Lucy Townsend

Lucy Townsend (née Jesse; 25 July 1781 – 20 April 1847) was a British abolitionist. She started the first Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Birmingham, UK, titled the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. Although slavery had been abolished in the UK in 1807, her society was a model for others in Britain and America which campaigned to end slavery in the West Indies and US. The British Ladies' Society's role in abolitionism is considered to have had an international impact. Life Townsend's family came from Staffordshire. Her father, William Jesse, was the evangelical incumbent at All Saints Church in West Bromwich. In 1807 she married Rev. Charles Townsend, who was the curate of West Bromwich and a campaigner against slavery. They became the parents of six children and they were both opposed to cruel sports as well as slavery. Townsend founded the first Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Birmingham on 8 April 1825. She and Mary Lloyd were the first joint secretaries of what was at first called The Ladies' Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. Other founding members included Elizabeth Heyrick, Sophia Sturge and Sarah Wedgwood (daughter of Josiah Wedgwood). By 1831 there were over seventy similar anti-slavery organisations. Townsend's organisation was publicised in America and it became a model for similar organisations in the USA. Townsend published To the Law and to the Testimony in support of anti-slavery in 1832. Whilst she was in Birmingham she started an organisation to assist deaf-mutes with Mary Lloyd. In 1836 Townsend moved to Thorpe in Nottinghamshire. She gave up the job of honorary secretary, but remained as a committee member. The role of abolitionist women in Britain was independent. For many years these anti-slavery organisations, which were run by women, were dismissed as of marginal interest, but recent research has revealed that these groups had a distinct and national impact.