Twelve Men in a Quaker Print Shop Found the British Abolition Committee
Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and nine Quaker colleagues launch the organized campaign that will end Britain's slave trade in twenty years
Quick facts
- Date founded
- May 22, 1787
- Location
- George Yard, Lombard Street, London
- Composition
- 9 Quakers, 3 Anglicans, including Clarkson and Sharp
- Key researcher
- Thomas Clarkson
What happened
On May 22, 1787, twelve men met in a Quaker print shop on George Yard, off Lombard Street in London, and formed the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Nine of the twelve were Quakers, who had been building antislavery sentiment within their own religious community for decades; the remaining three, including the group's most tireless researcher, Thomas Clarkson, were Anglican. Clarkson had won a Cambridge University essay prize in 1785 for an essay asking whether it was lawful to enslave people without their consent, and his research into the subject had left him, in his own account, horrified enough to abandon his plan to enter the clergy and devote himself to the cause instead. As the only committee member without other business commitments, Clarkson traveled to every major British slaving port, gathering evidence, ship diagrams, and testimony from sailors and surgeons that he then supplied to William Wilberforce for use in Parliament.
Why it matters
This committee, run by Quakers and a handful of allies rather than by Parliament or the church hierarchy, built the organizational and evidentiary machine, petitions, pamphlets, ship diagrams, sailor testimony, that Wilberforce needed to eventually pass the Slave Trade Act twenty years later. It set a template for single-issue reform campaigns built on documented evidence rather than moral appeal alone.
How we know
The UK Parliament's own historical archive documents the committee's founding, membership, and Clarkson's fieldwork using surviving committee minutes and Clarkson's own later published account of his research.
Sources
- UK Parliament, Living Heritage. The abolitionists · Primary source (author-declared)parliament.uk · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- National Park Service. 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery · Reputable sourcenps.gov · The domain "nps.gov" is on our Reputable source registry.
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Part of a timelineThe Atlantic Slave Trade29 events · Four centuries in which European traders forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans onto ships bound for the Americas, and the enslaved people, revolts, and abolitionists who fought it from the first crossing to the lastView all →