Sturge, Joseph

has biography | a une biographie: English Quaker and abolitionist active in the nineteenth century. Sturge was a major figure in the campaigns to abolish slavery in the British Caribbean and improve working conditions in the region after emancipation in 1834. During his travels to the Caribbean in the 1830s, Sturge worked with Baptist chapels in Jamaica to found Free Villages for formerly enslaved communities. Sturge also purchased freedom for an apprenticed man in Jamaica named James Williams, took him to London, and helped him to publish his testimony in 'A Narrative of Events Since the First of August, 1834'. Sturge's experiences in the post-emancipation Caribbean were further recorded in the co-written report 'The West Indies in 1837'.

After abolition, Sturge also bought two plantation estates in Montserrat, naming them Olveston and Elberton, for use as a free-labour experiment. The Sturge family subsequently became heavily involved on the island through their Montserrat Company and the introduction of commercial lime production. In 1839, Sturge led the founding of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (today Anti-Slavery International).

Many of the Sturge family papers related to Montserrat are now in the care of the Montserrat National Trust.
was born | est né: 1 January 1793
died in | est mort par: 14 May 1859
has nationality | a la nationalité: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
has type | est de type: depicted

is referred to by | est référencé par: Wikipedia; Art UK; National Portrait Gallery; Google Books - James Williams, 'A Narrative of Events since the first of August, 1834'; Google Books - Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey, 'The West Indies in 1837'; Nigel Sadler, 'EAP769: Montserrat in written records and photographs: preserving the archive for the nation and the Montserrat diaspora', British Library (2015); Montserrat National Trust; Birmingham Archives & Collection - MS 1436 - Papers relating to the Sturge family; Alex Tyrrell, Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain (London: Christopher Helm, 1987); Alex Tyrrell, 'A Business of Philanthropy: The Montserrat Company, 1856-1961', The Journal of Caribbean History, 38, 2 (2004) 184-212

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Items with "main figure depicted | personnage principal représenté: Sturge, Joseph"
Statue of Joseph Sturge, Birmingham