Guildford Anti-Slavery Committee

For over four hundred years, from the mid-fifteenth century, Europeans enslaved millions of Africans through the transatlantic slave trade. It is thought that over 12 million Africans were loaded onto slave ships and that over three million died. Concern about the slave trade and the treatment of African people started to become a social issue in the 1760s but it was not until 1807and through the work of William Wilberforce that the Slave Trade Abolition Bill passed in the British Parliament.

The Guildford Anti-Slavery committee was formed in February 1824 to cooperate with the national movement "for the mitigation and gradual abolition of slavery".

Comprising a large number of local clerics, and Henry Drummond Esq of Albury Park (who's daughter Louisa later married Earl Percy Duke of Northumberland), the committee distributed publications in banks and libraries and raised money for the anti-slavery cause. They also lobbied in Guildford, Godalming, Haslemere, Bagshot, Epsom, Ewell and Leatherhead and presented a petition to Parliament calling for action. The committee were part of a growing movement which nationally, between 1828 and 1830 deluged Parliament with over 5000 petitions. In Dec 1831, measures to increase activities resulted in the sending of 150 handbills, 2 signs, 100 circulars to influential persons in the area and a public lecture granted by the Mayor of Guildford.

Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 which covered all children under the age of six. However, it was not until seven years later on 1 August 1838 that all enslaved men, women and children in the Caribbean finally become free.