Clarkson Memorial

Thomas Clarkson was a leading anti-slavery campaigner, and in 1787 he helped to establish the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, later recruiting Wilberforce to provide a 'Voice in Parliament'. But it was Clarkson rather than Wilberforce who was the real driver of the campaign.  He was a tireless and effective activist in what has been described as “The first successful large scale human rights campaign”. He was probably the only one of the Abolitionists to risk his life for the cause, and he did so on several occasions.

Clarkson lived for 10 years at Eusemere in Pooley Bridge, where he became friends with the Wordsworths and with Coleridge. It was when Dorothy and William were on their way home after visiting Clarkson that they came upon the wild daffodils massed on the lakeshore. Wordsworth was so impressed by Clarkson's anti-slavery zeal that he wrote a poem “To Thomas Clarkson” which described him as a "firm friend of human kind". The poet Samuel Coleridge saw him as “a moral steam engine” and a “giant with one idea”. Both recognised that Clarkson was the real powerhouse in the anti-slavery movement. He is said to have travelled 35,000 miles on horseback in his quest for evidence of the evils of the slave trade, also promoting anti-slavery petitions and the sugar boycott. He continued to work for the cause into his 80s.

The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade had as its emblem the motif of a kneeling slave in chains surrounded by the words “Am I not a man and a brother?” This motif was reproduced on medallions which became the 'wrist band' of the day and were distributed by Clarkson all over the country (the historian Simon Schama says: “by the box load”). These Slave Medallions were seen as instrumental in the ultimate swing of popular feeling against slavery.

By Janet Wedgwood, resident of Pooley Bridge