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A Friend to Slaves Briony Hudson, Keeper of the
Museum Collections at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, tells Allen's story On
25 February 1807, William Allen wrote in his diary ‘the young men from my
house came home from the House of Commons this morning, at five o'clock, and
brought the glorious news that the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade
passed the second reading.’ This was particularly ‘glorious news’ for Allen
who had been at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement for more than
twenty years, and was to be involved in the cause for the rest of his life. Allen,
the first President of the Pharmaceutical Society, philanthropist, leading
scientist, and well-connected diplomat on behalf of his many causes, was one
of many Quaker opponents to the slave trade. In 1783, he signed the first
petition against the slave trade organised by the Quaker Meeting for
Sufferings. He became involved with the Sierra Leone Company, which
established the colony as a homeland for freed slaves from 1787. On 18 April 1791
he sat in the front row of the House of Commons while William Wilberforce
(1759-1833) spoke for four hours to promote the anti-slavery cause.
Wilberforce and Allen became great friends even though their religious
beliefs were in opposition. Wilberforce wrote: ‘I wish your religious
principles and my own were more entirely accordant.’ Allen
continued to work hard to improve the situation for slaves after 1807. When
Sierra Leone was handed over to the British Crown in 1807, he helped to found
the African Institution, to foster new trading links with Africa to replace the
old slave trade. Luke Howard (1772-1864), another well-known Quaker
pharmacist and Allen's business partner from 1796, was also involved in this
attempt to provide a better future beyond the slave trade ban. Allen's
strong connections in the political world both nationally and internationally
also meant that he acted as lead advocate for the antislavery cause. He
corresponded with the Board of Trade, called on the chancellor of the exchequer
and lobbied Tsar Alexander I of Russia and the Duke of Wellington at the
Congress of Vienna in 1822. Unsurprisingly,
Allen also responded in a more private way to slavery. He joined an estimated
400,000 Britons in abstaining from eating sugar from the 1780s until slavery
was abolished in 1838. Later, when he learnt that a West Indian boy brought
to London by a ship's captain was being mistreated, Allen had the boy brought
to his house, paid for his schooling and took him into service. `Black Tom' still
lived at Allen's home in Lindfield, Sussex in the 1850s. However,
the dilemma between personal ethics and commercial pragmatism was clearly a
difficult one to resolve. A large number of businesses in Britain rested on a
foundation of slave-produced products, and that included pharmacy. Allen
began his pharmacy career in 1792, aged 22, when he became a clerk for Joseph
Gurney Bevan at the long-established Plough Court pharmacy founded by
Sylvanus Bevan in 1715. The Bevan family were also Quakers. However, the majority
of Joseph Bevan's drugs trade was with the West Indies where most of his
customers were medical practitioners, including those on plantations. Yet
Bevan's letters make frequent references to his hatred of `the man-trade.'
His writings give an example of when he was prepared to wait for payment when
one of his customers in Jamaica offered to meet his debt by selling slaves. Allen
too refused to implicitly offer support for the slave trade through his
business. In 1814, he declined to re-fit a large sea chest having
investigated the buyer's occupation and found it was connected to the slave
trade. In
spite of his personal boycott, it is unclear whether Allen's business was
able to separate itself completely from slaveproduced commodities. The Royal
Pharmaceutical Society's archive includes a stock book for William Allen and
Company for the two years 1810 and 1811. In both years, the annual
stock-check reveals holdings of "double-refined sugar" (sacharum
purificat [sic] ), and of more than 20 medicinal syrups, alongside other
spices. This record alone cannot confirm the origin of this sugar. However,
it seems possible that, at least for the pharmaceutical business, Allen had
no choice but to rely on West Indian sugar produced on slave plantations. Nevertheless,
the indefatigable William Allen led by example in public, private and
commercial spheres to oppose what he termed ‘the infernal cruelty’ of the
slave trade. |
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site was last revised All material on this site is copyright © The Religious Society of Friends 2007 or © Michael Woolley 2007. |