Elizabeth Heyrick

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Elizabeth Heyrick (1769–1831) was a British activist and campaigner against the slave trade.

Born Elizabeth Coltman in Leicester, her father John Coltman had been a manufacturer of worstead cloth and a Unitarian. As a young woman she was exposed to radical politics and the writings of Thomas Paine. She became a schoolteacher and, in 1787 married John Heyrick, a lawyer. After his death in 1795 she became a Quaker, asoon after devoting her life to social reform.

She campaigned against the Corn Laws and in favour of better conditions in English prisons, but her principal concern became the campaign against the British slave trade. She encouraged the boycott of sugar from the West Indies and set up the Birmingham Ladies Association.

Heyrick was a strong supporter of complete emancipation for enslaved Africans in the British West Indies and in 1824 she wrote a pamphlet entitled Immediate, not Gradual Abolition, which was influential in encouraging public opinion to support the cause. More than seventy women's anti-slavery societies were started nationally as a result of her campaigning.

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