Thomas Binney and the 1840 London Anti-Slavery Convention [by Simon Strickland-Scott]
Step inside Abney Park from the Stoke Newington Church Street entrance and turn right on the main path. A few metres along on the right hand side you will see a red granite obelisk commemorating the last resting place of Thomas Binney.
Binney was born in Newcastle in 1798 and became a Congregational minister in 1829, serving at the notable King’s Weigh House Chapel in London. His preaching proved very popular. This and his defence of the dissenting tradition earned him the nickname the “Archbishop of Non-Conformity”.
He was a prominent member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and chaired several sessions of the London Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840.
The Convention was organised by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (founded in 1829 and now called Anti-Slavery International) and was held at the Exeter Hall in the Strand.
The purpose of the Convention, coming in the wake of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, was to focus attention on the demand for a worldwide ban of the slave trade. The United States was a major concern where abolition was still a quarter of a century and a civil war away, and many delegates travelled across the Atlantic to attend. There was also a presentation of the state of the slave trade in the Dutch colonies.
Most of the delegates were white, though a few Africans, including former slaves – Edward Barrett and Henry Beckford – attended.
Ironically the main controversy for which the meeting is remembered today, and the legacy it bequeathed, did not involve African emancipation but women’s emancipation – and thus the Convention sits at the intersection of two of the great social campaigns of the nineteenth century. A number of women sought to be admitted to the convention including several from the United States and this led to two factions quickly forming over the issue.
The pro-women group were dubbed the Garrisonians after William Garrison, an American who had promoted the role of women in the movement and was also a delegate. The other faction was led by the brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan. The controversy was resolved less than satisfactorily by allowing women to attend on condition that they did not speak!
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton returned to the United States angry at having been denied speaking rights and realising that another movement was needed, one which struggled for women’s emancipation. It took the two women eight years to rally support before organising the Seneca Falls Convention in New York state in 1848. This convention came to be considered both the birthdate and birthplace of the American suffrage movement.
Less well known than Mott and Stanton but equally spurned to action by the discriminatory practices of the 1840 Convention was the Scottish Quaker Eliza Wigham. Wigham was the treasurer of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society and along with another Convention delegate and fellow Quaker Elizabeth Pease Nicol (a member of the Darlington Ladies’ Emancipation Society) founded the Edinburgh branch of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage.
Similarly, as late as 1861 the Unitarian Clementia Taylor was denied membership of the London Anti-Slavery Society because she was a woman. In response she founded the Ladies London Emancipation Society. This had the effect of forcing the London Anti-slavery Society to finally abolish its bar on women and the two organisations co-operated from then on. Among other campaigns, the Ladies London Emancipation Society supported the war effort of the Union forces in the American Civil War. Taylor later founded and chaired the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage. (From Unitarian Women: A Legacy of Dissent, Ed. Ann Peart)
It is worth noting that another delegate at the Convention was Lady Byron, widow of the poet, Lord Byron (they were legally separated at the time of his death), who along with Percy and Mary Shelley was part of the Villa Diodati Circle. Moreover, it was the rise of the suffrage movement – in part an unintended consequence of the Convention – which led to the rehabilitation of the reputation of Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft, which had in turn been inadvertently damaged by her husband William Godwin’s candid biography.
Benjamin Haydon's painting of the Anti-Slavery Convention - by Benjamin Haydon. (Public domain image)
This writer has been unable to discover Thomas Binney’s own view of the controversy at the Convention; perhaps as the chair he maintained a judicious neutrality.
The convention has been immortalised in a painting by Benjamin Haydon, “The World Anti-Slavery Convention 1840”, painted in 1841 and including Binney among many of the other attendees. This painting is now exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery.
After the convention, Binney continued with his work as a cleric preaching and writing theological works. He had previously (in 1831) written a biography of fellow Abolitionist and parliamentarian, Fowell Buxton (who would also attend the 1840 Convention).
Binney also travelled widely (especially for his time) – to the United States and Canada and also to Australia.
He preached for the last time at Westminster Chapel in November 1873 and died the following February at his home in Upper Clapton.
Finally, it is worth noting that also at Binney’s last resting place, Abney Park, is a fellow attendee at the 1840 Convention, Josiah Conder – and a later Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Rev. Aaron Buzacott.
This blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It was made by New Unity and Simon Strickland-Scott. Find out more: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
