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Elizabeth Heyrick was born Leicester in 1769. Her parents, John and Elizabeth Coltman, were members of the Unitarians, and her early life was one of wealth (her father was a successful cloth manufacturer) and pleasure. Having been schooled in the arts, a teenage Elizabeth married John Heyrick, a Methodist lawyer. Their stormy marriage was brought to end by the death of John from a heart attack when Elizabeth was 26. A childless widow, Elizabeth moved back to the family house and became a Quaker. Armed with an allowance from her father, Elizabeth threw herself into social improvement including education and prison reform and campaigning against cruelty to animals. However, it was for anti-slavery work that Elizabeth became famous.
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© Religious Society of Friends in Britain
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Elizabeth knew about the plight of slaves from her brother, Samuel, who had been an anti-slavery campaigner since the previous century. She organised a sugar boycott in her native Leicester and helped to form the Birmingham Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. The group would subsequently change its name to the Female Society for Birmingham.
In 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick published her seminal pamphlet Immediate not Gradual Abolition, which condemned slavery as sinful and called for the immediate emancipation of enslaved Africans in the British colonies. These views were in sharp contrast with the official policy of the Anti-Slavery Society which believed in amelioration - the gradual abolition of the slave trade. The Anti-Slavery Society sought to stifle the existence of this pamphlet, and William Wilberforce called for leaders of the movement not to speak at women’s anti-slavery societies, but the pamphlet was distributed and discussed at meetings across the country. Heyrick and many of the women of her day were deemed more radical than their male counterparts on the slave issue and in 1830 she submitted a motion to the National Conference of the Anti-Slavery Society calling for it to struggle for a direct end to slavery in the British colonies.
To persuade the male leadership to change its mind on gradual abolition she suggested that the society should threaten to withdraw its funding of the Anti-Slavery Society if it did not support this resolution. As the Female Society for Birmingham was one of the largest local society donors to central funds it had a great influence over the network of ladies’ associations which supplied over a fifth of all donations. Her pressure gained momentum and at the conference in May 1830, the Anti-Slavery Society agreed to drop the words “gradual abolition” from its title and to support the Female Society’s plan for a new campaign to bring about immediate abolition. Elizabeth Heyrick did not live to see the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act be passed in Parliament as she died in 1831.
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