Role of women in the anti-slavery movement
The role of women in the campaign is remarkable because this was a section of the population still disenfranchised, yet they played an important role in one of the key social reforms in history. Women abolitionists who were active in the 1820s and 1830s, such as Elizabeth Heyrick (1769-1831), Anne Knight (1786-1862) and Elizabeth Pease (1807-1897) are well-known. But there were many Quaker women in the 1780s and 1790s who gave their support and campaigned, including Mary Birkett Card (1774-1817), Amelia Opie (1769-1853), Mary Morris Knowles (1773-1807). When the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was set up in 1787 it was an exclusively male organisation, yet its lists of subscribers included several women.
Title page of The Negro Boy's Tale A Poem... 1824 [Box 202 /2]
Women brought a distinctive female approach to the campaign, such as writing and circulating imaginative literature and poetry on slavery, such as A Poem on the African Slave Trade. Addressed to her own sex written in 1792 by Mary Birkett Card, and Amelia Opie's poem The negro boys tale: a poem addressed to children, first published in 1802.
In her writings Amelia Opie a well known novelist and poet successfully wrote on humanitarian issues in a populist style. The Negro Boy's Tale was written for children, and writing to Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847) in 1844 she said 'I believe simple moral tales the very best mode of instructing the young and the poor.'
Ameila Opie. Oil painting on canvas by
Henry Perronet Briggs (1791 - 1844)
Women wore the medallion designed by Josiah Wedgwood as jewellery to show their support, and later adapted it to show a kneeling female with the words "Am I not a Woman and a Sister?". As the main purchasers of sugar they came to play an important role in the sugar boycott.