Granville Sharp was born in Durham in 1735. Although his father and grandfather were Anglican clergymen, young Granville opted for a career as a linen draper in London. He would eventually abandon this career and work for the civil service. Sharp became involved in the abolition movement in 1765 when he fought for the freedom of a young African, Jonathan Strong. Strong, who had been a slave in Barbados, was brought to England by owner David Lisle. Lisle, known for his violent temper, subsequently pistol-whipped the teenager and left him to die on the capital’s streets.

© Anti-Slavery International

Sharp came upon the prostrate form of the former slave while visiting his brother’s surgery one morning, and immediately came to his aid. After some initial treatment by his brother, William, who was the King’s doctor, Strong recuperated at St Barts Hospital. After a lengthy convalescence, Strong was released to the care of the Sharp brothers, who provided him with financial assistance and subsequently found him a job in London.

The situation came to ahead a few years later when Lisle (Strong’s former slave owner) came across the recovered ex-slave, whom he still considered as his property, and proceeded to sell him to a Caribbean planter, James Kerr. Strong managed to get word to Sharp who appealed to the Lord Mayor of London. The Lord Mayor agreed that Strong should be freed; however, both Strong’s former and current owners were upset by the decision; one decided to sue while the other challenged Sharp to a duel. Although nothing came of these two complaints, it would appear that the trauma of this experience and the beating he sustained several years earlier, had a detrimental effect on the sickly Strong and he died aged 25 in 1770.

However, the Strong affair stung Sharp into life and he threw his time into researching the legal status of slavery in England. In 1769 he produced the tract: Representation of the injustice and dangerous tendency of admitting the least claim of private property in the persons of men, in England. After representing Strong, Sharp found himself in demand from Africans in need of help. One such individual was James Somerset whose master, Charles Stewart, had brought him to the UK from the USA. Somerset ran away from his master and lived as a free man in London before being recaptured by Stewart.

When a court edict allowed him to go free - prior to his case going before a judge - Somerset went straight to Sharp. This was the case Sharp was looking for and he used all his legal knowledge to argue that colonial law, which allowed slavery, had no basis on English soil. After much deliberation over contracts and property rights, the honourable judge, Lord Mansfield, passed a law stating that English law did not support slavery. This decision meant that a slave could be forcibly removed from England for a life of slavery overseas; it did not mean that slaves were to be emancipated in the British colonies.

Sharp spent the next year campaigning against the horrors of slavery; however, with the exception of the Quakers and John Wesley, there was little support for abolition. Sharp continued to show benevolence towards abandoned and infirm Africans, often at great cost to his dwindling finances. Aware of the growing African community in England, he and several colleagues proposed resettling African in Sierra Leone in the late 18th century. Unfortunately, this utopian enterprise would eventually falter; it was virtually impossible to create a free, integrated society on a continent awash with slavery, violence and exploitation.

Sharp, alongside Thomas Clarkson and the Quakers, was one of the founding 12 members of the Society for the abolition of the African slave trade in 1787. In his role as Chair of the society, he would work closely William Wilberforce and was in the vanguard of the movement which abolished the slave trade in 1807.

Sharp was also infamous for pamphlets and tracts on a range of esoteric subjects and his staunch form of evangelical Christianity had anti-catholic sentiments. However, the enduring legacy of Sharp must be of a courageous man who spent considerable time, energy and money improving the lives of Africans in the UK and abroad. Granville Sharp died in 1813 and a plaque commemorating his life and work is found in Westminster Abbey.