Edmund Sturge

Edmund Sturge (8 December 1808 – 28 June 1893), was a Quaker businessman and campaigner for liberal causes.

Edmund Sturge was born at Olveston, near Bristol, the youngest of the twelve children of Joseph Sturge (1752–1817) and his wife, Mary (born Marshall).

His older brother, Joseph Sturge (1793–1859), was active in the Anti-Slavery Movement. Edmund was schooled at James Moxham's (Thornbury) and R. Weston's (Rochester). Both his parents having died by the time he was aged 11, most holidays were spent with his brother Joseph at Netherton(Bewdley)where he was occupied in the office and warehouse of the corn factors business of Joseph & Charles Sturge. On leaving school he went to live at brother Joseph's new home in Birmingham, where his brother John also resided, and Edmund kept the books of John's "Chemical Works" until coming of age and entering partnership as J & E Sturge.

Edmund became quietly active in the anti slavery movement and many other liberal causes, for example, for peace, penal reform, the suppression of the opium trade and for the protection of aborigines.

From 1837, on Joseph Sturge's return from a tour of the West Indies, Edmund helped to widely distribute Joseph's report on the conditions of slaves. In 1840, he joined the newly formed British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and in 1860 was appointed to its Committee. He served as the Society's Secretary from 1870 and as its chairman from 1882 to 1891 and then as its vice-president until his death. After he retired from business in 1876, he regularly lobbied Parliament on the Society's business (see below: William Tallack's reminiscence).

In 1893, he published a 23-page pamphlet West India : "compensation" to the owners of slaves : its history and its results.

Edmund Sturge's Obituary in The Times said: "...Mr Sturge ... was a younger brother of the late Mr Joseph Sturge, the Abolitionist, and had himself been a steady but unobtrusive worker in the anti-slavery cause for more than 60 years, and many of the reforms that have taken place in the West Indies in favour of the emancipated negros are mainly due to his intervention".

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