KS 3 & 4 themes
- Africa and the transatlantic slave trade
- Cotton and transatlantic slavery
- Local cotton industries in Greater Manchester
- The American Civil War and Lancashire cotton workers
- Freedom and human rights
- Campaigning for the abolition of slavery
- After abolition
- Legacies of transatlantic slavery: racism in Manchester
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learning@revealinghistories.org
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Campaigning for the abolition of slavery
Breakfast service made by Wedgwood, 1785, Gallery Oldham
See this object at Gallery Oldham
This item may not always be on display, please check with the venue before visiting
This breakfast service shows many connections to slavery. It was made by Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood was an abolitionist and produced the design ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?' showing a kneeling enslaved African begging for freedom.
The set includes a sugar bowl. There was a huge growth in consumption of sugar in Britain during the 1700s. Sugar was grown on plantations in the Caribbean by millions of enslaved Africans working in appalling conditions. They often worked from early morning to late in the night and cutting and boiling sugar cane was extremely hard and dangerous work.
Sugar started off as a luxury but soon became a basic part of the British diet. It was used to sweeten puddings as well as drinks such as tea, coffee and chocolate. Rum was also produced from slave-grown sugar and became a very popular drink. Rum was given to sailors as well as to enslaved Africans on ships crossing the Atlantic.
This breakfast service was owned by British prime minister, William Gladstone. His father, John Gladstone, had large sugar plantations in Jamaica and British Guiana (now Guyana) and received nearly £100,000 in compensation when slavery was finally abolished. The enslaved people who had worked on his plantations received nothing.
This breakfast service came from the Lees family who founded Oldham’s art gallery. They made their fortune in the cotton industry, which depended on raw slave-grown cotton on plantations in the USA, until the abolition of slavery in 1865.