0:00

In South West London, there is an area

0:03

that plays an outsized role in

0:05

British history. Today,

0:07

if you walk through Clapham, you will be

0:09

greeted by formerly grand black and

0:11

white manor houses, now playing home

0:13

to the likes of popular coffee chains. Among

0:16

Londoners, the area is mostly the butt

0:18

of jokes about its reputation for bottomless

0:21

branches and its large cohort

0:23

of Australian inhabitants. But

0:26

in the 1770s, Clapham

0:28

was the place to be,

0:30

at least if you were a wealthy merchant

0:32

looking to buy a quasi-country pad. It

0:35

was effectively a suburban

0:38

area, so it's not actually classed as being

0:40

part of London during that period.

0:42

So if you're looking for records on Clapham, you sometimes

0:44

have to use the Surrey Record Office. So

0:47

it's a place

0:49

that is a kind of halfway

0:52

house, I guess, between city living

0:54

and proper rural countryside

0:56

living. This is Kate Donington, senior

0:59

lecturer in Black Caribbean and African History

1:01

at The Open University. She's

1:03

taking us on a tour of 18th century

1:05

Clapham.

1:06

And it was a space that was kind of developed

1:09

as a place where people could have

1:11

what were kind of known as suburban

1:13

villas. So it was close enough

1:15

to the city of London to mean

1:18

that people could travel backwards and forwards

1:20

by coach and horse. And there was

1:22

a regular carriage service that went

1:25

effectively, you know, kind of ye

1:27

olde bus service, I suppose, between Clapham

1:29

and London, which meant that a lot of people

1:32

who were working in the city, so

1:34

financiers, people who were involved

1:36

in insurance, merchants,

1:39

they moved to Clapham because it provided

1:41

the kind of store rule,

1:44

it all,

1:45

but a kind of functioning one in that

1:47

they could still get to work the same

1:49

day. So it was

1:51

a sort of green, lush,

1:53

open, semi-rural space

1:57

with middle class villas,

1:59

but this was

1:59

somewhere where the working

2:02

middle-class man could

2:05

approximate countryside

2:08

living, but in a way which

2:10

meant that their links to

2:12

the city were still preserved. So

2:15

why are we in the verdant growing suburb

2:17

of Clapham today? Well, it's

2:19

to examine the congregation of a particular

2:22

site of religious worship, the Holy

2:24

Trinity Church, that would come to symbolise

2:26

the debate raging in Britain over

2:29

whether it was time to wrap up the enslavement

2:31

of millions

2:32

of Africans across its empire. In

2:35

the space of a few pews sat

2:37

two men with very different views on

2:39

abolition and chattel slavery. Both

2:42

of them would have a big influence on

2:44

the existence of the British slave trade. I'm Mwelodia

2:47

Maclean, a journalist on the Jane

2:50

to discover the truth about Britain's enslaving

2:52

history. This is

2:54

Human Resources.

3:19

Hi Human Resources listeners.

3:21

Before I get to the episode, I want

3:23

to take a moment to address the United

3:25

States Supreme Court decision to overturn

3:28

Roe vs Wade on the 24th of

3:30

June, which stripped away the right

3:32

to have a safe and legal abortion.

3:36

Restricting access to comprehensive

3:38

reproductive care, including abortion,

3:41

threatens the health and independence

3:43

of all people, which

3:45

we've already seen with abortion bans and

3:47

restrictions in countries like Poland and

3:50

Malta. This decision

3:52

has dire consequences and

3:54

could have harsh repercussions for other landmark

3:57

decisions within the United States and

3:59

beyond. I encourage

4:02

my audience, American and otherwise,

4:05

to learn more about what you can do to help

4:07

at podvoices.help. I

4:10

encourage you to speak up, take care,

4:12

and spread the word.

4:15

This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

4:18

Selling a little or a

4:21

lot? Do

4:23

your thing however you cha-ching with

4:25

Shopify, the global commerce platform

4:27

that helps you sell at every stage of your

4:29

business. Shopify helps you turn browsers

4:32

into buyers with the internet's best converting

4:34

checkout. 36% better on average

4:37

compared to other leading commerce platforms.

4:39

Get a $1 per month trial period at

4:41

shopify.com slash offer23.

4:45

So would we say that Clapham

4:47

is the Chipping Norton of its day? Where

4:49

the rich and powerful gather?

4:51

I mean, certainly when you look at the

4:53

kind of networks of people,

4:55

so if we're thinking about

4:57

the ways in which power circulates

5:00

through

5:02

the kind of neighborhood networks, then

5:04

yes, it is kind of that not closed

5:06

set, but there is a particular group of

5:09

people who are working in finance.

5:11

They are maybe

5:13

going to similar

5:15

cultural spaces, so they kind of

5:18

share membership of elite clubs

5:21

and

5:22

they will all know each other through their kind

5:24

of social circuit. As

5:27

we can see, they sometimes took

5:29

very, very different views on political

5:31

issues. And of course, a number of them were

5:34

MPs, so they would be familiar to one

5:36

another through Parliament as well.

5:38

And that's not a coincidence, is it? That

5:40

the financiers and these merchants also

5:43

happen to be members of Parliament.

5:46

Before the Parliamentary Reform Acts of the

5:49

1800s, getting a seat in the House of Commons

5:51

basically solely depended on your

5:53

wealth and connections. You

5:55

either landed gentry,

5:56

representing a county seat,

5:59

or an urban professor.

5:59

national representing a borough

6:02

seat. It's not a coincidence

6:04

at all, no. As we have today, it's

6:06

very much a system in which networks of

6:08

affiliation are

6:09

extremely important and also

6:12

independent wealth as well. You know, we're

6:14

in a period of time in

6:16

which members of parliament are not being

6:18

paid a wage. They need to be independently

6:20

wealthy and therefore

6:22

you see the predominance

6:23

of landowners. And increasingly,

6:27

in the 18th century,

6:27

you also see the rise of

6:29

commercial men and then perhaps a little

6:32

bit later in the early 19th century,

6:34

industrialists who also

6:36

have that wealth, that

6:38

prestige, that power.

6:40

Let's imagine we're in Clapham today. How

6:42

do the street names give us clues

6:45

about the figures who are involved in the story

6:47

that we're going to unpack? There's

6:48

Macaulay Road on Macaulay Street,

6:51

named after Zachary

6:52

Macaulay, who was resident in

6:54

Clapham for a very long time. And

6:56

he was very active within the

6:58

abolition movement. Less

7:00

well known to most inhabitants that

7:02

live there would be Hibbert Street.

7:05

Although there's a clue in the fact that there's also

7:08

a Hibbert Arms House in the local area

7:10

on Wandsworth Road. So you're beginning

7:12

to kind of get an indication

7:14

from the

7:15

presence of street names and also

7:18

important buildings in the area

7:20

that

7:21

the Hibbert family were

7:23

an important part of the kind of social

7:25

milieu in Clapham. But of course, the

7:27

Hibbets, unlike the Macaulays, were

7:29

involved in pro-slavery and descending

7:32

slavery rather than trying to abolish it.

7:35

Both these families, the Macaulays and the Hibbets,

7:37

were very influential in different ways

7:40

and they both attended the same Clapham

7:42

church, the Holy Trinity. It

7:44

was an Anglican church, aka its congregation

7:46

belonged to the Church of England and

7:48

was consecrated in 1776. I

7:52

asked Kate to take us to the Holy Trinity

7:54

on a Sunday in the 1780s and describe the

7:57

scene inside the church.

7:59

It's interesting to

8:01

think about what

8:03

the

8:04

social scene of the church might have

8:06

looked like. For anyone who is

8:08

or has been a churchgoer, church

8:11

is about more than just attending the service.

8:14

It's about being part of the community and

8:16

people turn up early so they can catch up with

8:19

one another. And at the end, they

8:21

often just hang around and talk and discuss

8:23

things. So it's really the social

8:25

space as well as a place

8:26

of religious practice.

8:29

I guess the kind of mapping out of

8:31

space within the church itself

8:33

is very much structured around kind

8:35

of social hierarchies. So

8:37

the pews at the front of the church

8:40

are pretty much reserved

8:42

for the really the great and the good of

8:44

the local area. And the closer you

8:46

are to the altar, the kind of more

8:49

social and religious prestige that you

8:51

have. There are spaces at the back

8:54

of the church which are effectively

8:56

kind of benches that were used by

8:58

the servants of the wealthier

9:00

congregation. So if you

9:02

had a lot of money, you would pay

9:05

for your impute, but then you would also

9:07

book space for

9:08

your servants to be able to attend church. And it

9:11

was a demonstration of the

9:13

ways in which you could support

9:16

dependent people, so dependents in terms

9:18

of your family, but also dependents in

9:21

relation to the rest of the members of

9:23

your household.

9:25

On this particular Sunday in the 1780s,

9:28

who's at the front of the Holy Trinity?

9:31

At the front of the church, you're going to be likely to

9:33

see the most important influential

9:36

members of the congregation. So

9:38

your Macaulays, your Wilberforces, your Thornsons.

9:40

We've met the Macaulays

9:43

briefly already. That family

9:45

was led by Scottish abolitionist

9:47

Zachary Macaulay. He was a reformer

9:49

who had worked on

9:49

Jamaican plantations as an assistant

9:52

manager, which saw him so appalled

9:54

by the brutality of enslavement, it

9:56

kick-started his evolution into an ardent

9:59

anti-slide.

9:59

slavery campaigner. The Wilberforces

10:02

were led by William Wilberforce, perhaps today

10:04

remembered as the face of the British Abolitionist

10:07

movement, although he was driven by conservative

10:10

evangelical faith rather than a

10:12

radical political background. The

10:15

Thaunton's Kate mentions was the household

10:17

of Henry Thaunton, William Wilberforce's

10:20

best friend, a fellow reformer and

10:22

a hugely influential economist whose

10:24

ideas about central banking have helped

10:27

shape Britain's modern monetary system.

10:29

I wanted to know if these reformers and

10:32

any accompanying family members are at the front

10:34

of the Holy Trinity, where are the pro-slavery

10:37

individuals like George Hibbert sitting?

10:40

George Hibbert started off

10:42

relatively far back

10:44

in the church, so

10:46

he was relegated

10:48

to pew 19 in

10:50

the middle aisle, which isn't

10:52

in terms of social kudos,

10:55

that great of a position, but he's

10:57

very determined to move forwards and throughout

10:59

the years he gradually creeps

11:01

further and further towards

11:04

the front of the church and

11:06

eventually a pew comes up, pew 9, which

11:09

is pretty much as close as anyone

11:11

has been able to move to the front

11:13

of the church.

11:15

Let me guess,

11:17

what George Hibbert wants,

11:19

George Hibbert gets.

11:38

What

11:50

kind of philanthropy is someone like George

11:52

Hibbert engaged in? Something we've

11:54

seen a lot throughout human resources is the

11:56

figure of the philanthropist who would be involved

11:58

in lots of charitable acts domestically

12:01

with

12:01

money made from investment in the overseas

12:04

slave trade.

12:05

It's a form of social power I think and

12:07

so in order to be considered

12:10

a respectable gentleman you

12:12

needed at that time to really

12:13

be exercising your social power

12:16

and that involved participating in

12:19

philanthropic activities so

12:21

donating to charity, being

12:23

on the board of various different charities

12:25

even founding your own as well

12:27

and George Hibbert was sort

12:29

of no different in that respect.

12:32

He had come

12:34

from a family in Manchester

12:36

that was involved in the cross trade

12:38

and over the generations the Hibbert

12:41

had built

12:41

up effectively

12:43

a kind of commercial empire that spread

12:45

from Manchester to

12:48

Jamaica where his family were involved

12:49

in slave trading and plantation

12:52

ownership and then they set up a branch house in

12:54

London which dealt with selling slave produced

12:56

commodities. There is an anxiety

12:58

in this period around the idea of new money,

13:01

many made in trade and particularly

13:04

as the 18th century progressed and

13:06

the issue of abolition emerged

13:09

money made through the slave trade.

13:11

So for George Hibbert the

13:14

sort

13:14

of exercise of philanthropy was part

13:16

of his claims to the trappings

13:18

of

13:20

gentlemanly respectability

13:22

but also really importantly it

13:24

was part of his activities

13:29

in relation to defending the slave trade

13:31

and slavery so he was very

13:33

much a leading member

13:35

of the London West India lobby.

13:39

How did Hibbert defend the slave trade?

13:41

One of the things that he argued

13:43

was that wealth generated through

13:46

slavery was being spent

13:49

in maintaining respectable Christian

13:51

families so again if we think of the importance

13:54

of that visibility

13:56

in the church in Clapham it's

13:58

a performance of that sort

14:00

of idea of Christian respectable

14:03

family life, this sort

14:05

of crafting of this identity

14:07

is part of his

14:10

work around why slavery

14:12

is important. And not only

14:15

was that money supporting

14:17

good Christian families but also it was being spent

14:19

on worthy causes. So he also makes arguments

14:23

in his speeches to Parliament on the slave trade

14:25

about the ways in which he

14:29

uses his wealth to support

14:31

philanthropic causes to make

14:33

sure that the poor, the needy and the destitute

14:36

of the metropole of Britain itself

14:39

are the recipients of his largesse.

14:42

He also does what I would sort

14:44

of frame as I guess kind of religious

14:47

charitable work, religious philanthropy.

14:49

So he's involved in the Society

14:52

for the Conversion and Religious Instruction in

14:54

Education of Negro Slaves in

14:56

the British West Indies. That was

14:59

a missionary society that was

15:01

established in 1794 and

15:03

it had the Bishop of London as its

15:05

president.

15:07

This episode is brought to you

15:09

by Undeniably Dairy. Dairy

15:12

farmers are more than farmers, they're

15:14

climate caretakers. They see water

15:17

as a precious resource. Most farmers

15:19

recycle water up to four times, from

15:22

chilling the milk to irrigating the crops.

15:24

And some even use technology to turn

15:27

manure into renewable energy.

15:29

To learn more about what dairy farmers are doing

15:31

to make their farms more sustainable visit

15:34

usdairy.com.

15:37

What's up everyone? It's Damien Lillard

15:39

and Bose knows how important music is to my

15:41

daily routine. That's when I'll

15:44

go for the QC Ultra headphones. Especially

15:47

for me being like a lyricist, a storyteller,

15:50

somebody that you got to be able to hear clear.

15:52

The immersive audio is perfect for that. It

15:55

literally puts you in a space of quiet,

15:58

quality sound. Just plug. them in

16:00

and get to us. Discover more

16:02

at Bose.com. Bose.

16:04

Sound is power.

16:07

In the Human Resources Season 2

16:09

episode, Origin Stories Part 1,

16:11

we heard about how the Catholic Church provided

16:14

religious arguments in defence of the

16:16

slave trade. Kate has outlined

16:18

how passionate Christians like George Hibbert also

16:22

use their faith to underwrite their pro-slavery

16:24

beliefs. But Hibbert is sitting

16:26

alongside evangelical Christians in his

16:28

local church who use their faith

16:30

as a bedrock to argue the complete opposite.

16:34

How did Christianity power the abolitionist

16:36

cause?

16:37

In regards to why it was that the

16:39

abolitionist really

16:41

pushed

16:42

for

16:43

the abolition of slavery, I think it's very

16:45

much linked to this idea

16:48

that being enslaved in the Caribbean

16:50

represented an untapped congregation

16:53

for God. And this is

16:55

a point in time when evangelical

16:57

Christianity is seeking to

17:00

expand its reach.

17:02

And the enslaved were a population

17:04

that could be

17:05

quote unquote civilised

17:08

through exposure to

17:11

improving virtues of Christianity,

17:14

so to marriage, to

17:16

church attendance. And you see

17:18

that reflected in some

17:19

of the issues that the abolitionists

17:22

really go after. They're very,

17:24

very interested in the beauty of sexual

17:26

morality in the Caribbean, and they

17:28

campaign and push hard on that.

17:30

Both in relation to

17:32

the ways in which the

17:34

enslaved population is sexually

17:37

exploited by slave

17:39

owners. And I mean, of course, you can see that through

17:42

the rising population of

17:44

people of mixed heritage that are located

17:47

in the various different Caribbean colonies.

17:50

And this was considered to be a sort of gross

17:52

immorality. It's a betrayal of Christian

17:55

principles of marriage, the

17:57

denial of Christian

17:59

marriage to enslaved people, to

18:01

break up of families as a

18:04

result of the selling

18:06

of enslaved families away from one

18:08

another either for financial

18:11

purposes or as a form of punishment as

18:14

well.

18:15

What other areas did the abolitionists

18:17

focus on?

18:18

For example enslaved people having to work on a Sunday

18:21

that didn't create a space for them to be able

18:23

to or time for them to be able to go

18:26

to church to hear the Word of God which

18:28

again was an issue that the abolitionists

18:31

wanted to stop. They wanted enslaved

18:33

people to have a spiritual life. For

18:36

missionaries, for example, Unitarian

18:38

missionaries where the active

18:41

engagement with the gospel required

18:43

the ability to be able

18:44

to read, enslavement

18:46

meant that

18:47

people were not educated. The

18:50

priority for planters was to have

18:52

enslaved people working and

18:55

not to spend time and money

18:57

on educating them. There was also

18:59

a deep fear that should they become educated

19:02

it would lead to

19:04

an engagement with ideas

19:07

that would encourage them to seek

19:09

their own freedom. You

19:11

can see some of the different ways in

19:13

which the abolitionist movement

19:16

is being

19:17

influenced by its Christian

19:20

principles and morals and also this

19:22

kind of evangelical impetus as well,

19:24

the notion that

19:26

enslaved people

19:27

could be a new spiritual

19:30

congregation under God should

19:33

the

19:33

prohibitive nature of enslavement be

19:36

removed from them. So they didn't necessarily

19:39

value

19:40

and see African

19:42

cultures and traditions and religious practices

19:45

as equal. They wanted

19:46

to change those things about the enslaved

19:49

people but they wanted

19:51

to get rid of slavery because slavery

19:53

in effect was

19:55

impeding the spread

19:56

of Christianity because people

19:59

were not educated.

19:59

enough to be able to engage

20:02

with their religious faith in a way that

20:05

was kind of serious and would

20:07

enable them to really embrace faith.

20:09

You've got these two groups, abolitionists

20:12

and pro-slavery advocates mingling

20:14

regularly within the very small space

20:16

of the Holy Trinity. Do

20:18

you have any idea how they interacted on an

20:20

interpersonal level, especially

20:22

as both campaigns heated up in the 1790s?

20:26

You've got some idea of how

20:28

they interacted. There's not sort

20:30

of voluminous correspondence which would

20:32

really elucidate that. George Hibbert

20:34

was very, very careful to cultivate

20:37

this

20:39

sociable and polite

20:42

sense of gentlemanliness.

20:44

And

20:45

William Wilberforce did say of

20:47

George Hibbert that he was one of the only

20:50

ones of his

20:51

opponents

20:53

to treat him as a gentleman.

20:55

So I think there is this sense

20:57

that forms and

20:59

practices of gentlemanliness,

21:00

sociability are kind of greasing

21:02

the wheels of social interactions,

21:05

particularly

21:05

in Capom. I mean, George

21:07

Hibbert lived there for,

21:08

I think it's about 28 years.

21:11

So there is an impetus there to

21:13

really make those relationships

21:16

work. They also were both involved

21:18

in a variety of different charitable

21:21

endeavors together. So they

21:23

were both involved with the Society

21:25

for the Elimination of Small Tocks.

21:28

They were both involved with the founding

21:31

of the Royal National

21:32

Lifeboat Institution. Wilberforce

21:35

was also involved in the Society

21:38

for the Conversion of Enslaved People

21:40

in the Caribbean as well. And of course, they're

21:43

both members of Parliament.

21:44

Wasn't there an instance where an abolitionist

21:47

who lived in Clapham went to visit

21:49

the Hibbits what happens in this

21:51

encounter between George Hibbert and the

21:53

abolitionist William Smith?

21:55

George Hibbert's response

21:57

indicates that effectively what William

21:59

Smith is doing is said to him was that if your family

22:01

hadn't been involved with transatlantic

22:04

slavery, you wouldn't

22:06

be a supporter

22:08

of slavery.

22:09

And Hibbert writes back saying perhaps

22:11

if his family hadn't been involved,

22:14

he wouldn't have taken such an interest in the issue.

22:17

But given that they were, he had effectively

22:19

done his homework and he was entirely

22:22

convinced and could

22:24

make the arguments without contradicting

22:26

his conscience. So they're writing to each

22:28

other, they're visiting, they're going to the same church

22:31

and they are also

22:32

active within the same

22:35

philanthropic sphere.

22:36

Although his letters to his planter clients

22:39

are far

22:40

less complimentary when it comes

22:42

to William Wilberforce. He writes to

22:45

one of his clients in Jamaica,

22:47

a plantation owner called Simon Taylor.

22:50

Effectively, he calls Wilberforce

22:52

a wasp that has been slapped

22:55

out the window, but

22:57

in order to stop could do with being

22:59

squashed on the foot.

23:00

It's June, October 6th at Paramount.

23:03

First place I'm going to be at is

23:05

Los Alamos, South America. Dead things buried

23:08

in that land. I'm coming back.

23:10

There's something else. Something's

23:13

wrong with Timmy.

23:14

He needs time to adjust. That's

23:17

not Timmy. I'm going

23:20

to be fucking driven. Screaming. Sometimes,

23:25

debt is better. Cemetery

23:28

online, $40,000 community fee at Paramount

23:30

Plus.

23:34

If I would have kept making only the minimum

23:36

payments on my credit cards, my debt would have

23:38

taken 47 years to pay off. These are real

23:41

national debt relief customers. I knew

23:43

I wasn't going to be able to get out of debt by myself.

23:45

Credit card, medical, or personal loan debt? National

23:48

Debt Relief negotiates with your creditors to reduce

23:50

what you owe. National Debt Relief got me out of

23:52

debt. You could be debt free in as little as 24

23:55

to 48 months. Visit NationalDebtRelief.com

23:58

to learn more and get started.

23:59

relief to our palm.

24:01

I never know whether to praise

24:03

this sort of disingenuity and

24:06

civil political discourse. Is

24:08

it an indicator of maturity and

24:11

the ability to find common ground that is so

24:13

vital in politics or a sign

24:15

that these people don't actually consider the stakes

24:18

very high because ultimately it's

24:20

more of an intellectual exercise for them? To

24:23

some degree

24:24

it's all the same today. Political

24:27

opponents can be civil

24:29

towards one another. You don't know what says in

24:31

private and of course you don't know the

24:33

degree to which Hibbitt's also performing

24:35

a role for his plan

24:37

for clients, Simon Taylor

24:39

as well, who will want to hear that

24:41

he is really adamantly

24:43

against will before.

24:44

So you just have to try and wade

24:47

through and measure up. What

24:49

is it that

24:51

these people are really thinking

24:53

between

24:53

the lines of what they're saying?

24:55

I guess we could think about maybe at parallel

24:58

today with the ways in which the

25:01

arms trade is presented

25:03

as an essential part of

25:06

the British economy. Respectable people

25:08

work in its

25:09

board of directors or who facilitate

25:12

those wheels of commerce.

25:14

It is a trade which deals

25:17

in human death and human maiming

25:19

and it's defended

25:20

on the same ground as being

25:22

a sort of

25:25

integral part of the British economy. If

25:27

we didn't do it, someone else would do it. We

25:29

do it better because we have

25:31

laws to regulate it. In

25:33

terms of political rhetoric, there's

25:35

quite a lot of parallels between the two.

25:38

Beyond the machinations of Westminster, I

25:41

want to know about the hidden stories of the Holy

25:43

Trinity Church. We're aware of some

25:45

of the big names but what are the stories

25:47

of people who might have been involved in either

25:49

abolitionism or pro-slavery

25:51

and holy trinity that we don't know so much

25:54

about?

25:54

Maybe one of the stories that's interesting

25:57

that people don't know here to learn about

25:59

is that...

25:59

Zachary McCauley, who was an abolitionist,

26:02

was very much involved with the

26:05

project to effectively set up

26:07

a colony in Sierra Leone.

26:10

After the ending of the American Revolution, enslaved

26:12

people belonging to the colonists

26:15

that had rebelled against the British government were

26:17

offered their freedom if they would fight for the British.

26:20

When the British lost the war, those

26:22

enslaved people who would

26:24

become free were effectively the responsibility

26:27

of the British, and a number of them were

26:29

sent to Nova Scotia, and a

26:31

number of

26:32

them came and settled in London.

26:35

Following that, it was decided that these people

26:37

should be sent

26:38

to Sierra Leone. So

26:40

there was a project that was set up in order

26:43

to do that.

26:44

So Zachary McCauley was

26:46

interested and involved in that

26:49

project. His brother, I think, was very

26:51

much one of the leading figures who

26:54

established that colony

26:54

there.

26:56

In 1799,

26:58

children were brought over

27:00

from Sierra Leone,

27:01

and they were brought over by Zachary

27:04

McCauley.

27:05

And they came to

27:07

participate in what Zachary

27:09

McCauley had founded and named the

27:11

African institution. And the idea

27:14

was that these children would receive

27:16

an education, and they would be Christianized.

27:19

So they came over, and they were living

27:21

in Clapham at the same time as the

27:24

abolitionists, and also as this

27:26

contingent

27:26

of slave owners as well. So you

27:29

can imagine as George Hibbert shripped

27:31

off to church with his wife

27:34

and many, many children and servants

27:36

in tow.

27:37

There would have been African children

27:40

also living

27:41

on the common as well at the African institution.

27:44

Do we know anything about the lives of these black

27:46

children who ended up in Clapham? Those

27:49

children

27:49

participated in community

27:51

and church life, and they would have been a very

27:53

visible part of the community

27:56

as well.

27:57

And so a number of them actually ended up dying.

27:59

quite young and effectively

28:02

they were buried in

28:04

St Paul's Church in Clapham. Now

28:07

that church had been

28:09

funded by the great and the good

28:11

of Coley Trinity Clapham including

28:13

George Hibbert who had given money to

28:15

establish that church. So George's

28:18

son, also his name George,

28:20

and his brother William are buried at

28:23

St Paul's in Clapham as

28:25

are some of the African children who

28:27

died

28:28

and as are some of the

28:30

abolitionists as well. There's

28:32

a very tragic

28:33

postscript that so many of these black children

28:36

bought England from Sierra Leone died

28:38

young.

28:39

I think it flags another key issue. Sometimes

28:42

today because our values have changed so much

28:44

there is a conception of the slavery abolitionist

28:47

movement as an anti-racism movement

28:49

which is very historical and

28:52

imposes modern political values on the past.

28:54

Yeah I mean I think it's something that's really

28:55

important to acknowledge that

28:58

just because the abolitionists wanted

29:00

to get rid of slavery it

29:03

didn't necessarily make them

29:05

anti-racist. Anti-slavery and anti-racist

29:08

are not the same things

29:11

and the abolitionists

29:13

did not see African

29:15

civilization culture and religion

29:17

as equal to

29:20

British forms of culture

29:23

and civilization and religion

29:26

and in fact you know the abolitionists what

29:29

they wanted to do was effectively to remake

29:31

the enslaved

29:32

in their own image to

29:35

make them into British

29:37

subjects

29:39

and to model their cultural,

29:42

their familial and

29:44

their spiritual lives in

29:46

ways that mirrored

29:48

their own. So it's not

29:51

about equality in

29:53

that sense and so it's not

29:55

surprising to find some

29:58

crossover with regards to to some

30:00

of these kind of colonial or projects

30:03

of empire, including the

30:05

society for, you know, affecting the relief

30:08

of the Black Core,

30:09

which

30:11

was about or was set up in

30:13

order to do something about those freed

30:17

people who had escaped

30:20

slavery in America and had been brought

30:22

over to London after the American

30:24

Revolution. Those people

30:26

reviewed as a problem.

30:28

Those people reviewed as a drain on resources.

30:31

And

30:33

there is an interest there

30:35

for absentee planters who

30:37

were living in

30:38

Britain

30:40

to

30:41

effectively

30:43

shape that society with their ideas

30:45

about race.

30:47

We've talked a lot about Holy Trinity, but I'm

30:49

interested to know what other British

30:51

locations, religious or otherwise, might

30:54

serve a similar function in representing

30:56

these overlaps between pro-slavery

30:58

figures and abolitionists. The

31:01

example I'm thinking of is Cross Street Chapel in Manchester,

31:04

which inhibits worship plan when the

31:06

family was majority-based there.

31:08

It's a dissenting church.

31:11

And

31:12

again, you have this community

31:14

of kind of abolitionists and

31:16

people involved in slavery being

31:19

involved with the church. I would say in

31:22

terms of thinking about the various different

31:24

churches that we have across the country, everyone

31:26

might be united in faith, but that doesn't mean

31:28

that they're united in terms of their political

31:31

opinions in other

31:33

areas.

31:34

Another example, again, from London

31:37

would be Newington Green congregation.

31:39

That's a different kind of congregation.

31:42

So Holy Trinity Chapel is the Church

31:44

of England, whereas Newington Green

31:47

is one of the oldest, if not

31:49

the oldest, Unitarian place

31:51

of worship in the country.

31:53

And Newington Green has some

31:56

very famous abolitionists

31:59

that use it as a

31:59

place of worship. Mary

32:02

Wollstonecraft was associated with

32:04

Newington Green and she did a book

32:06

review effectively

32:07

of Olade Aquiano's interesting narrative

32:10

in

32:10

which she talks about the

32:12

ways in which race is not an

32:14

indication of civilization

32:17

and humanity and therefore enslavement

32:20

is you know an oppressive institution

32:22

that doesn't allow people to fulfill

32:25

their entire selves. So

32:27

she worshiped there also, Anna Letitia

32:29

Barbourge,

32:30

again a female

32:32

abolitionist. She wrote

32:34

an epistle to William Wilberforce which

32:36

celebrated the work that Wilberforce

32:38

did and encouraged him to carry

32:41

on with his campaign

32:42

to end the slave trade. He

32:44

was a member of the congregation there.

32:47

Do we know anything about how these households

32:49

interacted within this space?

32:51

At that point in time the preacher

32:53

there was Richard Price and

32:57

he was very very vocal on issues

33:01

of American slavery. So he

33:03

had written tracks denouncing American

33:05

slavery but he doesn't say

33:08

a huge amount about Caribbean

33:11

slavery and other historians

33:13

have kind of questioned whether

33:16

that's perhaps because

33:18

it was easier to talk about American

33:20

slavery in relation to his congregation

33:23

than it was to talk about Caribbean slavery

33:25

because his congregation included some

33:28

very wealthy people who were

33:30

involved in westerns here commerce.

33:33

So it's interesting

33:36

to think not only of how the congregation

33:38

interacted with one another but also

33:41

how the

33:42

issue of slavery was also impacting

33:45

on

33:46

how they were receiving the word of God

33:48

or how they were being

33:50

preached at and what

33:53

that says about

33:55

the sort of social

33:56

and religious

33:57

entanglement that enabled

33:59

people to speak or not

34:02

speak

34:03

in different ways and at different times.

34:06

The Holy Trillity in Clapham is a microcosm

34:09

of the larger debates around slavery

34:11

that were about to dominate British political

34:14

life in the late 1700s. In the next few episodes, we're

34:18

going to examine the movement for abolition

34:20

from sometimes overlooked perspectives.

34:22

First up, the Black abolitionists

34:25

whose work was so crucial to the legal

34:27

end of the slave trade but found themselves

34:30

shunted from historical record.

34:47

Human Resources was written by me, Moyolothian

34:49

Maclean. Our editor and producer is

34:52

Renee Richardson. Our researchers are

34:54

Dr. Alison Bennett and Arisa Lumber. Production

34:56

assistant is Rory Boyle, sound design

34:58

by Ben Yolovitz. This is a broccoli

35:01

production part of the Sony Podcast Network.