The Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society was a leading abolitionist group based in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the nineteenth century. [1] The women associated with the organisation are considered "heroines" and the impact of these abolitionist organisations for women are thought to have had a notional impact. [2]
The Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society was a later addition to societies formed in 1833; on 7 October 1833, a group of activists formed the Edinburgh Emancipation Society, the Glasgow Emancipation Society, and the Glasgow Ladies' Emancipation Society. The Edinburgh societies were formed to support George Thompson, as he had received an invitation to visit the New England Emancipation Society which was led by the 28-year-old William Lloyd Garrison. Dr. John Ritchie was in the chair and among the three secretaries was Robert Kaye Greville. [3]
The emancipation societies would host abolitionist speakers on lecture tours of Great Britain, although the Edinburgh Ladies' society eventually rejected speakers from the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. This was because the British and the American abolitionist movements were split over the beliefs of Garrison, who advocated the immediate release of American slaves. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Bristol, and Clifton were strong supporters of Garrison's proposal, while other groups favoured a managed move away from slavery. [4] John Wigham of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society had set up links with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), and it was his wife Jane Wigham and his daughter Eliza Wigham who steered the Ladies' Emancipation Society to different loyalties. [5]
Eliza Wigham, as secretary of the society, corresponded with many of the leading abolitionists. She was friends with anti-slavery activists including Wendell Phillips, George Thompson. and Frederick Douglass. An American ex-slave, Douglass visited Edinburgh and accompanied members of the society when in the 1840s they wrote "Send Back the Money" on the grass of Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh. The graffiti was aimed at the Free Church of Scotland, which had accepted funding from American slave-owning organisations. [6] In 1860, at the society's invitation, American abolitionist campaigner Sarah Parker Remond, who was described as "a lady of colour from America", [7] gave a lecture in Edinburgh that was "crowded to the door by a most respectable audience, number upwards of 2000", whose consciences Remond awakened to a deepened "abhorrence of the sin of Slavery". [8]
The society moved away from its support of Garrison, and Eliza and Jane Wigham were encouraged to leave in protest, but they remained as members. The society tried to steer a compromise position between the radical Garrison and the more conservative position of the BFASS. The Wighams supported Mary Estlin's initiative to find common ground between the Garrisonians and the BFASS. [5]
Eliza also corresponded with Levi Coffin and Thomas Garrett of the Underground Railroad. She sent Garrett money towards the cost of supporting the slaves who were smuggling themselves to Canada via Garrett's house. [9]
Unlike other anti-slavery organisations that splintered, the Edinburgh organisation was still running in 1870. Credit for this was given to Jane and Eliza Wigham. [10]
Four of the women associated with the organisation were the subject of a campaign by Edinburgh historians in 2015. The group intended to gain recognition for Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Priscilla Bright McLaren, Eliza Wigham, and Jane Wigham – the city's "forgotten heroines". [6]
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this society, who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown, also a freedman, also often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local chapters with around 250,000 members.
Sarah Parker Remond was an American lecturer, activist and abolitionist campaigner.
The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, also known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and sometimes referred to as the Abolition Society or Anti-Slavery Society, was a British abolitionist group formed on 22 May 1787. The objective of abolishing the slave trade was achieved in 1807. The abolition of slavery in all British colonies followed in 1833.
The Glasgow Emancipation Society was a group of Glaswegians who formed an anti-slavery abolitionist group in 1833. Prominent members included James McCune Smith, John Murray, William Smeal, Ralph Wardlaw, Anthony Wigham and Hugh Heugh.
George Donisthorpe Thompson was a British anti-slavery orator and activist who toured giving lectures and worked for legislation while serving as a Member of Parliament. He was arguably one of the most important abolitionists and human rights lecturers in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Elizabeth Heyrick was an English philanthropist and campaigner against the slave trade. She supported immediate, rather than gradual, abolition.
Elizabeth Nichol was an English abolitionist, anti-segregationist, woman suffragist, chartist and anti-vivisectionist. She was active in the Peace Society, the Temperance movement and founded the Darlington Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. In 1853 she married Dr. John Pringle Nichol (1804–1859), Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Glasgow. She was one of about six women who were in the painting of the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840.
William Smeal (1792–1877) was a grocer and an abolitionist Quaker from Glasgow.
The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (1833–1840) was an abolitionist, interracial organization in Boston, Massachusetts, in the mid-19th century. "During its brief history ... it orchestrated three national women's conventions, organized a multistate petition campaign, sued southerners who brought slaves into Boston, and sponsored elaborate, profitable fundraisers."
The World Anti-Slavery Convention met for the first time at Exeter Hall in London, on 12–23 June 1840. It was organised by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, largely on the initiative of the English Quaker Joseph Sturge. The exclusion of women from the convention gave a great impetus to the women's suffrage movement in the United States.
Eliza Wigham, born Elizabeth Wigham, was a Scottish campaigner for women's suffrage, anti-slavery, peace and temperance in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was involved in several major campaigns to improve women's rights in 19th-century Britain, and has been noted as one of the leading citizens of Edinburgh. Her stepmother, Jane Smeal, was a leading activist in Glasgow and together they made the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society. Her brother John Richardson Wigham was a prominent lighthouse engineer.
Jane Wigham was a leading Scottish abolitionist, and was the secretary of the Glasgow Ladies' Emancipation Society.
Priscilla Bright McLaren was an English activist who served and linked the anti-slavery movement with the women's suffrage movement in the nineteenth century. She was a member of the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society and, after serving on the committee, became the president of the Edinburgh Women's Suffrage Society.
The Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage was a leading group for women's rights in Scotland. It was one of the first three suffrage societies to be formed in Britain.
Mary Anne Estlin was a British abolitionist and leading figure in anti-slavery and anti-prostitution campaigns in Britain.
The Ladies' London Emancipation Society was an activist abolitionist group founded in 1863, which disseminated anti-slavery material to advance British understanding of the Union cause in the American Civil War as one pertaining to morality rather than territory. This was said to be the first national anti-slavery society for women.
Lucy Townsend was a British abolitionist. She started the first Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Birmingham, UK, titled the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. Although slavery had been abolished in the UK in 1807, her society was a model for others in Britain and America which campaigned to end slavery in the West Indies and US. The British Ladies' Society's role in abolitionism is considered to have had an international impact.
James Cropper (1773–1840) was an English businessman and philanthropist, known as an abolitionist who made a major contribution to the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.
John Murray (1787–1849) was an abolitionist and social activist who served as Corresponding Secretary of the Glasgow Emancipation Society.
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