The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7444 p344-345
24 March 2007

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William Allen: anti-slavery campaigner

William Allen, one of the Pharmaceutical Society's founders, was deeply involved in the campaign to end slavery, which led to the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 200 years ago this week. Briony Hudson, keeper of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's museum collections, writes

SUMMARY

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.” The news was particularly glorious for Allen, who had been at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement for more than 20 years, and was to be involved in the cause for the rest of his life.

A month after the Bill’s second reading, Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. The Act outlawed the slave trade throughout the British Empire and made it illegal for British ships to be involved in the trade. It marked the beginning of the end for the transatlantic traffic in human beings. Best estimates suggest that over more than 300 years, 10–12 million Africans were forcibly transported to North and South America and the Caribbean.

Much has been written about the life of William Allen. He was the first member and first president of the Pharmaceutical Society, a philanthropist, a leading scientist and a well-connected diplomat on behalf of his many causes. Allen was one of many Quaker opponents to the slave trade. He was horrified by the idea from an early age, writing, aged 20: “I think it may be safely asserted, and clearly proved, that those who enslave men, or are accessory to it, are neither moralists nor Christians; for we know, in the first place, that to drag innocent people from their near and dear connections and from their native land, to consign them to slavery, to wear out their lives in continual hardships, is unjust.”

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