Volume Thirteen - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - even more aspects - Slavery - echoes of the past . . . .

John Hawkshaw's view upon Slavery

John Hawkshaw, our eminent engineer of Penarth Dock, and his wife Ann, were setting out in the 1840's to become notable members of society, up north, in the Manchester and Salford area mixing within the Unitarian community. John, had married Ann (1812-1885) in March 1835 and moved to the 'wrong side of the Pennines' from his home town of Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire and was the engineer of the Manchester & Bolton Railway Company.

Ann had written her first, of four, books of poems. Copies of the first were sent in 1844 to William Wordsworth (Poet Laureate) and to the historian Thomas Carlyle which were well received by both. The book contained a poem entitled 'Why am I a Slave?' which provides an insight into the changing Victorian attitudes to slavery at this time being about a decade after the 1833 Act of abolition. She wrote : Who has a right to bind these limbs And make a slave of me . . .

John Hawkshaw had previously published his opinion and observations upon slavery during his working time in Venezuela and had formed the following view:-

Why is the black man carried into slavery? Simply because the white man has the power to do it. Should the African ever become more powerful, he would have reason just as good for transferring his chains to the neck of the European. Even now the dark races of mankind surpass the white in numbers. Frequently they have as much contempt for the pale face of the European, as he can have for them ; and however problematical it may be, it will not be amiss occasionally to suppose the cases reversed - the darker races triumphant, the white ones in chains.