Plantation hoes sold by Joseph Smith of Sheffield. Photo: Courtesy Sheffield Local Studies Library.
A fuller picture: Chrissie Hinde on Sheffield Quakers’ involvement in the slave trade
‘It was not unusual for Quakers in Barbados to trade in enslaved people.’
Sheffield & Balby Area Meeting’s Racial Justice Group has been exploring how Sheffield and its Quakers profited from the Atlantic economy, and the mass enslavement of Africans between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Our discoveries form a Sheffield piece of the jigsaw puzzle that comprises Britain Yearly Meeting’s (BYM’s) work on reparations.
Sheffield is known for its strong tradition of anti-slavery, and many prominent Sheffield Quakers were ardent campaigners for abolition. But the historical stories of involvement with slavery itself are less well documented. This is what we concentrated on, to try to get a fuller picture.
There were at least eight confirmed ‘owners’ of enslaved people who lived in the Sheffield area at some point in their lives. (We now recognise, of course, that the word ‘owner’ is not morally valid, but I am using it because it reflects the legal position at the time.)
One of these was Ralph Fretwell. Born in Sheffield in 1631, he set out in 1657 to make his fortune in Barbados. By the early 1660s he had saved enough to purchase a fifty-three-acre sugar plantation. In 1671 he met George Fox in Barbados and became a Quaker. But it was not unusual for seventeenth-century Quakers in Barbados to be ‘owners’ of, and traders in, enslaved people.
In 1677, Fretwell was prosecuted for having eighty ‘negroes’ present at a Quaker Meeting in his home. Many local planters were against introducing enslaved Africans to Christianity, because they feared it would lead to uprising and rebellion.
In around 1690, Fretwell left Barbados and returned to South Yorkshire as a very wealthy man. He built Hellaby Hall, near Rotherham, which is now a luxury hotel. When he died, in 1702, he left a legacy of £5,000 to each of his daughters, Dorothy and Mabell, and £1,000 to his aunt Eliza Mollyning. This £11,000 legacy is estimated at £24.1 million in 2020 values. His executors include local Quakers, though neither his nor any of his beneficiaries’ names appear in any local Quaker records.
Sheffield manufacturers benefitted in three major ways from the transatlantic trade in enslaved people. First, metalware produced in Sheffield was bought by British merchants and exported to West Africa, where it was traded for enslaved Africans. Secondly, tools produced in Sheffield, including the famous plantation hoe, were bought by plantation owners in North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Third, crops grown by enslaved people in the Americas were processed in Sheffield, which hosted a thriving sugar refining industry.
There is evidence of a Sheffield ironmaster, George Sitwell, using the plantation colonies as an export market as early as 1662-3. This was only a few decades after the settlement of the first English colonies in North America and the Caribbean. In 1704, parcels of nails worth £99 14s 0d were sent to a man called Thomas Fell, in Jamaica (this would have been worth around £222,000 in 2020 values). Nails were used for the construction of buildings in the expanding colonies. The Fell family had roots in the wider Sheffield region, and had strong links to Quakerism. It is possible that the ties between the Sheffield ironmasters and Thomas Fell are an example of transatlantic Quaker commercial networks in operation. Branches of the Fell family could be found in Barbados and Jamaica by late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries.
‘It is likely that a significant proportion of the sugar refined in Sheffield was grown by enslaved people, even after the abolition of slavery in the British empire in 1833.’
By the mid-nineteenth century, Sheffield had eight sugar-refineries, including Walker & Wall on Exchange Street. A Quaker, James Wall, worked briefly with his brother, joint owner of this firm, before going into the closely-linked trade of grocery. In 1845, Sheffield Quaker Meeting appointed him to make a collection from members for ‘Negro education’ in ‘the West India isles and other places’.
It is likely that a significant proportion of the sugar refined in Sheffield was grown by enslaved people, even after the abolition of slavery in the British empire in 1833. Sheffield manufacturers had commercial connections with sugar producers in Brazil, where slavery was not abolished until 1888.
Frederick Douglass, the famous black American abolitionist, visited Sheffield in 1846-1847. He spoke at Friends’ Meeting House to great applause from a large gathering. But just twelve years later, in 1859-60, Douglass delivered speeches in Sheffield’s Temperance Hall to a much reduced and less enthusiastic audience. The strong support of his first visit had begun to wane. Douglass remarked that ‘the influence of Sheffield went wherever its knives and crinoline went’. He was not sure ‘whether the people of Sheffield had not sent too much crinoline to America, and had not too many good customers there whom they did not like to offend. If such was the cause, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.’
When the US civil war began in April 1861, many Sheffielders favoured the pro-slavery Confederacy. In May 1863, between 6,000 and 8,000 Sheffield residents voted 3-1 in favour of Southern independence. The profits from trade with the southern states were the most likely reason for this support for the Confederates. Several of Sheffield’s manufacturing industries continued to have close links with slavery-based economies in the Americas long after the end of the British involvement in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.
Our research has been shared with the BYM Reparations Working Group Historical Workstream. We hope the findings will inspire other Meetings to share their histories, and contribute to the bigger picture, namely the outworking of BYM’s commitment to reparations and racial justice.
Chrissie says: ‘This article draws information from Sheffield & Balby Area Meeting Archive, and Sheffield libraries, archives and social Studies resources, and an excellent report, ‘Sheffield, Slavery, and its Legacies’ (2021) by Michael D Bennett and team from the University of Sheffield History department.
