Elizabeth Heyrick
Elizabeth Coltman was born in Leicester on 4th December 1769. Her father, John Coltman, a committed Unitarian, was a successful worsted manufacturer. Her mother, Elizabeth Cartwright (1737–1811), was a published poet and book reviewer. Her parents held progressive political views and as a young women she was introduced to the ideas of Tom Paine.
On 10th March 1787 Elizabeth married John Heyrick, a Methodist lawyer. Elizabeth Heyrick was still childless when her husband died of a heart-attack eight years later. According to her biographer: "The marriage was said to have been stormy, but she mourned fervently, with lifelong observance of the anniversary of his death. They had no children."
After the death of her husband Elizabeth moved back into her parents home. Elizabeth, now a member of the Society of Friends, renounced all worldly pleasures and devoted herself to social reform. She campaigned against bull-baiting and became a prison visitor. Elizabeth also wrote eighteen political pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects including, the Corn Laws and the harsh treatment of vagrants.
Isobel Grundy has argued: "Elizabeth Heyrick's philanthropy has been better recognized than her executive acumen, her grasp of power systems and of pressure-group politics, and her forceful analysis of the interdependence of social evils... Her twenty or more books and pamphlets also address war, prisons, corporal punishment, the level of wages and the plight of the industrial poor, election issues, and vagrancy legislation. In 1809 she stopped a bull-baiting at Bonsall in Derbyshire by purchasing the bull."
Heyrick's main concern was the campaign against slavery. Elizabeth organised a sugar boycott in Leicester and with the help of Mary Lloyd, Lucy Townsend, Sophia Sturge and Sarah Wedgwood helped to form the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (later the group changed its name to the Female Society for Birmingham).
In 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick published her pamphlet Immediate not Gradual Abolition. In her pamphlet Heyrick argued passionately in favour of the immediate emancipation of the slaves in the British colonies. This differed from the official policy of the Anti-Slavery Society that believed in gradual abolition. The leadership of the organisation attempted to suppress information about the existence of this pamphlet and William Wilberforce gave out instructions for leaders of the movement not to speak at women's anti-slavery societies.
Most of the Women's Anti-Slavery groups in Britain supported Heyrick's call for the immediate emancipation of slaves. In 1830, Heyrick who was the leader of the Leicester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society and treasurer of the Female Society for Birmingham, had helped to establish a network of women's anti-slavery groups and her pamphlet, Immediate not Gradual Abolition, was distributed and discussed at meetings all over the country.
In 1830, the Female Society for Birmingham submitted a resolution to the National Conference of the Anti-Slavery Society calling for the organisation to campaign for an immediate end to slavery in the British colonies. Heyrick, who was treasurer of the organisation suggested a new strategy to persuade the male leadership to change its mind on this issue. She suggested that the society should threaten to withdraw its funding of the Anti-Slavery Society if it did not support this resolution. This was a serious threat as it was one of the largest local society donors to central funds, and also had great influence over the network of ladies associations which supplied over a fifth of all donations. At the conference in May 1830, the Anti-Slavery Society agreed to drop the words "gradual abolition" from its title. It also agreed to support Female Society's plan for a new campaign to bring about immediate abolition.
Elizabeth Heyrick died on 18th October 1831 and therefore did not live to see the passing of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.
Primary Sources
(1) Elizabeth Heyrick, Immediate not Gradual Abolition (1824)
In the great question of emancipation, the interests of two parties are said to be involved, the interest of the slave and that of the planter. But it cannot for a moment be imagined that these two interests have an equal right to be consulted, without confounding all moral distinctions, all difference between real and
pretended, between substantial and assumed claims. With the interest of the planters, the question of emancipation has (properly speaking) nothing to do. The right of the slave, and the interest of the planter, are distinct questions; they belong to separate departments, to different provinces of consideration. If the
liberty of the slave can be secured not only without injury, but with advantage to the planter, so much the better, certainly; but still the liberation of the slave ought ever to be regarded as an independent object; and if it be deferred till the planter is sufficiently alive to his own interest to co-operate in the measure, we
may for ever despair of its accomplishment. The cause of emancipation has been long and ably advocated. Reason and eloquence, persuasion and argument have been powerfully exerted; experiments have been fairly made, facts broadly stated in proof of the impolicy as well as iniquity of slavery, to little purpose; even the hope of its extinction, with the concurrence of the planter, or by any enactment of the colonial, or British legislature, is still seen in very remote perspective, so remote that the heart sickens at the cheerless prospect. All that zeal and talent could display in the way of argument, has been exerted in vain. All that an accumulated mass of indubitable evidence could effect in the way of conviction, has been brought to no effect.
It is high time, then, to resort to other measures, to ways and means more summary and effectual. Too much time has already been lost in declamation and argument, in petitions and remonstrances against British slavery. The cause of emancipation calls for something more decisive, more efficient than words. It calls upon the real friends of the poor degraded and oppressed African to bind themselves by a solemn engagement, an irrevocable vow, to participate no longer in the crime of keeping him in bondage.
(2) Elizabeth Heyrick, Immediate not Gradual Abolition (1824)
The perpetuation of slavery in our West India colonies is not an abstract question, to be settled between the government and the planters; it is one in which we are all implicated, we are all guilty of supporting and perpetuating slavery. The West Indian planter and the people of this country stand in the same moral relation to each other as the thief and receiver of stolen goods.
The West Indian planters have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion of this great question....The abolitionists have shown a great deal too much politeness and accommodation towards these gentlemen.... Why petition Parliament at all, to do that for us, which... we can do more speedily and effectually for ourselves?