Samuel Lucas

Samuel Lucas
Rev. Cox (left) and Samuel Lucas (right) shown in a detail from The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840, by Benjamin Robert Haydon
Born	1811 Wandsworth
Died	16 April 1865 London
Cause of death	Bronchial complaint
Nationality	British
Known for	Abolitionist, editor of the Morning Star

Samuel Lucas (1811–1865) was a British journalist and abolitionist. He was the editor of the Morning Star in London, the only national newspaper in Britain to support the Unionist cause in the American Civil War. He died knowing that legal slavery in America had ended. In 2010 a U.S. Embassy attaché visited the tomb of Samuel Lucas. Lucas lived to hear the "tidings of the destruction of the slave power in the United States"

Samuel Lucas was born in 1811 to a Quaker family in Wandsworth. Frederick Lucas was his younger brother. His father bought and sold corn. Lucas married his cousin Margaret Bright on 6 September 1839 who was also from a well connected family in the Society of Friends. His wife was to become famous in her own right largely after Lucas's death.

Lucas worked for many good causes. He attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 and he was included in the commemorative painting by Benjamin Haydon. Freeing slaves was to be a theme throughout his life. Another interest was secular schools, which Lucas championed in Manchester and where he met Richard Cobden. He had moved there in 1845 as he took an interest in a cotton mill and he stayed there for five years before returning to London. He became active for the Anti-Corn Law League which Cobden and John Bright had founded. His wife Margaret organised meetings and Samuel led them. Meanwhile, his wife took the leading role in caring for their daughter, Katherine, and their mute son.

In August 1847 he was a founding member of the Lancashire-based organisation that was to become the National Public Schools Association. As a result, Lucas wrote a Plan for the Establishment of a General System of Secular Education in the County of Lancaster, By 1860 Lucas and his family had moved to London where he became a supporter of the Society for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge.