The journey of Mary Prince from the salt ponds of Bermuda to a cause célèbre in early 19th-century Britain came at unbearable personal cost. Torn from her family in a slave auction and routinely beaten while naked, she was brought to England by her owners after years of brutality on Caribbean plantations.
It was only after she fled and found refuge with anti-slavery campaigners in northern England that she was given a voice, by dictating the traumatic story of her life and using it to bring home to Britons the reality of the inhumane industry 3,000 miles away that was enriching their economy. In her 1831 book, The History of Mary Prince, she lambasted the English for their conduct in the West Indies where “they forget God and all feeling of shame”.
She continued: “They tie up slaves likes hogs – moor them up like cattle, and they [whip] them, so as hogs, or cattle, or horses never were flogged – and yet they come home and say ... that slaves don’t want to get out of slavery. But it is not so.”With these words and her harrowing descriptions of slavery, including being separated from her mother and sisters as she was examined “in the same manner that a butcher would a calf or a lamb” and sold, Prince became a key part of the campaign which ended with the passing of an abolition law in Britain in 1833.
But while names such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson have lived on as the heroes of the movement to end British involvement in slavery, the names of its heroines and their role in blazing a trail where men could only but follow has been all but wiped from popular memory.
Historic England, formerly English Heritage, is now seeking to redress the balance by highlighting the role of women in the anti- slavery moment as events are held today to mark the International Day Trade.
