the tyrant Stanley) and the majority of 209 of the House of Commons, for compensating the slave-holders of the West Indies with £20,000,000 of the legalized plunder of the British people.' (Poorman's Guardian 106, 15 June 1833, p. 196)

Some early Chartists likened the condition of workers to that of slaves:

Winterton speaking to Wandsworth & Clapham Chartists on 27 November 1838 stated: ‘Why my friends, we are the greatest slaves on earth. We are worse off than the poor negroes, for their masters find it in their own interest to feed them well to enable them to perform their labour.’  (The Operative, 2 December 1838) John George was also a speaker to Wandsworth & Clapham meetings.