Trading in Human Lives
Our connections with the slave trade and its abolition

The slave trade was abolished in the British empire two hundred year ago. Has this anything to do with us? It may seem to be something that happened far away, a long time ago. Yet our church of St Mary Magdalene displays links with both the slave trade and the movement for its abolition.

A slave-trading family

Buried in the church are several members of the Lascelles family, which had trading interests and estates in the West Indies, particularly in Barbados, from 1648 until 1975. The enormous wealth that transformed the family into one of the great English aristocratic dynasties was built up during the first half of the eighteenth century, chiefly by Henry Lascelles, through a range of commercial and trading activities in the West Indies, particularly trading in sugar and slaves.

Henry returned to this country with his new second wife, Jennet, in 1732 to manage the English end of the business — a commission house in the City which dealt with the sugar imports, and the organisation of slave shipments from the west coast of Africa. From 1738 they lived in Lichfield House, Richmond. Jennet died in 1754, a year after her husband, and was buried in St Mary’s churchyard.

Holburne monument
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Henry was joined in Barbados by his younger half-brother, Edward, in about 1715. Edward took over charge of the West Indian end of the family’s interests in 1732 when Henry returned to England. At about that time he married Frances Ball, daughter of another Barbados planter, who was probably from a Richmond family. One of their sons was to become the 1st Earl of Harewood. After Edward’s death in 1747, Frances married Captain Francis Holburne, who, alongside his career in the Royal Navy, had been managing a Barbadan plantation. They returned to England and also chose to live in Richmond. When Frances died in 1761 she was buried inside St Mary’s. This handsome marble monument, extolling her virtues as wife, mother, friend and mistress of a family, was erected to her memory on the west wall of what is now the children’s corner. The black slate slab in the south aisle nearby, records that her brother and her second husband, by then Admiral Holburne, were buried with her.

The black presence in eighteenth century Richmond

Between 1662 and 1780 twenty black people were recorded in the parish registers. On 6 January 1715/16 is recorded the baptism of ‘Caesar a Black of riper years of Mr Vandeput’. This may have been a way of asserting that his servant, Caesar, was a free man, not a slave.

St Mary's Pulpit with the Vandeput Monogram
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Mr (later Sir) Peter Vandeput was one of the Vestry members who had their crests and monograms inlaid on the panels of the new pulpit, installed in 1699. His monogram is the one surmounted by a winged dolphin.

An abolitionist

The monument to Gilbert Wakefield on the north wall is our link back to the abolition movement. His father and brother were successively vicars of Richmond. He began training for the ministry himself and in 1778, before resigning to become a Unitarian, he was a curate in Liverpool. While there he crusaded against the slave trade, denouncing it from the pulpit. This was quite a brave thing to do at the age of 22, as Liverpool was one of the centres of the trade. Although some people (particularly the Quakers) had been speaking out against the trade for some time, his involvement was still relatively early, as the abolition movement did not gather momentum until a decade later (the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was not formed until 1787).

Gilbert Wakefield monument
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Gilbert was a nationally-known figure, described as one of the two leading British scholars of his time. He was never afraid of controversy and this led to his early death. He became a dissenter of a rather extreme form. He embraced the teachings of Christ, whom he regarded as the greatest moral philosopher, sent by God to redeem mankind, and he was a notable theological writer; but he was averse to most forms of worship and, after resigning his curacy, never associated himself with any sect or congregation. He became a pacifist, and wrote against hunting and the death penalty and in favour of vegetarianism. He supported the French Revolution and wrote that any church promoting the anti-French policy of the Pitt government was the Antichrist. This is what earned him a 2-year prison sentence, from which he died of prison fever (typhus), as recorded on his monument.

How should we respond to these reminders?

It would not be meaningful to apologise for the actions of long-past generations; they are now too remote from us. Rather, we must try to understand these historical events, as only then can we recognise their consequences that are still around us. More particularly, they should make us think about the various forms of slavery in the world today and what we can do to support their abolition.

From 21 March to 29 July there is an exhibition at the Museum of Richmond in the Old Town Hall, which examines the wider subject of the town’s connections to the slave trade and its abolition.

Grahame Boyes