About Me
Early life
Born in Hull, I was the son of a wealthy merchant who died when I was still a child. Placed under the guardianship of my uncle and aunt (a strong supporter of John Wesley), I developed an early interest in Methodism. My mother, however, was disturbed by this development and I was returned to her care whilst still young.
After attending Pocklington School in 1776, I was sent to St John's College, Cambridge. I was shocked by the behaviour of most of my fellow students and later wrote: "It was introduced on the very first night of my arrival to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives." Amongst these surroundings, I befriended William Pitt the Younger who would later become the Prime Minister. Although at first shocked by the goings on around me, I unfortunately later pursued a hedonistic lifestyle myself.
Outlawing slave trade
I decided to pursue the career of politics so I spent about nine thousand pounds to get elected as a member of parliament for Hull. In 1784, I became an Evangelical Christian. I now became a social reformer, concerned in particular with improving working conditions in factories. Millions of men, women and children had no choice but to work sixteen hours, six days a week in grim factories. People had come to the cities to find work but had been exploited and crowded together in filthy apartments. Here, they could easily catch cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis.
Eventually, Lady Middleton (Albinia Townshend, elder sister of Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney) approached me and asked that I use my power as an MP to stop the slave trade. I wrote "I feel the great importance of the subject and I think myself unequal to the task allotted to me," but I agreed to do my best. On 12 May 1789, I made my first speech against the slave trade. I was now seen as one of the leaders of the anti-slave trade movement.
Most of my fellow Tories were against any limits to the slave market but I persisted. Even when my first bill, in 1791, was defeated by a landslide of 163 votes to 88, I did not give up. In 1805, the House of Commons finally passed a law that made it illegal for any British subject to transport slaves but the House of Lords blocked it. In 1807, William Grenville made a speech saying that the slave trade was "contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy". This time, when the vote was taken, a huge majority in the House of Commons and the House of Lords backed the proposal. It became law on 25 March 1807. After 1807, with the support of friends such as Beilby Porteus, the Bishop of London, I continued to fight for the complete emancipation of slaves in the British Empire.
Although British captains were fined £100 for every slave that was found aboard their ship, this did not stop the trade. If a slave-ship was in danger of being captured by the Navy, the captain would order the slaves to be thrown overboard in order to reduce the fine. Some of the campaigners realised that the only way to stop slavery completely was to make it illegal. I disagreed with this because he thought that both the slaves and their owners would suffer as a result. "It would be wrong to emancipate (the slaves). To grant freedom to them immediately would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom."
Eventually, I was persuaded to join the campaign but I did not have much effect. Having retired in 1825, I did not play an important role. My fellow MP, Thomas Fowell Buxton continued to lead the abolition movement in Parliament. I died on 29 July 1833, a month before the Slavery Abolition Act was passed (an act which gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom).
Other projects
Although I am most famous for my work towards the abolition of slavery, I was also concerned with other matters.
The British East India Company was set up to give the British a share in the East Indian spice trade (before the Spanish Armada, Portugal and Spain had monopolised the market). In 1793, the East India Company had to renew its charter and I suggested adding clauses to enable the company to employ religious teachers with the aim of 'introducing Christian light into India.' I had also tried to set up a mission in India. This plan was unsuccessful but I tried again in 1813 when the charter had to be renewed again. Myself, using many petitions and various statistics, managed to persuade the House of Commons to include the clauses. In part of my efforts, my work enabled missionary work to become a part of the conditions of the British East India Company's 1813 renewed charter. (Although concerned with the country deeply, myself had never been to India. [1].) Eventually, this resulted in the foundation of the Bishopric of Calcutta.
I wrote, "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners." It was at my suggestion, together with Bishop Porteus, that the Archbishop of Canterbury requested King George III to issue his 'Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice' in 1787.
I was also a founding member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as well as the Church Missionary Society (since renamed Church Mission Society). I also gave his support to local projects and was treasurer to a nearby charity school while I was living in Wimbledon.
The 17th-century house in which I was born is today Wilberforce House museum in Kingston upon Hull.
My children included Robert Isaac Wilberforce, Samuel Wilberforce and Henry William Wilberforce.
A film titled Amazing Grace, about my life and the struggle against slavery, directed by Michael Apted, with Ioan Gruffudd playing the title role, was due to be released on February 25, 2007 – to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the date the British Parliament voted to ban the transport of slaves by British subjects.And recently, the University of Hull opened the Wilberforce Institute of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), to help educate people about the slave trade and its abolishion, aswell as the ongoing human trafficking and slavery today. The centre was opened by Desmond Tutu.(much thanks to Wikipedia for details of my life)
