Elizabeth Heyrick

Elizabeth Heyrick (4 December 1769 – 18 October 1831) was a British philanthropist 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, her mother Elizabeth Cartwright a poet and writer. As a young woman, Elizabeth was exposed to radical politics and the writings of Thomas Paine, and showed a natural ability for painting landscapes. She met John Wesley when he visited the family house and soon after became a practising Methodist. She became a schoolteacher and, in 1787 married John Heyrick, a lawyer and a descendant of Robert Herrick the poet. After his death in 1795, when she was only 25, she became a Quaker, soon after devoting her life to social reform. She became one of the most prominent radical women activists of the 1820s.

In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded. Members included Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease, Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton and Anne Knight.

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