Read Part One HERE
In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Elizabeth Coltman Heyrick. She lived from 1769 - 1831.
Elizabeth aimed to promote public awareness of the issues of the slave trade and hit the profits of planters and of importers of slave-produced goods, so she encouraged a social movement to boycott sugar from the West Indies, visiting grocery shops in Leicester to persuade them not to stock it.
Elizabeth believed women should be involved in these issues as they were qualified "not only to sympathise with the suffering, but also to plead for the oppressed."
In 1823, Elizabeth joined the new Anti-Slavery Society, the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominion. She was a founding member of the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves in 1825, the first ladies' anti-slavery society in the world.
Elizabeth was concerned with the welfare of long-term prisoners and worked as a prison visitor. Sadly, she did not live to see the Slavery Abolition Acts 1833 put one of her major social ambitions into practice. Elizabeth died in 1831.
Read Part Seventy-One HERE
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