Elizabeth Heyrick was a fiercely outspoken anti-slavery campaigner who challenged male authority and advocated for the abolishment of slavery.

Elizabeth Heyrick fought fiercely for the rights of oppressed people. After a disastrous marriage, she became a prolific pamphleteer, a Quaker and one of the most outspoken anti-slavery campaigners of her time. Despite renewed contemporary interest in slavery, and in the stories of those who opposed it, female abolitionists are still much less well known than their male counterparts. Yet they were often more radical and more daring. Heyrick defied male authority and she led others in challenging William Wilberforce and his colleagues to fight for the immediate rather than the gradual abolition of slavery.

This book is the first full length biography of Elizabeth Heyrick and it sets her life in the context of the British anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She was a woman who dared to put her head above the parapet and to call out those responsible for one of the worst abuses of human rights in history. She was courageous, loyal and uncompromising, and did not suffer fools gladly. It was not until long after her death in 1831 that her contribution to the anti-slavery cause started to be recognized and even today, she remains hidden in the shadows of the movement. Using archival records and recently unearthed family materials, as well as contemporary fiction and memoirs, the author creates a compelling account of an unsettled life set in turbulent times.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Timeline in the Fight for the Abolition of British Slavery
• Key Characters
• Searching for Elizabeth Heyrick
• Backdrop
• PART I: 1760–1770
  • Chapter 1 ‘.....in hopeless disaccord’
  • Chapter 2 ‘I will not be trifled with’
  • Chapter 3 ‘…the prettiest and the ugliest of the litter should both be preserved’
• PART II: 1780–1790
  • Chapter 4 ‘No Presbyterians, no machines’
  • Chapter 5 ‘Never daring even to think of it’
  • Chapter 6 ‘All the work of a moment’
• PART III: 1790–1800
  • Chapter 7 ‘.an emblem of the Wise’
  • Chapter 8 ‘If we purchase the commodity, we participate in the crime’
  • Chapter 9 ‘Peace - when there is no peace’
• PART IV: 1800–1820
  • Chapter 10 ‘The Rights of the Poor’
  • Chapter 11 ‘A War with beggars! An exterminating crusade against the poor and miserable!’
  • Chapter 12 ‘...by a train of most exquisite reasoning’
• PART V: 1820–1830
  • Chapter 13 ‘Let compensation be made in the first place where it is most due’
  • Chapter 14 ‘Finish the great work’
  • Chapter 15 ‘A burning passion for justice’
• Endnotes
• Appendix 1 Pamphlets by Elizabeth Heyrick (née Coltman)
• Appendix 2 Immediate not gradual abolition; or an inquiry into the shortest, safest, and most effectual means of getting rid of West Indian slavery by Elizabeth Heyrick (1824)
• Plates