Mary Lloyd (abolitionist)

Mary Lloyd
Born	12 March 1795 Falmouth
Died	25 January 1865 Wood Green
Nationality	British

Mary Lloyd or Mary Hornchurch (12 March 1795 – 25 January 1865) was a British joint secretary of the first Ladies Anti-Slavery Society.

Mary Hornchurch was born in Falmouth in 1795 into a Quaker family. Her mother was a minister in the Society of Friends and her father was a cooper. Mary's mother died whilst she was a child and she quickly became the carer for her father when he became ill until her died in 1818. Mary was cared for by friends until she married Samuel Lloyd (1795–1862) on 12 November 1823. Samuel was to support his wife as she campaigned against slavery.

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

Lucy Townsend founded the first Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Birmingham on 8 April 1825. She and Lloyd were the first joint secretaries of what was at first called The Ladies' Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. Other founding members included Elizabeth Heyrick, Sophia Sturge and Sarah Wedgewood. By 1831 there were over seventy similar anti-slavery organisations. Townsen's organisation was publicised in America and it became a role model for similar organisations in the USA.

Whilst she was in Birmingham she started an organisation to assist deaf-mutes with Lucy Townsend. Lloyd continued as Honorary secretary when Townsend resigned when she moved to Thorpe in Nottinghamshire in 1836. Townsend remained as a committee member and Lloyd was secretary and later treasurer in the 1840s. In 1841 she became a minister in the Society of Friends and this required her to speak and travel around England.

...
Wikipedia