Lucy Townsend, Mary Lloyd and
Mary Anne Galton
Women Abolitionists

By 1787 ten percent of Abolitionist Society funds came from women. Women championed the runaway, Mary Prince, & the boycott of slave produce, and the immediate abolition of slavery. Lucy Townsend and Mary Lloyd founded the West Bromwich, Birmingham and District Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves in 1825. Others followed. Lucy Townsend was a highly influential figure in the anti slavery movement. The society was founded at a time when women did not have the vote. Women were actively campaigning against slavery by refusing to use slave produced sugar, writing poems, organising and collecting petitions for the abolition of slavery. Female petitioning produced a large scale national female petition which was presented as a part of a campaign to influence parliament into the passing of the emancipation in 1833 act. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire and slave owners were compensated.

Anti slavery women were influenced by the contemporary ideas of the day. Lucy Townsend had corresponded with the prominent Anti slavery activist Thomas Clarkson. Lucy Townsend was the daughter of William Jesse, a clergyman at All Saints Church, West Bromwich. Mary Lloyd (died 1865) was the wife of Samuel Lloyd, a prominent Quaker and head of Lloyds, Foster & Co. which owned an iron foundry and a colliery at Wednesbury. The couple settled in Wood Green. Members of the women's abolitionist society such as Amelia Keir, also known as Mrs Moilliet, would have been influenced by her fathers' James Keir membership to the Lunar Society. The Lunar Society met at Soho house in Birmingham. The society generally was against slavery. It sought to propagate mainly the most advanced scientific ideas, but also took positions on moral, social and political issues. The anti slavery women would also have been influenced by women thinkers such as The Blue Stockings. The artist Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807), historian Catharine Macaulay (1731-91) and early 'feminist' Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97 were prominent participants. The term came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation over fashion.

There are not many records of the thoughts of women or people who directly encountered the products of slavery in their home. Mary Anne Galton and her sister were members of West Bromwich, Birmingham and District Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. An insight into how some women's social position provoked action is provided by the young Mary Anne Galton, the daughter of Lunar Society member Samuel Galton Jnr:

My father had a very large acquaintance with the affluent West India merchants of Liverpool. They were most kindly, generous, and hospitable; their houses were like palaces. I was amazed to see the sumptuous drawing-rooms, rich with satin and silk, in houses where there was no library. But what surprised me most...was the multitude of black servants,a lmost all of whom had originally been slaves; this deeply moved my compassion, and when I saw the table laden with West India produce, in its various forms of fruit and sweetmeats, and saw the black servants looking on at the produce of a land, their native home, which they had left for us, and of which they might not partake, my heart often ached; and it is no wonder that my resolution was confirmed never to taste anything made with sugar, or to use other West Indian commodities.³