In Greater Manchester
- How money from slavery made Greater Manchester
- The importance of cotton in north west England
- The Lancashire cotton famine
- Smoking, drinking and the British sweet tooth
- Black presence in Britain and north west England
- Resistance and campaigns for abolition
- The bicentenary of British abolition
Global
Who resisted and campaigned for abolition?
George Caley of Rochdale
Personal experience of slavery
George Caley was a botanist who spent his childhood in Middleton near Rochdale, and went to the West Indies as curator of the botanic gardens in St Vincent where he acquired a personal African slave.
On his death in 1829 he gave this slave his freedom. His will states:
'Also I direct that a negro called Washington who belongs to me in the Island of St Vincent in the West Indies shall be set free and I do hereby give and bequeath to him his freedom'.
Touchstones Rochdale has a copy of a letter written by George Caley, as well as items donated by the Middleton Botanical Society, of which George Caley was a member.