yr9_Elizabeth_Heyrick




 * Elizabeth Haywick**

Details about my life: I was born in Leicester in the 1700s and during my life i campaigned for an end to not just the slave trade, but to slavery itself. I had a great impact on the social reformers of the time, including William Wilberforce. I was an avid campaigner for the immediate abolition of slavery. I wasn't afraid to take on the establishment or leading abolitionists like William Wilberforce and his friends, arguing that it wasn't enough to abolish the slave trade but the whole institution of slavery should be done away with immediately. I wrote pamphlets to promote my cause and with my friend, Susannah Watts, I formed the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. Wilberforce was unhappy with the idea of women campaigning, but by this time I had become the Treasurer of the Birmingham Ladies Society, and I proposed that the women should threaten to withdraw funding to the Antislavery Society if immediate abolition wasn't called for. The resolution was carried, and so I got my way. However after campaigning long and hard for abolition, I died in 1837 before witnessing the end of slavery.