Benjamin Barron Wiffen

Benjamin Barron Wiffen (1794–1867) was an English Quaker businessman, bibliophile and biographer of early Spanish Protestant reformers.

The second son of John Wiffen, ironmonger, and his wife Elizabeth (née Pattison), he was born at Woburn, Bedfordshire; his elder brother was Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen. He followed his brother to Ackworth school in 1803; on leaving in 1808 he went into his father's business. His mother Elizabeth was left widowed with a young family. Wiffen remained in business at Woburn till 1838, when his health failed, and he retired to Mount Pleasant, Aspley Guise, near Woburn, with his mother and two unmarried sisters.

Early in 1840 Luis de Usoz came to London from Madrid, and was introduced by George Borrow to Josiah Forster. When Wiffen came to the Friends' meeting in Whitweek, Forster told him that Usoz had inquired after his late brother as a translator of Spanish poetry. At Forster's request he called on Usoz in Jermyn Street, beginning a lifelong friendship. Wiffen attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in June as a delegate. In late 1840 or early 1841 Wiffen made his first visit to Spain with George William Alexander, as a deputation to forward the abolitionist cause there.

In 1842 Wiffen accompanied Alexander a second time to Spain and Portugal. Correspondence between John Scoble and François-André Isambert led Wiffen to seek out the Barcelona publisher Antonio Bergnes de las Casas (1801–1879). Bergnes had first been visited in 1833 by William Allen and Stephen Grellet. Contact was renewed through Santiago Usoz, brother to Luis. Bergnes became a publisher for British abolitionist material in Spain. Wiffen also passed material relating to Juan Francisco Manzano and his poetic slave narrative to Usoz, with the co-operation of Richard Robert Madden. In 1843 Wiffen made another research trip with Alexander, to the Netherlands and Denmark in particular.

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